The Complete Game Trilogy: Game, Buzz, Bubble. Литагент HarperCollins USD

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      There was a smell of dry earth, straw and something else natural that HP couldn’t quite identify. And of course there was no-one there to meet him …

      He lit a fag and chilled for a while but the sun was burning the back of his neck and soon his grimy t-shirt was clinging to his back with sweat.

      He must remember to nick a pair of shorts.

      A few cows were mooing in the distance and on the horizon he saw a little yellow plane coming towards him over the treetops. The plane was pulling a long banner and HP couldn’t help smiling.

      He hadn’t seen that sort of advert since he was little. Hadn’t the internet and commercial television killed off advertising with real banners? But, on the other hand, this was the arse-end of nowhere and you could probably get away with anything round here.

      ‘Fjärdhundra Market 28-31 July’ the banner read.

      He grinned again. Fjärdhundra Market! Bound to be a load of morons in dungarees trying to guess the weight of a pig, topple cows over, or get off with their fifteen-year-old cousins. A banjo-solo, maybe? Dingelingdingdingdingsdingding ding …

      It was beyond him why anyone would choose to live like that instead of in the city like a proper Homo sapiens.

      ‘Yeehaa, Farthundra!’ he yelled, waving at the plane as it passed overhead. But even though the pilot must have seen him as he stood there in the middle of the road among the new-mown fields, HP didn’t get a hint of a response. Not even a little dip of the wings.

      ‘Fuck you, then, shithead,’ he muttered. With the cigarette dangling from his mouth, he switched to other less friendly gestures as the plane disappeared from sight.

      When the sound of the engine died away he heard another, angry-sounding motor coming towards him. It turned out to be a flatbed moped, and the character riding it looked like Tim Burton’s younger brother.

      Long fair hair, a scruffy matching beard, all held down by one of those old leather flying-helmets with built-in goggles. Blue overalls that had definitely seen better days and a pair of old army boots completed the outfit, and yet again HP had trouble holding back his laughter.

      A bit odd, yeah, right!

      Fuck, this was serious Candid Camera stuff!

      The moped man stopped sharply in front of him and grappled with the gears.

      ‘Are you HP?’

      ‘No, I’m just a tourist who likes cows and fields, what the fuck do you think?’ HP muttered.

      ‘Whassat?’ The moped muppet leaned forward.

      ‘Yes, that’s me. Nice with all these cows and fields you’ve got out here,’ HP replied, this time louder so the man could hear him over the noise of the two-stroke engine.

      ‘Erman,’ the bloke nodded in reply. ‘Jump on!’

      HP hesitated for a moment, then, still grinning, jumped up onto the flatbed. Of course, a little ride on a flatbed moped was all he needed to reinforce all his prejudices about the countryside. The banjo duet in his head got even louder and he hummed along, safe in the knowledge that his driver couldn’t hear him over the clatter of the engine.

      Erman followed the road for a couple of kilometres, then turned off, heading straight across the fields on an almost invisible gravel track.

      As they approached the tree-line the track got even bumpier, but HP’s chauffeur made no attempt to ease up on the gas, and by the time they pulled up outside the little cottage hidden in amongst the fir trees, the whole hillbilly thing had almost stopped being fun.

      While Erman parked the moped HP stretched and massaged his sore backside.

      Where the fuck had he ended up now?

      The house was small, maybe just fifty or sixty square metres, not much bigger than Auntie Berit’s allotment cottage. The façade had once been red but most of the planks had faded to grey, with just a few hints of pink where the sun and rain hadn’t got to them. The drooping concrete-fibre roof was green with moss and algae and the cottage was surrounded by metre-high nettles. The whole thing looked ready to collapse at any moment.

      ‘Go on in,’ Erman muttered, nodding towards the entrance as he closed the door of the little outhouse. HP did as he was told and discovered that the inside of the shack looked considerably better than the outside had led him to expect.

      The kitchen and small living room were clean and tidy, there was a smell of detergent and in one corner there was a cosy crackle from a cast-iron stove. In spite of that the house was cool, probably because it was shaded by the surrounding firs.

      ‘You followed the instructions, I hope?’ Erman said abruptly as he came into the kitchen a few seconds later.

      ‘Yep,’ HP said. ‘No mobile, paid cash for all tickets and did a bit of James Bond stuff before catching the train, so your little paradise is safe from discovery.’

      Erman grunted and tossed the flying-helmet onto a kitchen chair.

      To his surprise HP realized that his host wasn’t some old bloke like he’d first thought, but at a guess was just a few years older than him.

      Erman gestured to him to sit down on the kitchen sofa, then put an old-fashioned coffee-pot on the stove and started to get cups out.

      ‘So you’re allergic to electricity, how do you get that?’ HP began in an exaggeratedly friendly tone, but got a quick snort in reply.

      ‘Twenty-five years with computers, magnetic fields, radio waves and all the other shit flying around through the air. Then you wake up one day covered in a rash and can hardly breathe.’

      He poured them both coffee and HP took a quick, scalding sip. Boiled coffee, he hadn’t drunk that since his grandmother had died, he realized as he managed to swallow the burning liquid and blink a tear from his eye. Apart from the temperature, it tasted pretty good.

      The porcelain cup was wafer-thin and the handle so finely made that he had to hold it Lidingö style, with his ring and little fingers sticking out. The coffee-set had to be at least as old as the house, if not even older.

      He swirled the coffee round, blowing on it, then took another cautious sip as he peered at his host.

      ‘So you want to know more about a server I installed?’ Erman said, glowering suspiciously at him across the table. ‘I don’t usually talk to people I don’t know, or with anyone at all these days, come to that.’

      No shit! HP thought, grinning into his coffee cup.

      ‘But an old friend said you were okay and I owe him, big time you could say. If he says you’re all right, then you’re okay in my book. So what do you want to know, and why?’

      HP had worked out his strategy while he was on the bus and made an effort to sound nonchalant.

      ‘Just who you installed the server for and where it is. I’m the art director of a small advertising agency and they’ve got some visual material I’m interested in.’

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