The Rabbit Hunter

by Lars Kepler

  ‘Just wait here. I’m sure we can sort this out,’ the man calls after her.

  Parisa goes down the steps and hurries along the narrow track between the boats and the large workshop. Further down she sees a crane shaking in the wind, etched against the approaching clouds. The waves are breaking over the rocks and the boat ramp.

  Parisa realises that there are lights shining through the plastic covering several of the boats.

  The smell of warm oil dredges up memories from Afghanistan, and she finds herself back in the engineering workshop where her father and grandfather worked, by the Safid River on the outskirts of Sheberghan.

  ‘Amira?’ she calls across the marina. ‘Amira?’

  46

  Parisa calls her sister’s name again. She thinks she sees shadows moving behind the illuminated plastic covering a large motorboat down by the water.

  She starts to walk towards the boat, but trips over a rusty outboard motor. There are engine parts and other junk everywhere: windows, buoys, damp boxes full of rolls of tape, anchors, and a clutch of neon tubes leaning against a big forklift-truck.

  ‘Miss!’ the man calls after her. ‘You can’t just …’

  ‘Amira?’ Parisa shouts as loudly as she can.

  The elderly couple have emerged from the office now, and over her shoulder she sees the man help the old woman down the steep steps, slowly and unsteadily.

  The sound of the sander in the workshop stops abruptly.

  Parisa detects movement from some distance away. Someone is climbing down an aluminium ladder from one of the boats closest to the water.

  It’s Amira.

  She’s sure it is.

  Her little sister is wearing a blue down jacket, with a shawl covering her head and mouth.

  ‘Amira!’ she cries out, and starts running down the narrow path.

  The old man calls out again. Parisa waves at her sister. She stumbles over a sawhorse but manages to get past it.

  Her sister is squinting, trying to see her through the growing darkness in the sprawling boatyard.

  Suddenly a large man in overalls comes around the corner of the workshop. He’s limping, leaning on a crutch as he walks towards Parisa. He’s clutching a heavy sander in one hand. The cable snakes off behind him, and white dust is swirling from the dislodged filter.

  ‘Amira!’ Parisa calls again, just as three spotlights on the front of the building are switched on.

  The man with the sander is heading right for her, followed by her sister, who has a look of fear in her eyes.

  ‘Stop shouting,’ the man mutters, walking into the furthest light beam.

  ‘Anders, go home,’ the older man calls out behind her.

  ‘I want my wife,’ he mutters, and stops.

  He stares at Parisa through smeared protective goggles. Amira is standing behind him, as if paralysed, unable to get past.

  ‘Hello,’ Parisa says.

  ‘Hello,’ he replies quietly.

  ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ she says. ‘But I was trying to make sure my sister could hear me.’

  ‘Parisa, they’re crazy, you need to get help!’ her sister calls out in Pashto.

  When the man hears Amira’s voice he turns towards her, steps further into the harsh light from the building and hits her hard across the cheek with the crutch. The blow knocks her sideways and she falls to the ground. He moves after her, bellowing, and tries to hit her in the face with the heavy sander. He misses and loses his grip. The machine flies off, dislodges the frame of an old window, and thuds to the ground.

  ‘Stop!’ Parisa shouts, trying to open the bag where her gun is hidden.

  Amira is lying on her side, trying to crawl away. The man is kicking out at her, and waving his crutch.

  ‘My wife!’ he yells.

  ‘Stop it!’ Parisa cries, pulling the pistol from her bag with shaking hands.

  He turns towards her and she pulls the catch back and takes aim at him.

  ‘Dad said she was my wife now,’ he says in a thick voice.

  Parisa sees him looking towards the office building, and turns to see that the old man is still supporting the woman as they slowly approach along the gravel path.

  ‘She was given to me,’ the thickset man says, wiping snot from his nose with his sleeve.

  ‘Get out of the way,’ Parisa says sharply.

  ‘No,’ he says, shaking his head obstinately.

  Parisa marches over and hits him in the face with the pistol, right in the goggles. He stumbles back and lands in the weeds in front of the building.

  Holding the pistol with both hands and keeping it trained on him, she calls to her sister. Amira starts crawling towards her, but lets out a frightened shriek when the man rolls over and grabs one of her ankles.

  ‘Let go of her, or I’ll shoot!’ Parisa roars.

  She raises the gun and fires into the air, then quickly aims at his chest as the shot echoes between the buildings.

  ‘Let go of her!’ she shouts again, her voice cracking.

  ‘Anders doesn’t understand. He’s only a child,’ the older man calls out behind them.

  With a gasp, Parisa spins around and aims the pistol at the old man as he comes closer. The old woman is sitting on a stack of starter-motors further up the path.

  ‘Dad, you said I was going to have a wife,’ the large man wails from the ground.

  ‘Anders,’ his father pants. ‘I said … that if no one wanted her, you could have her.’

  Parisa can feel hysteria flaring in her chest. The elderly man holds his hands up and takes a step towards her.

  ‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’ Parisa yells at him. ‘Amira’s coming with me. I’ll pay you later. You’ll get your money, but—’

  Her head flashes and her vision fades as something strikes the back of her neck hard from behind. She lurches forward, then her knees buckle and she hits her forehead against a post, drops the gun and falls sideways. She feels blood start to run down her face.

  With a groan she struggles to get up, but it feels like someone’s pressing a scorching hot sponge against her neck.

  The ground sways beneath her. As she fumbles for something to grab hold of she hears Amira screaming with fear. She tries to pull herself up against the cold metal wall, spitting blood. She sees that other migrants have clambered down from different boats and are cautiously coming closer.

  ‘You don’t exist!’ roars a bearded man in his fifties. He clutches a shotgun.

  He lashes out a second time with the barrel of the gun and she collapses, spilling an old pushchair full of used oil filters, and scraping her shoulder on the gravel.

  She raises her head and tries to see where her gun is, but the blow to the back of her head has affected her vision. The world is flickering and shaking. She can only just make out the heavyset man with the goggles as he moves towards Amira.

  Gasping for breath, Parisa tries to stand up again. She spits blood, and hears the bearded man say he’s going to wipe them out.

  He kicks her in her ribs and she rolls over. She tries to catch her breath but he looms over her and yanks off her veil so hard that the friction against her neck stings.

  ‘You’ve got faces – fucking hell, you’ve got faces!’ the bearded man yells.

  ‘Linus, that’s enough,’ the elderly father says.

  Wiping her mouth, Parisa tries to locate her pistol. Above the man with the shotgun she sees the flagpole shake in the wind, its blue and yellow pennant twitching and fluttering.

  The bearded man, Linus, walks over to Parisa, presses the end of the shotgun hard between her breasts, then lowers the barrel, sliding it over her stomach and in between her thighs. Then he stops, and stands there breathing hard.

  ‘Please,’ she begs quietly.

  ‘Linus, calm down,’ the father says.

  The bearded man trembles, then quickly jerks the gun towards Parisa’s face and puts his finger on the trigger.

  ‘Or would you rather not have a f
ace? You don’t really want one, do you?’ he asks.

  ‘Stop it now,’ the father cries with fear in his voice.

  ‘She doesn’t want a face,’ he replies.

  Parisa tries to move her head, but he follows her movements with the gun.

  Anders is crying, covering Amira’s mouth and nose with his hand. Her legs are kicking weakly, and her eyes have rolled back.

  ‘Please, Linus, don’t go too far, we don’t want the cops here,’ the father pleads.

  Sweat runs from the man’s beard down his neck. He mutters something and presses the cold barrel of the shotgun to Parisa’s forehead.

  47

  Joona is running along Roslagsvägen through the darkness. Almost twenty minutes have passed since he left the car by the side of the road. He hasn’t seen anyone else in all that time. The only things he has heard have been sudden gusts of wind in the treetops and his own breathing.

  He’s running down a long slope, so he lengthens his stride and speeds up even more. He can just make out the glow of a building in the distance, through the trees.

  His pistol bounces against his ribs.

  He runs across a small viaduct with dusty railings, but stops when he hears a sharp bang behind him.

  A pistol shot.

  He turns and listens.

  The sound is carried off across the water and bounces back between the islands.

  Joona starts running back as fast as he can, towards an unpaved side-road he passed a short while ago. A car is heading towards him at high speed. Dazzled by the headlights, he climbs into the ditch and pushes his way through the tall grass. The ground shakes as the car passes, then everything is dark again. Joona clambers up onto the road and runs a bit further, until he finds the dirt road leading towards the building and turns into it.

  The road leads him past a rusty car, and into a tunnel of black trees.

  When he emerges from the patch of woodland he sees Parisa’s car. It’s parked outside the office of a small boatyard. As he moves towards the rows of boats he reports back to Janus, giving his coordinates using GPS and asking for backup from the Rapid Response Unit.

  ‘But hold back,’ he repeats. ‘Hold back until I’ve evaluated the situation. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

  He hears agitated voices and creeps closer, switching his phone to silent as he takes cover under a large motorboat.

  Crouching down, he moves nearer through the narrow space between the boats.

  He sees an old woman sitting on a stack of starter-motors before he catches sight of the others.

  An elderly man is standing on the gravel path with a Stanley knife hidden in his hand, and another man is sitting on the ground holding a girl in his arms.

  Joona quickly moves closer. Dry grass rustles beneath his feet.

  The tarpaulin covering one boat lifts like a sail, giving him a glimpse of what’s going on. A bearded man hits Parisa in the back of the neck with the butt of a shotgun, then aims the barrel at her.

  Water trickles to the ground as the tarp falls back down.

  The bearded man is standing still with the barrel of the shotgun pointed between Parisa’s legs. It’s a double-barrelled shotgun that can fire two rounds without needing to be reloaded.

  Joona creeps under a sail boat. The sound in his left ear gets distorted as he passes close to the rusting keel.

  The bearded man yells something, and aims the barrel at Parisa’s face.

  Joona steps quickly from his hiding place, straightens up, approaches the bearded man from the side and twists the barrel of the shotgun upward, away from Parisa’s head.

  He follows through, yanking the butt of the shotgun down with his other hand, out of the man’s grasp, then spins it around and puts his finger on the trigger.

  Joona jabs the barrel into the man’s face. He staggers backwards, clutching his hands to his mouth. Maintaining his line of sight, Joona takes a step forward, turns sideways and strikes him hard across the cheek with the butt of the gun. A cascade of blood squirts from his mouth.

  Joona quickly turns the weapon on the old man.

  The bearded man hits the ground, crashes over a box of aerosol cans and comes to rest face-down.

  The old man stands still and drops the knife on the ground.

  ‘Kick the knife away and get down on your knees,’ Joona says.

  The old man does as he’s told, leaning against the side of the building as he kneels down.

  It’s almost silent, the wind and the rustle of plastic are the only sounds. Parisa looks up and sees that the blond man has followed her. Pointing the gun at Anders’s chest, he pulls Amira from his grasp.

  ‘Don’t play with guns, boys,’ he says in his Finnish accent.

  Anders just looks at him in astonishment, licking snot from his top lip.

  When Parisa rolls onto her side it feels like her head is going to explode. She gasps for breath, but forces her eyes open and sees Amira stumble towards her and sink to her knees.

  ‘Amira,’ she whispers.

  ‘We have to get away from here. You need to get up!’

  Parisa can’t move. She leans her cheek on the rough ground and sees three more migrants approaching along the path. First a small boy with serious eyes, followed by an older woman in traditional costume.

  Behind them is a man in a shiny black tracksuit.

  Parisa knows she’s seen him before, but it takes her a few moments before she realises he’s a famous football player. Salim used to point him out in matches because he came from the same town as them.

  48

  Joona tries to make a quick assessment of the situation, and turns the gun on the bearded man when he starts to move again.

  Some sort of conflict has clearly arisen between the human-traffickers, migrants and Parisa.

  The old woman is still sitting on the stack of starter-motors with her knitting, and the old man is on his knees with his hands on his head.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ Joona says.

  Three refugees are walking towards them along the narrow path between the workshop and the boats.

  Joona hears a rhythmic sound and glances towards the water before turning back to Parisa.

  ‘Is this everyone?’ he asks, noting that the lights in the house further away have gone out.

  ‘There’s just my sister and the three others left,’ she replies.

  ‘Tell them to come with us.’

  Parisa gasps something, and her sister calls to the other three. They look confused as they come closer. The older woman is reluctant, but the boy pats her hand and tries to calm her.

  ‘Come on,’ Joona says, turning the gun on the old man.

  The boy points, says something, then crawls in under a white yacht. He emerges a few moments later clutching Parisa’s pistol. He looks pleased with himself as he brushes his knees and holds the gun out towards her.

  One arm around her sister’s shoulders, Parisa reaches out with her other hand.

  The boy steps into the white glare of the spotlight, then his head whips sideways and the right side of his face disappears.

  The others see blood, brain tissue and fragments of skull splatter the sleek hull of the yacht before the sound of the rifle shot reaches them.

  ‘Follow me, come on!’ Joona calls, trying to pull Parisa and her sister towards the large forklift.

  The rhythmic sound gets louder and louder, then the sharp clatter of a helicopter rotor envelops them from all sides, hitting their chests and necks.

  ‘Down on the ground!’ Joona yells above the noise.

  The Rapid Response Unit helicopter sweeps around, a dark shape against the black sky. A sniper is hanging out of the cabin with his feet on the landing strut.

  The older Afghan woman crawls in under the boats, and the football player runs at a crouch along the side of the building. The man Joona hit rolls towards the tall weeds near the building and disappears from view.

  Joona manages to get Parisa and
her sister behind the forklift, lays the shotgun on the grass by the wall of the workshop, and tries to call the Security Police.

  All he can hear is a vibrating sound, but he repeats several times that they have to break off the operation, that there are no terrorists in the boatyard.

  Anders stands up, using his crutch, then points at the helicopter with a smile and starts walking towards the water. The treetops rustle and the noise of the helicopter changes as it performs an abrupt swerve behind them.

  The four searchlights on the underside of the helicopter shine like white beacons.

  Joona can see five members of the Response Unit hanging from a SPIE rope beneath the helicopter. They’re all wearing helmets and bulletproof vests and carrying semiautomatic rifles.

  They are oddly inert as they approach the ground, like puppets on a string. The jetty’s wet wood shimmers in the beam of the searchlights as they fly across the water.

  Anders is standing by the edge of the water, laughing at the helicopter.

  The sky is dark, but the three spotlights on the front of the workshop illuminate part of the gravel path.

  The clattering sound gets even louder. Joona tries calling again, sees from the screen that someone has answered, and shouts at them to break off the operation, that there aren’t any terrorists in the boatyard.

  ‘Break off the operation at once!’ he repeats.

  Everyone has taken cover except Anders and the old woman, who is still sitting on the stack of motors.

  Joona watches as the helicopter gets closer to the shore and hovers above the narrow strip of beach.

  The water is pushed back in a frothing circle. Waves break over the swaying pontoon jetties. The searchlights cast trembling shadows across the path and wall of the workshop.

  A sudden crosswind makes the helicopter lurch, and the mechanic tries to hold the cable away from the cabin with his foot.

  The sound of the rotors gets deeper as the helicopter hovers in the air. The five response team officers are still swaying on the SPIE rope. The plastic covering one of the boats comes loose and blows away.