The Rabbit Hunter

by Lars Kepler

  ‘Don’t try anything,’ the man calls.

  ‘Which way do you want me to throw the pistol?’

  ‘Easy, now … This is a shotgun, I won’t miss.’

  ‘I’m doing what you said,’ Joona replies.

  The old man’s face stiffens and the barrel of the gun moves slightly to the right. A dark shadow spreads across the dangling boat engine.

  Joona hears the son’s footsteps behind him, stands still, then steps quickly forward and sideways when the blow comes. The axe misses, but the edge of the blade cuts into the back of his shoulder.

  Joona spins around as he moves and rams his left elbow into the base of the man’s neck, breaking his collarbone.

  The axe spins through the air, hits a jack and falls to the cement floor. Joona wraps his arm around the man’s neck, tips him over his hip and down onto the floor in front of him to act as a shield as he raises his pistol towards the father.

  The old man has already rested the butt of the shotgun on the ground and put the end of the barrel in his mouth.

  ‘Don’t do it,’ Joona calls.

  The old man reaches down and just manages to reach the trigger. His cheeks light up as the blast goes off, simultaneously his head jerks back and fragments of skull and brain tissue spray up at the ceiling and rain down onto the floor behind him.

  His body falls forward and the shotgun clatters to the ground beside it.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ his son gasps.

  Joona quickly ties his arms and legs with thick steel wire, then drags him to his feet and pushes him back towards the dangling engine.

  ‘I’ll kill you!’ the son screams hysterically.

  Joona winds the wire twice around the man’s bearded neck and the sturdy axle of the generator, then picks up the control pad from a workbench, and raises the engine just high enough that the man is forced to stand on tiptoe.

  Joona hears more rifle shots from outside, then semiautomatic gunfire.

  He runs over and lowers Parisa to the ground, telling her repeatedly that she’s going to be all right. He rolls her over onto her stomach, quickly wipes the blood away with the palm of his hand and seals the deep wound temporarily with duct-tape.

  ‘You’re going to be fine,’ he says calmly.

  He adds more layers of tape, even though he knows it won’t hold for very long. He can see that the wound won’t be fatal if she gets to a hospital.

  She tries to stand up but he tells her to lie still.

  ‘I just wanted to get Fatima,’ she says, trying to control her ragged breathing.

  She gets to her knees, then rests for a moment.

  She’s shaking and wobbling because of the blood she’s lost, but he helps her up and supports her through the workshop, though her knees threaten to buckle several times.

  They emerge into the cool air. The entire marina is burning, the gusting wind fanning the flames.

  Joona leads them up the gravel path along the side of the workshop, clutching his pistol in one hand.

  When Amira sees them she gets to her feet beside the forklift-truck and walks towards them, her face grey and impassive. Her eyes seem distant, her pupils enlarged. Joona helps Parisa sit down and wraps his jacket around her.

  Gustav is standing further up the path. His heavy bulletproof vest and semiautomatic rifle are lying on the ground.

  The operation has been brought to a close, and he’s reporting back to command in an unsteady voice, saying that they have the situation under control and requesting ambulances and fire engines. He nods, mutters something, then lowers the radio to his side.

  ‘Are there ambulances on the way?’ Joona calls.

  ‘The first ones will be here in ten minutes,’ Gustav replies, staring at Joona with wet eyes.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘God … I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Joona. I did everything wrong.’

  ‘It’ll be OK.’

  ‘No, it won’t. Nothing’s going to be OK.’

  A few metres behind him the old woman is sitting on the stack of motors, still knitting with a sad expression on her face. Her youngest son is lying on the ground, his arms fastened with zip ties.

  ‘We were given orders to go in immediately,’ Gustav says, wiping tears from his cheeks.

  ‘Orders from whom?’

  There’s a loud crack and Gustav takes a small step forward.

  The bang echoes between the buildings as the smell of powder dissipates.

  The old woman is holding Parisa’s pistol in both hands. Her knitting is on the ground by her feet.

  She fires again and Gustav fumbles for the wall with one hand. Blood is running from his stomach and a wound in his upper arm. Adam, who is standing next to the woman, grabs the gun and wrestles her to the ground, breaking her arm at the shoulder and holding her down with his boot.

  Joona catches Gustav when he collapses and lowers him gently to the ground. Gustav looks confused and his mouth is moving as if he wants to say something.

  51

  Joona spent two hours waiting in the hallway outside the operating theatre where Gustav was being treated. Eventually he had to leave, but there was still no word about whether Gustav was going to survive.

  He parks the car next to the top of Tule Street and feels the cool air from the park. He remembers that part of one of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s books took place here, in an flat overlooking Vanadislunden.

  As he walks down the hill towards the hotel, the local anaesthetic he was given for the axe-wound starts to fade. He had to get eleven stiches, and now the pain is starting to flare up again.

  The shoulder of his jacket has been taped together, but it’s still crumpled and spattered with blood. He smells like smoke, has a cut across his nose, and his knuckles are raw.

  The woman in reception stares at him open-mouthed. Joona realises that his appearance has changed quite a bit since he checked in.

  ‘Rough day,’ he says.

  ‘So I can see,’ she replies with a warm smile.

  He can’t help asking if there are any messages, even though he doesn’t really expect Valeria to have called.

  The receptionist checks her computer first, then his cubby hole, but there’s nothing there.

  ‘I can ask Sandra,’ she suggests.

  ‘There’s no need,’ Joona says quickly.

  He still has to wait while she goes to speak to her colleague. He stares at the empty desk and the pattern of scratches in the varnish as he thinks about the fact that his part of the mission is over.

  They all knew that the infiltration and ensuing operation were a gamble, but there was no other option. There wasn’t enough time.

  Joona has done all he could to help the Security Police, and he wishes he could tell Valeria that now he’s just an ordinary inmate out on leave.

  ‘No, sorry,’ the woman smiles when she comes back. ‘No one’s asked for you.’

  Joona thanks her and goes to his room. He leaves his muddy shoes on a newspaper, runs a hot bath, then sinks into it with his injured arm hanging over the side.

  His mobile phone is on the tiled shelf next to him. He asked the hospital to call as soon as there was any news about Gustav.

  The tap drips slowly, rings spread out across the water and disappear. His body relaxes in the warm water and the pain starts to fade.

  Salim Ratjen’s message had simply meant that Parisa’s sister had been smuggled into the country sooner than expected. And before Salim had time to tell his wife, he had been moved from Hall Prison and isolated from the world outside.

  The old couple and their three sons had turned their boatyard into a centre for human-trafficking.

  Once Joona stopped reporting back, Janus became worried that they were losing contact with the terrorist cell.

  And defeating the threat against the state was the absolute top priority.

  That was why he made the decision to fly the National Response Unit into the marina.

  Janus had seen that Joona wa
s trying to call him, but had heard nothing but static.

  From the helicopter, the response team had seen a number of people next to a large metal building. There were bodies on the ground, and a third person was on their knees. They had to make a split-second decision, and when the sniper saw through his sights that a young man was aiming a pistol at a woman, he had to fire.

  The response team couldn’t have known that the two men on the ground were human-traffickers, and that the young man with the pistol had fled from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

  The family’s third son was woken up by the commotion outside the workshop, fetched a hunting rifle from the gun cabinet, crept out of the house and hid behind a pallet of tiles.

  When the helicopter had set down the response team, the son fired and managed to hit the pilot in the chest.

  The rest of the helicopter crew died in the crash, two of the response team died during the ensuing fire-fight, and two migrants were shot by accident.

  There were no terrorists at the boatyard.

  The operation was a fiasco.

  The father shot himself, the middle son was killed by the response team, and the mother and the two other sons were arrested.

  Gustav, the team leader, was shot and seriously injured, his condition still critical. Parisa Ratjen is going to be OK, no lasting injuries. Her sister, Amira, and the older woman are both going to seek asylum in Sweden.

  Joona gets out of the bath, dries himself, then calls Valeria. As the phone rings, he looks out at the street. A group of Roma are preparing their beds for the night, on the pavement outside a supermarket.

  ‘I realise you’re not coming,’ he says when she eventually answers.

  ‘No, it …’

  She falls silent, breathing heavily.

  ‘I’m done with my job for the police, anyway,’ he explains.

  ‘Did it go well?’

  ‘I can’t really say that it did.’

  ‘Then you’re not done,’ she says quietly.

  ‘There’s no easy way to answer that, Valeria.’

  ‘I understand, but I feel I need to take a step back,’ she says. ‘I have a life that works, with the boys, the nursery … Look, I don’t want to sound boring, but I’m a grown-up, and things are fine as they are. I don’t need earth-shattering passion.’

  Silence on the line. He realises that she’s crying. Someone switches a television on in the next room.

  ‘Sorry, Joona,’ she says, and takes a shaky deep breath. ‘I’ve been fooling myself. It could never have worked out for us.’

  ‘Once I get my gardening qualifications, I hope I can still be your apprentice,’ he says.

  She laughs, but Joona can still hear a sob in her voice, and she blows her nose before answering:

  ‘Send in an application, and we’ll see.’

  ‘I will.’

  They run out of words again.

  ‘You need to get some sleep,’ Joona says quietly.

  ‘Yes.’

  They say goodnight, then fall silent, say goodnight again, and then end the call.

  Down in the street a group of youngsters emerge from a bar and head off towards Sveavägen.

  He can’t help thinking how unreal it feels not to be locked up as he gets dressed and goes outside into the cool city air. People are still sitting on the outdoor terraces along Oden Street. Joona walks up to the Brasserie Balzac, and gets a table facing the street. He’s just in time to order the pan-fried sole before the kitchen closes.

  The police investigation will go on without him.

  Nothing is over.

  The killer probably isn’t connected to a terrorist group.

  His motive for killing the Foreign Minister could easily be something completely different.

  And something definitely made him behave oddly: he stayed with his bleeding victim for more than fifteen minutes and left a witness alive.

  He knew where the cameras were located, and wore a balaclava, but for some reason he wore strips of fabric around his head.

  If he hadn’t actually killed anyone before, he crossed that line on Friday night. Any fear he felt before the killing would now have been replaced by the sense that he controls the situation. Now there’s nothing to stop him from killing again.

  52

  There’s a place in the far corner of Hammarby Cemetery to the north of Stockholm where you can see far across the fields and reed-fringed water.

  Even though the city is so close, everything here looks the way it has for a thousand years.

  Disa is lying in the innermost row, by a low stone wall, next to a child’s grave with a handprint on the headstone. Joona was with her for many years after his separation from Summa, and not a minute goes by without him missing her.

  He removes the old flowers, gets fresh water and puts the new bunch in the vase.

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t visited you in a long time,’ he says, getting rid of some leaves that have fallen on the grave. ‘Do you remember me talking about Valeria, who I used to be in love with back in high school …? We’ve been writing to each other for the past year, and have met up several times, but I don’t know what’s going to happen to us now.’

  A girl comes riding along the bridleway on the other side of the wall. Two birds take off and fly in a wide arc over a large boulder at the edge of the forest.

  ‘Can you believe that Lumi’s living in Paris?’ he smiles. ‘She seems happy, she’s working on a film project for college, about the migrants in Calais …’

  The gravel path crunches as a slender figure with colourful plaits in her blonde hair walks up. She stops next to Joona and stands there in silence for a while before starting to speak.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to the doctors,’ Saga says. ‘Gustav’s still sedated. He’s going to survive, but he’ll need more operations. They had to amputate his arm.’

  ‘The most important thing is that he’s going to make it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Saga sighs, poking at the gravel with her trainer.

  ‘What is it?’ Joona asks.

  ‘Verner has already closed this down. Everything’s been declared confidential. No one has access. I can’t even look at my own damn reports any more … If they knew what I’ve kept on my personal computer I’d lose my job. Verner’s pushed for such a high level of secrecy that even he doesn’t have access now.’

  ‘In that case, who does?’ Joona asks with a smile.

  ‘No one,’ she laughs, then turns serious again.

  They start to walk back, past the rune-stone with its twined serpents, and the sombre angel by the entrance.

  ‘The only thing we know after the biggest anti-terrorism operation in Swedish history is that absolutely nothing about it points to terrorism,’ she says, stopping in the car park.

  ‘What exactly went wrong?’ Joona asks.

  ‘The killer said Ratjen’s name … and we linked that to the conversation the security officers at Hall Prison managed to record … I’ve read the entire translation myself, Salim Ratjen talked about three big celebrations … and the date of the first party coincided with the date of the murder of Foreign Minister William Fock.’

  ‘I know that much.’

  She swings one leg over her filthy motorcycle.

  ‘But those parties only meant that Ratjen’s relatives were coming to Sweden,’ she continues. ‘There’s nothing to suggest that he’s been radicalised in prison, and we haven’t been able to find any connection to Islamic extremism or organisations that have been linked to terrorism.’

  ‘And Sheikh Ayad al-Jahiz?’ Joona asks.

  ‘Yes, well,’ Saga laughs bitterly. ‘We’ve got that recording of him saying he’s going to find the leaders who supported the bombings in Syria and blow their faces off.’

  ‘And the Foreign Minister was shot in the face twice,’ Joona points out.

  ‘Yes,’ Saga nods. ‘But there’s one small problem with that connection … The management of the Security Police already knew before the
operation that Ayad al-Jahiz has been dead for four years – so he couldn’t have been in contact with Ratjen.’

  ‘So … why?’

  ‘The Security Police just had its budget increased by forty per cent, so it can maintain the same high level of protection in future.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Welcome to my world,’ Saga sighs, and kick-starts her motorcycle. ‘Come to the boxing club with me.’

  53

  Narva Boxing Club is almost empty. The chain holding the punchbag clanks rhythmically as a heavyweight metes out hard blows, a distant look on his face. Dust particles dance in the air above the ring. Two younger men are groaning as they do sit-ups on rubber mats beneath the broken speedball.

  Saga emerges from the locker room in a burgundy vest top, black leggings and well-used boxing gloves. She stops in front of Joona and asks him to help wrap her hands.

  ‘The security service’s main job, in any country, is to frighten its politicians,’ she says in a low voice, handing him one of the rolled bandages.

  Joona pulls the loop at the end over her thumb, then winds the elasticated fabric across her palm and around her knuckles. She clenches her fist as he does.

  ‘It doesn’t really matter to the Security Police that there weren’t any terrorists – either way, the threat has been dealt with,’ she goes on as he pulls the bandage between her fingers. ‘And because politicians can’t admit to a waste of taxpayers’ money, the operation is being hailed as a triumph.’

  The heavyweight boxer is punching faster now, and the two younger men have moved on and are now using skipping ropes.

  Joona pulls the gloves over her hands, fastens the laces, then winds sports tape around her wrists.

  Saga climbs up into the ring and Joona follows, taking two leather punch pads with him.

  ‘Sweden has been spared,’ Saga says, testing the pads. ‘But not thanks to us.’

  Joona starts circling, changing the height and position of the pads, and Saga follows, striking with a complicated series of hooks and uppercuts.