Ларс Кеплер: The Rabbit Hunter

Joona lets go of the bar, lands softly on his feet and looks at the man with the weapon.

‘Can I give you something to think about?’ Joona says in his Finnish-accented Swedish. ‘Feigned ignorance is born of confidence, illusory weakness is born of—’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ the man interrupts.

After his time in the Paratroop Unit Joona received enhanced training in unconventional close combat and innovative weaponry in the Netherlands.

Lieutenant Rinus Advocaat trained him for situations very similar to this. Joona knows exactly how to deflect the man’s arm, how to crush his throat and windpipe with repeated blows, how to twist the glass knife from his grasp, how to jam it into his neck and break off its point.

‘Stab the cop,’ a member of the Brotherhood snarls, then laughs. ‘You don’t have the nerve...’

‘Shut up,’ a younger man says.

‘Stab him,’ the other man laughs.

The prisoner with the thin face squeezes the makeshift knife and Joona looks him in the eye as he comes closer.

If Joona is attacked now, he knows he’s going to have to stop himself from following through with the sequence of movements that are imprinted in his body.

During his almost two years in prison he’s managed to steer clear of serious fights. His only aim has been to serve his time and start a new life.

He just needs to deflect the arm, twist the weapon from the man’s hand and knock him to the floor.

Joona turns his back on the newcomer with the knife. As he exchanges a few words with Marko, he can see the man’s reflection in the window looking onto the yard.

‘I could have killed the cop,’ the man says, breathing hard through his thin nose.

‘No, you couldn’t,’ Marko replies over Joona’s shoulder.

Twenty-three months have passed since Joona was found guilty of using violence to help a convicted felon escape custody. He was taken away to the risk assessment unit at Kumla Prison.

The prison service transportation unit took his few possessions, custody documents and ID. Joona was led into the reception centre, where he was stripped, made to give a urine sample for a drug test, and given new clothes, sheets and a toothbrush.

After five weeks of evaluation he was placed in Unit T instead of the secure unit in Saltvik where convicted police officers are usually sent. He would spend the next few years in a cell measuring six square metres, with a plastic floor, a sink and a small, barred Plexiglas window.

For the first eight months Joona worked in the laundry with the rest of the inmates. He got to know a lot of the men on the second floor, and told each of them about his work with the National Police and his conviction. He knew it would be impossible to keep his past a secret. Whenever a new prisoner arrives in the unit, the others are quick to ask a relative on the outside to find out what they were sentenced for.

He has a relaxed relationship with most of the groups in the unit, but keeps his distance from the Brotherhood and its leader, Reiner Kronlid. The Brotherhood has links to extreme right-wing groups, and is involved in drug-trafficking and protection rackets in all the big prisons.

By the end of the summer Joona had encouraged nineteen prisoners to start studying, at various levels. They formed a support group, and so far only two of them have dropped out.

The monotonous routines make the whole establishment run very slowly. All the cell doors are opened at eight o’clock in the morning and locked at eight o’clock in the evening.

As soon as the automatic lock clicks open each morning, Joona leaves his cell to shower and have breakfast before the entire unit heads down into the ice-cold tunnels that link the different parts of the prison like a sewage system.

The men pass the junction where the commissary used to be before it was shut down. They wait for the doors to open, allowing them further along the tunnel.

The guys from Malmö run their fingertips superstitiously over the mural of Zlatan Ibrahimovic´ before heading to the powder-coating workshop.

The study group head for the library instead. Joona is halfway through a course in horticulture, and Marko has finally got his GCSEs. His chin trembled when he said he was thinking of studying science.

This could have been yet another identical day in prison. But it won’t be for Joona, because his life is about to take an unexpected turn.

Joona sets the table in the visitors’ room with coffee cups and saucers, smooths the tablecloth that he’s spread out, and switches on the coffee-maker in the little kitchen.

When he hears keys rattling outside the door he stands up and feels his heart beat faster.

Valeria is wearing a navy-blue blouse with white polka dots, and black jeans. Her dark-brown hair is tied back and hangs in soft coils.

She comes in, stops in front of him and looks up.

The door closes and the lock clicks.

They stand and look at each other for a long time before whispering hello.

‘It still feels so strange every time I see you,’ Valeria says shyly.

She looks at Joona with sparkling eyes, taking in the slippers with the prison service logo, the grey-blue T-shirt with sand-coloured sleeves, the worn knees of the baggy trousers.

‘I can’t offer much,’ he says. ‘Just sandwich biscuits and coffee.’

‘Sandwich biscuits,’ she nods, and pulls her trousers up slightly before sitting down on one of the chairs.

‘They’re not bad,’ he says, and smiles in a way that makes the dimples in his cheeks deepen.

‘How can anyone be so cute?’

‘It’s just these clothes,’ Joona jokes.

‘Of course,’ she laughs.

‘Thanks for your letter. I got it yesterday,’ he says, sitting down on the other side of the table.

‘Sorry if I was a bit forward,’ she mumbles, and blushes.

Joona smiles, and she does the same as she looks down, before raising her eyes again.

‘Speaking of which, it’s a shame they turned down your application for leave,’ Valeria says, suppressing another smile in a way that makes her chin wrinkle.

‘I’ll try again in three months... I can always apply for re-acclimatisation leave,’ Joona says.

‘It’ll be OK,’ she nods, feeling for his hand across the table.

‘I spoke to Lumi yesterday,’ he goes on. ‘She’d just finished reading Crime and Punishment in French... It was good, we just talked about books, and I forgot I was here... until the line went dead.’

‘I don’t remember you talking this much before.’

‘If you spread it out over two weeks, it’s only a couple of words an hour.’

A lock of hair falls across her cheek and she tosses her head to move it. Her skin is like brass, and she has deep laugh-lines at the corners of her eyes. The thin skin beneath her eyes is grey, and she has traces of dirt under her short nails.

‘You used to be able to order pastries from a bakery outside,’ Joona says, pouring coffee.

‘I need to start thinking about my figure for when you get out,’ she replies, with one hand on her stomach.

‘You’re more beautiful than ever,’ Joona says.

‘You should have seen me yesterday,’ she laughs, her long fingers touching an enamel daisy hanging from a chain around her neck. ‘I was out at the open-air pool in Saltsjöbaden, crawling around in the rain preparing the beds.’

‘Yoshino cherry trees, right?’

‘I picked a variety with white flowers, thousands of them. They’re amazing... every year in May it looks like a snowstorm has hit just those little trees.’

Joona looks at the cups and the pale blue napkins. The light from outside is falling in broad stripes across the table.