Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

Whenever he spotted the sparkle of the lake through the trees he became so excited that he wanted to run the last stretch, but he always forced himself to hold back. His dad had explained that you had to approach the water carefully.

The huge gate slides back with a heavy metallic whirr.

The sun emerges from behind a cloud, prompting him to look up. For the first time in two years he can see the horizon. He’s looking out across fields and roads and forests.

Joona leaves the prison grounds and reaches the car park. The gate slides shut behind him. It’s like breathing fresh air into his lungs, having a drink of water, catching his dad’s eye in unspoken agreement.

The memory of those fishing trips comes back again, the way they would walk slowly towards the shore and see that the water was full of fish. The bright surface was broken by little rings, as if it was raining.

The feeling of freedom is overwhelming. Emotions are churning in his chest. He could easily stop and weep, but he keeps walking without looking back. As he walks to the bus-stop, his muscles start to relax.

He feels like he’s slowly getting back to his normal self.

In the distance he can see the bus approaching through a cloud of dust. According to Joona’s pass, he has to get on and travel to Örebro, and then catch the train to Stockholm from there.

He climbs onto the bus, but knows he won’t be catching the train. Instead he’s going to meet a handler from the Security Police. The meeting is due to take place in the car park beneath the Vågen shopping centre in forty-five minutes.

He checks his watch, then leans back in his seat with a smile.

He has the plain Omega watch that he inherited from his dad back again. His mum never sold it, even though they could have used the money.

The sun has disappeared and the wind has picked up by the time Joona steps off the bus and makes his way to the shopping centre. Even though he only has five minutes, he stops at a fast-food stand and orders a ‘Pepper Cheese Bacon Meal with Future Fries’.

‘Drink?’ the owner of the restaurant asks as he prepares the food.

‘Fanta Exotic,’ Joona replies.

He puts the drinks can in his pocket, then stands next to the little red flag advertising ice-cream and eats his hamburger.

Down in the car park, a man dressed in jeans and a down jacket is standing beside a black BMW, staring at his phone.

‘You should have been here twenty minutes ago,’ he says sullenly when Joona appears and shakes his hand.

‘I wanted to get you a drink,’ Joona replies, and hands him the can.

Taken aback, the handler thanks him and takes it before opening the car door for Joona.

On the back seat are a basic mobile phone, a debit card and three bulky envelopes from Saga Bauer containing the forensics report from the Foreign Minister’s murder. Everything Joona has requested is in the envelopes: the preliminary investigation report, the initial findings from the post-mortem, the lab results and printouts of all the witness interviews.

They drive past the railway station and out onto the highway towards Stockholm.

Joona reads up on Salim Ratjen’s background, how he escaped from Afghanistan and sought asylum in Sweden, then got dragged into the drug trade. Apart from his wife, his only other family member in the country is his brother, Absalon Ratjen. The Security Police have conducted a thorough investigation, and are confident that the brothers haven’t been in contact in eight years. According to correspondence they have uncovered, Absalon severed all ties with Salim when Salim asked him to hide a large block of hash for a dealer.

Joona has just picked up the folder of photographs from the Foreign Minister’s home when his phone rings.

‘Were you able to establish contact with Ratjen?’ Saga Bauer asks.

‘Yes. He’s given me a task, but it’s impossible to know where that might lead,’ Joona says. ‘He asked me to see his wife and tell her to make a phone call and ask for Amira.’

‘OK. Good work. Really good work,’ Saga says.

‘It’ll be a big operation tonight, won’t it?’ Joona asks, looking down at the glossy photographs: blood, splattered kitchen cabinets, an overturned potted plant, the Foreign Minister’s body from various angles, his blood-soaked torso, hands, and crooked, yellowish toes.

‘Do you really think you can pull this off?’ she asks seriously.

‘Pull it off? This is what I do,’ he replies.

He hears her laugh to herself.

‘You’re aware that you’ve been away for two years, and that this killer is particularly efficient?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you read the forensic timeline?’

‘He knows what he’s doing, but there’s something else, I can feel it. There’s something disturbed about it.’

‘What do you mean?’

Just before they reach Norrtull the handler is given a new destination. He pulls into the car park in front of the Stallmästaregården restaurant and stops.

‘The team leading the operation are waiting for you in the pavilion,’ he says.

Joona gets out of the car and sets off towards the yellow summerhouse that looks out onto the waters of Brunnsviken. Not long ago, this area was incredibly beautiful, but these days the restaurant is ensnared in a tangle of highways, bridges and viaducts.

When he opens the thin wooden door one of the two men at the table stands up. He has strawberry-blond hair and almost white eyebrows.

‘My name is Janus Mickelsen. I’m in charge of the Rapid Response Unit of the Security Police,’ he says as they shake hands.

Janus has an oddly jerky way of moving.

Beside him sits a young man with a lopsided smile. He’s looking up at Joona with an earnest expression.

‘Gustav will be in the first group, leading the National Response Unit’s ground operation in the field,’ Janus says.

Joona shakes Gustav’s hand, and holds it a moment too long as he looks into the man’s eyes.

‘I see you’ve grown out of your Batman costume,’ Joona says with a smile.

‘You remember me?’ the young man asks sceptically.

‘You two know each other?’ Janus asks, and smiles, revealing a network of laughter lines around his eyes.

‘I used to work with Gustav’s aunt at National Crime,’ Joona explains.

Joona thinks back to the party at Anja’s summer cottage on the shores of Lake Mälaren. Gustav was only seven years old. He was dressed in a Batman costume, and spent the entire time racing around on the grass. They sat on blankets eating cold-smoked salmon and potato salad and drinking beer. Later, Gustav sat with Joona and kept asking what it was like to be a policeman.

Joona removed the magazine from his pistol and let the boy hold it. Afterwards Anja tried to persuade Gustav that it wasn’t a real pistol but a practice one.

‘Anja’s always been like a second mother to me,’ Gustav smiles. ‘She thinks being in the police is too dangerous.’

‘Things could get very dangerous tonight,’ Joona nods.

‘And no one will thank you if you get yourself killed,’ Janus says with an unexpectedly bitter tone in his voice.

Joona recalls that Janus Mickelsen had been some sort of whistle-blower many years ago. It was a big deal at the time, at least for a few weeks. He had made his career in the military, and was part of a pan-European operation against piracy in the shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia. When his superiors refused to listen to him, he spoke to the media about how the semiautomatic rifles they had been issued became overheated very quickly. Janus claimed the weapons were so inaccurate that they were a security risk. The semiautomatics stayed, and Janus lost his job.