Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

‘OK, I’m coming,’ Joona says, and slowly opens the car door.

‘Keep your hands where I can see them,’ she says, licking her lips.

‘Who’s Amira?’ he asks as he puts his right foot on the ground.

‘Walk away from the car without turning around.’

Joona straightens up with his back to her. He notes that there are three cars parked outside the McDonald’s. The wind is tugging at the flags flying outside.

‘Further away,’ she says as she steps closer to the car, keeping the gun trained on him.

Joona starts to walk towards the parked cars.

Parisa gets back in the driver’s seat, still pointing the pistol at him.

‘I might be able to help you,’ he says, and stops walking.

‘Keep walking,’ she calls out behind him.

He takes another couple of steps, and sees a large man come out from McDonald’s carrying a bag of food. He gets into the front seat of his car, puts the key in the ignition and starts to eat his hamburger.

‘Just so you know,’ she says, with a trace of hysteria in her voice: ‘If you try to use me to put pressure on Salim, it won’t work, because I’ve already filed for divorce. He won’t care what happens to me.’

‘I’m not involved,’ Joona repeats, and hears her put the pistol down on the passenger seat.

‘Keep walking. I swear, I’ll shoot if you stop again.’

The moment he hears her put the car in gear and accelerate he starts to run. He vaults the low hedge surrounding the car park, opens the door of the car in which the large man is eating a hamburger. He yanks him out onto the ground. His big cup of Coke falls to the ground, scattering its ice-cubes.

Joona sees Parisa almost lose control of her car as she drives past the yellow industrial building.

He quickly puts the car in gear, slams his foot down and drives straight through the neatly trimmed hedge.

The golf clubs on the back seat rattle when the rear wheels hit the road on the other side.

The heavyset man gets to his feet and stands there surrounded by the remains of his hamburger as his car heads straight up the steep grass bank beside the road.

Joona drives across the grass divider, makes a sharp right and thuds down onto the main road. The Volvo lurches across the three lanes. The back end of the car is still sliding sideways as he slams his foot down on the accelerator pedal.

The left rear wheel hits the central guard rail with a thump.

The hubcap flashes in the rear-view mirror as it bounces onto the other side of the highway.

Joona sees Parisa turn onto Huddingevägen. A warning light appears on the dashboard.

He passes a white van, hitting one hundred and forty kilometres an hour, then brakes when he sees her dirty Opel a couple of hundred metres ahead.

Joona pulls into the right-hand lane, leaving two cars between them, then draws out his phone and calls Janus Mickelsen, and gives him all the information about Parisa’s car and their current position and direction.

‘OK, I’ve got it,’ Janus says. ‘Keep us informed. I’ll get the go-ahead to redirect our operation.’

‘I don’t know what this is about or where we’re going,’ Joona says. ‘But I’ve only got enough petrol for another fifty kilometres, so I’ll need backup before then.’

When the warning light first comes on, there are eight litres of fuel left. That would give fifty-four kilometres of normal driving, but because he’s driving unusually fast it could be considerably less.

He has no idea where Parisa is going, and he can’t see any other option but to follow her for as long as he can.

They’re heading north, just west of Stockholm. He thinks about her peculiar nervousness, and her efforts to make conversation before she spotted one of the snipers and decided to make a run for it.

Thirty minutes later Joona is driving down a long hill beside a golf course. The wind is blowing hard, tugging sideways at the car.

He sees a petrol station and a row of rental cars. But if he stops he might lose sight of Parisa.

And then she’d be gone.

He has to gamble and keep driving, even though the petrol is going to run out in about four kilometres.

Joona calls Janus and gives him a concise update, telling him that they’ve passed Åkersberga and are heading out along Roslagsvägen. As he drives, the forests and meadows are swallowed up by dusk.

Parisa’s red rear lights are visible far ahead of him. Sometimes they vanish briefly, only to reappear when he emerges from a bend in the road.

The road leads through a dark patch of forest. The tree-trunks look like a stage-set in the glow of the headlights.

Joona thinks about the look on Parisa’s face when he passed on Salim’s message. The emotions he saw were fear and surprise.

He’s just passed an isolated side-road blocked by a rusty barrier when there’s a whirring sound.

The engine sounds like it’s racing, then it goes completely quiet. Joona pulls over to the hard shoulder, stops and switches on the hazard lights.

Far in the distance he sees the lights of Parisa’s car flicker and then disappear.

Grabbing his phone, Joona gets out of the car and starts running along the road after her.

The sound of her engine has already vanished.

Even on a winding road like this one Parisa can drive something like three times as fast as he can run. With every minute the distance between them is growing exponentially.

There’s dense forest on either side of the road.

He passes a deserted bus-stop and runs down a slope. The forest opens up, revealing misty meadows in the darkness.

He’s running fast, and he knows he can keep this pace up for more than ten kilometres.

Far off in one of the fields, two deer raise their heads as he runs past.

Even though there’s still some light left in the sky, the surrounding forest is completely dark. Parisa brakes as she heads down a long hill. She slowly steers right, then starts to drive down a gravel track beside an overgrown patch of land with a wrecked car at the far end.

She thinks about the tall man who came to her home with a message from da gawand halak . He said Salim had just been transferred to his unit at Kumla, but that he didn’t really know him. Presumably Salim had felt obliged to send a message with the first person granted leave.

Salim gave him a code which meant that he was someone whose loyalty couldn’t be guaranteed, but that she should still listen to what he had to say.

She had seen that the blond messenger was armed, but didn’t actually start to panic until she saw the sniper from the kitchen.

On the upper floor of the house across the street.

A window ajar, a black ring and a glowing circle: barrel and sights.

It was impossible to tell if he knew the sniper, if they were working together.

Maybe the messenger was the sniper’s target?

Thoughts are buzzing through her head. She can’t figure out how everything fits together, but right now her sister is the only thing that matters.

Once she’d forced the man out of the car she called the number he’d given her, and the call was forwarded automatically. There was a second ringtone, then after a long wait a man answered in a Slavic language. She asked if he spoke English, and he said of course he did.

The gravel crunches beneath the tyres, and the trees around the car quiver in the darkness. The headlights illuminate a small stream through the trees on the left.

Parisa had asked the man where her little sister Amira was. She explained that Amira was among the group from Sheberghan that was expected to arrive in Sweden on Wednesday.

The man spoke to someone else nearby, then replied that the journey had been quicker than normal, and that they had arrived at the rendezvous five days early. Her little sister was already in Sweden. Amira had been waiting three days for her, and she hadn’t known.