Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

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 was 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.

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.