Ларс Кеплер: The Rabbit Hunter

Seven minutes later the house and grounds are swarming with members of the Security Police’s specialist unit.

For the past two years the Security Police has dramatically increased the level of protection for members of the government, with bodyguards and modern personal alarms. There are different levels of alert, but because the terrified woman managed to press both buttons on the alarm simultaneously for longer than three seconds, a Code Platinum was declared.

The crime scene has been cordoned off, three separate zones around the Greater Stockholm area are being closely monitored, and roadblocks have been set up.

Janus Mickelsen comes in and shakes Saga’s hand. He’s taking over command of the operation inside the house, and she quickly briefs him on the situation.

Janus has an almost hippie-like charm, with his strawberry-blond hair and pale ginger stubble. Saga always thinks he looks all peace and love, but she knows he used to be a professional soldier before he ended up in the Security Police. He took part in Operation Atalanta, and was stationed in the waters off Somalia.

Janus positions one agent at the door, even though they won’t be keeping the usual list of people visiting the crime scene. Under Code Platinum regulations, no one can know who is informed or aware of events and who isn’t.

Two Security Police officers walk over to the young woman Saga handcuffed. Her eyes are red from crying and her mascara has run down her temple.

One of the two men kneels down beside her and takes out a syringe. She becomes so scared that she starts to shake, but the other officer holds her tightly as the sedative is injected directly into her vein.

The woman’s cheeks turn red, she cranes her neck, her body tenses and then goes limp.

Saga watches them cut the zip ties, put an oxygen-mask over her nose and mouth, then lift the sedated woman into a body-bag and zip it closed. They carry the inert form outside to a waiting van.

The four other teams are already busy with their examination of the crime scene, scrupulously documenting everything. They’re recording finger- and shoe-prints, mapping splatter patterns, bullet-holes and firing angles, gathering biological evidence, textile fibres, strands of hair, bodily fluids, fragments of bone and brain, as well as pieces of glass and splinters of wood.

‘The minister’s wife and children are on their way home,’ Janus says. ‘Their plane lands at Arlanda at 08.15, and everything needs to be cleaned up here by then.’

The members of the unit have to gather information in one search. They won’t get another chance.

Saga goes up the creaking staircase and into the Foreign Minister’s bedroom. The room smells like sweat and urine. Leather straps hang from the four bedposts. There are bloodstains on the sheets.

A riding crop is visible on top of a chest of drawers, in the glow of a watch-winding case. Behind the glass a Rolex ticks silently next to a Breguet.

Saga wonders if the minister’s wife knew about the prostitutes.

Probably not.

Maybe she just didn’t ask.

Over the years you realise that you can put up with all sorts of cracks in your self-image and still cling to security.

Saga herself spent years in a relationship with a jazz pianist, Stefan Johansson, before he walked out on her.

He’s moved to Paris now. He plays in a band and he’s engaged.

When Stefan is on tour in Sweden, he calls her late at night and she lets him come over. She knows there’s no chance he’ll leave his fiancée for her, but has nothing against sleeping with him.

Saga knows she isn’t easy to live with. She has a fiery temper and a tendency to overreact in certain situations.

She goes back downstairs to the bullet-riddled body in the kitchen.

The glare from the lights reflects off the ridged aluminium floor. It feels like she’s standing on a silver bridge above a scene of bloodstained chaos.

Saga spends a long time looking at the dead man’s upturned palms, the yellow callus beneath his wedding ring, the sweat-stains under the arms of his shirt.

The team around her are working quickly and silently. They’re filming and cataloguing everything on an iPad using three-dimensional coordinates. Strands of hair and fabric are taped to transparent film, while tissue and skull-fragments are placed in test-tubes which are then immediately chilled.

Saga walks over to the patio door and examines the circular hole in the three layers of glass.

The alarm didn’t go off until the chair was thrown at the window, when the acoustic detectors and magnetic contacts reacted.

So the chair wasn’t thrown by the killer.

Saga thinks back to the look of terror on the woman’s face, her wounded wrists, the smell of urine.

Was she being held captive here?

Two men are covering the floor with large expanses of chilled foil, pressing it down using a wide rubber roller.

One IT specialist wraps the hard-drive from the security-camera controller in bubble-wrap, then puts it in a cool-box.

Janus is stressed. His jaw is clenched, and his freckled brow almost white and beaded with sweat.

‘OK... what do you think?’ he asks, coming over to stand beside Saga.

‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘The first shot to his abdomen was fired from a distance, and from a slightly strange angle.’

Blood has been oozing from the Foreign Minister’s stomach onto the floor.

A bullet leaves a ring of dirt around its entrance hole. There are two circles of powder dust on the man’s shirt.

The first two shots were from a distance, then there were two at extremely close range.

Saga bends over the body and looks at the entrance wounds in the eye-sockets, noting that there is none of the usual cratering around the openings.

‘He used a silencer,’ she whispers.

The killer must have used the kind of silencer that also muffles the flare, because there is no evidence of the percussive gases igniting. Otherwise the gas would have forced its way under the skin and left an obvious depression around the wound.

She straightens up and steps aside to make room for a forensics officer, who spreads a sheet of plastic over the dead man’s face. He presses it against the bullet-holes in an effort to gather particles from the ring of dirt, then marks the centre of the entrance holes on the plastic with a marker.

‘He was rolled onto his stomach after his death, then over onto his back again,’ Saga says.

‘What for?’ the forensics officer asks. ‘Why would—’

‘Shut up,’ Janus interrupts.

‘I want to see his back,’ Saga says.

‘Do what she says.’

They all feel like time is starting to run out. They anxiously fasten bags around the Foreign Minister’s hands, and lay out a body-bag beside him. They lift him up carefully and lay him down on his stomach in the bag. Saga looks at the wide exit wounds in his back and the messy void at the back of his head.

She stares at the floor where he was lying and sees the bullet-holes from the two final shots, then realises why the body had been rolled aside.

‘The gunman took the bullets with him.’

‘No one does that,’ Janus mutters.

‘He used a semiautomatic pistol with a silencer... Four shots fired, two of which were clearly lethal,’ she says.

A heavyset man is going around the dark-toned furniture in the living room, spraying luminol over the fabric as another forensics officer puts an armchair back into place over the depressions in the rug.

‘Get ready to pack up, everyone,’ Janus shouts, clapping his hands. ‘We’re cleaning the house in ten minutes, and the glazier and painter will be here within an hour.’

The heavyset man removes the forensic team’s floor-tiles behind them as they leave. As soon as they exit the door a team enters the house to clean it.