Ларс Кеплер: The Rabbit Hunter

The killer not only took the spent cartridges with him, but also dug the bullets out of the floor and walls while the alarm was howling and the police were on their way. Not even the very best hit men do that.

They’re dealing with a perfectly executed murder, yet he left a witness. He could hardly have failed to notice someone watching him at the crime scene.

‘I’ll go and talk to the witness,’ Saga says. The woman must be involved somehow.

‘You know we’ve already got our experts there,’ Janus says.

‘I need to ask my own questions,’ Saga replies, and sets off towards her motorbike.

The bomb-shelter beneath Katarinaberget in Stockholm was the biggest nuclear shelter in the world when it was built at the start of the Cold War. Today the whole place, other than the section that used to house the backup generators and ventilation units, is used as a parking garage.

The machine house is a separate building, blasted into the bedrock alongside the actual shelter.

These days it is used by the Security Police.

It’s the site of the secret prison known as the Spinnhuset. The most highly classified interrogations take place deep in the bowels of the old ice pools.

It’s still early in the morning when Saga passes the Slussen junction on her motorcycle. Her sweaty leather bodysuit feels cold against her breasts. She drives in through the arched entrance next to the petrol station, and heads down into the garage. The shift in acoustics amplifies the sound of the engine.

Rubbish has gathered beneath the peeling yellow railings, and loose cables hang from the loudspeakers.

The panels covering the wide groove in the floor rumble beneath the tyres as Saga passes the shelter’s immense sliding doors, designed to protect against a pressure wave.

As she heads down the concrete ramp, her mind ponders the unsolved riddle.

Why would the woman activate the security alarm and then stay at the crime scene if she was involved in the murder?

Why would the killer leave a witness if she wasn’t involved in the murder?

The Security Police see her as a security risk whether she was involved or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Saga brakes carefully as she circles deeper and deeper inside the parking garage.

The woman’s identity has been verified. Her name is Sofia Stefansson, and she appears to work part-time as a prostitute, though that hasn’t been confirmed.

So far they’re relying on what she said, and the very limited documentation they’ve found in her flat.

Saga can’t rule out the possibility that Sofia has been recruited by a terrorist organisation.

Maybe she was the bait; maybe she filmed what happened in bed in order to blackmail the Foreign Minister?

But in that case, why was he killed?

Saga lets go of the brakes and swings into the lowest level.

She drives past a few parked cars, tyres squealing. Red dust swirls up around the motorcycle. She parks and walks over to a blue blast-proof door.

She swipes her ID, taps in the nine-digit code and waits a few seconds. The door opens onto an airlock.

She shows her ID again and is signed in by a guard who takes her pistol and keys. After passing through the full-body scanner she is let through the inner door of the airlock.

Jeanette Fleming sits inside the staffroom. She’s a psychologist, and one of the Security Police’s specialist interviewers. She’s a beautiful middle-aged woman, with ash-blonde hair cut in a boyish style.

Jeanette is elegantly dressed as usual. She’s eating salad from a plastic container.‘You know I’m not hitting on you, but you really are ridiculously attractive,’ she says, pushing her plastic fork into the salad. ‘I somehow forget about it every time... some sort of self-preservation instinct, I assume.’

Jeanette puts the rest of the salad in the fridge. They walk towards the lifts.

‘How’s your appeal going?’ Saga asks.

‘I’ve been turned down.’

‘Sorry to hear that.’

Jeanette waited eight years for her husband to decide he was ready to have children, and then he left her. She then spent three years trying Internet dating before applying for artificial insemination from the Swedish health service.

‘I don’t know, if they say no, I might go down to Denmark to do it... but I still want the child to speak Swedish,’ Jeanette jokes as she gets into the lift with Saga.

She presses the button for the lowest level.

‘I’ve only read the initial report on my phone,’ Saga says.

‘They were too rough on the girl. She got scared and clammed up,’ Jeanette says. ‘They had orders to go in hard.’

‘Who gave the orders?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jeanette replies.

The lift descends quickly. The light from the cage reflects off the rough rock walls, and the counterweight shimmers briefly as it glides up past them.

‘Sofia’s afraid of being hurt again. She needs someone who’ll listen to her, protect her.’

‘Who doesn’t need that?’ Saga smiles.

They reach the bottom and walk quickly down the hallway. At this depth everything seems still and grey.

Sofia Stefansson’s story has been corroborated by the discovery of a high dose of the fast-acting sedative flunitrazepam in her blood. Her wrists and ankles are wounded and there’s bruising on the inside of her thighs. Her fingerprints have been found on the chair that smashed the window.

If her story is true, then she’s a victim according to the law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services: she was assaulted and exploited by her customer, and should be allowed to speak to both the police and a psychologist.

But since she could also be involved in a serious act of terrorism, the law doesn’t matter.

‘I think it’s best if I wait in the control room to start,’ Jeanette says.

Saga taps in the code and opens the door to the former ice-store.

The lighting in the windowless room is very bright. A security camera is recording at all times.

The store was built to fit two hundred tons of ice to keep the shelter cool in case of nuclear war.

Sofia Stefansson is standing uncomfortably in the middle of the floor on a plastic sheet. Her shoulders are pulled back tightly, and her hands are tied behind her back. Her weight is held by the cable she’s hooked to, which stretches up to a plank beneath one of the beams. Her head is lowered and her lank hair hides her face.

Saga walks straight over to Sofia. She makes sure she’s still alive and then explains that she’s going to lower her to the ground.

Saga starts to turn the winch. Sofia gradually sinks to the floor. One of her legs starts to buckle.

‘Put your heels on the floor and take the strain,’ Saga calls.

The skin on Sofia’s ankles is torn, and Saga thinks of the bloody straps around the bedposts upstairs in the house.

First she was there, and now she’s down here.

Sofia is lying on her side on the plastic sheet. Her breathing is laboured. She looks even younger without makeup. She could be very young. Her eyelids are swollen and the bruising around her neck is more pronounced.

When Saga loosens the straps on her arms she starts to tremble and her body tenses up.

‘Don’t hurt me,’ she gasps. ‘Please, I don’t know anything.’

Saga winches the empty cable back up towards the ceiling, then pulls a chair over to Sofia.

‘My name is Saga Bauer. I’m an officer with the Security Police.’

‘No more,’ she whispers. ‘Please, I can’t bear it.’

‘Sofia, listen to me... I didn’t know they were treating you like this. I’m sorry about that, and I will be bringing it to my boss this afternoon,’ Saga says.