The Rabbit Hunter

40

Joona parks beside a battered white trailer at 16 Almnäsvägen out in Bandhagen. He looks at the time and thinks about his interview with Sofia Stefansson again.

They’re dealing with a killer who is acting outside the frame of his remit, in spite of his exceptional military training.

He takes meticulous care not to leave any evidence, but he still leaves a witness.

He’s incredibly fast and efficient, yet he lets ten minutes pass without doing anything. He’s perfectly calm, shows no sign of nerves, he doesn’t pray, doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t make any demands.

That empty period of time must be somehow important to him, it must be a ritual on some level, Joona thinks.

But if that’s true, then the motives behind the murder are far more complex than they’ve assumed. It means that this can’t be as simple as a conventional terrorist act.

The door to the trailer opens and a woman in a green raincoat comes out, pulling the hood up over her blonde hair. Joona gets out of the car and goes over to her.

‘Joona Linna,’ she says.

‘That’s my name too,’ he replies, holding out his hand.

She wipes the smile off her face.

‘My name is Ingrid Holm. I’ll take you to the boss.’

‘Thanks.’

Ingrid leads him through a gate in an unpainted fence between the house and garage, and into a patch of woodland. The air smells like heather and warm moss. As the wind blows through the treetops dry pine needles fall to the ground.

‘You need to follow my footsteps exactly so you won’t be seen from the road,’ she says, stopping him at the brow of the hill.

Ingrid calls someone on her radio, listens, then waits for a few seconds. She tells Joona to crouch down, then leads him past two pine trees and behind a large rock covered in white moss before indicating that it’s OK to stand up again. They change direction, and walk along a well-worn path past some tall lilacs and out across a lawn behind a yellow wooden house with white windows and eaves. An old red barbecue and a small trampoline are marooned in the tall weeds next to an old apple tree.

Ingrid leads Joona to the white veranda door. There are police officers in bulletproof vests standing in the hall, kitchen and living room. There’s an anxious smell like sweat and gun-grease. Semiautomatic rifles swing from leather straps, black helmets litter the floor. All the downstairs windows have been screened to conceal the activity inside the house.

‘The first group are in the kitchen,’ she says, gesturing beyond the staircase.

Joona pushes past a group of black-clad men waiting restlessly at the bottom of the stairs.

None of them know that several of them will be dead within a few hours.

The members of Operational Unit 1 are squeezed into the little kitchen. This is Gustav’s team, the ones who will be first in behind Joona, forcing their way through the doors and windows if a hostile situation arises.

‘Joona?’ a man with dark-brown eyes asks.

‘Yes.’

‘This is Joona Linna, he’s going to be the first man in,’ the man explains to the others.

‘And we’re the ones who are going to rescue you,’ a man with a shaved head and thick neck says.

‘I feel safer already.’ Joona smiles, and shakes hands with the four men, who introduce themselves in turn: Adam, August, Jamal, and Sonny.

‘This is my day off,’ Sonny says. ‘But there was no way I wanted to miss this.’

Adam is walking around, making the floor creak. He takes swigs from a small can of Red Bull as he adjusts his vest and clothing.

‘Do you want me to call your brother and let him know you have your own wings today?’ August asks from where he’s sitting on the floor with his back against the wall.

‘His big brother’s the flight engineer on one of our choppers,’ Jamal says.

Sonny looks in the fridge, finds a jar of jam and sniffs at a carton of vanilla yogurt.

‘I don’t like your chances of finding terrorists in there,’ August says, then yawns.

‘But if I do, I’ll kill them,’ Sonny mutters, eating some smoked ham out of a plastic pack.

‘Is Gustav upstairs?’ Joona asks.

‘Yes, he’s going through the last details with Janus,’ Jamal replies.

One of the men from the Rapid Response Unit is sitting on the bottom step, staring into space. As Joona approaches he jumps up and gets out of the way, his movements jerky with nerves.

Joona goes up the creaking wooden staircase and finds himself in a spacious open landing leading to two bedrooms. Here too the windows have been covered. Everyone is already in position. All conversation is subdued and terse.

Janus is looking at the original plans for the building across the way, discussing something with Gustav.

‘Back in black,’ Janus says, shaking Joona’s hand.

‘What are your thoughts about the operation?’ Gustav asks.

‘Everything will probably go smoothly,’ Joona says. ‘But if things heat up, I must warn you that the killer is far more dangerous than we initially thought.’

‘We’ve got the situation under control,’ Janus says, with a note of impatience in his voice.

‘As you know, I spoke to the witness after our meeting... and in my considered opinion, our killer has received military training that’s at least as good as the training for the US Navy Seals.’

‘OK, that’s useful,’ Gustav says in a serious voice.

‘For God’s sake, we’ve got six snipers in position, including me,’ Janus says. ‘We’ve got twenty-six men from the Rapid Response Unit armed with automatic machineguns, stun grenades and M46s.’

‘I just want you to be prepared for the fact that this guy will be able to see through your tactics without even thinking,’ Joona says. ‘He’ll exploit the things you pride yourself on: he knows how you sweep rooms, how you hold your guns.’

‘This is supposed to scare you,’ Janus says, patting Gustav on the shoulder.

Beads of sweat are trickling down his freckled brow from his hair.

‘We haven’t prepared for that,’ Gustav says, wiping his mouth.

‘If you suffer any losses, you need to abandon standard procedure,’ Joona says, wishing that the young man was nowhere near this operation.

‘I’ll go down and discuss alternative tactics with my team,’ Gustav says, blushing slightly. ‘I can’t have you telling Aunt Anja I made a fool of myself, can I?’

‘Just be careful,’ Joona says.

‘We’re all prepared to die in the memory of our esteemed Foreign Minister,’ Janus whispers, then grins.

Gustav disappears downstairs with his helmet in his hand.

Joona goes into the bedroom facing the trees and looks at the computer screen that shows what’s going on in the street outside. The branches of some bare trees are moving in the wind in front of Parisa’s home.

10 Gnestavägen is a yellow terraced house from the 1950s. There’s a pile of dry leaves next to the cracked steps, and an old broom leaning against the wall.

Parisa is expected home in twenty-five minutes.

Janus comes in with the plans from the City Council’s housing department.‘We haven’t spotted any sign of activity in the house since Parisa left this morning,’ he says, laying the plans on the table. ‘But there are a couple of blind spots.’

‘The hallway and bathroom,’ Joona says, pointing at the paper.

‘And upstairs someone could be lying in the bath or on the floor. But the biggest unmonitored spaces are the boiler and utility rooms.’

‘The house was built in the fifties, so there could be a pretty big bomb-shelter down there, and—’

‘Hang on,’ Janus interrupts, and answers a call on his radio. He listens, then turns back towards Joona. ‘Parisa’s earlier than we expected. She’s on her way now, she’ll be home in less than five minutes.’