The Rabbit Hunter Read online

  ‘What?’

  ‘If it wasn’t hair?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, I was lying on the floor at the time … but there was something hanging down his cheeks, like strips of fabric.’

  ‘You don’t think it could still have been hair?’

  ‘No, it was thicker, more like leather, maybe.’

  ‘How long were the strips?’

  ‘This long,’ she says, putting one hand to her shoulder.

  ‘Can you draw them on this picture?’

  She takes the sketch of the masked face and she adds what she saw hanging down beside his face with a trembling hand.

  At first it looks like big feathers or quills, but then it starts to resemble matted hair. The point of her pen makes holes in the paper.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she says, pushing the picture away.

  ‘Did the Foreign Minister say anything about a man with two faces?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It could have been a metaphor,’ Joona says, looking at the picture.

  ‘Doesn’t everyone have two faces, then?’

  36

  Sofia sits still with her eyes downcast, eyelashes quivering. Joona is struck by the fact that she seems to remember everything as if she’s watching herself from outside of her body.

  ‘Do you think the killer was a terrorist?’ he asks after a pause.

  ‘Why are you asking me? I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It felt personal … but maybe it is to terrorists.’

  First she witnesses the two shots from a distance, then the killer starts to move. She tries to escape and slips on the blood.

  ‘You fall, and end up lying on the floor,’ Joona says, showing her a photograph of the bloodstained kitchen that was taken from her perspective.

  ‘Yes,’ she says quietly and looks away.

  ‘The Foreign Minister is on his knees, bleeding from the two shots to his torso. The killer is holding him by his hair, and presses the barrel of the pistol to his eye.’

  ‘His right eye,’ she whispers, her face impassive.

  ‘You mentioned the conversation between them – but what happened after that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing. He shot him.’

  ‘But that didn’t happen right away, did it?’

  ‘Didn’t it?’ she asks meekly.

  ‘No,’ Joona replies, and sees the little hairs on her arms stand up.

  ‘I hit my head on the floor. Everything seemed to be happening very slowly,’ she says, getting up from the sofa.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was like time stopped, and just … No, I don’t know.’

  ‘What were you going to say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replies.

  ‘Nothing? We’re talking about a ten-minute span,’ he says.

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘What happened?’ Joona persists.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, scratching one arm.

  ‘Did he film the Foreign Minister?’

  ‘No, he didn’t – what are you talking about?’ Sofia groans, then walks over to the door and knocks on it.

  ‘Did he communicate with anyone?’

  ‘I can’t do any more of this,’ she whispers.

  ‘Yes, you can, Sofia.’

  She turns back towards him, and her face is distraught, desperate.

  ‘Can I?’ she asks.

  ‘Did he communicate with anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did it look like he was praying?’ Joona asks.

  ‘No,’ she says, wiping tears from her cheeks.

  ‘Could he have forced the Foreign Minister to say something?’

  ‘They were both silent,’ she replies.

  ‘The whole time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You lay there looking at them, Sofia. Did the killer really not do anything?’ Joona asks. ‘I mean, did he seem frightened, was he trembling?’

  ‘He seemed calm,’ she replies, wiping her eyes again.

  ‘Could he have been fighting an internal battle … Maybe he wasn’t sure if he should kill him or not?’

  ‘He didn’t hesitate, it wasn’t that … I think he just liked standing there. The minister was breathing really fast the whole time. He was on the verge of losing consciousness, but the murderer never let go of his hair. He just kept looking at him.’

  ‘What made him shoot?’

  ‘I don’t know … after a while he just let go of his hair but kept the pistol pressed against his eye … then suddenly there was a bang, but not from the pistol, that just made a rattling sound … The noise came from the back of his head, I think? When his skull exploded?’

  ‘Sofia,’ Joona says gently. ‘I’m going to take my pistol out in a moment. It isn’t loaded. It isn’t dangerous at all, but we need to look at it to figure out the last details.’

  ‘OK,’ she says, her lips turning white.

  ‘Don’t be scared.’

  Slowly he loosens his Sig Sauer from its holster, takes it out and puts it down on the table.

  He notices that she has trouble even looking at the pistol, the veins in her neck are throbbing.

  ‘I know it’s hard,’ Joona says quietly. ‘But I’d like us to talk about how he was holding the gun. I know you can remember because you said the killer was holding the pistol with both hands.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which hand did he use for support?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘One hand holds the pistol, finger on the trigger, and the other hand is used to support it,’ he explains.

  ‘He used … his left hand for support,’ she replies, and tries to smile at him before lowering her gaze again.

  ‘So he was aiming with his right eye?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he had his left eye closed?’

  ‘He was looking with both.’

  ‘I see,’ Joona says, thinking about how unusual the technique is.

  Joona also fires with both eyes open. It gives him better peripheral vision in delicate situations, but you have to practise diligently to be able to do it correctly.

  He continues asking questions about the way the killer moved. He runs her through the way the killer’s shoulders were angled when he shot from a distance, how he moved the pistol to his other hand so he wouldn’t lose his line of fire when he picked the shells up from the floor.

  She tells him again how slow everything seemed, the shot to the eye, how the body fell backwards at an angle, with one leg stretched out and the other bent underneath, then how the killer stood over the body and shot him in the other eye.

  Leaving his pistol on the table, Joona stands up and gets two glasses from the little kitchen area. He’s thinking about how the Foreign Minister’s killer didn’t have to switch magazines.

  But if I was in his shoes I would have done that right after the fourth shot, so I had a full magazine in the pistol when I left, he thinks to himself as he pours the Coke.

  They drink, then both put their glasses down carefully on the table. Joona picks up the pistol and waits while Sofia wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  ‘After that last shot … did he replace the magazine in the pistol?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says tiredly.

  ‘You have to loosen the catch and slide the magazine into your hand, like this,’ Joona says, demonstrating. ‘And then you insert a fresh one.’

  The sound makes her shake. She swallows and nods.

  ‘Yes, that’s what he did,’ she says.

  37

  Joona is driving slowly down the bumpy gravel track to Valeria’s nursery, thinking about Sofia’s description of the killer: he shoots with both eyes open, takes his bullets and shells away with him, and inserts a full magazine in his pistol before he leaves the house.

  In order to fire a single-action firearm, the hammer has to be cocked manually to feed the bullet into the chamber.

>   There are a number of different ways of doing that. Swedish police officers place their left hand over the hammer, aim at the floor and pull back, upwards.

  But the killer put his thumb and forefinger over the pistol, and instead of pulling back he thrust the pistol forward in order to be able to fire immediately. That isn’t a technique that comes naturally, but once you’ve learned it, it can save you valuable seconds.

  Joona remembers once examining some old footage from Interpol, a security camera recording of the murder of Fathi Shaqaqi outside the Diplomat Hotel in Malta.

  The attack was carried out by two Mossad agents from a spearhead unit known as Kidon.

  The grainy black and white footage shows a man with his face concealed feeding bullets into the chamber in precisely that way. He shoots the victim three times, then gets on a motorcycle driven by another man and rides away.

  Everything Sofia described reinforces the idea that the killer received first-class military training.

  Throughout the course of the attack the pistol never wavered from head-height, and its barrel was always aimed in front of him.

  Joona can see the man in his mind’s eye, how he fires, runs and changes magazine, all without losing his line of fire.

  He is reminded of the Polish special forces unit, GROM, or the US Navy Seals. Yet the killer still chose to remain at the scene far longer than necessary.

  He isn’t frightened or anxious, he just lets time pass as he observes his victim’s death-throes.

  Joona looks at his watch. In three hours he will be conveying Salim Ratjen’s message to his wife.

  He parks outside Valeria’s little cottage with its leafy garden and picks up one of the two bouquets from the passenger seat. The branches of large weeping willows touch the ground. The late summer air is warm and humid. There’s no answer when he knocks at the door, but the lights are on, so he goes around the back to look for Valeria.

  He finds her in one of the greenhouses. The glass is misted with condensation, but Joona can see her clearly. Her hair is pulled up in a loose knot, and she’s wearing a pair of faded jeans, boots, and a tight red fleece jacket with mud-stains on it. She’s moving several heavy pots containing orange trees. She turns around and sees him.

  Those dark eyes, that curly, unruly hair, that slender body.

  It’s as if he’s gone back in time.

  Valeria was in the same class as him in high school, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was one of the first people he ever told about his dad’s death.

  They met at a party, and he walked her to the door. He kissed her with his eyes wide open, and can still remember what he thought: no matter what happened to him in the future, at least he had kissed the most beautiful girl in school.

  ‘Valeria,’ he says, opening the door to the greenhouse.

  She keeps her mouth closed to stop herself from grinning, but her eyes are smiling. He hands her the bouquet of lily-of-the-valley. She wipes her hands on her jeans before taking it.

  ‘So you got leave to come and apply for an apprenticeship?’ she asks, looking him up and down playfully.

  ‘Yes, I …’

  ‘Do you think you’d be able to handle normal life when you get out? Working as a gardener can be pretty tough at times.’

  ‘I’m strong,’ he replies.

  ‘Yes, I believe that,’ she smiles.

  ‘I promise you won’t regret it.’

  ‘Good,’ she whispers.

  They just stand there looking at each other for a while, until Valeria lowers her gaze.

  ‘Sorry I look like this,’ she says. ‘But I have to load fifteen walnut trees … Micke and Jack are picking the trailer up in an hour.’

  ‘You look more beautiful than ever,’ Joona says, following her into the greenhouse.

  The trees are in big, black plastic pots.

  ‘Is it OK to lift them by their trunks?’

  ‘Better to use this,’ she replies, pulling out a yellow trailer.

  Joona lifts the first walnut tree onto the trailer and Valeria pulls it backwards through the door and up the path. The bright green foliage trembles as Joona lifts the trees onto the trailer.

  ‘Nice of the boys to help out,’ Joona says after he’s put the pot down with a heavy thud.

  They get more trees and put them on the trailer. The leaves rustle and soil spills onto the grass path.

  Valeria clambers up into the trailer and shoves the trees further in so there’ll be room for all of them.

  She gets down, blows the hair from her face, brushes her hands, and sits down on the towbar of the trailer.

  ‘It’s hard to believe they’re grown-ups,’ she says, looking at Joona. ‘I made my mistakes, and the kids grew up without me.’

  Valeria’s amber eyes darken and turn serious.

  ‘What matters is that they’re back now,’ Joona says.

  ‘But I can’t take that for granted … considering what I put them through while I was locked up in Hinseberg. I let them down so badly.’

  ‘They should be proud of the person you’ve become,’ Joona says.

  ‘They’ll never be able to forgive me completely. I mean, you lost your dad at a young age, but he was a hero. That must have meant a lot, maybe not at the time, but later.’

  ‘Yes, but you came back. You could explain what had happened, the mistakes.’

  ‘They don’t want to talk about it.’

  She lowers her gaze and a line appears between her eyebrows.

  ‘At least you’re not dead,’ he says.

  ‘Even though that’s what they told their friends because they were so ashamed.’

  ‘I was ashamed that Mum and I had such a hard time financially … That’s why you and I never went back to my place.’

  Valeria turns her head and looks into Joona’s eyes.

  ‘I always thought your mum wanted you to date Finnish girls,’ she says.

  ‘No,’ Joona laughs. ‘She would have loved you. She had a thing for curly hair.’

  ‘So what were you ashamed of?’ she asks.

  ‘Mum and I lived in a one-room flat in Tensta. I slept in the kitchen on a mattress that I had to roll up every morning and tuck out of the way in the wardrobe … We didn’t have a television or a stereo, and the furniture was all old …’

  ‘And you had a part-time job in a warehouse – didn’t you?’

  ‘A lumber-yard in Bromma … we couldn’t have paid the rent otherwise.’

  ‘You must have thought I was very spoiled,’ Valeria mumbles, looking down at her hands.

  ‘You soon learn that life isn’t fair.’

  38

  Valeria sets off towards the greenhouse again, taking the barrow with her. They keep loading the walnut trees onto the trailer in silence. The past is drifting around them, dragging up old memories.

  When Joona was eleven years old his father, Yrjö, a policeman, was shot and killed while on duty during a domestic dispute in an flat in Upplands Väsby. His mum, Ritva, was a housewife, and had no income of her own. The money ran out and she and Joona had to move out of their house in Märsta.

  Joona soon learned to say he didn’t want to go to the cinema with his friends, and he learned to say he wasn’t hungry whenever they went to a café.

  He lifts the last tree onto the trailer, tucks one of the branches in, then closes the trailer door carefully.

  ‘You were talking about your mum,’ Valeria says.

  ‘She knew that I felt ashamed of our circumstances,’ Joona says, brushing his hands. ‘That must have been hard for her, because we really weren’t that badly off. She worked as much as she could as a cleaner, and we borrowed books from the library. We would read together and talk about what we’d read in the evenings.’

  After putting the trailer away in the shed they walk up to her little house. Valeria opens a door that leads directly into the utility room.

  ‘You can wash your hands here,’ she says, turning on the tap of a large meta
l sink.

  Standing beside her, he rinses his filthy hands in the warm water. She lathers a bar of soap and starts to wash his hands.

  The only sound is the water running into the sloping sink.

  The smile fades from her face as they wash each other’s hands.

  They keep their hands in the warm water, suddenly conscious of their touch. She gently squeezes two of his fingers in one of her hands, and looks up at him.

  He’s much taller than she is, and even though he leans down to kiss her she has to stand on tiptoe.

  They haven’t kissed since they were in high school, and afterwards they glance at each other almost shyly. She takes a clean towel from the shelf and dries his hands and arms.

  ‘So, here you are, Joona Linna,’ she says tenderly, and strokes his cheek, tracing his cheekbone up towards his ear and messy blond hair.

  She pulls off her shirt and washes under her arms without taking off her discoloured bra. Her skin is the same colour as olive oil in a porcelain bowl. She has tattoos on both shoulders, and her upper arms are muscular.

  ‘Stop looking,’ she smiles.

  ‘It’s hard not to,’ he says, but turns away.

  Valeria changes into a yellow vest top and black tracksuit bottoms with white stripes.

  ‘Shall we go upstairs?’

  Her house is small, and furnished simply. The ceilings, walls and floors are all painted white. Joona hits his head on the lamp when he enters the kitchen.

  ‘Watch your head,’ Valeria says, and puts the flowers he brought her in a glass of water.

  There are no chairs around the kitchen table, and the counter is covered with three trays of bread rising under tea-towels.

  Valeria puts some more wood in the old stove, blows on the embers, then gets out a pan.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ she asks, taking bread and cheese out of the pantry.

  ‘I’m always hungry,’ Joona replies.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Are there any chairs?’

  ‘Only one … so you’ll have to sit on my lap. No, I usually move the chairs out when I’m baking so I have more space,’ she says, gesturing towards the living room.

  He walks into the next room, which contains a television, sofa and an old hand-painted dresser. Six kitchen chairs are lined up along the wall, so he picks up two of them and carries them back to the kitchen. He hits his head on the lamp again, stops it swinging with one hand, then sits down.