The Rabbit Hunter

‘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.

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.

9 (#ulink_beaab968-574e-564f-a66e-b77b27b1685c)

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.