Hunter. Ларс Кеплер

at herself in the mirror, takes her powder out of her purse and leans over the sink. She can hear someone in the cubicle next to her, moving around in the confined space.

      She powders her face and notices that there’s a round hole in the wall between her and the next cubicle. Maybe that’s where the toilet-roll dispenser used to be. She puts her powder away again and turns around to see that the wall is moving slightly.

      Someone is leaning against it from the other side.

      There’s a rustling sound and a folded banknote falls onto the floor from the hole. The wall creaks. Jeanette is about to say something when a large penis appears, dangling through the hole in front of her.

      The situation is so absurd that she can’t help smiling.

      A memory of something she once read about a swingers’ club in France flashes into her head, about them having rooms like this.

      The man on the other side thinks she’s a prostitute.

      She stands there for a moment, and swallows hard. She stares at the penis, feeling her heart beating fast in her chest, then looks at the door to make sure it’s definitely locked.

      Slowly she reaches out and takes hold of the warm, thick member.

      Jeanette squeezes it gently and feels it stiffen and start to rise. She gently strokes back and forth, and then lets go of it.

      She has no idea why she does it, but she leans forward and takes the penis in her mouth, sucks it tentatively, feeling it swell and get stiffer. She pauses for breath, puts her hand between her thighs, pulls her underwear down and steps out of it as she massages the erect penis.

      She tries to breathe quietly. She thinks she’s going to stop. She can’t do something like this. She’s crazy. Her pulse is throbbing. She turns around and holds onto the cistern with one hand. Her legs are trembling as she stands on tiptoe, bends the penis down and lets it slide into her from behind. She gasps and looks over at the lock again. The metal wall creaks as Jeanette is pushed forward, and she clings onto the cistern and pushes her backside against the cool metal.

      Saga is sitting opposite Tamara in one of the booths in the restaurant, waiting while she eats a plate of French fries with ketchup on the side. A streak of snot shimmers under her nose. Beneath them traffic passes by on the highway, white lights in one direction, red in the other.

      ‘How well do you know Sofia Stefansson?’ Saga asks.

      Tamara shrugs, and drinks some of her milkshake through the straw, sucking her cheeks in. Her forehead turns white.

      ‘Brain-freeze,’ she gasps when she finally lets go of the straw.

      She carefully dips the fries in the ketchup and eats, smiling softly to herself.

      ‘Who did you say you were again?’ she asks.

      ‘I’m a friend of Sofia’s,’ Saga says.

      ‘Oh yeah.’

      ‘Could she have faked working as a prostitute?’

      ‘Faked it? What the hell do you mean? We did a job together in a building’s rubbish collection room once … she got fucked up the ass … I don’t know if that counts as faking?’

      Tamara’s face suddenly goes slack again, as if she were lost in some absorbing memory.

      ‘Why did you stop working as an escort in Stockholm?’ Saga asks.

      ‘You could go a long way too … I’ve got contacts, I used to be a lingerie model … just without the lingerie,’ Tamara says, and shakes with soundless laughter.

      ‘You once had a client out in Djursholm, a big house facing the water. He may have said his name was Wille,’ Saga says calmly.

      ‘Maybe,’ Tamara says, eating the fries with her mouth open.

      ‘Do you remember him?’ Saga asks.

      ‘No,’ Tamara yawns, then wipes her hands on her skirt and tips the contents of her bag onto the table.

      A hairbrush, a roll of plastic bags, a stump of mascara, condoms and perfume from Victoria’s Secret roll out across the wax tablecloth. Saga notes that Tamara has three dark-brown glass ampules of Demerol, an extremely addictive opioid. Tamara presses a Valium from a blister-pack of ten pale blue pills, and washes it down with Pepsi.

      Saga waits patiently until she has swept everything back into her bag again, then takes out a photograph of the Foreign Minister.

      ‘I don’t give a shit about him,’ Tamara says, then purses her lips.

      ‘Did he speak to anyone on the phone while you were there?’

      ‘Seriously. He was really stressed and drank a lot. He kept going on about how the cops ought to stand to attention … he said it, like, a hundred times.’

      ‘That the police ought to stand to attention?’

      ‘Yes … and that there was a guy with two faces who was after him.’

      She drinks more Pepsi and shakes the cup, making the ice-cubes rattle.

      ‘In what way was the guy after him?’

      ‘I didn’t ask.’

      Tamara dips two fries in ketchup and puts them in her mouth.

      ‘What did he mean, two faces?’

      ‘I don’t know. He was drunk. Maybe he meant that the guy had two sides,’ Tamara suggests.

      ‘What else did he say about this man?’

      ‘Nothing. It wasn’t important. It was just talk.’

      ‘Was he going to meet him?’

      ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about that … I just wanted him to be happy, so I got him talking about all those paintings on the walls instead.’

      ‘Was he violent with you?’

      ‘He was a gentleman,’ she replies tersely.

      Tamara picks up the bag of sweets from the table, stands up and weaves over towards the door. Saga has just gone after her when her phone rings. She looks at the screen and sees that it’s Janus.

      ‘Bauer.’

      ‘We’ve been through all the security footage from the Foreign Minister’s hard-drive … thirteen cameras, two months, almost twenty thousand hours of footage,’ Janus says.

      ‘Is there any sign of the killer? Doing reconnaissance or something?’

      ‘No, but someone else is very visible in one of the recordings – you need to see this. Call me when you reach the building and I’ll come down and let you in.’

      Saga knows that Janus is bipolar, and she’s worried he’s having a manic episode, he must have stopped taking his medication for some reason.

      ‘Do you know what time it is?’ Saga asks.

      ‘Who cares?’ he replies quickly.

      ‘I need to get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she says gently.

      ‘Sleep,’ Janus repeats, then laughs loudly. ‘I’m fine, Saga, I’m just eager to make progress, same as you.’

      She walks towards the car park, looking at the traffic below, and calls Jeanette.

      Sofia appears to have been working as a prostitute, just as she said. She’s probably been telling the truth all along – and is in no way connected to the murder.

      So why was she allowed to live? Saga asks herself as she stops in front of the car, all too aware that they still have no idea of what the murderer wants.

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