‘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.