The response team is made up of eight police officers in full gear: helmets, bulletproof vests, stun grenades, pistols and sniper rifles.
Their heavy boots echo as they move down the empty road.
At a signal from Magnus, Janus and two other snipers leave the road and head out into the undergrowth. The rest of the group head towards the fence and move along it in silence. Birdsong is coming from the treetops high above. A few butterflies are flitting among the wild flowers.
The response team reaches the neatly maintained driveway to David Jordan’s house. Magnus waves his colleagues forward. He’s received a report from Janus telling him that the snipers have crossed the fence and are now making their way up the rocks behind the tennis court.
He gestures to the group to spread out in pairs.
Magnus and his partner Rajmo stand still and observe the house.
The snipers report that they’re in position.
Magnus is sweating. He can hear his own breathing inside the helmet as he raises his arm and gives his men the signal.
Group one makes its way to the guesthouse and forces the door while group two follow Magnus and Rajmo towards the main building.
Crouching, they run across the open space towards the house. They approach from two directions – Magnus breaks down the front door as other men in group two smash a window and toss in distraction grenades.
Rajmo pulls the door back, knocking the splinters from the frame with the barrel of his gun, then runs over to the first bedroom door, crouches down and opens it. Magnus is right behind him. The burglar alarm shrieks as they check the bedrooms, opening the wardrobe doors and overturning the beds.
As they emerge from the bedrooms they get reports from the rest of the team in the main building. They’ve searched the other end of the house but found nothing.
Magnus waves Rajmo forward, then runs through the living room, securing the hidden corners before heading into the huge kitchen, full of dazzling light from the sea. Magnus moves forward, and hears the team in the other part of the house shout something. His protective glasses have become dislodged and he pulls them off, but then, from the corner of his eye, he sees someone rush out from a hiding place in the yard. Magnus gasps and points his gun at the window. His finger is resting on the trigger but he can no longer see anyone, just the row of white lounge chairs.
Magnus crouches down to limit the size of target he presents. His heart is pounding in his chest. Outside the leaves on the trees sway in the gentle wind. He wipes the sweat from his eyes and then he sees the figure again.
It’s Rajmo, somehow reflected through various windows, making it look as if he’s outside on the deck even though he’s moving around the dining-room table ten metres away.
Magnus stands up again, looks through the window, takes a step back and sees his partner reflected in the glass once more.
He turns towards Rajmo and says that they need to search the house again.
In the kitchen there’s a half-full glass of whisky on the marble counter, next to an open bag of cheese puffs. Magnus removes one of his gloves and touches the glass. It isn’t cold. No ice-cubes have melted into it recently.
But someone has been here, and left the house in a hurry.
He goes over to the window. Group one has reached the jetty. Two men have climbed onto the speedboat and are checking the cabin and deck hatches.
Magnus opens the patio door and goes outside. He sees an inflatable fox in a tree. The wind must have carried the toy from the pool area.
The alarm finally turns off and Magnus reports back to NOU command that there’s no one home, but that they’re going to search the house once more, slowly and systematically.
‘Joona Linna will be with you in fifteen minutes,’ the chief of staff tells him.
‘Good.’
Magnus walks around the house and waves to the snipers, even though they have orders to remain on standby. The red rubber surface of the tennis court is covered with brown pine needles.
Magnus starts to walk along the back of the main building, thinking that they should search the guesthouse once more as well. There must be a shed housing the pump and ventilation for the pool, and someone could be hiding there too.
The lingering summer heat radiates off the dark-brown wood of the building. There aren’t many windows on this side, facing the forest.
The ground crunches beneath Magnus’s heavy boots and the air is heavy with childhood smells of sap and warm moss.
He discovers what look like large lobster pots hanging beneath the eaves at the back of the house, and is just about to lift them down when he receives instructions from command to go back into the house, switch on the computer and try to find a calendar or something that details any upcoming trips.
In the distance he can hear a woodpecker. Magnus thinks about how his girlfriend always used to cover her ears when she heard a woodpecker. She couldn’t bear it, and was convinced they must get terrible headaches from having to do that.
He starts to retrace his steps, signalling to Rajmo who has followed him around the house, but stops when he sees a hatch in the fa?ade, about a metre and a half high. The catch is hanging loose on the outside.
Some sort of woodshed, maybe, he thinks, drawing his knife. Rajmo moves back as Magnus nudges the door open with the blade.
He doesn’t really believe the house could be booby-trapped, despite the warnings he was given.
Nothing happens.
Magnus smiles at Rajmo, puts his knife away, opens the door completely and sees a steep flight of steps leading down into the foundation of the building.
‘I’ll go down and check,’ Magnus says, as he sticks his hand in and presses the light-switch.
There’s a click, but the lights don’t come on. He attaches the flashlight to his pistol and starts to go down the steps.
‘What the hell is that smell?’ Rajmo says as he sticks his head through the low opening.
The cloying stench of decay gets stronger the lower they get. The narrow concrete steps seem to lead far beneath the house itself. There are spiderwebs everywhere, with big spiders swaying with their own weight.
At the bottom of the steps is a short passageway containing two metal doors. Magnus signals to Rajmo to be ready, then quickly opens the closest door. He looks into a room containing a radon filter and water purification system. Rajmo opens the other door and shakes his head at Magnus.
‘Geothermal heat pump,’ he says, pulling the collar of his jacket up over his nose to escape the nauseating smell.
Struggling not to throw up, Magnus sweeps his flashlight across the passageway and sees a narrow wooden door at the end.
They can hear a loud humming noise.
Magnus tries to open the door but it’s locked. Rajmo takes a step back and kicks the handle so hard that the entire lock comes loose and the door swings open.
The stench of rotting meat hits them like a noxious wave. The humming becomes a deafening buzz as tens of thousands of flies fill the air.
‘Christ,’ Magnus groans, clapping one hand over his nose and mouth.
The air is so thick with flies that they can’t see the rest of the room.
‘What the fuck is this?’ Rajmo manages to say.
The flies disperse, followed by a sound like someone dragging a stick across railings, then everything is quiet.
Magnus can feel his legs shaking as he steps inside the stinking room.
The flashlight’s beam plays unsteadily across a workbench covered in black blood. It’s run down one of the wooden legs and onto the floor. Blood has sprayed across the walls, all the way to the ceiling.
Magnus’s flashlight moves across the dissected, splayed cadavers of rabbits, glinting with black flies.
There’s a glass jar holding knives with stained wooden handles and blunt blades.
‘This is fucking disgusting …’
They hear the clattering sound again. Magnus points his gun at the floor and the flashlight lights up a cage. The innards of a large number of animals lie tossed against the wall beside a drain. There’s a yellow plastic bucket containing a bloody chopping board and a skin scraper.