by Lars Kepler
The Rabbit Hunter goes down into the garage beneath Rådhusparken, opens the boot of the car, and makes sure he can’t be seen on any security cameras as he packs a black overnight bag with weapons, a change of clothes, vinyl gloves, wet-wipes, bin bags, tape, box cutters and a special crowbar for opening security doors.
Taking the bag with him, he leaves the garage and walks down to Fleming Street, where he catches a taxi for the ferry terminal and buys a cheap ticket under a false name.
He’s been given another chance to stop Oscar, but knows there’s still a lot that could go wrong. There are always unforeseeable factors. The plan is to get off the ferry before it leaves, but Oscar may be sitting in a crowd of people in one of the restaurants when the boat leaves. In that case he’d have to go with him to Finland in order to get the job done.
The Rabbit Hunter is planning to slice open Oscar’s stomach and pull his intestines out.
He wants each of them to have to confront his own death.
The purpose of the rhyme is to prepare them.
At the beginning, he wants them to hope that they might survive, despite all the pain and fear, so that they struggle desperately even as it slowly dawns on them that any future life will be very different from the one they’ve known.
They need to realise that they will be blind, or missing a limb, or paralysed.
They should go on fighting for their lives until the second stage, when they realise that there is no mercy, that this pain and fear are the last things they will ever experience.
The Rabbit Hunter takes no pleasure in their suffering, but he is filled with an elevated sense of justice – and then when they finally die, the world becomes completely still, like a winter landscape.
In the terminal he checks in using one of the automated machines, prints his boarding card, then follows the stream of people on board. The M/S Silja Symphony is more than two hundred metres long, with thirteen decks, and with its almost one thousand cabins, it carries more passengers than the Titanic did.
The Rabbit Hunter holds up his fake ID. He’s given the made-up last name ‘von Creutschen’ so that he ends up next to Oscar on the passenger list. He makes a note of Oscar’s cabin number from the screen, goes over to the map by the lifts, then goes downstairs to the staff quarters.
The Rabbit Hunter waits outside the staffroom. After a minute or so, a woman comes out. He catches the door, holds it open for her, and asks after Maria, to demonstrate that he has a valid reason for being there as he goes inside. He passes two men changing out of their street clothes, and says hello to a woman who is typing a message on her phone.
‘Do you have a master key-card?’ he asks.
‘I need mine,’ she replies without looking up.
‘I’ll get it back to you in no time,’ he says with a smile.
‘Ask Ramona,’ the woman replies, nodding towards the bathroom.
There’s a grey and pink imitation-leather gym bag on the bench outside the bathroom. He unzips it and searches through the clothes, running his hands over the bottom of the bag as the toilet flushes.
He quickly searches the two inside pockets as he hears her wash her hands and pull out some paper towels. He opens the two side pockets and finds Ramona’s ID and master key-card just as the lock on the door clicks.
As the door swings open he walks away calmly, card in his hand.
He’d allowed himself fifteen minutes to find a key-card, but it’s only taken five.
Not needing to use his crowbar will give him more time with Oscar in his cabin.
He carries his bag up the carpeted stairs, past decks housing the bars and restaurants, the avenue of tax-free shops, the hallways of meeting rooms, one-armed bandits and the casino.
The top deck, named after Mozart, is where the most exclusive suites are.
A drunk woman emerges from a cabin and stumbles towards him. She blocks the hallway with her arms, as if they are playing a game.
‘You look nice,’ she says with a giggle. ‘Do you want to come to my cabin and help me with …’
It’s as if something snaps in his head, he hears a crackling sound in one ear and reaches out for the wall for support as he remembers how he wept when he nailed up the remains of his latest kills around the door next to the rotting rabbits.
Now they’ll stay away, now they’ll stay away, he whispered.
The Rabbit Hunter merely smiles at the woman as he passes her. Sweat is running down his back and he finds himself thinking about the heat from the burning wheelchair.
He found the petrol in the tool-shed, and the matches in the kitchen, then he updated Nils Gilbert’s Facebook status with a suicide note.
He went out and poured petrol all over him, told him why he was going to die, and then tossed the lit match on his lap.
The heat made him back away as he listened to Gilbert’s growling roar and watched the contorting body through the flames for nineteen minutes.
The body shrank in on itself and turned black.
Everyone knew that Gilbert was lonely and depressed, and the police would never think of linking his suicide with the other deaths.
Now the Rabbit Hunter stops at the back of the ship, in front of the door leading to a suite bearing the peculiar name ‘Nannerl’. He hears voices behind him as he slips on a pair of vinyl gloves, goes into the suite using the master key-card, and closes the door silently behind him.
He puts his bag down on the floor and takes out a blood-smeared plastic bag from which he pulls out the leather strap with the ten rabbits’ ears fastened to it.
84
The Rabbit Hunter turns towards the mirror in the hall, puts the strap around his head and ties it at the back of his neck. With a familiar gesture he flicks some of the ears away from his face, then looks at his reflection, which fills him with cold power.
Now he’s a hunter again.
He pulls out one of his pay-as-you-go phones and sends the audio file to Oscar. He hears a smartphone beep in the bedroom, then the sound of the rhyme playing.
Oscar is probably alone, but the Rabbit Hunter still checks the bathroom just to be sure, then quickly makes sure the living room is empty.
He can see the oil-black water of the harbour through the streaked windows.
He pushes the bedroom door open and marches in.
A football match is muted on the television. A bluish-grey glow reflects off the walls of the room.
He realises at once that Oscar is hiding in the wardrobe, behind the white glass sliding door, and that he’s probably trying to call the police right now.
Everything is so mundane, yet simultaneously so strange when death comes calling.
There’s a glass of whisky on the bedside table.
He sees the dented table legs, the frayed bedspread, the dark marks on the carpet, and the smears on the mirror.
The Rabbit Hunter hears Oscar drop his phone. Oscar knows that the noise has given him away, but keeps hiding regardless because his brain is trying to tell him that the murderer might not have heard anything, that the murderer might not actually find him.
Some hangers clatter against each other inside the wardrobe.
The floor starts to vibrate as the ferry’s engines warm up.
The Rabbit Hunter waits a few seconds, then walks over and kicks the sliding glass door to pieces. He backs away instinctively as the fragments fall to the floor around Oscar von Creutz’s legs.
The middle-aged man slides to the floor in fear, and ends up crouching in the wardrobe staring up at him.
A flash of memory comes back to him, and he thinks about the rabbits’ terror when he checked the traps, turned the cages upside down, and grabbed them by their back legs.
‘Please, I can pay, I’ve got money, I swear, I—’
The Rabbit Hunter strides over and grabs one of Oscar’s legs, but he squirms and tries to get away, and the Rabbit Hunter loses his grip. He hits Oscar twice in the face, holds his arms back with one hand and grabs his leg
again.
Oscar screams as the Rabbit Hunter pulls him out onto the floor and fastens his ankle to one leg of the bed with a zip tie.
‘I don’t want to!’ he roars.
Oscar lands a kick on the Rabbit Hunter’s upper arm, but he flips Oscar over, pushes him down on his side and locks his arms behind his back.
‘Listen, you don’t have to kill us,’ Oscar pants. ‘We were young, we didn’t understand, we—’
The Rabbit Hunter tapes his mouth shut and then takes a couple of steps back and stares at him for a while, watching him struggle to break free, watching him try to move his body even though the zip ties are cutting into his skin.
He did two tours of Iraq, so he knows how state-sanctioned killing feels. He’s aware of the force of will required, and the exhaustion that follows.
He used to think they were all fairly ordinary guys when they were doing their basic training together.
But the killing in southern Nasiriyah made them overconfident.
The targets weren’t people to them, but part of a destructive and dangerous enemy they were risking their lives to fight.
There was a unity, a sense of common purpose.
But killing someone after you’ve come home and are no longer wearing the uniform is different.
It’s lonely, and far more powerful. The decision and responsibility are yours alone.
He looks at the time and pulls out the knife he’s planning to use. It’s an SOCP knife, shaped like a Chinese ring dagger, with the blade and grip fashioned from the same piece of black steel.
It’s a finely honed, well-balanced weapon.
The Rabbit Hunter walks over quickly and blocks Oscar’s free leg with one knee, holds his chest down with one hand, and cuts his shirt open across his torso. He looks at the hairy stomach, which is rising and falling rapidly in time with his breathing, and sticks the knife in ten centimetres below the navel. It slides softly through tissue and membranes as he slices Oscar’s torso open, almost all the way to his breastbone.
Smiling, he looks into Oscar’s bulging eyes as he sticks one hand into the opening in his gut and feels the heat of his body through the plastic of the glove. Oscar’s body is shaking. Blood is streaming down his sides. The Rabbit Hunter grabs his intestines and pulls them out, leaving them hanging between Oscar’s legs. Then suddenly there’s a knock on the door to the suite.
A loud knock.
He stands up, turns up the volume on the television, goes over to the small hallway, closing the bedroom door behind him, and looks through the peephole.
An elderly man dressed in white is waiting outside with a room service cart. Oscar has evidently already ordered food, and now he’s going to have to accept the delivery.
The man knocks again as the Rabbit Hunter pulls his gloves off and closes his bag. He quickly removes his trophies, hangs them on a hanger, looks in the mirror, wipes the blood from his face, turns the light out and opens the door.
‘That was quick,’ he says, blocking the door.
Loud bangs are coming from the bedroom as Oscar tries to attract attention by kicking something.
‘Would you like me to serve in the sitting room, sir?’ the older man asks.
‘Thanks, but I’ll do it myself,’ he replies.
‘I’m happy to do it,’ the man says, glancing into the suite.
‘It’s just that I’m not quite ready to eat,’ he says as the whisky glass crashes on the bedroom floor.
‘Then I’m happy with a signature,’ the man smiles.
The Rabbit Hunter remains in shadow as he takes the receipt and pen. As he signs for the food he realises that the bottom of his right arm is covered in blood, all the way to the elbow.
‘Is everything all right, sir?’ the waiter asks.
He nods, looks the man in the eye and tries to work out if he is going to have to drag him into the bathroom and slit his throat over the Jacuzzi.
‘Why shouldn’t it be?’
‘I didn’t mean to be impertinent, sir,’ the man says apologetically, and turns towards the cart.
The banging from the bedroom starts again as the waiter hands him the tray. The Rabbit Hunter thanks him, backs into the hall and pushes the door shut.
He puts the tray on the floor and looks through the peephole, ready to rush out and grab the waiter. Through the wide-angle lens he sees the old man release the brakes on the small wheels of the trolley, then walk slowly off along the corridor.
He quickly pulls on a fresh pair of gloves, wraps the rabbits’ ears around his head and returns to the bedroom.
It smells like blood, whisky and vomit.
Oscar is about to lose consciousness and is kicking only weakly now, letting his heel fall to the floor. His face is white and sweaty, and his eyes are darting about.
The Rabbit Hunter turns the television off and walks straight over to Oscar, grabs hold of his intestines and pulls them out a whole metre, jerks hard and then lets them fall to the floor.
The pain brings Oscar back to almost full consciousness again. He’s breathing quickly through his nose and trying instinctively to push himself backward.
Oscar is going to die in three minutes, and the noise inside the Rabbit Hunter’s head gets louder as he stares into his terrified eyes. The room is silent, but inside the Rabbit Hunter’s mind it’s like someone is drumming on saucepans and throwing plates into a bath. Oscar raped a young woman, left her unconscious and bleeding on a manure pile, and thought he could get away with it.
The floor lurches beneath the Rabbit Hunter’s feet.
He leans against the wall, trying to focus and breathe calmly, then he sees the bloody handprint on the wall and makes a mental note to wipe it off before he leaves, even though there’s no way it could be traced back to him.
‘I can tell you know why this is happening,’ he says, taking the knife out again. ‘That’s good. That’s the point.’
Oscar whimpers and writhes, fighting to pull free. Blood from his torso is pouring onto the floor and soaking into the carpet, which is now shiny and black.
The loudspeakers announce that the ferry will be departing in thirty minutes. The Rabbit Hunter is confident that he’ll have time to get back to shore before then.
Oscar won’t be found until the next morning, in Helsinki, the Rabbit Hunter thinks to himself, looking at the knife in his hand.
It’s like the black tongue of a demon, pointed and jagged.
Soon he will slide the blade into Oscar’s heart, right through the breastbone.
The whole world clatters and rings like a casino.
Then a wind sweeps through him, leaving silence in its wake.
It’s like when a rabbit is lying on the ground kicking one leg. When the animal finally stops moving, a calm seems to settle on the entire world.
Time comes to a stop.
He has always been on his way towards this point.
Ever since those Sundays after mass, back when he lived with Grandma and Grandpa.
85
Rex gets off the underground at Mariatorget, and is walking along Sankt Pauls Street when his phone buzzes to let him know he’s received a new voicemail. It’s from Janus Mickelsen, telling him he’s organised a secure safe-house for Rex and Sammy, with reinforced glass, a steel door, alarm and a direct line to the emergency control room.
‘I understand that you can’t speak freely if you feel threatened. I get it, I really do. This is a good solution, short-term. My boss has given the go-ahead and I’d like you to meet me tonight at 19.00 just outside Knivsta, at a safe-house belonging to the Security Police, so we can talk through the situation,’ Janus says, then repeats the full address twice before the message ends.
Rex decides to go and find out more about this threat the Security Police seem to be taking so seriously.
He walks through the glass door of 34 Krukmakar Street, where the Pool Hall has its rundown basement premises, thinking that there appears to be a tug-of-war between the Security
Police and the National Operative Unit.
He passes the bar and goes downstairs, making his way between the tables.
The only sound is clicking as balls knock together and roll silently across the felt table.
At the end of the room is one pool table that’s bigger than the others. Beside it stands a tall man with unruly blond hair and eyes as grey as driftwood.
‘The yellow ball is called the Kaisa,’ Joona says.
The Finnish pool game, Kaisa, is like Russian Pyramid. It requires a larger table, bigger balls and longer cues. You can play Kaisa in teams, but usually it’s a duel between two players.
Rex listens as the taller man runs through the rules and hands him a long cue.
‘Sounds a bit like snooker,’ Rex says.
‘First to sixty wins.’
‘Is this why I’m here?’
Joona doesn’t answer, just sets the balls out in their positions. If Rex isn’t involved in the murders, then he’s probably one of the intended victims. The murders appear to revolve around the rape, but there’s something more to it than that, maybe further parties, an unknown participant, Joona thinks.
‘If you beat me you can leave, but if you lose I’ll arrest you,’ he says, shooting a sharp glance at Rex.
‘Sure,’ Rex smiles, running his hands through his unkempt hair.
‘I mean it,’ Joona says seriously. ‘You had a strong motive for the Foreign Minister’s murder.’
‘Did I?’
Joona hits his white cue-ball, and there’s a loud click as it strikes the yellow ball and sends it rolling across the table, where it hits the cushion, rebounds and disappears into one of the pockets.
‘Six points to me,’ Joona explains.
Rex looks at him uncomprehendingly.
‘I had a motive because I pissed in the Foreign Minister’s swimming pool?’
‘You said he was a bastard and that he stole your girlfriend in high school.’
‘Yes,’ Rex concedes.
‘But you didn’t mention you were locked up all night.’
‘There were three of them,’ he says reluctantly. ‘They gave me a beating and then locked me up – not great, but no reason to—’