The Rabbit Hunter

by Lars Kepler

  Kent gasped for breath as his gut filled up with blood.

  DJ had tilted the sharp blade of the knife upward, and whenever Kent got tired or slumped to the ground slightly, the knife cut higher into his guts.

  Towards the end Kent had been in agony. One knee almost buckled several times, and the knife had slid up diagonally towards his ribs.

  Blood filled his boots and started to overflow.

  ‘And now the kite string breaks,’ DJ said, pulling the knife out, looking Kent in the eye and shoving him in the chest with both hands, out over the edge.

  DJ wipes his mouth, glances over towards the hallway leading to the hotel rooms, and starts to remove the cartridges from the rifles. He opens the duffle bag on the floor in front of his feet and drops the ammunition into the compartment next to the underwear.

  It’s time to bring this to a conclusion.

  First Lawrence, or possibly James, and then, last of all, Rex.

  Maybe he’ll have time to kill one of them before all hell breaks loose, before the screaming starts and they start running.

  But fear has never saved the rabbits.

  He knows that their panic follows simple patterns.

  His hands tremble slightly as he fits the silencer to his pistol, inserts a fresh magazine, and puts it back in the bag, next to the short-handled axe.

  If they don’t come out soon, he’ll have to start going from room to room.

  He takes out his black SOCP dagger, wipes the grease from the blade, and checks the cutting edge.

  His mother was left pregnant after the rape, but it probably wasn’t until he was born that her psychosis really hit her.

  She was only nineteen years old, and must have been horribly lonely and frightened.

  DJ doesn’t remember his early years, but now knows that she gave birth to him alone, and kept his existence a secret. She hid him out in the barn. His first memory is of lying under a blanket, freezing, eating beans from a tin.

  He has no idea how old he was then.

  Throughout his childhood her chaotic psyche became part of his life, part of his perception of reality.

  His maternal grandparents didn’t move home for good until Lyndon White Holland’s long stint as ambassador to Sweden came to an end.

  DJ was almost nine when his grandfather found him in the barn.

  At the time he spoke a mixture of Swedish and English, and hadn’t really understood that he was a human being.

  It took time to get used to his new circumstances.

  His mother was looked after at home. She was kept heavily medicated and spent most of her time in bed with the curtains drawn.

  Sometimes she got frightened and started screaming, and sometimes she hit him for leaving the door open.

  Sometimes he told her about the rabbits they had shot that day.

  Sometimes they would sit on the floor next to the bed together, singing her nursery rhyme until she fell asleep.

  A year or so later he recorded the whole rhyme for her on a cassette tape so she could listen to it if she felt anxious.

  His mum never wanted to talk about his dad, but once, when he was thirteen and her medication had just been changed, she told him about Rex.

  It was the only time that happened during his childhood, and he can still remember those few sentences by heart. As a child, he clung to every little word, building whole worlds of hope around what she had said.

  He had learned that they had been in love, and had to meet in secret, like Romeo and Juliet, before she came back to Chicago.

  DJ couldn’t understand why he didn’t go with her.

  She replied that Rex didn’t want children, and that she had promised not to get pregnant.

  At first DJ believed her, but then he started to think she was hiding from Rex in Chicago because she was ashamed of the way she looked after the truck accident.

  He still doesn’t know where the idea of the accident came from. He has no memory of her ever having talked about it.

  When he was fourteen years old his mum saw a picture of Rex in an article in Vogue, about the new generation of chefs in Paris. She went straight out into the barn and tried to hang herself, but Grandpa climbed up to the beam on a ladder and cut her down before she died.

  Grandma and Grandpa had her committed to a psychiatric hospital and he was sent to the Missouri Military Academy, which took younger boys.

  DJ tucks the dagger under the tablecloth when he hears someone coming down the hallway.

  He closes the duffle bag with his foot, leans back again, and wonders which one of the men the fates have chosen to send out first.

  His head crackles and he can see his mother huddled on the floor in the stall, covering her ears and whimpering in terror as one of the rabbits they thought was dead suddenly jerks and starts running again.

  DJ remembers catching it under a green plastic bucket, sticking his hand inside to grab it, then nailing it to the wall. His mother was shaking uncontrollably, then threw up in terror and screamed at him that he wasn’t allowed to bring the rabbits inside.

  106

  DJ looks up when he hears the footsteps get closer, and Lawrence appears in the light of one of the lamps. DJ raises his hand in greeting, thinking that the man will soon be running from room to room clutching his intestines in his arms.

  Lawrence looks like he’s been crying. His eyes are swollen and red and he’s still wearing his wet clothes.

  ‘Did you find the phones?’ he asks, blinking hard.

  ‘Can’t find them anywhere,’ DJ replies.

  ‘We think Rex took them,’ Lawrence says in a tense voice.

  ‘Rex?’ DJ says. ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘We just think it’s him,’ Lawrence snaps.

  ‘You and James? That’s what you two think?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lawrence says, and his face turns red.

  He goes behind the reception desk and switches on one of the computers. The rain is still clattering on the roof. The storm seems to have been catching its breath, then returning with even greater fury.

  Just two months after DJ returned from his last tour in Iraq, his grandfather died, leaving a fortune to his only grandchild.

  DJ’s grandmother had passed away two years earlier. He went to the clinic to visit his mother, but she didn’t even recognise him.

  He was alone.

  That was when he decided to go to Sweden, so at least he could see his father.

  Rex was already a successful chef. He’d been a guest on countless television programmes and had published a cookbook.

  DJ set up a production company, changed his name to his grandmother’s maiden name, and approached Rex without any thought of revealing that he was Rex’s son.

  Nonetheless, he was incredibly nervous before their first meeting, and suffered an attack of narcolepsy in the dimly lit passageway leading to the Vetekatten café.

  He woke up on the floor and arrived at the meeting half an hour late.

  They didn’t look alike, except maybe around the eyes.

  DJ presented Rex with a business proposal. He offered him a ridiculously generous contract, drew up a new strategy, and in less than three years managed to get him a slot on the main Sunday morning breakfast show and turn him into the biggest chef in the country, and a bona fide celebrity.

  DJ came to act as a sort of manager, they started to socialise, and gradually became friends.

  Even though he was already sure, he couldn’t help taking a couple of strands of Rex’s hair. He was standing behind Rex’s chair, and pulled them out with a pair of tweezers. Rex yelped and put his hand to his head, then spun around. DJ just laughed and said it was a white hair that he hadn’t been able to ignore.

  Without touching them, he put the hairs in plastic bags and sent them to two different companies that specialised in paternity tests.

  There was no doubt about the match. DJ had found his father, but had to bury any happiness he felt.

  ‘There’s no
Wi-Fi,’ Lawrence says from behind the reception desk.

  ‘Maybe try another computer?’ DJ suggests.

  Lawrence looks at him, wipes the sweat from his hands and nods towards the window.

  ‘Can we walk to Björkliden from here?’

  ‘It’s only twenty kilometres,’ DJ replies. ‘I’ll go as soon as the storm has passed.’

  Throughout David Jordan’s childhood his mother was treated for depression and suicidal behaviour. After the most recent visit, when she didn’t recognise him, DJ had his mother moved to a more exclusive care home, Timberline Knolls Residential Treatment Centre. The senior doctor there believed her condition was post-traumatic stress disorder, and radically altered her treatment.

  Just before Thanksgiving DJ decided to go to Chicago to ask his mother for permission to tell Rex that he was his father.

  He didn’t even know if she would understand what he was talking about, but the moment he walked into her room he could tell that she was different. She took the flowers and thanked him for them, offered him tea and explained that she had been ill as a result of psychological trauma.

  ‘Have you started to talk to your therapists about the truck accident?’ he asked.

  ‘Accident?’ she repeated.

  ‘Mum, you know you’re sick, and that you weren’t able to take care of me, and that I had to live with Grandma.’

  DJ saw the odd expression on her face when he told her about the DNA test, that he had got to know his father, and that he now wanted to tell him the truth.

  There was a faint tinkle as she put her cup down on the saucer. She stroked the tabletop slowly with one hand, and then she told him what had happened. She became less and less coherent as she went on, but she told him about the rape in gruesome detail, about how the boys had wanted to hurt her, and the pain, the fear, and how she ended up losing herself.

  She had shown him a photograph from a boarding school outside Stockholm, then started to stammer as she recited the names of the boys who had taken part in the assault.

  He remembers exactly how she was sitting, with her thin hand over her mouth, sobbing as she told him he was the product of rape, and that Rex was the worst of all of them.

  After saying those words his mother couldn’t look at him.

  It was devastating.

  ‘Nothing’s working. We’re completely isolated,’ Lawrence says in an unsteady voice.

  ‘That could be because of the storm,’ DJ suggests.

  ‘I think I’m going to head out for Björkliden right away.’

  ‘OK, but make sure you bundle up, and watch out for the cliffs,’ DJ reminds him gently.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Lawrence mutters.

  ‘Can I show you something before you go?’ DJ says.

  He folds back the tablecloth and picks up the flat knife, then conceals it by his hip as he walks over to the desk.

  107

  Lawrence nudges his glasses further up his nose, walks over to the desk with the computer, and looks at DJ.

  ‘Is it difficult getting down to the main road from here?’ he asks.

  ‘Not if you know which way to go,’ DJ replies in an oddly flat voice. ‘I can show you on a map.’

  Instead of a map, DJ pulls a photograph from his pocket, puts it on the desk and turns it around so Lawrence can see it.

  ‘My mum,’ he says softly.

  Lawrence reaches forward to pick up the photograph, then snatches his hand back as if he’s been burned when he recognises the young woman in the photograph.

  At that moment a black knife slams down into the counter right where his hand had been.

  The blade sinks deep into the wood.

  Without thinking, Lawrence pushes the computer towards DJ, and the rounded corner of the screen hits one side of his face.

  DJ stumbles backwards and almost falls.

  The computer’s trajectory changes when it reaches the end of the cable. The screen swings back beneath the desk, comes loose and clatters to the floor.

  DJ looks surprised as he raises his hand and feels his face.

  Lawrence runs along behind the desk and down the steps to the spa as quickly as he can with his bulky frame.

  His first thought is to try to get out through the emergency exit he noticed earlier.

  For some reason the sign’s green glow had stuck in his mind.

  Without looking, Lawrence hurries past the photographs of women in Jacuzzis and on white massage tables. He passes a smaller reception desk with towels and a shop selling bathing suits, and makes his way into the locker room. When he closes the door he notices that it has a lock.

  He tries to turn it but his hands are shaking so badly that he keeps losing his grip.

  The lock’s stuck.

  Lawrence is gasping for breath and his heart is thudding in his chest as he wipes his hands on his shirt.

  Footsteps are approaching.

  He pulls at the handle and tries again. It’s stiff, but finally there’s a scraping sound and he pulls harder, turns it, and slowly the lock slides into place before he loses his grip and scrapes his knuckles.

  He sucks the wound, listens and is just about to check that the door is completely locked when someone pushes the handle down on the other side.

  Lawrence moves back.

  DJ tugs at the handle and shoves the door with his shoulder, making the doorframe creak.

  Lawrence stumbles backwards, staring at the door, and feels like shouting at him to kill James instead, that James is in Rex’s room.

  But instead he retreats further into the dark locker room, thinking in confusion that he needs to find somewhere to hide.

  DJ just said that Grace is his mother.

  So DJ is the one who’s been getting revenge, Lawrence thinks to himself as he walks past the lockers.

  He pushes open a frosted glass door and finds himself in an unlit shower room. He takes a few steps and tries to calm his breathing.

  His mouth is completely dry and his chest hurts.

  He stands with his back to the wall and looks down at the drain. There are some dried hairs stuck to the grille.

  Sweat is running down his sides from his armpits.

  Lawrence thinks back to the rape in the Rabbit Hole, how they formed a line, and how he was worried they’d be stopped before he got a chance to do it with her.

  When he’d seen her lying there on the floor beneath the others he’d felt a surge of adrenalin and fury against her.

  He had always known that Grace was too pretty for him, but now she was lying there with her legs open.

  He pushed his way forward, leaned over her, hit her in the face with his beer bottle, and held her chin hard to make her look at him.

  At first he felt nothing but jubilant triumph inside.

  Afterwards he stood up and spat on her, but then two weeks later he had tried to castrate himself in the bathroom of his dorm. He cut deep, but the pain made him stagger sideways, slip and fall. He hit his face on the sink, and when it broke people came running.

  After a month in a junior psychiatric ward he was allowed home, and he immediately handed himself in to the police. They wouldn’t even listen to him: no one had been raped at the school, and the girl he was talking about had moved back to the US.

  He rests his hand against the cool polished granite wall, feels the taste of blood in his mouth, and realises he can’t stay in the shower room.

  Legs shaking, Lawrence makes his way past the row of showers, the tinted glass door to the sauna, then emerges into the unlit pool area.

  All he can hear is the rain against the huge windows.

  He knows he has to reach the emergency exit, get out of the hotel and try to find help, or just hide out in the forest.

  The pool area is divided by a large, hexagonal bar in the middle.

  On one side are the Jacuzzis and the main swimming pool, which still has some water left at the bottom. In the winter you could swim through a plastic curtain right out into the sno
w, but for now the external part of the pool is covered.

  On the other side of the bar, beyond the serving area and relaxation zone, is the emergency exit. The construction workers have dug up the floor and all the furniture has been moved out, and is now blocking the passageway between the bar and the windows. The mountain of wicker chairs and tables is covered with industrial grey tarp.

  The only way through to the emergency exit seems to be past the door to the women’s locker room.

  Lawrence listens for a while, then starts to creep along the pillared walkway. He keeps his eyes glued to the frosted glass of the door to the women’s locker room. Every little vibration makes him tense in an effort not to run in panic. He can see through the gap around the door that the changing room is unlit, and he holds his breath and moves past, forcing himself to walk slowly past the window to the solarium.

  He glances quickly back at the door, then hurries on.

  Through the next window he sees a gym full of exercise machines, treadmills and cross-trainers.

  Lawrence is walking towards the other side of the bar when he hears a squeaking, clicking sound.

  From this angle the pillars block his view of the entrance to the women’s lockers, but a reflected shadow is moving on the wall.

  Someone must have come through the door.

  Lawrence doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t dare run, so he just walks quietly around the end of the bar, where he sinks to the floor and tries to catch his breath.

  108

  Lawrence is hiding behind the bar, with one hand clamped firmly over his mouth. His racing pulse is thudding in his ears. He knows that DJ is in the spa area, trying to find him.

  But everything is silent and still.

  Some Coke has dripped down the dark veneer of the bar, and someone has stuck a piece of gum under the edge of the protruding bar-counter.

  Lawrence is sweating as he huddles up, making himself as small as he can, trembling.

  He’s breathing hard through his nose, thinking about how the rape set him on a path away from happiness. He’s never had a serious relationship, never been close to anyone sexually, never had a family.

  To stop those close to him thinking he’s weird, he sometimes pretends to have brief relationships.