The Rabbit Hunter

by Lars Kepler

  To his friends he claims to prefer one night stands. But the truth is that there has never been anyone for him, male or female.

  For the past year he has been in touch with a girl he met on a dating site. She’s one of the dancers in the musical Hamilton on Broadway. Lawrence knows that this may be a lie, that she could be ‘catfishing’, but they always have interesting and entertaining conversations, and she’s never asked him for money. He loves the pictures she sends. She’s so astonishingly pretty that it makes his entire body feel happy. Her big, curly hair, and those cheeks, and that smiling mouth. She’s too good to be true, but she just sent him a ticket to the show that looks genuine, with a barcode and everything.

  He’s probably being tricked somehow, but what if it really does mark a turning point in his life?

  Lawrence glances over at the emergency exit, then stands up in a crouch and creeps down a broad flight of stairs.

  The whole bar area has been cleared and they’ve started to lay mosaic tiles on the floor. The green exit sign is shining beyond some construction pallets.

  Rain is still streaming down the big panes of glass.

  Lawrence walks faster, trying to breathe quietly.

  If he can get outside, he just has to keep going until he reaches the church, then head along the E10 to Björkliden, and hide somewhere until this is all over.

  There’s a clatter as his foot hits a black bucket. It slides across the dusty floor, and the trowels inside it rattle when it comes to a halt.

  Lawrence starts running, no longer worrying if anyone can hear him, swings around the pallets and reaches the emergency exit. He shoves the handle down and pushes and pulls, but the door won’t open.

  A heavy padlock is hanging from the handle.

  He adjusts his glasses, turns around, and his heart starts to thud in terror when he sees DJ coming down the stairs with an axe in his hand.

  Lawrence kicks at the glass but nothing happens.

  His eyes sweep quickly across the room and he realises he needs to try to get to the other side of the bar, through the mountain of sofas, cupboards, potted plants, chairs and tables.

  Panting, he hurries along the windows towards the stack of furniture. It’s tightly packed and reaches his chest. He lifts the plastic cover and squeezes in between a pile of chairs and a round marble table.

  The light changes beneath the plastic, becomes hazy and oddly soft.

  He holds the cover up with one hand and crawls into a narrow passageway between some cupboards, but stops when he hears a clattering sound behind him. He quickly huddles down and hears the plastic settle on top of the furniture again.

  Leaning over and with his knees bent, he forces his bulky frame between two cupboards full of dishes.

  He can’t help thinking that it’s Grace coming after him.

  That this is how they’ve set it up.

  In his mind’s eye he sees her pink pleated skirt, her blood-smeared thighs and her long hair stuck to her cheeks.

  Panting for breath, he pushes past some huge terracotta pots and deck chairs, then suddenly hears footsteps behind him.

  On one level he knows it’s DJ, but his brain keeps summoning up an image of Grace.

  She’s here to get her revenge. He can hear her getting closer, dragging a skipping rope behind her, its plastic handle bouncing across the uneven mosaic floor.

  Panicking, he shoves one wicker chair out of his way, picks up the next and pushes his way through to a large buffet table, but from there on his path is blocked.

  He’s reached a wall of heavy cupboards. It’s impossible to get through to the pool area this way. He needs to find a different route, possibly under the stack of sun-loungers.

  The plastic sheet billows up in a draught, then settles back down with a rustling sigh.

  The pain in Lawrence’s chest has got worse and his left arm feels oddly numb.

  When he bends down to see if it would be possible to crawl under the loungers his glasses fall off.

  Shaking badly, he sinks to his knees to look for them, but manages to knock them under a low table instead. He thinks he can see them, and reaches but can’t quite grab them.

  He lies down on his stomach and starts to slide into the cramped space. Shuffling forward, he blinks and stretches his arm out, touches his glasses with his fingertips and quickly puts them back on.

  Still lying on his stomach, he turns his head and looks back towards the mosaic floor when DJ suddenly crouches down and stares straight at him through the table legs and chairs.

  He looks like Grace, with his attractive open face and blond hair.

  The plastic rustles and Lawrence realises that DJ is squeezing through the stack of furniture.

  Lawrence presses on beneath the table, and hears the zip of his jacket scrape across the slate floor.

  He’s breathing harder now, and with each breath his back presses against the stone slab and it feels like he’s about to get stuck.

  He thinks about the ticket to the musical again, and how she’ll never understand why he didn’t show up.

  Furniture is crashing behind him and he hears glass breaking as he gets closer to the other side of the table.

  He’s gasping for breath now as he tries to grab something to help pull himself out.

  There’s a dull clang as DJ puts the axe on the floor and reaches in after him.

  ‘Leave me the fuck alone!’ he screams.

  DJ grabs one of his feet and starts pulling him back. Lawrence kicks out and pulls free, slides out from the other side of the table and stands up shakily. It feels like he’s about to throw up as he pushes between some heavy sofas. He topples a stack of white cushions and the plastic settles down over him again. He stumbles on, scrambling over the cushions, and just about manages to keep his balance.

  He’s made it through the barricade, and turns and rushes on, hitting his shoulder on one of the pillars as he hurries around the whirlpool bath, but then he stops.

  He’s breathing incredibly fast and the fingers of one hand feel completely numb now.

  He keeps going, looking back at the bar and seeing DJ’s reflection in the glass door.

  DJ is running along the walkway with the axe in his hand.

  He’s heading towards the pool area, past the doors to the locker rooms.

  Odd strips of leather are hanging down his cheeks.

  Lawrence coughs and walks quickly towards the main pool, thinking he can get outside from here.

  His heart is hurting now, and he has to move more slowly as he grabs the handrail beside the tiled steps leading down into the pool. The water at the bottom smells stagnant.

  Shaking, he hurries down the shallow steps, wades out and tries to run, but the resistance is too great.

  The muck at the bottom swirls up through the thigh-high water.

  He pushes laboriously through the water, feeling it splash his stomach and chest.

  Plasters, flip-flops and clumps of hair are floating on the surface.

  He passes the hanging plastic curtain and heads into the covered outdoor pool. It must be possible to get out from there. The covering is only a tarp, after all, stretched across some low cross-beams.

  He wades further out and tries to see if there are any holes in the fabric.

  He hears heavy splashing behind him and turns around.

  DJ is ploughing towards him through the water.

  Lawrence realises it’s going to be almost impossible for him to get out of the pool before he’s caught.

  His fingertips are itching and tingling.

  Panting, he turns away and starts to wade towards the closest edge of the pool. He almost falls over, but manages to grab it.

  He pushes the tarp up as hard as he can. The coarse nylon fabric is stretched so tightly that he can’t open up even the smallest gap.

  He tries to pull on the cross-beam in an effort to dislodge it, but it’s impossible.

  DJ is wading through the water with long strides.

>   The waves hit the side of the pool and splash up at Lawrence.

  He can’t get his fingers under the edge of the tarp and tries to push it instead, but he has to give up.

  Gasping for breath he starts to wade off into the water again, but his heart is beating too fast. He can’t go on. There’s nowhere left to run, and he stops and turns around.

  109

  Lawrence stands still, breathing hard through his mouth. He tries to say something, but is still too out of breath. He’s nothing but a rabbit, darting around in its own blood at the bottom of a tub.

  The Rabbit Hunter is getting closer now, trailing the axe across the surface of the water.

  He had prepared the tape-player and the cassette, and had intended for Lawrence to be pinned to the reception desk by the dagger when the others came out to look for him.

  The dirty water has splashed up over Lawrence’s checked shirt, and there are big sweat-stains under his arms.

  ‘I know what this is about,’ Lawrence says between strained breaths.

  He holds both hands up as if to stop him from coming any closer. The Rabbit Hunter takes a short step forward, grabs one of his hands, stretches his arm out and strikes him with full force just above the elbow with the axe. Lawrence stumbles sideways from the force of the blow, and his scream of pain echoes around the walls of the pool.

  Dark blood pumps from the deep wound.

  He keeps hold of Lawrence’s hand, twists it slightly, and strikes again.

  The blade slices straight through the bone this time.

  He lets go and looks at Lawrence, who staggers backwards with his lower arm hanging from a few last sinews before it falls off and splashes into the murky water.

  ‘Oh God, oh God,’ he whimpers, trying to press the stump of his arm back to his body to stem the bleeding. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do. Please, just tell me. I need help, can’t you see?’

  ‘Grace is my mother, and you—’

  ‘They made me do it. I didn’t want to. I was only seventeen,’ he sobs.

  He falls silent, breathing hard. His face is white, as if he were already dead. The Rabbit Hunter looks at him intently: the splashes on his glasses, his snot-streaked beard, the blood smeared across his filthy clothes.

  ‘I understand that you want revenge,’ Lawrence says, gasping for breath. ‘But I’m innocent.’

  ‘Everyone’s innocent,’ the Rabbit Hunter says in a low voice.

  He thinks about Ratjen, sitting on a chair in his kitchen in front of his children. Ratjen died because he provided the keys, because he opened the door to the boarding house and took Grace to the Rabbit Hole. That’s what started it all. If he had said no back then, he could have eaten his macaroni in peace, and then gone to bed with his wife once the children were asleep.

  ‘Wille made all the decisions,’ Lawrence gasps.

  ‘Mum identified you. She told me what you did,’ he says calmly.

  ‘They forced me,’ he sobs. ‘I was a victim, I was also a …’

  Lawrence’s voice fades away as the Rabbit Hunter’s ears go deaf. He picks at one ear but still can’t hear anything. He’s lost in the memory of a summer afternoon, the day before his mum’s attempted suicide.

  He was hunting with his rifle beyond the main road, past the railway line and down towards the silo. He sat down in the grass, leaned back, and when he woke up it was already evening.

  It was as if he’d woken up in a dream.

  He lay still in the tall grass, thinking that the silo looked like the Mad Hatter’s big top hat.

  At that moment he was as small as a rabbit.

  Lawrence is still hoping he can escape, and stumbles off in the direction of the tiled steps again.

  A trail of dark blood billows out across the water around him.

  The Rabbit Hunter looks at his watch and follows him.

  Lawrence passes the plastic curtain, staggers forward, takes one step up and then sits down on one of the bottom steps. He lifts the stump of his arm, whimpering from the pain. Wheezing badly, he tears his shirt apart and winds it around the stump as tightly as he can, pulling at it with his single, trembling hand.

  ‘God, oh God,’ he keeps whispering to himself.

  Blood seeps through the fabric onto the wet steps.

  ‘You don’t need to worry about bleeding to death,’ the Rabbit Hunter says, brushing the rabbits’ ears from his face. ‘Because before you pass out I’m going to hit you in the neck with the axe, so you’ll die pretty instantaneously.’

  Lawrence looks up at him in despair.

  ‘Did we kill Grace? Why are you killing us, if she’s still alive—’

  ‘She’s not alive,’ he interrupts. ‘She never got a chance to live.’

  Very soon he’s going to go back upstairs and hang James Gyllenborg. He doesn’t know why he wants to hang him, in particular. It was just an idea he had when he was watching him when they were out hunting – that he wanted to see him hang.

  A flash of memory: the sound when Grandpa cut his mother down from the beam in the barn.

  ‘What are you going to do next?’ Lawrence whispers with bloodshot eyes. ‘When you’ve finished getting your revenge? What happens afterwards?’

  ‘Afterwards?’ the Rabbit Hunter says, resting the axe on his shoulder.

  110

  When Rex comes to, his heart starts to race with anxiety. He’s lying on his stomach on the floor with his arms tied behind his back. His face feels tight, and is thudding with pain from the repeated blows.

  His empty suitcase lies in the middle of the floor, its contents scattered.

  He can hear voices and rolls cautiously onto his side. He tries unobtrusively to free his hands, and realises that he can’t feel his fingers.

  Through half-open eyes he sees Sammy sitting against the wall with his arms wrapped around his knees. Rex makes a slight movement, meets his son’s gaze and sees him shake his head almost imperceptibly.

  Rex closes his eyes at once and pretends to be unconscious. He listens to his son talk in a subdued voice.

  ‘I have nothing to do with this … I’m sure you already realised that. I wouldn’t even be here if my dad hadn’t been trying to stop me from seeing my boyfriend.’

  ‘You’re gay?’ James asks curiously.

  ‘Don’t tell Dad,’ Sammy jokes.

  ‘What’s so great about guys, then?’

  ‘I’ve been out with girls too, but the sex is better with guys.’

  ‘In my day,’ James says, ‘I could never have said that. So many things have changed, in a good way.’

  With ice-cold fingers Rex tries to loosen the tightly knotted strips of cloth.

  ‘I’m not ashamed of who I am,’ Sammy replies.

  ‘Do you go out with older men?’ James asks in an odd tone of voice.

  ‘What turns me on are individuals, situations. I don’t have a big set of rules,’ Sammy says calmly.

  Rex lies still and hears James walk across the floor. He opens his eyes cautiously and sees James standing in front of Sammy. He’s holding the rifle loosely in one hand, its barrel pointing down beside his leg. The overpriced bottles of water and wine that the hotel offers its guests are standing on the coffee table.

  James turns around and Rex quickly closes his eyes and tries to make his body limp. James comes over and stops in front of him. The smell of metal tells him that the rifle is pointing at his face.

  ‘Most people I know call themselves pan-sexual,’ Sammy goes on.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘When you think that personality, not gender, is the most important thing.’

  ‘That sounds sensible,’ James says, going back over to him. ‘I’m sorry Lawrence cut you. Does it hurt?’

  ‘A little …’

  ‘You’re going to have a scar on that pretty face of yours,’ he says with unexpected tenderness in his voice.

  ‘Damn,’ Sammy sighs.

  ‘You should probably put something over it t
o keep the edges closed,’ James goes on.

  ‘Dad has some plasters in his toiletry bag,’ Sammy suggests.

  The room goes silent and Rex keeps his eyes closed. He’s almost certain that James is looking at him.

  ‘It’s over there, by the armchair,’ Sammy says.

  Rex feels James take a step away from him and kick the bag across the floor, towards Sammy.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Rex hears Sammy unzip the bag, followed by a rustling sound as he finds the plasters.

  ‘You should wash it first,’ James points out.

  When he hears James pick the water bottle up off the table and unscrew the lid, Rex twists his arms and pulls as hard as he can until he frees one hand from the bindings. His cold fingers tingle and sting as the blood returns to them.

  ‘Sit still,’ James murmurs. ‘Lift your face up a little …’

  ‘Ow,’ Sammy whispers.

  Rex opens his eyes and sees that James has put the rifle down on the floor and is bending over Sammy holding the water bottle and a bundle of paper napkins.

  Very slowly, he gets to his feet. His legs are numb and feel like lumps of wood. One of the strips of cloth is dangling from the cuff of his shirt, but comes loose and falls to the floor, making a soft sound as it lands.

  Rex stops and waits.

  James hasn’t heard anything. He turns the water bottle upside down on the napkins and goes on bathing Sammy’s cheek.

  Rex moves slowly over to the coffee table and picks up the wine bottle, taking care not to make a sound.

  ‘A bit more water,’ Sammy says. ‘Ow … ouch, that really …’

  ‘Almost done,’ James says, with an odd intensity in his voice.

  Rex walks towards James but manages to step on the shirt that was in his suitcase. It’s still in plastic and rustles beneath his foot. He rushes forward, raising the wine bottle, and sees James drop the napkins and turn towards him just as he strikes. James raises his arm to defend himself, but the bottle hits him on his cheek and temple, so hard that the glass breaks. Green splinters and dark-red wine rain down on James and across the wall behind him.

  James groans heavily and falls sideways. Sammy moves out of the way and Rex grabs the rifle and backs away. James slumps back against the wall, feels his temple and looks groggily up at Rex just as he steps forward and rams the butt of the rifle against the bridge of James’s nose, slamming his head back against the wall.