The Rabbit Hunter

by Lars Kepler

  ‘Come on,’ Rex says to Sammy. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  They leave the room, close the door and hurry along the cold hallway towards the reception area.

  ‘Nice work, Dad,’ Sammy says with a smile.

  ‘You too,’ Rex says.

  They can hear heavy thudding coming from somewhere, and Rex turns back, but the dimly lit hallway is empty and the door to his room closed. The barrel of the rifle scrapes the wall and Rex raises it slightly. At that precise moment he gets such a splitting headache that he has to stop.

  ‘What is it?’ Sammy whispers.

  ‘Nothing, just give me a second,’ Rex replies.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to get away from here … Let me look at you,’ he says, and leads his son into the light. ‘You might end up with a scar …’

  ‘On my pretty face,’ Sammy jokes.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You should see yourself, Dad.’

  Rex looks back at the hallway again, and now he sees that one of the doors they passed is ajar.

  111

  Rex and Sammy walk towards the lobby in silence. The thick carpet muffles their footsteps.

  They emerge into the lobby. There’s no one there, but one of the computers is lying on the floor. The rain is still pounding furiously against the black windows. The gutters are overflowing, the water splashing down onto the terrace outside.

  ‘Ten little rabbits, all dressed in white,’ they suddenly hear a child say. ‘Tried to get to heaven on the end of a kite.’

  Rex and Sammy turn around and see an old tape-player standing on a table.

  ‘Kite string got broken,’ the child’s voice continues. ‘Down they all fell. Instead of going to heaven, they all went to … ’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sammy whispers.

  Rex recognises the rhyme from the phone call he got at the restaurant. He walks over to the table and sees that there’s blood on the tape-player buttons.

  ‘Nine little rabbits, all dressed in white, tried to get to heaven on the end of a kite …’

  ‘Go to the front door,’ Rex says nervously.

  ‘Dad …’ Sammy says.

  ‘Walk down to the main road, then turn right and keep walking,’ Rex calls.

  ‘Dad!’

  Rex turns and sees James Gyllenborg coming towards them quickly. He’s holding a hunting knife in his hand, his clothes are stained with wine, and he’s breathing through his mouth as if his nose is broken.

  ‘Eight little rabbits, all dressed in white,’ the voice on the tape drones on.

  James looks at the knife in his hand, then marches towards Rex.

  ‘Just calm down, James!’ Rex says, raising the rifle.

  James stops and spits some bloody saliva on the floor. Rex backs away and puts his finger on the trigger.

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ James snarls, holding the knife out in front of him.

  There’s a crack as one of James’s legs snaps at the knee. Blood spurts onto the floor and he collapses. He arches his body back and shrieks with pain.

  It takes Rex a few moments to understand what’s happening.

  DJ is standing in the doorway leading to the spa area, a pistol fitted with a silencer in his hand.

  He’s wearing a leather strap around his head, strung with rabbits’ ears.

  Rex notices that his trousers are wet, right up to his thighs. He walks into the lobby, tosses a plastic-covered rope on the floor and tucks the pistol into a shoulder holster.

  DJ stops, closes his eyes, then slaps himself on the cheek, across one of the rabbits’ ears.

  James is screaming and trying to crawl back down the hallway.

  DJ looks at him, then walks over to Rex and takes the rifle, removes the cartridges and puts it on the coffee table with the other guns.

  ‘Six little rabbits, all dressed in white, tried to get to heaven on the end of a kite,’ the child’s voice chants on the tape.

  James is lying on the floor gasping. A pool of blood is spreading out around his shattered leg.

  ‘We need to bind the wound,’ Rex says to DJ. ‘He’ll bleed to death unless we …’

  DJ grabs James by his unharmed leg and drags him into the dining room. Rex and Sammy follow him in. James knocks into one of the tables, sending the candlesticks rolling to the floor.

  DJ turns James onto his stomach, puts one knee between his shoulder-blades, fastens his hands behind his back with cable ties, then stuffs a linen napkin into his mouth. Very methodically, he pulls a chair over and feeds the black rope through the chandelier hook in the ceiling.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rex asks.

  DJ ignores his questions and ties a noose, then pulls it over James’s head, tightens it, winds the rest of the rope around a pillar and then starts to hoist him up by his neck.

  The weight of James’s body pushes the chandelier to one side, and the prisms tinkle as he twitches and writhes. Panicked quacking sounds can be heard through the linen napkin. Some of the crystals fall to the floor.

  ‘That’s enough,’ Rex says, and goes over and tries to hold James’s weight.

  DJ wraps the rope around the pillar several times, then ties a knot and shoves Rex out of the way.

  James swings sideways, his legs flailing.

  The chandelier tinkles above him.

  DJ watches James as he slowly spins, then he pushes the chair over towards him and watches as he stands up on it with his one good leg and tries to keep his balance.

  In the lobby, the tape has reached the final verse about the last rabbit who ends up going to hell. DJ looks at his watch, then walks over and loosens the noose slightly. James tries to breathe in through his broken nose. Tears are streaming down his cheeks and his whole body is shaking.

  ‘If you fall or pass out, you’ll die,’ DJ says calmly.

  ‘Are you crazy? What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Rex asks.

  ‘You still don’t get it,’ DJ says blankly. ‘All the others understood, but not you.’

  ‘Dad, let’s go,’ Sammy says, trying to pull Rex away.

  ‘What is it I don’t get?’ Rex asks, swallowing hard.

  ‘That I’m going to kill you too,’ DJ replies. ‘As soon as I’m done with James I will … I think I’ll slice your back open and pull your shoulder-blades out.’

  He holds up an old photograph of Grace from her first year at the school. The photograph has a white fold right across her smiling face.

  ‘She’s my mother.’

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I just found out she was raped,’ Rex says. ‘James told me.’

  ‘Dad, let’s go,’ Sammy says quietly.

  ‘You were there,’ DJ says with a smile, swaying slightly.

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ Rex says.

  ‘Do you know, everyone says that before I—’

  ‘I’ve done loads of things I regret,’ Rex cuts him off. ‘But I haven’t raped anyone, I was—’

  He’s interrupted by a knock coming from the lobby. They stand in silence as another knock echoes through the hotel.

  112

  The Rabbit Hunter stands absolutely still in the dining room, looking through the door to the lobby and feeling the icy rush of adrenalin through his veins.

  But a wave of fatigue comes hot on the heels of his increased pulse, and he realises he’s forgotten to take his Modiodal today.

  He’s not sure he’ll need it, but a serious attack of narcolepsy could ruin everything.

  He just needs to stay calm.

  He hears Rex say that they need to remove the rope from James’s neck, but it’s as if he’s speaking from behind a wall.

  The Rabbit Hunter opens his eyes and meets his gaze.

  He knew from the beginning who was going to be the last to die. Rex will be left alone, surrounded by the desolation of the battlefield. He will see his avenger come and will fall to his knees in acceptance of his fate.<
br />
  The dining room is silent.

  Rex moves back with Sammy. James is in so much pain that he’s on the point of losing consciousness.

  When there’s a third knock on the door, sparks fly inside the Rabbit Hunter’s head as he sees the barn door blow open and snow swirl in across the floor.

  His mum is crying like a frightened little girl as she shuffles backwards, holding the butcher’s knife to her own throat.

  The storm had been raging all night, and his mum had grown more and more scared, not knowing what to do. She sat for hours with her hands over her ears, her eyes screwed shut, and then she got aggressive, picking at the entrails and throwing them at the door, and threatening to smother him when he started to cry.

  He knows he has to stop. The razor-sharp memories take up too much space, and he needs to stop himself from turning into his mother, from opening the door to psychosis.

  As a child he shared her sickness, but he wasn’t sick himself. He just didn’t have an alternative – and that isn’t a sign of psychosis, he reminds himself.

  For her, the rape overwhelmed the reality of the present, her fear of rabbits became a phobia and her terror formed a terrible alliance with her memories.

  There’s another knock on the door, even harder this time.

  The Rabbit Hunter hears himself start to issue orders, but it feels as if it’s all happening in another world.

  He kicks the chair from under James and watches his body jerk as he pulls off the rabbits’ ears, closes the doors to the dining room, then rearranges the rug to cover the bloodstains on the floor.

  They go over to the reception area, and DJ takes Sammy behind the desk with him while Rex goes over to open the front door.

  The rain is still beating against the black windows, running down the glass, gushing off the roof.

  A figure is visible in the storm outside.

  DJ puts his rabbits’ ears in a drawer containing pens and paperclips. He draws his pistol, takes the safety off and hides the gun behind the desk.

  Rex unlocks the door and lets in a tall man holding a petrol can. Rain blows in across the floor before Rex closes the door.

  DJ studies the stranger’s face and weary movements.

  His blond hair is stuck to his wet cheeks. His clothes are soaked through and his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers are caked in mud.

  DJ can’t hear what he says to Rex, but sees the man put the empty petrol can down on the mat and walk towards the reception desk.

  ‘The hotel’s closed,’ DJ says, looking into the stranger’s oddly pale grey eyes.

  ‘I realise that, but I ran out of petrol down on the E10 and saw the lights,’ the man says in a Finnish accent.

  DJ puts his left hand on Sammy’s shoulder and holds the hidden pistol with the other. He’s an ambidextrous shooter, and doesn’t even need to think when he switches hands.

  DJ knows that there’s a chance that the stranger is a police officer.

  He could be, even though it seems unlikely.

  Still, he can’t allow irrational suspicions to govern what he does in the next few minutes.

  No one could have tracked them down in such a short time, and a police officer would never come after him alone.

  DJ looks at the way the man’s wet clothes cling to his arms and chest, and is sure he isn’t wearing a bulletproof vest.

  But he could still have a pistol tucked under his left arm or down by his ankle.

  The most likely explanation is that the man doesn’t have a clue what he’s stumbled into; he simply ran out of petrol.

  ‘We’d love to help, but this is a private event,’ DJ says, moving the pistol to his other hand under the counter. ‘There’s no staff here and all the phones have been disconnected.’

  113

  Joona stands in front of the reception desk as if he’s about to check in. He knows Rex recognised him, but treated him like a stranger.

  David Jordan has a small streak of blood on his forehead, and is looking at him with curiosity.

  Presumably he’s trying to figure out if Joona is going to pose a threat to his plan, or if he’s just going to leave.

  Joona brushes his wet hair from his face and feels the rain trickling down his back as he puts both hands on the counter.

  As soon as he landed at Kiruna Airport he spoke to Jeanette Fleming, the psychologist, over the phone. She didn’t have an address, but confirmed that both Sammy and Rex had travelled to Kiruna, then repeated what Nico had said about Rex trying to turn his son straight by forcing him to shoot reindeer in a cage.

  While Joona hired a car, Anja found the only hunting enclosure with wild reindeer anywhere close to Kiruna. She also discovered that the hotel attached to the enclosure had been rented for a private event this weekend. She begged Joona to wait for reinforcements from the North Lapland Police District.

  ‘I’m sorry we can’t help,’ David Jordan concludes.

  Joona knows that most elite military close-combat training assumes that the opponent will be inferior in terms of both equipment and training.

  Because that’s usually the case.

  Their techniques are extremely effective, but there’s also a degree of arrogance built into everything they do.

  ‘You must have a mobile phone, though?’ Joona says in a friendly voice.

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you, but we’ve been a bit unlucky with everything technical, so we’re on our own until we get picked up tomorrow.’

  ‘I see,’ Joona says. ‘Where’s the nearest place you can think of to get hold of a phone? Would that be Björkliden?’

  ‘Yes,’ DJ replies curtly.

  Joona had noted the four hunting rifles on the coffee table in front of the fireplace when he came in, which probably means that at least one person is missing.

  Both Rex and his son look like they’ve been beaten, but apart from the injuries to their faces they don’t seem too badly hurt.

  There’s a computer lying on the floor, and the rug in front of the dining-room door is askew.

  ‘Has there been some sort of trouble here?’ Joona says, nudging the computer with his foot.

  ‘Go now,’ DJ says quietly.

  David Jordan had his left hand on Sammy’s shoulder when Joona came in, and then he moved the hotel ledger with his right hand.

  Both gestures were unnecessary.

  It’s likely that he wants Joona to think he isn’t holding a pistol beneath the desk, to test if he’s the first police officer on the scene.

  But Joona knows that the murderer is ambidextrous, and he knows that he’s in the middle of an unspoken hostage situation.

  The murderer would definitely have time to shoot both Rex and Sammy before Joona managed to put his hand under his wet jacket and draw his own pistol from its holster.

  He knows he has to wait, even if that might mean incurring losses, and suddenly finds himself thinking of his former lieutenant, Rinus Advocaat, who quoted Wei Liao-Tzu before their first training session in unconventional close combat.

  The tactical balance of power is located at the extremities of the Tao, he said in his usual joyless way. If you have something, pretend that you don’t have it; if you’re missing something, pretend that you have it.

  Even a child is familiar with the strategy, but it takes strong will to stick to it in a tense situation where it would normally be natural for a police officer to draw his weapon.

  Right now, this extreme game is Joona’s only chance of saving the lives of the hostages.

  Like all spree killers David Jordan has got a plan, and he’ll want to stick to it.

  If he thinks Joona is a police officer, he will shoot at once. That’s the only rational option, even if it means deviating from the plan. But if Joona is merely a man who’s run out of petrol, it makes more sense to wait and let him leave.

  The killer has tried several times to show Joona that he’s unarmed, to prompt him to act. So by now he’s probably started to drop the sus
picion that Joona could be an armed police officer.

  ‘What are you guys doing up here?’ Joona asks.

  ‘Hunting.’

  Every second he lingers takes them closer to a dangerous situation, but as long as Joona pretends not to have a gun, there’s a chance he can separate Rex and Sammy from the killer.

  ‘Well, I’d better get going, but … I was just thinking,’ Joona says with a smile. ‘There must be some sort of garage here with snow mobiles, that sort of thing?’

  ‘There should be,’ Rex replies, coming closer to the desk.

  ‘It would be great if I could just siphon off a bit of petrol … I’ll pay, obviously,’ Joona says, undoing one of his jacket buttons.

  ‘We only have the keys to the main entrance, and they don’t fit the barn or the annexe,’ David Jordan says, sounding stressed.

  ‘I see,’ Joona nods. ‘Well, thanks anyway.’

  He turns his back on David Jordan, undoes the last button and starts to walk towards the door.

  ‘Don’t you want to wait until the worst of the rain has passed?’ Rex says behind him.

  ‘That’s kind of you.’

  He turns around again and sees that Sammy has started shaking, and that David Jordan has had his eyes closed for an unusually long time.

  Wait, wait, Joona thinks.

  David Jordan moves with lightning speed, yet it still feels like he’s pushing his arm through gushing water as he raises a pistol and pulls the trigger.

  The hammer hits the pin, the percussive gas forces the bullet through the barrel and the bolt clicks.

  Blood squirts out behind Rex as the bullet passes through his torso.

  David Jordan has already turned the gun on Joona and moves out from behind the desk without losing his line of fire for a second.

  He has both eyes open, and is scanning the whole room as he moves. Rex looks bemused as he staggers backwards, clutching his hand to his bleeding stomach.

  ‘Dad!’ Sammy cries.