Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

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.

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.

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.’

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.