Ларс Кеплер: The Rabbit Hunter

She smiles to herself, closes her eyes and listens to the sound of her own breathing, the drips falling into the bath, and the soft lapping of the water.

For some reason she can’t remember if she locked the basement door earlier this evening.

Not that it really matters, but she usually does.

She’s almost asleep, so she puts one foot on the edge of the bath, then stands up slowly to stop herself from getting dizzy. She steps carefully out of the bath and starts to dry herself. Her skin is steaming hot, and the mirror above the sink is foggy with condensation.

She squeezes the water from her hair, then pushes the bathroom door open and waits a few moments, looking along the hallway at the shadows on the wallpaper.

Over the past few days she’s been getting an odd feeling in the house. She’s not usually scared of the dark, but she’s been more wary since her time in prison.

Valeria leaves the bathroom and walks naked along the hallway, pulling the wet plasters from her hands and wrists. She was clearing a patch of brambles in a large garden in Saltsjöbaden the day before yesterday, and the thorns went right through her gloves.

She walks into the bedroom and sees through the window that the treetops beyond the greenhouses are still darker than the sky. She goes over to the chest and opens the top drawer, takes out a clean pair of knickers and puts them on, then gets out her yellow dress and lays it on the bed.

She hears a clattering noise from downstairs and freezes. She stands absolutely still and listens, but can’t hear anything now.

She can’t think what the noise could have been.

Maybe the nail holding the framed photograph of her mother has given way?

Maybe the dishes in the sink have shifted position?

Valeria has invited Joona over tonight. They’re going to have dinner together, and she’s planning to cook spiced fillet of lamb with coriander, a recipe she found in Rex’s new cookbook.

She hasn’t told Joona he can stay the night, but she’s made up the bed in the spare room just in case.

She goes over to the window and starts to lower the blind when she sees someone standing beside one of the greenhouses.

Instinctively she takes a step back and lets go of the cord, and the blind rolls back up noisily.

Valeria turns the bedside light off, covers her breasts with her hands and looks out again.

There’s no one there, but she’s pretty sure what she saw.

A thin man with a wrinkled face was standing very still between the narrow trunks of the deciduous trees, watching her.

Like a scarecrow on the edge of the dark forest.

It was a skeleton, her brain keeps telling her.

A skeleton in a green raincoat, clutching her old garden shears in one hand.

Now all she can see is the light glinting off the glass of the greenhouses, the trees, the yellowing grass and the rusty old wheelbarrow.

She lives alone in a house in the country, so she can’t be scared of the dark.

Maybe it was a customer or a supplier who wanted to ask something, then changed their mind when they saw her naked in the window.

She picks up her phone from the bedside table, but it’s dead.

Joona should be here within the next hour. She needs to start cooking, but can’t shake the feeling that she ought to go and check the garden.

Valeria pulls on her old bathrobe and goes downstairs, but stops before she reaches the bottom. There’s a cold draught around her legs. She shivers when she sees that the front door is open.

‘Hello?’ she calls tentatively.

A few wet autumn leaves have blown onto the rug. Valeria pulls her boots on without bothering with socks, takes the flashlight from the coat-rack and leaves the house.

She goes down to the greenhouses and checks that the doors are all closed, then turns the flashlight on and looks inside them. Beads of condensation sparkle on the glass, and leaves pressed against the windows light up in the flashlight’s beam, casting shadows into the greenhouses.

Valeria walks slowly towards the forest. The grass rustles beneath her boots and a small branch snaps when she steps on it.

‘Can I help you with something?’ she calls in a loud voice.

The pale bark of the willow looks like a geological formation in the light of the torch. The illuminated stems hide the darker ones behind them.

Valeria walks on towards the wheelbarrow, and looks at the brown flakes of rust, the holes in the porous metal, and realises that she’s shaking with cold.

She moves cautiously to one side, points the flashlight up ahead and sees spiders’ webs sparkle in the light.

There’s no one there. The wild grasses don’t seem to have been disturbed, but further in between the trees, just where the darkness takes over, is a grey blanket or old rug she hasn’t seen before. She walks closer even though her pulse is starting to race.

The blanket seems to be covering something on the ground, something that looks like a thin body, a curled-up human form with no arms.