Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

She clicks on an audio file and a moment later a tentative child’s voice echoes from the speaker of the laptop:

The call ends abruptly and is followed by silence. Saga clicks to close the audio file, and mutters that the rhyme could also be connected to the contest as she searches through the report.

‘Absalon is the next victim,’ Joona says, and gets up from his chair.

‘That can’t be right,’ she objects, smiling despite herself. ‘We’ve examined it from every—’

‘Saga, you have to send people down there right away.’

‘I’ll call Carlos, but can you tell me why you—’

‘Make the call first,’ Joona interrupts.

Saga takes out her phone and asks to be put through to Carlos Eliasson, head of the National Operations Unit and Joona’s former boss.

Ratjen, rabbits and hell, Joona repeats to himself.

He thinks about the high-pitched and slightly bemused child’s voice, and the rhyme about the rabbits that end up in hell.

When he was questioning Sofia he’d tried to analyse the composite sketches of the killer.

Sofia told him she had thought the killer had long strands of hair hanging down his cheeks.

Searching her memory, she then described them as strips of thick fabric, possibly leather.

When she tried to draw the strips onto the picture, at first they looked like big feathers, before turning into matted hair.

But they weren’t feathers, Joona thinks.

He’s almost certain that what she saw hanging over the murderer’s cheeks were sliced-off rabbits’ ears.

Ratjen, rabbits and hell.

The killer mentioned Ratjen, and said that hell would devour them: he’s planning to kill all the rabbits in the rhyme.

Saga is trying to explain to Carlos why they urgently need to send a team to Salim Ratjen’s brother in Skövde.

‘Look, I need to know why,’ Carlos says.

‘Because Joona says so,’ Saga says.

‘Joona Linna?’ he asks in surprise.

‘Yes.’

‘But... but he’s in prison.’

‘Not at the moment,’ Saga replies bluntly.

‘Not at the moment?’ Carlos repeats.

‘Just get a team down there at once.’

Joona grabs the phone from Saga’s hand and hears his former boss’s voice:

‘Just because Joona is the most stubborn person in—’

‘I’m only stubborn because I’m probably right,’ he interrupts. ‘And if I am, then there’s no time to lose if you want to save his life.’

A robot made of red and grey Lego is standing on the kitchen table. It’s the size of a wine-box, and resembles an old-fashioned tank with a grab-claw attachment.

‘Say hello to our new friend,’ Absalon smiles.

‘Hello,’ Elsa says.

‘And he’s going to be asleep very soon,’ Kerstin says.

She hands out paper towels to use as napkins, looks at her husband’s beaming face, and thinks that he must have gained some weight.

The children are already in their pyjamas. Peter’s are too short in the leg. Elsa is wearing all her hairbands as bracelets.

Absalon moves the carton of lactose-free milk, a sticky ketchup bottle and the bowl of grated carrot and apple.

The robot starts to roll across the floral-patterned wax tablecloth. Its small rubber front wheels hit the pan of macaroni and trigger the next action. Peter giggles as the moveable upper section of the robot slides forward on two rails. With a plastic rattling sound the wooden ladle sinks into the macaroni, then lifts back up again far too quickly.

The children laugh as macaroni flies across the table.

‘Hang on,’ Absalon says, leaning forward and adjusting the spring on the grab-arm. He aims the remote at the robot again.

With gentler movements, the robot picks up some more macaroni, rotates half a turn and then rolls towards Elsa’s dish. Her eyes shine as it deposits the food on her plate.

‘That’s so sweet!’ she cries out.

There are sirens in the distance.

‘Does it have a name?’ Kerstin asks with a wry smile.

‘Boris!’ Peter declares.

Elsa claps her hands and repeats the name several times.

Absalon steers the robot towards his son’s plate, but manages to crash it into the pot of crispy onion pieces, and can’t stop it from emptying its spoon into his glass of milk. Peter bursts out laughing and puts his hands over his face.

‘Boris, I think you’re really smart,’ Elsa says consolingly.

‘But now he needs to get some sleep,’ Kerstin says once more, and tries to catch her husband’s eye.

‘Can he pick up sausages too?’ Peter asks.

‘Let’s see.’

Absalon runs a hand through his curly hair, then swaps the ladle on the grip-arm for a fork and presses the remote. The robot heads off towards the frying pan too fast, and Absalon doesn’t manage to stop it before it collides with the cast-iron rim and topples forward.

‘Mum, can we keep him?’ the children cry in unison.

‘Can we?’ Absalon asks with a smile.

‘Mum?’

‘He can stay as long as we don’t have to keep the one in the bathroom,’ Kerstin replies.

‘Not James,’ Elsa says, appalled.

James is a yellow robot who provides toilet paper. Kerstin thinks he’s a little creepy, and far too interested in people’s bathroom habits.

‘We can lend James to Granddad,’ she says, taking the fork from Boris and putting sausage on the children’s plates.

‘Is he coming this weekend?’ Absalon asks.

‘Can we handle that?’

‘I can make a nice—’

Suddenly the kitchen door slams shut in the draught, and the calendar with the children’s pictures on it falls to the floor.

‘It’s the bedroom window,’ she says, getting up.

The door feels stuck, as if someone is holding it shut on the other side, and when it opens there’s a rushing sound as the air pushes past. She goes out into the hall, closing the kitchen door a little too hard behind her before heading past the stairs and into the bedroom.

The curtains are fluttering.

It’s not the window that’s open but the patio door. The blinds are rattling in the wind.

The room is cold and her nightgown has blown onto the floor. When Absalon makes the bed, he usually drapes her nightgown across her side of it.

Kerstin crosses the cool floor and closes the patio door, pushing the handle down until she hears the little click.

She picks her nightgown up and puts it on the bed, then turns the bedside light on and notices that the carpet is dirty. Soil and grass have blown in from the garden. She decides to get the vacuum out after they’ve eaten, and starts to walk back.

Something makes her stop in the darkened hallway.

There’s no noise coming from behind the kitchen door.

She looks over at the bundle of coats and bags, all hanging from the same hook.

Very slowly, she moves towards the kitchen, sees the light through the keyhole, and then suddenly hears an unfamiliar child’s voice.

‘ Seven little rabbits, all dressed in white, tried to get to heaven on the end of a kite. Kite string got broken, down they all fell. Instead of going to heaven, they all went to ...’

Thinking that Absalon has decided to demonstrate a new robot while she was gone, she opens the door and walks in, then stops dead.

A masked man is standing by the kitchen table. He’s wearing blue jeans and a black raincoat, and is holding a knife with a serrated blade in one hand.