Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

They don’t look at each other as Edith ends the call. With downcast eyes she slips the phone back into her bag, then raises her glass to her lips with a trembling hand.

Rex picks up the champagne and walks towards the bedroom, swaying and hitting his shoulder on the doorframe. A little cloud of foam spills from the neck of the bottle, dripping down his hand and onto the floor.

Edith has a serious look on her face as she follows him to the bedroom. The dark sky is visible through one of the skylights, and from the foot of the bed you can see the whole of Stockholm, all the way to the white curve of the Globe.

Edith stands beside Rex and strokes his face, tracing the deep scar across the bridge of his nose with one finger.

‘Are you drunk?’ she asks.

‘Not badly,’ he says, and hears himself slur his words.

She starts to unbutton her dress and Rex pulls the covers off the bed. The combination of sudden movement and his unexpected intoxication makes him stagger as if he were negotiating the deck of a ship in rough seas.

Edith lays her dress over a chair, turns her back to him and quickly slips her tights off.

With a sigh Rex sits down on the edge of the bed, manages to pull his T-shirt off, and drinks some more champagne straight from the bottle. He knows he’s fairly muscular, but far too broad around the waist. A line of hair leads from his chest to his navel.

Edith slips off her pink panties and folds them to hide the pad, then puts them on the chair and lays her bra on top of them. Her bra straps have left red marks across her shoulders, and she’s plumper than he had imagined. Her pubic hair is blonde, with an almost tobacco-coloured tint, and her skin is unblemished.

Rex stands up and pushes his trousers and underpants down, trampling his way out of them, then he turns aside and tugs at his limp penis so it doesn’t look so small.

‘The men who leave me usually regret it,’ she says.

‘I believe you.’

‘Good,’ she mutters, with a stern look on her face.

‘My hands are cold,’ he whispers as he puts his hands on her hips.

She pushes him back playfully onto the bed, and he lands on his back, shoves an uncomfortable pillow out of the way and closes his weary eyes for a moment. The room spins as if someone were tugging at the sheet beneath him.

Edith’s phone starts to ring out in the kitchen, sounding muffled inside her bag. Rex looks at the two champagne glasses on the bedside table, the pink lipstick on one of them, the tiny bubbles clinging to them. He leans his head back and remembers what he said about Sammy at the award ceremony. On the ceiling he discovers two pale circles that must somehow be reflections from the glasses.

He realises he must have nodded off when he feels Edith’s unbelievably soft lips close around his penis. She raises her head and looks at him anxiously, then continues.

He sees the bed and his own pale form reflected in the skylight. He can’t understand why he ends up in the same situation every time he drinks. It’s a script that he sets in motion yet is powerless to prevent.

She crawls up the bed and straddles him, guiding his half-erect cock inside her. She kisses him. He thrusts tentatively so as not to slip out of her. She looks into his eyes and lifts his right hand to one of her breasts. He stiffens inside her and she leans forward and moans into his mouth.

‘Your phone rang,’ he says groggily.

‘I know.’

‘Don’t you want to know who it was?’

‘Don’t talk so much,’ she smiles.

The gentle waves of her hair are sticking to her forehead. Her lipstick is gone, and her mascara has run beneath her eyes like a black shadow.

She breathes harder and puts her hands on his chest, so that almost her whole weight is resting on him, then leans back and sighs.

Rex caresses her breasts and watches them press together again and again. She’s gasping and moving faster. Her thighs start to tremble and she closes her eyes.

‘Keep going,’ she groans.

He comes without having time to react, ejaculates right inside her. There’s no point pulling out now, it’s too late, and he just lets it happen, feeling the contractions and the slow comedown.

Edith’s cheeks, neck and breasts are flushed. She opens her eyes, flashes him a wide smile, and slowly begins to move her hips again. A shimmering trickle of sweat has run from her armpit down to her hip.

Rex wakes up naked in bed, gasping for breath as if he’s been underwater. His heart is pounding anxiously. He looks at the time and sees that it’s half past two.

Edith is gone.

He must not have noticed her creep out.

With a groan, he sits up and tries to find his phone, but the room is spinning so much that he can’t focus. He stands up, head throbbing, and comes very close to falling over. He screws his eyes shut and leans against the wall for a while before he can continue. The phone is under the bed. Odd images swirl around his head as he crouches down and tries to reach it.

His phone says he’s missed nine calls from Sammy.

Rex feels a cold shiver of angst.

He tries to call but can’t get through. Either his son’s phone is switched off, or he’s run out of battery.

He sees that Sammy has left three voicemails, and clicks to listen to them. His fingers are shaking.

‘Dad, if you feel like coming early that would be great.’

There’s a click and the call ends. The next message is from a few hours later, and Sammy sounds considerably more tired this time.

‘It’s half past one now. Are you on your way?’

After a brief pause his son says in a low voice:

‘Nico was mad and ignored me all night, and now he’s with some girl and I’m left here with a bunch of idiots.’

Rex hears him sigh to himself.

‘I’ll be waiting on the side of the road outside the house.’

Rex stands up and listens to the last message. The walls lurch away from him the moment he tries to focus on them.

‘I’m going to start walking, Dad. Hope you’re OK.’

He pulls on the clothes that are lying on the floor, bangs into a wall and tries to suppress the urge to throw up. He weaves his way out into the hall, finds DJ’s car keys on the dresser, pulls on his shoes and jogs downstairs.

When he emerges into the cool air, he walks straight over to some recycling bins and throws up between the green containers.

He shivers as if he has frostbite and throws up again, feeling lumps of the buffet from Café Opera press their way through his throat.

Legs shaking, Rex makes his way to DJ’s car. He pulls out Sammy’s note and taps the address into the GPS.

Rex drives off towards Nykvarn. His lingering intoxication makes the world spin outside the windshield. His hands shake on the wheel and sweat runs down his back, and he prays silently to himself that nothing bad has happened.

He tries calling Sammy again, but the car lurches and a lorry honks its horn at him.

While he drives, memories from the past evening slowly become clearer: his drinking, Edith’s patient coaxing of his faltering erection.

In the early morning light, the city looks like it’s rising from the sea: church spires and imposing buildings break the surface, water runs off rooftops, gushes from windows and doors, down streets and squares.

The water runs away, revealing glistening fragments of the night.

Champagne splashing over floors and sheets, her hand on his head as he licked her, her sweating thighs against his cheeks, the floor lamp toppling over and going out.

Somewhere in the middle of it all he started to get dressed to take a taxi out to Djursholm, before remembering that the Foreign Minister was dead.

He tripped over her bag, picked it back up and saw a knife in there along with her purse and make-up case.