Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

‘OK, get the butter, some sprigs of thyme, one clove of garlic, and...’

The sun passes behind a cloud and grey rain falls lazily against the window facing the yard. The electric lighting is bare and uncompromising. Suddenly Rex imagines he can hear something rustling out in the restaurant, like someone walking on plastic wrap.

He walks towards the pass, then stops. He gently nudges the door open and listens.

‘What is it?’ Sammy asks behind him.

‘I don’t know.’

Rex goes through the swinging door, into the empty dining room. There’s something dreamlike about the restaurant with the rain coursing down the windows, the light rippling on the white linen, cutlery and wine-glasses.

Rex startles when his phone rings in his back pocket. The caller’s number is withheld but he still answers. The signal is weak and the line crackles in his ear. Through the big windows he can see cars and people with umbrellas walking in the rain. He is about to end the call when he hears a distant child’s voice.

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

‘I think you’ve dialled the wrong number,’ Rex says, but the child doesn’t seem to hear him. He keeps chanting the nursery rhyme.

‘ Nine 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 ...’

Rex listens to the rhyme’s countdown before the line goes dead.

Through the window he sees a child standing under the bridge fifty metres away. Rex watches him turn his back and walk into the dark car park.

The air feels humid and an oily light is hanging over the fields beside Nynäsvägen. Joona passes a lorry carrying a load of dusty rubble.

The acting headmaster at Ludviksberg School refused to hand over any lists of students unless Joona could produce a formal request from either a public prosecutor or the lead detective.

‘This is a private boarding school,’ the headmaster explained over the phone. ‘And we’re not covered by the freedom of information legislation.’

The first three victims can be traced back to the school thirty years ago, Joona thinks as he drives towards Ludviksberg School.

It seems highly likely that future victims will share the same connection.

Maybe the killer does too.

The school is the geographic link, Joona thinks.

But somehow everything has to fit together on a deeper level.

He needs to find the algorithm, solve the riddle.

While he drives he listens to a playlist he put together for his daughter, Lumi. Old recordings of Swedish folk music and dance tunes. Fiddles summoning forth the melancholy of summer, the longing of youth and the transformative effect of the bright summer nights.

He thinks about Summa’s bridal crown of woven roots, and her smile when she stood on the stool to kiss him.

Joona drives east towards the coast. The narrow road leads him across two bridges and a tunnel.

He’s driving across Muskö when Saga calls. The music goes quiet and Joona taps the car’s screen and answers.

‘I have to talk to you,’ she says without any preamble, and Joona hears her kick-start her motorcycle.

‘Are you allowed to?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not allowed to talk to you either.’

Joona considers the irony in the fact that he and Saga are trying to solve a series of murders together even though their official tasks are like night and day: she’s supposed to hush everything up; he’s supposed to reveal it.

The water is silvery and still, and Joona sees a flock of ducks take flight. Saga is saying that Rex had a girlfriend — Grace Lindstrom — who dumped him for William Fock.

‘But here’s where it gets interesting,’ she says.

‘I’m listening,’ Joona says as he drives along the edge of a military training area.

‘William had some sort of club at the school. It was only for select pupils, I don’t know what the point of it was, but the place where they met was called the Rabbit Hole.’

‘The Rabbit Hole,’ Joona repeats. They’re getting close to the answer.

‘This is what we’re looking for — isn’t it?’

‘Do you have the names of the members?’

‘Only Grace and Wille.’

‘No one else?’

‘Rex says he doesn’t know.’

‘But Grace must know,’ Joona says.

‘Of course, but she seems to live in Chicago...’

‘I can go,’ Joona says.

‘No, I’ve already spoken to Verner, I’m leaving as soon as I get an address.’

‘Good.’

Braking gently, he turns into the driveway leading to Ludviksberg School. The main building looks like an old manor-house, with whitewashed stone walls and a hip roof.

He leaves the car in the visitors’ car park and crosses the lawn to the broad flight of stairs. The ground is covered with blue flowers, but deer or rabbits have been eating them. Joona bends over and picks up one of the spoiled flowers.

He passes a group of students wearing navy-blue uniforms and carrying stacks of textbooks in their arms.

In the entrance there’s a large colour photograph of the school grounds with arrows and signs. There are four boarding houses for girls and four for boys, as well as a groundskeeper’s flat, teachers’ homes, stables, sheds, a pump-house, sports facilities and a beach pavilion.

Joona walks through the glass doors to the headmaster’s office, shows his ID to the secretary and is shown into a large room with polished oak panels and huge windows overlooking the park. Behind the desk hang framed pictures of members of royalty who have been pupils at the school.

The headmaster is standing in front of a dark leather armchair, a stack of papers in one hand. He’s a thin man in his fifties, clean-shaven, with dark-blond hair parted on the side, and a very rigid posture.

Joona goes over and hands him the little blue flower, then pulls out a document in a plastic folder.

‘Here’s the prosecutor’s request.’

‘Not necessary,’ the headmaster says, without even looking at the document. ‘I’m happy to help in any way I can.’

‘Where’s the student register?’

‘Be my guest,’ he smiles, making a sweeping gesture towards a built-in bookcase covering one of the walls.

Joona goes over to the library. It contains the bound yearbooks for every year since the school was founded. He traces his way across the spines, back thirty years.

‘Can I ask what this is about?’ the headmaster says, putting the flower down next to his keyboard before sitting down.

‘A preliminary investigation,’ Joona says, and pulls out one of the books.

‘I appreciate that, but... I’d just like to know if it’s anything that might reflect badly on the school.’

‘I’m trying to stop a spree killer.’

‘I don’t know what one of those is,’ the headmaster says.

Joona pulls out another four yearbooks and puts them on the table.

He starts to leaf through the thirty-year-old photographs, looking at pictures from a lecture by the author William Golding, as well as St Lucia celebrations, tennis tournaments, cricket, dressage, show-jumping.

He looks at graduation pictures of students wearing white caps, school balls with big band music, Sunday dinners with white tablecloths, crystal chandeliers and serving staff.

According to the yearbooks, the boarding school is home to about five hundred and thirty students at any one time. Taking teachers, administrative staff, boarding house staff and other employees into account, there are some six hundred and fifty names in each book.

One picture shows a very young William Fock, the man who would later become Sweden’s Foreign Minister, receiving a prize from the headmaster at the time.