Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

‘That’s all bullshit. I have the right to defend myself,’ Oscar hisses, and looks down at the floor again. ‘What the fuck do you want with me? I don’t get it...’

He stops speaking and sits for a while with his free hand over his face, breathing hard.

‘Tell me about the Rabbit Hole,’ Joona says.

‘I want to talk to a lawyer first.’

‘Anything that happened back then has passed the statute of limitations.’

‘Really? Doesn’t feel like it,’ Oscar says.

‘Maybe not,’ Joona says darkly.

‘I need protection.’

‘Why?’ Joona asks, picking up Oscar’s glasses from the floor.

‘Someone’s hunting us, killing us, one by one, like rabbits.’

‘You’ve heard the nursery rhyme?’

‘Have I already said all this?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not paranoid. I can tell you everything. I know who it is... I swear, it’s a student from Ludviksberg. He hates us. He’s like a demon, he’s waited thirty years before making his move.’

‘Who?’

‘If you really are a police officer, you have to stop him.’

‘Give me a name,’ Joona says, handing him his glasses.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘No.’

‘I can prove it all,’ Oscar says, putting his glasses back on. ‘It makes sense if you realise who we were... a small gang who ruled that school. We were like gods. You asked about the Rabbit Hole... it was a pavilion that belonged to the Order of the Crusebjörn Knights, dating back to the court of Fredrik I, blah, blah, blah. We knew all that, but we really didn’t give a shit, it was just one of a thousand little privileges that went with our status. We’d go to the Rabbit Hole to get drunk and sleep with the best-looking girls in school.’

Oscar smiles sardonically to himself and wipes his upper lip before he goes on.

‘It was a different world in there. We used to watch porn and we swapped the portrait of Prince Eugen for a poster of NATO’s Evolution Squadron because they had a Playboy bunny as their logo.’

‘But you burned the pavilion down,’ Joona says gently.

Oscar bites his thumbnail and stares into space.

‘You say someone’s hunting and killing you,’ Joona goes on. ‘Does that have anything to do with the fire?’

‘The fire?’ Oscar says, as if he’s just woken up.

‘Yes.’

‘This is totally fucking real,’ he says, rubbing his face with his free hand. ‘People are dying, I’m not just imagining it...’

‘I’m leaving now,’ Joona says.

‘Please, wait... I’m just trying to explain everything so you believe me when I give you the name,’ he says anxiously. ‘There was this guy in class, his name was Rex. We thought he was a total loser, but he was always hanging around, wanting to be part of the gang, getting beer for us, doing our homework... I have a very clear memory of a rainy summer’s day when we were smoking behind the main building — there were some bricked-up cellar steps where we used to go — and Rex was hanging around, and said he was going out with a girl named Grace. Wille knew who she was and looked interested, he wanted to know more, and got Rex to boast about having sex with her in the meadow behind the school. It was all a bit pathetic, but Wille enjoyed teasing him. Then just a few hours later he was talking to Grace and telling her that Rex had joined the club and that she could become a member too seeing as they were together. I don’t really know what he said, but the idea was that Rex had organised a secret party for her that night. Most of the students weren’t allowed out after eight o’clock, but the groundskeeper used to help us, and he unlocked the boarding house and brought her over to the Rabbit Hole.’

A cold night wind blows through the hole in the floor. The doors bang against the edge of the drop.

‘I think about it every day,’ Oscar whispers. ‘The fact that... that she’d made such an effort to look nice, and was so ridiculously happy about everything, blushing and talking about Rex, thinking he was about to show up, but he was locked up in the stables.’

Oscar’s thin mouth stretches into something that’s supposed to be a smile, but his eyes are dark.

‘Wille locked Rex in and told him that Grace was his now, that it was just the way things went.’

He shakes his head slowly. The wind sweeps across the roof of the building, making the windows rattle.

‘Go on.’

‘I don’t think I want to say any more,’ he whispers.

‘How old were you when this happened?’

‘Nineteen,’ he replies.

‘So you can’t blame anyone else,’ Joona says.

‘I’m not, but Wille liked humiliating people,’ Oscar goes on quietly. ‘He liked to make them squirm, make them feel ashamed, but this, what happened when Grace realised she’d been drugged, it was so... the hell he kicked off, the things he got us to do... we were drunk, I don’t even want to think about who did what. Some of us were shouting, others were like animals. I refused, but everyone had to do it, they wanted everyone to do it, so they put a sort of crown of rabbits’ ears on me and I did it. I don’t know how, but I did it, it was there inside me after all. I was so fucking scared, but I did it... they even got the fucking groundskeeper to do it with her before he carried her out.’

‘Absalon Ratjen?’

He nods, then sits there motionless, staring into space for a while before he goes on.

‘Afterwards, when we let Rex out of the stables, Wille told him he’d had sex with Grace. He made up lots of crap about what the two of them had done, and how much she’d liked it. I just felt numb. I was empty, my soul had been sucked out and all I could think about was getting away from the school, and I started to walk. But when I reached the outdoor swimming pool, just before the bridge, I made up my mind to go back and set fire to the pavilion.’

‘You got expelled.’

‘I’m not telling you this to get some sort of forgiveness. What I did was wrong, I know that, but I don’t want to die,’ Oscar says. ‘Christ, all I want is for you to believe me when I say Rex Müller is the one hunting us down.’

‘You seem very sure.’

‘I am.’

‘But you thought I was the murderer just now?’ Joona says.

‘Rex has money. He doesn’t need to get his hands dirty unless he wants to.’

‘You’re sure Rex was locked up while the rape was taking place?’

‘I helped do it... and I helped let him out afterwards,’ he replies heavily.

Joona pulls his damp phone from his inside pocket, looks at the blank screen and realises that it’s ruined.

The victims’ nineteen minutes of suffering must correspond with how long the rape took.

Rex was locked inside the stables. All the other boys took part, but someone other than Grace was inside the Rabbit Hole.

‘You said everyone joined in,’ Joona says.

‘Yes.’

‘But that isn’t entirely true, is it?’

‘Isn’t it?’ Oscar mumbles.

‘Was there a witness?’

‘No.’

‘Who saw you?’

‘No one.’

‘I need the names of everyone who was in the Rabbit Hole,’ Joona says.

‘Not from me,’ Oscar says.

‘I need to make sure they get protection.’

‘But I don’t want them to get protection,’ Oscar replies, looking at Joona with empty eyes.

Valeria is walking down towards the greenhouses. It’s cool, and she wraps her worn cardigan more tightly around her. She’s thinking about asking Micke to help her with the frame of the new polytunnel. She loves her nursery: the fresh air, the racks of seedlings, the rows of plants and trees.

But today her chest feels empty.

She knows she should transplant her cuttings into pots, but can’t summon up the enthusiasm.