Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

‘OK,’ Johan says, tapping a new command. ‘We’ll start with number one.’

On the large screen they see a perfectly sharp image of the front door and a view of the illuminated garden down towards the gate. Every so often pink petals from the flowering Japanese cherry trees drift down.

After three hours they’ve looked through that night’s footage from all thirteen cameras. Thirteen different angles of a sleeping house on the morning of May 1 between 3.36 and 3.55. Four cameras captured Rex during those nine minutes, from the moment he puts his bottle down in the middle of the road and clambers over the black iron railings, until he leaves the garden and delightedly ‘discovers’ a bottle of wine in the middle of the road.

‘Nothing,’ Johan sighs.

Rex is in the grounds for nine minutes, and during that time there is no sign of anyone else in any of the recordings, no vehicles on the road, no movement behind the curtains.

‘But he saw the murderer,’ Joona says. ‘He must have, his description matches what other witnesses have said.’

‘Maybe it was a different day,’ Johan mutters.

‘No, this was the night it happened... He saw the murderer, even if we can’t,’ Joona says.

‘We can’t see what he saw — all we’ve got are these cameras.’

‘If only we knew exactly when he saw him... Start with camera seven, that’s the one pointing at the pool.’

Once again they see Rex on the edge of the screen as he stumbles onto the deck at the outer limit of the lens’s distorted perspective.

He walks over to the side of the pool, sways for a while, then opens his fly and urinates in the water, before weaving over to the navy-blue garden furniture and letting his urine cascade over the recliners and table.

He buttons his trousers, turns towards the garden and looks at something. He lurches slightly, then walks back towards the house, where he stops in front of the patio door and looks into the living room. He leans against the railing, then disappears out of shot.

‘What’s he looking at just after he zips his fly? There’s something in the garden,’ Joona says.

‘You want me to enlarge his face?’

On the screen Rex moves backwards towards the pool, circles the furniture and turns his back to the camera.

When he starts to move forward again, Johan zooms in on his face and follows it as he urinates on the table. He rests his chin on his chest, closes his eyes and lets out a sigh before zipping his trousers.

Rex turns towards the garden, sees something and smiles lazily to himself before his face slips offscreen as he loses his footing.

‘No, it’s not there... keep going,’ Joona says.

Rex turns to face the house and starts to walk towards it, and Johan zooms in even closer. Rex’s drunk face fills the whole screen: bloodshot eyes, bottom lip dark with wine, stubble starting to grow out.

They see him stop in front of the patio doors and look into the living room. He opens his mouth slightly, as if he realises he’s been spotted, before the look in his eyes becomes concerned, scared, and he turns away and disappears.

‘There! That’s when he sees him,’ Joona says urgently. ‘Run it again. We need to take another look.’

Johan Jönson makes a loop of the twenty seconds in front of the glass door, when Rex sees something and starts to smile before becoming scared.

‘What do you see?’ Joona whispers.

They zoom out and try to follow his gaze. He seems to be staring directly into the living room.

Without breaking the loop, they switch to camera six and see Rex from behind and slightly off to one side. His face is reflected in the glass, as if he’s looking at his own reflection.

‘Is he in there?’ Joona whispers.

The shift in Rex’s face, from bemusement to fear, is visible in the reflected image. Through the glass the living-room furniture looks like indistinct shadows.

‘Is there someone standing in there?’ Johan says, leaning forward.

‘Try camera five.’

The fifth camera is positioned outside the dining room, in the part of the house that’s at an angle to the rest of the building. It covers part of the living room from the outside, as well as the entire window, and looks towards the corner where camera six is mounted.

Johan zooms in.

The twenty-second-long clip repeats over and over in its loop, but everything inside the darkened dining room is completely still: the chandelier above the table, its reflection on the tabletop, the chairs neatly tucked underneath, a pair of men’s socks on the floor.

‘There’s no one there — what the hell is he looking at?’

‘Zoom in under the sofa,’ Joona says.

Johan pulls back, then moves down to the base of the lamp, and follows the cable under the sofa.

There’s something lying there. Johan gulps and makes the picture brighter, but loses the contrast. The milky darkness is almost as impenetrable as the black was. The picture slowly pans right, revealing a collection of pale tassels by the leg of the sofa.

‘It’s just a rolled-up rug,’ Joona says.

‘I almost got scared there,’ Johan smiles.

‘There’s only one possibility left,’ Joona says. ‘If the killer isn’t inside the room, then Rex is seeing him reflected in the window.’

‘He’s seriously drunk, though, so it could be nothing,’ Johan says tentatively.

‘Go back to camera six.’

Once again the screen shows Rex from behind, in front of the glass door to the living room. Time after time, the expression on his face changes from surprise to fear.

‘What’s scaring him?’

‘He can’t see anything but himself.’

‘No, that’s the Venus effect,’ Joona replies, leaning closer to the screen.

‘What?’

‘If he’s being filmed from the side, and we can see his face head on, then he can’t be looking at himself.’

‘Because he’s looking straight at the camera,’ Johan says, tugging at his beard again.

‘So what he’s looking at must be somewhere just below camera six.’

The analyst switches cameras and pans past the large living-room windows to the edge of the image, towards camera six which is mounted on the far corner of the building, with a grove of dark trees behind it.

‘Closer, under that weeping willow,’ Joona says.

The long branches reach almost to the grass, and are swaying in the gentle breeze.

Joona feels a shiver run down his spine at the first glimpse of the murderer.

The shadows of the leaves move across a masked face, and then it’s gone.

With his hands trembling, Johan rewinds the footage and halves the speed, and they see the branches of the willow part to reveal the face, then hide it again.

‘A little more,’ Joona whispers.

The leaves sway slowly and then they see the murderer once more, just as he turns away and vanishes into the shadows.

‘Again, from the beginning,’ Joona says.

This time he can clearly see the rabbits’ ears hanging in front of the masked face.

‘Stop... go back slightly.’

The screen is almost completely black, but something grey moves across the murderer’s head and there’s a flicker in the window next to him.

‘What the hell’s he doing?’

‘Zoom in on the darkness,’ Joona says.

‘What’s that?’ Johan asks, pointing at the screen.

‘Must be the back of his ear.’

‘He’s taken off the mask?’

‘The opposite, I’d say... this is where he puts it on, under cover of the shadows.’

The murderer must have figured out that there was a camera shadow in line with the grove of trees, and made his way into the garden using that blind spot before stopping under the willow tree to pull his balaclava over his head.