Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

They stop at a stone bench just inside the gates of the enclosure. DJ pours coffee from a flask, hands out the steaming mugs and smiles at the men.

Now he has the last four in a cage, ready for slaughter.

It’s going to require a degree of care when he kills the first one, so the others don’t try to run.

Towards the end it won’t matter if they figure out what’s going on and start to panic.

They will all bleed and scream, and feel death creep up and stare at them, until it’s finally time.

‘We’ll split into two teams, in two zones,’ he explains. ‘Team one will be made up of me, James and Kent... and we’ll stick to zone one. Lawrence, Rex and Sammy will be team two, in zone two. Everyone OK with that?’

He hands out maps to the two teams, goes through the geographic boundaries, permitted shooting angles and safety regulations.

‘We’ll break off at five a.m. precisely, and disarm our rifles. No more shots can be fired after that, even if that’s the first time you see a reindeer. We’ll wait ten minutes, then gather here before going back to the hotel together... and don’t worry about tonight’s meal,’ he adds. ‘Rex has promised to make the best hamburgers on the planet.’

‘We’ve got plenty of ground fillet steak,’ Rex says.

DJ looks at them, takes a sip of coffee and thinks about how he’s going to lead Kent and James across the bare stretch of ground and split them up among the rocky crags. His plan is to end up on the same side of the rocks as Kent, then they’ll head up the path towards the ravine and rest there before going into the valley.

Kent’s in worse shape than the rest of them. He’s overweight and suffers from high blood pressure. While they’re resting he’ll congratulate him on his recent appointment as Chancellor of Justice, draw his hunting knife, slice open the lower part of his fat gut, make him stand at the edge of the cliff and tell him that he’s going to push him off in precisely nineteen minutes. He’ll still be conscious, so he’ll experience the fall.

The men study the maps and point at the landscape and hilltops. Rex puts his rifle down on the bench and walks off, steps over the ditch and stops in the undergrowth facing the fence to pee.

‘If you bring down an animal, make sure it’s dead, then break off and mark the location on the map,’ DJ says. ‘The biggest stags in here weigh a hundred and sixty kilos, and have got huge antlers.’

‘I am so up for this,’ Kent says.

Sammy blows on his coffee, drinks some and wipes the lipstick off his mug with his thumb.

‘Didn’t you get a rifle?’ Lawrence asks, looking over at him.

‘I don’t want one. I don’t understand how anyone can think it’s fun to kill an animal,’ Sammy replies, looking down at the ground.

‘It’s called hunting,’ Kent says. ‘People have been doing for quite a while...’

‘And real men like it,’ Sammy concludes, turning towards DJ. ‘They like killing, they like guns and rare meat — what could possibly be wrong with that?’

‘Can someone give this little poof a slap?’ Kent says with a smile.

DJ looks at Rex, who is walking back through the weeds.

He has no idea that he’s one of the prey in the enclosure.

So far Carl-Erik Ritter is the only one who has been at all problematic, like a wounded rabbit retreating into its burrow.

When DJ found out that Ritter was dying from liver cancer, he’d been forced to rethink his plans.

He had to prioritise Ritter to make sure he didn’t die of natural causes before he could get to him.

The accelerated plan involved finding him in the bar and luring him outside to the Axelsberg underground. DJ had driven up from Skåne early that morning and maybe he wasn’t concentrating enough. He hadn’t counted on being attacked in the square. He had to improvise to make it look like an accident. He shoved him into the window, breaking the glass with the back of his head, then turned him around and pushed his neck onto the sharp edge, slicing through his carotid artery.

Even though he tried to hold the wound together, Ritter still bled out quicker than expected. He only took fifteen minutes to die. He was getting away too easy. Maybe that was why DJ cut his lip open with the knife before he lost consciousness.

‘OK, let’s get going,’ DJ says, shaking his mug. ‘The sky looks pretty dark off to the east, and there’s a chance we might get a bit of bad weather this evening. Kent and James, you come with me, we’ve got a little further to walk than the others.’

Once Rex’s group have climbed a little higher they can clearly see the vegetation below them, and how the forest thins out up the slopes and then stops altogether.

The bog arcs between Rákkasláhku and Lulip Guokkil. The entire valley is like the prow of a huge ship pointing towards Torneträsk.

Sammy pulls out his binoculars and looks around.

Lawrence is holding the map, leading the group down into the valley, towards zone two. The range includes part of the bog and the eastern slopes, and stretches above the treeline to the subalpine heathland and across to the ravine.

Everything is suddenly very quiet.

The only sounds are the clatter of their equipment, their feet hitting the ground, and the wind blowing through the leaves.

The muddy path is covered with the footprints of previous hunters. Clumps of lingon twigs brush against their boots.

‘How’s it going?’ Rex asks, and Sammy shrugs in response.

Between the white stems of the birch trees the light is the colour of porcelain. The valley is like a vast room, a hall of pillars with a canopy of billowing cloth.

‘Do you know how deep the snow gets here in the winter?’

‘No,’ Sammy replies quietly.

‘Two and a half metres,’ Rex says. ‘Look at the trees... all the trunks are much whiter up to two and a half metres off the ground...’

When he doesn’t get any response from Sammy, he goes on in an exaggeratedly pedagogical tone:

‘And that’s because the black lichen that grows on the bark can’t survive underneath the winter snow.’

‘Please, can you two try to keep quiet,’ Lawrence asks, turning towards them.

‘Sorry,’ Rex smiles.

‘I want to do some hunting, even if you don’t. That’s why I’m here.’

They walk through a patch of crowberry scrub and emerge into a brighter glade.

‘I barely even know how a hunting rifle works,’ Rex tells Sammy. ‘I got my licence when I was thirty and I still haven’t quite figured it out... You have to pull the bolt back somehow when you insert more cartridges.’

Lawrence stops and raises his hands.

‘Let’s split up,’ he says, and points at the map. ‘I go down into the valley, and you two continue along the path... or up that side.’

‘OK,’ Rex replies, looking along the path towards the side of the mountain.

‘You can only fire in that direction... and I’ll fire that way,’ Lawrence says, pointing.

‘Of course,’ Rex replies.

Lawrence nods to them, steps off the path and heads off down the slope through the trees.

‘I’ve ended up stuck in a cage full of angry apes,’ Rex mutters, fastening his knife to his belt.

They walk along the path for a while, and start to head diagonally up the mountainside. After half a kilometre they stop beside a boulder. It’s like a tower-block of slate, deposited here when the glaciers retreated.

They stand with their backs to the rock-face, and drink some water.

Rex puts on his reading glasses, unfolds the map and studies it for a while before he gets his bearings.

‘We’re here,’ he says, pointing at the map.