Ларс Кеплер - The Rabbit Hunter

At first DJ believed her, but then he started to think she was hiding from Rex in Chicago because she was ashamed of the way she looked after the truck accident.

He still doesn’t know where the idea of the accident came from. He has no memory of her ever having talked about it.

When he was fourteen years old his mum saw a picture of Rex in an article in Vogue , about the new generation of chefs in Paris. She went straight out into the barn and tried to hang herself, but Grandpa climbed up to the beam on a ladder and cut her down before she died.

Grandma and Grandpa had her committed to a psychiatric hospital and he was sent to the Missouri Military Academy, which took younger boys.

DJ tucks the dagger under the tablecloth when he hears someone coming down the hallway.

He closes the duffle bag with his foot, leans back again, and wonders which one of the men the fates have chosen to send out first.

His head crackles and he can see his mother huddled on the floor in the stall, covering her ears and whimpering in terror as one of the rabbits they thought was dead suddenly jerks and starts running again.

DJ remembers catching it under a green plastic bucket, sticking his hand inside to grab it, then nailing it to the wall. His mother was shaking uncontrollably, then threw up in terror and screamed at him that he wasn’t allowed to bring the rabbits inside.

DJ looks up when he hears the footsteps get closer, and Lawrence appears in the light of one of the lamps. DJ raises his hand in greeting, thinking that the man will soon be running from room to room clutching his intestines in his arms.

Lawrence looks like he’s been crying. His eyes are swollen and red and he’s still wearing his wet clothes.

‘Did you find the phones?’ he asks, blinking hard.

‘Can’t find them anywhere,’ DJ replies.

‘We think Rex took them,’ Lawrence says in a tense voice.

‘Rex?’ DJ says. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘We just think it’s him,’ Lawrence snaps.

‘You and James? That’s what you two think?’

‘Yes,’ Lawrence says, and his face turns red.

He goes behind the reception desk and switches on one of the computers. The rain is still clattering on the roof. The storm seems to have been catching its breath, then returning with even greater fury.

Just two months after DJ returned from his last tour in Iraq, his grandfather died, leaving a fortune to his only grandchild.

DJ’s grandmother had passed away two years earlier. He went to the clinic to visit his mother, but she didn’t even recognise him.

He was alone.

That was when he decided to go to Sweden, so at least he could see his father.

Rex was already a successful chef. He’d been a guest on countless television programmes and had published a cookbook.

DJ set up a production company, changed his name to his grandmother’s maiden name, and approached Rex without any thought of revealing that he was Rex’s son.

Nonetheless, he was incredibly nervous before their first meeting, and suffered an attack of narcolepsy in the dimly lit passageway leading to the Vetekatten café.

He woke up on the floor and arrived at the meeting half an hour late.

They didn’t look alike, except maybe around the eyes.

DJ presented Rex with a business proposal. He offered him a ridiculously generous contract, drew up a new strategy, and in less than three years managed to get him a slot on the main Sunday morning breakfast show and turn him into the biggest chef in the country, and a bona fide celebrity.

DJ came to act as a sort of manager, they started to socialise, and gradually became friends.

Even though he was already sure, he couldn’t help taking a couple of strands of Rex’s hair. He was standing behind Rex’s chair, and pulled them out with a pair of tweezers. Rex yelped and put his hand to his head, then spun around. DJ just laughed and said it was a white hair that he hadn’t been able to ignore.

Without touching them, he put the hairs in plastic bags and sent them to two different companies that specialised in paternity tests.

There was no doubt about the match. DJ had found his father, but had to bury any happiness he felt.

‘There’s no Wi-Fi,’ Lawrence says from behind the reception desk.

‘Maybe try another computer?’ DJ suggests.

Lawrence looks at him, wipes the sweat from his hands and nods towards the window.

‘Can we walk to Björkliden from here?’

‘It’s only twenty kilometres,’ DJ replies. ‘I’ll go as soon as the storm has passed.’

Throughout David Jordan’s childhood his mother was treated for depression and suicidal behaviour. After the most recent visit, when she didn’t recognise him, DJ had his mother moved to a more exclusive care home, Timberline Knolls Residential Treatment Centre. The senior doctor there believed her condition was post-traumatic stress disorder, and radically altered her treatment.

Just before Thanksgiving DJ decided to go to Chicago to ask his mother for permission to tell Rex that he was his father.

He didn’t even know if she would understand what he was talking about, but the moment he walked into her room he could tell that she was different. She took the flowers and thanked him for them, offered him tea and explained that she had been ill as a result of psychological trauma.

‘Have you started to talk to your therapists about the truck accident?’ he asked.

‘Accident?’ she repeated.

‘Mum, you know you’re sick, and that you weren’t able to take care of me, and that I had to live with Grandma.’

DJ saw the odd expression on her face when he told her about the DNA test, that he had got to know his father, and that he now wanted to tell him the truth.

There was a faint tinkle as she put her cup down on the saucer. She stroked the tabletop slowly with one hand, and then she told him what had happened. She became less and less coherent as she went on, but she told him about the rape in gruesome detail, about how the boys had wanted to hurt her, and the pain, the fear, and how she ended up losing herself.

She had shown him a photograph from a boarding school outside Stockholm, then started to stammer as she recited the names of the boys who had taken part in the assault.

He remembers exactly how she was sitting, with her thin hand over her mouth, sobbing as she told him he was the product of rape, and that Rex was the worst of all of them.

After saying those words his mother couldn’t look at him.

It was devastating.

‘Nothing’s working. We’re completely isolated,’ Lawrence says in an unsteady voice.

‘That could be because of the storm,’ DJ suggests.

‘I think I’m going to head out for Björkliden right away.’

‘OK, but make sure you bundle up, and watch out for the cliffs,’ DJ reminds him gently.

‘Don’t worry,’ Lawrence mutters.

‘Can I show you something before you go?’ DJ says.

He folds back the tablecloth and picks up the flat knife, then conceals it by his hip as he walks over to the desk.

Lawrence nudges his glasses further up his nose, walks over to the desk with the computer, and looks at DJ.

‘Is it difficult getting down to the main road from here?’ he asks.

‘Not if you know which way to go,’ DJ replies in an oddly flat voice. ‘I can show you on a map.’

Instead of a map, DJ pulls a photograph from his pocket, puts it on the desk and turns it around so Lawrence can see it.

‘My mum,’ he says softly.

Lawrence reaches forward to pick up the photograph, then snatches his hand back as if he’s been burned when he recognises the young woman in the photograph.