The Rabbit Hunter Read online

  ‘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.

  88

  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.

  ‘Quite the fucking professional,’ Johan says breathlessly.

  ‘Try number eight again … there was a glimmer of something in the window.’

  The picture goes black and the grey movements sweep across the screen as the murderer pulls on his mask with his back to the camera. There’s a flicker of something in the window before he turns around, the rabbits’ ears swaying in front of his face.

  ‘What’s that, glinting off the kitchen window?’ Johan asks.

  ‘It’s a vase. I saw it before, on camera seven,’ Joona says. ‘It’s on the windowsill, next to a bowl of lemons.’

  ‘A vase.’

  ‘Zoom in on it.’

  Johan makes the vase fill the screen, just as Rex’s face did a short while before. The curved, shiny metal reflects the window and the garden outside. Along one edge of the vase is a trace of movement, no more than a fleeting shift in the light.

  ‘Back,’ Joona says.

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ Johan mutters as he rewinds the footage.

  The movement along the edge of the vase forms a curved line, the colour of yellowing paper.

  ‘That could be his face before he puts the mask on,’ Joona says.

  ‘Shit me sideways,’ Johan whispers, taking a high-resolution screenshot of the convex reflection.

  They both stare at the curved reflection in the vase, a pale arc running vertically down the screen.

  ‘What do we do? We need to see his face.’

  Johan drums his fingers on his thigh and mutters something to himself.

  ‘What did you say?’ Joona asks.

  ‘In an almost spherical mirror, the image is so distorted because the rays from the edges and centre of the surface don’t meet at the same point.’

  ‘Can that be corrected?’

  ‘I just need to try to find a concave distortion that corresponds exactly with the convex surface, and align that with the main axis …’

  ‘Sounds like it would take a long time.’

  ‘Months … if Photoshop didn’t already exist,’ Johan smiles.

  He opens the program and starts to flatten the image, little by little.

  The only sound is the tapping of keys.

  The glare of the reflection is sucked into the white arc, leaving the surrounding space darker. It looks like a peculiar meteorological phenomenon.

  ‘I’ve got goose-bumps,’ Johan whispers.

  The pale face slowly widens and finally crystallises in its original form.

  Joona takes a deep breath and stands up from his chair. For the first time, he can clearly see the murderer.

  89

  As Rex puts his suitcase down in the hall he can hear Sammy playing his guitar. He recognises the chord, and tries to remember what song it is as he heads towards the living room.

  Rex gave Sammy a steel-stringed Taylor guitar when he got confirmed, but he didn’t know that he still played it. As he enters the room he remembers the song: Led Zeppelin’s ‘Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You’.

  Sammy has dirt under his nails and he’s written something on his hand. His blond fringe hangs in front of his face as he concentrates.

  He plucks nimbly at the strings and sings along quietly, just to hear the tune in his head.

  Rex sits down on the amplifier and listens. Sammy keeps playing until he reaches the long instrumental section, then holds his hand over the strings to silence them and looks up.

  ‘You’re good!’ Rex exclaims.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Sammy says, embarrassed.

  Rex picks up his semi-acoustic Gibson and adjusts the amp. There’s a buzz as the cables warm up.

  ‘Do you know any Bowie tracks?’

  ‘“Ziggy Stardust” was the first song I taught myself. I felt really cool. Mum must have heard it a million times,’ Sammy says, smiling as he starts to play.

  Rex sings along, trying to keep pace with his son on his guitar.

  Grey clouds are racing across the sky outside the large windows, and it looks like there might be a storm brewing.

/>   As they sing together, Rex looks at Sammy’s face and remembers when Veronica told him she was thinking of keeping the baby. He had already said he didn’t feel mature enough, and was unable to contain his feelings of powerlessness and frustration. He stood up, tucked his chair in and walked out on her.

  ‘Solo, Dad! Solo!’ Sammy cries.

  With a look of horror on his face, Rex starts playing the only blues scale he knows, but it sounds all wrong.

  ‘Sorry,’ he groans.

  ‘Try E-flat instead,’ Sammy says.

  Rex changes position and tries again, and this time it does sound a little better, almost like a real guitar solo.

  ‘Bravo!’ Sammy says with a smile, looking at him happily.

  Rex laughs and they start to play Håkan Hellström’s ‘It’ll Never Be Over For Me’, when suddenly the doorbell rings.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Rex says, and puts his guitar down on the floor, making the amplifier rumble.

  He hurries out to the hall and opens the door.

  A young woman with pierced cheeks looks at him groggily. She’s wearing black jeans, a Pussy Riot T-shirt, and a black hat, and her skinny left arm is in a cast from the elbow all the way to her fingertips. In her other hand she’s carrying a crumpled plastic bag from H&M.

  Behind her stands a man in his thirties. His eyes are warm and his face is boyishly attractive, albeit rather haggard, like a rock star. Rex recognises him. It’s the man Sammy was at the party with when he took an overdose.

  ‘Come in,’ Sammy says behind Rex.

  The young woman stumbles over the doormat and hands the bag to Sammy.

  ‘Your stuff,’ Nico says, stepping into the hall.

  ‘OK,’ Sammy replies.

  The woman wraps her arms around Nico and smiles up at his face.

  ‘Is this the gay guy who paid for your car?’ she asks.

  ‘He’s my Salaì. I love him,’ Nico says, stroking her back.

  ‘I thought you loved me,’ she complains.

  Sammy looks in the bag.

  ‘Where’s the camera?’

  ‘Shit, forgot it,’ Nico says, and taps his head.

  ‘How are things?’ Sammy asks in a subdued voice.

  ‘The court case is in November … but I’ve rented a house in Marseilles, so I’m going to spend the autumn there.’

  ‘He’s going to paint a series of pictures of me,’ the young woman says, wobbling as she manages to step on Rex’s boots.

  ‘Filippa’s coming along. There’ll be a little gang of us, so it’s going to be really cool.’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ Sammy says.

  ‘She doesn’t have your eyes,’ Nico says quietly.

  Sammy looks up at him.

  ‘Damn, you’re so handsome,’ Nico sighs.

  Sammy can’t help smiling.

  ‘When can I have my camera?’ he asks.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ Filippa whispers into Nico’s ear.

  ‘I’m thinking of going to Jonny’s party,’ Nico says.

  ‘They’re so fucking sick, I can’t handle that,’ she groans, leaning back against the coats hanging in the hall.

  ‘I wasn’t asking you,’ Nico says, and looks at Sammy. ‘Do you want to come? It could be fun, and I’ll take the camera.’

  ‘To Jonny’s?’ Sammy says dubiously.

  ‘He’s staying at home,’ Rex says sternly.

  ‘OK, Dad,’ Nico says, and salutes.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Sammy says.

  ‘Say yes, that would make me—’

  ‘Thanks for coming,’ Rex interrupts.

  ‘Stop it, Dad,’ Sammy whispers, sounding pained.

  Filippa giggles and starts to go through the pockets of the coats behind her. Nico takes her arm and backs out through the door.

  ‘I’ll call you,’ Sammy says.

  Rex closes the door, then stands there holding the handle, staring down at the floor.

  ‘Dad,’ Sammy says wearily. ‘You can’t just do that. That was really shitty.’

  ‘You’re right, I’m sorry,’ Rex begins. ‘But … I thought it was over?’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen.’

  ‘You need to live your own life, but I can’t pretend to like him.’

  ‘Nico’s an artist. He went to art school in Gothenburg.’

  ‘He’s good-looking, and I can see that he’s exciting, but he put you in danger, and that—’

  ‘I’m not completely naïve,’ Sammy cuts him off irritably.

  Rex holds his hands up towards him apologetically.

  ‘Can we just try to get through these weeks together, like we said at the beginning?’

  90

  The Rabbit Hunter is walking down the narrow pavement on Luntmakar Street, a dark backstreet that runs between the tall buildings in the centre of Stockholm.

  Inside his coat the little axe swings on its strap by his waist.

  Several pallets laden with shrink-wrapped trays are blocking the pavement in front of one of the restaurants and he’s forced to step out into the road.

  The Rabbit Hunter feels beneath his nose, as if he has a nosebleed, and looks at his fingers, but it’s nothing. He thinks of how he used to tie live rabbits to the dead ones, in long chains, and then set them loose. The living and injured would drag the dead bodies with them, darting in different directions and panicking as they tried to get away.

  They would draw strange bloody patterns across the dirty cement floor.

  He remembers the twitching back legs, the claws clattering as the creatures tried to escape the weight of the dead.Without hurrying, he walks down the street past a half-open garage. The electronic door seems to be broken, and is being held a metre or so off the ground by a sawhorse. He can hear a woman sobbing angrily inside the garage. She sniffs and says something in an agitated voice.

  The Rabbit Hunter passes the opening just as the woman stops speaking.

  He stops, turns around and listens.

  The woman is crying again, and now a man is shouting at her.

  The Rabbit Hunter walks back, crouches down and looks in. He sees a steep ramp with dim lights along the concrete walls. The woman is speaking more calmly now, but stops abruptly as if she’s been hit. The Rabbit Hunter ducks under the door and starts to walk down the ramp.

  The air inside is stuffy and smells like petrol.

  He keeps going until he reaches a small garage. A man in his sixties, wearing a leather jacket and baggy jeans, is shoving a skimpily dressed young woman in between a red van with misted-up windows and a sports car covered in some sort of silvery fabric.

  ‘Are you having fun?’ the Rabbit Hunter asks in a low voice.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ the man exclaims. ‘You’re not allowed down here!’

  The Rabbit Hunter leans against the wall, looks at them and then the van, which is rocking rhythmically, and thinks that he could slice them all open, chop their hands off and watch them run around squirting blood everywhere.

  ‘Get out of here!’ the man says.

  The woman stares at him blankly.

  Pieces of an aluminium ventilation system are laid out on a tarp just behind the man, and further away some rolls of artificial grass are stacked against the wall.

  The Rabbit Hunter has never had anything against close combat. When he was going house to house helping to clear the combat area in Ramadi, he was always the first man in.

  They would break the door down, then throw in some Polish-manufactured shock grenades. The unit commander would stand aside and give orders to the others.

  He always went straight for the target with his M4, a pistol or a knife. He was quick, and could kill four or five men single-handed.

  ‘Get lost,’ the man says, coming closer.

  The Rabbit Hunter straightens up, wipes his top lip, and looks at the flickering fluorescent light in the ceiling.

  ‘This is a private ga
rage,’ the man says threateningly.

  ‘I heard screams when I was walking past, and—’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ the man interrupts, puffing his chest out.

  The Rabbit Hunter looks over at the young woman again. She has a sullen look on her face, and one of her cheeks is red from where the man slapped her. She’s wearing a mid-length raincoat and a white wrap-dress, black tights with skulls on them, and platform shoes.

  ‘Do you want to be here?’ the Rabbit Hunter asks her gently.

  ‘No,’ she replies quickly, and wipes her nose.

  ‘Look, you’ve misunderstood the situation,’ the man smiles.

  The Rabbit Hunter knows he shouldn’t be here, but he can’t help staying. He doesn’t care about the woman. She’s not going to escape prostitution, whatever happens here. It’s the man who’s the attraction.

  ‘Let her go,’ he tells him.

  ‘She doesn’t want to go,’ the man replies, drawing a semiautomatic pistol.

  ‘Ask her,’ the Rabbit Hunter suggests, feeling shivers of heat radiate from somewhere deep in his gut.

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’ the man asks. ‘Do you think you’re some kind of hero?’

  He points the pistol at the Rabbit Hunter, but is unnerved by his utter lack of fear and takes a few steps back.

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to her,’ the man says, a trace of nerves in his voice. ‘She’s just stuck-up and thinks she’s better than the others.’

  The Rabbit Hunter follows him, and can’t help smiling.

  The man has lowered the gun. It’s pointing at the floor now, its barrel shaking.

  He backs into the large ventilation drum, moving aimlessly, trying to get away like a sick rabbit.

  ‘Leave me the fuck alone.’

  The man raises the pistol again, but the Rabbit Hunter gently blocks his hand, turns the gun on him and pushes the barrel into his mouth.

  ‘Bang,’ he whispers, then pulls the gun out again, releases the magazine onto the ground and empties the bullet from the chamber. It rolls across the floor to the girl’s feet. She’s just standing there, her eyes downcast, as if afraid to look.

  The Rabbit Hunter goes back up the ramp, wipes his fingerprints off the pistol and drops it in a bucket of sand and cigarette butts. He ducks under the garage door and walks along the shaded pavement.