The Rabbit Hunter Page 37

  At Rehns Street he turns right and walks up to the wooden doorway just as a woman with dyed black hair whose arm is in a cast holds the door open for a man with an attractive face.

  The Rabbit Hunter catches the door and thanks them, walks straight into the lift and presses the button for the top floor.

  He remembers when he and his mother used to help each other with the traps, spraying the cages with apple cider so the rabbits wouldn’t pick up the scent of humans.

  The lift reaches the top floor just as the lights in the stairwell go out. There’s only one door on this floor, a heavy security door.

  After Rex dies, he’s going to cut his ears off, thread them onto a leather strap and wear them around his neck inside his shirt.

  The thought fills his head with a crackling sound, which turns into a deafening rattle, like when you push a shopping cart full of bottles across the car park.

  The Rabbit Hunter closes his eyes and tries to compose himself. He needs to bring the silence outside in, and impose it on the chaos.

  He rings the doorbell and hears footsteps approaching from inside the flat. He looks down at the marble floor only to see it rotating beneath his feet.

  The door opens and Rex is standing in front of him, his shirt hanging outside his trousers. He lets him in, takes a few steps back and almost falls over a suitcase.

  ‘Come in,’ he says gruffly.

  The Rabbit Hunter goes in and closes the door behind him, hangs his coat up and unties his shoes while Rex goes back upstairs.

  He adjusts the axe hanging under his jacket and slowly follows Rex to the brightly lit first floor.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he says when he enters the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry,’ Rex smiles, and throws his arms out. ‘I was playing guitar instead of preparing the asparagus.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ the Rabbit Hunter says, taking out a white plastic chopping board.

  ‘I’ll start making the stock, then,’ Rex says, grabbing four bunches of green asparagus from the fridge.

  The Rabbit Hunter swallows hard. He needs to take his medication as soon as possible. His brain is screaming as if someone were ripping it in half. Rex is one of the men who raped his mother, who left her for dead on a manure heap.

  The Rabbit Hunter leans one hand on the counter and pulls a vegetable knife from the block.

  Sammy comes into the kitchen holding an apple, glances at the Rabbit Hunter and then turns to his father.

  ‘Can we keep talking?’ he asks, then blushes.

  The Rabbit Hunter holds the knife-blade against his thumb, presses it gently and closes his eyes for a few moments.

  ‘Sammy,’ Rex says. ‘I don’t have a problem with you living here, that isn’t what I said.’

  ‘But it isn’t all that fucking great knowing you aren’t wanted,’ he says.

  ‘Everyone’s going to die anyway,’ the Rabbit Hunter says.

  He looks at the knife in his hand and thinks about his mother again, and the terrible rape that destroyed her.

  Now he knows that his mother was suffering from recurrent reactive depressive psychosis during his childhood, and that her dark delusions had a serious impact on both of them.

  Their aggressive fear of rabbits, and of those repulsive rabbit holes in the ground.

  He used to try to keep his childhood memories at arm’s length. The rabbit hunts and his mother’s fears were just one part of a secret past.

  But more recently those memories have been surfacing more frequently, breaking through all his defences.

  They rush in and head straight for him, as if everything is happening at this very moment.

  He doesn’t think he’s psychotic, but the past has proved beyond any doubt that it will never give up.

  91

  As he chops the shallots, Rex can feel how sore the fingertips of his left hand are from playing the guitar.

  ‘Why would you say you aren’t wanted?’ he asks tentatively, brushing the chopped onion into a saucepan.

  ‘Because you’re always talking about how we have to try to get through three weeks together,’ Sammy explains.

  Rex scrapes the knife against the edge of the pan, looks at the wide blade, then rinses it in the sink.

  ‘I don’t mean that I have to put up with you when I say that,’ he says. ‘I mean … I’m pleading with you to put up with me.’

  ‘Doesn’t feel like it,’ his son says in a thick voice.

  ‘I’ve never seen Rex as happy as he is now,’ DJ points out as he peels the asparagus.

  ‘Dad, do you remember last time I was supposed to stay with you?’ Sammy asks. ‘Do you remember that?’

  Rex looks at his son, his glistening eyes, sensitive face and thin shoulders. He realises that what he’s about to say isn’t going to be good, but he still wants him to keep going.

  ‘No, I don’t remember,’ he replies honestly.

  ‘I was ten years old, and I was so happy. I told all my friends about my dad, and how I was going to live with you in the middle of the city, and how we were going to eat at your restaurant every night.’

  Sammy’s voice breaks, he lowers his face and tries to calm down. Rex wishes he could go over and hug him, but doesn’t dare.

  ‘Sammy … I don’t know what to say, I don’t remember that,’ he says quietly.

  ‘No,’ Sammy replies. ‘Because you changed your mind when you saw I hadn’t cut my hair.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he says.

  ‘I had long hair, and you kept making a fuss, saying I should get it cut, but I didn’t, and … when I got to your house …’

  Sammy’s eyes fill with tears, his face turns red and his lips swell. Rex takes the saucepan off the heat and wipes his hands on his apron.

  ‘Sammy,’ he says. ‘Now I know what you’re talking about, and it had nothing to do with your hair. Look, it was like this … when your mum brought you, I was so drunk I couldn’t stand up. There was no way she could leave you with me.’

  ‘No,’ Sammy sniffs, turning his face away.

  ‘That was when I lived on Drottning Street,’ Rex says. ‘I remember I was lying on the kitchen floor, and I remember you. You were wearing red plimsolls and you had that little cardboard suitcase that …’

  He trails off as the realisation spreads through his chest.

  ‘But you thought it was your hair,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘Of course you did.’

  He walks around the kitchen counter and tries to hug Sammy, but his son pulls away.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Rex says, and gently brushes Sammy’s long fringe away from his face. ‘Forgive me, Sammy.’

  DJ slips a Modiodal pill in his mouth and swallows. He doesn’t know how he’s going to be affected emotionally by everything that’s going on. It wouldn’t be good if he suddenly fell asleep on the floor.

  He cuts the peeled asparagus stems into slices, saves the tops and then tips the rest into a pan of water.

  He’s thinking that he can’t be a hunter right now, that he’s going to have to be DJ the friend for a little while longer.

  There’s no hurry. Everything is happening at a perfect pace, in the perfect order.

  He remembers his mum showing him a school photograph, with all the students gathered in front of the huge main building. The eyes of nine of them had been pricked out, and the tenth wasn’t on the picture because he was the groundskeeper. He remembers his mother’s trembling hand precisely, and the way the light from the lamp on the table shone through the holes in the paper, like an unfamiliar constellation.

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ Sammy says in a subdued voice. ‘Don’t you get that yet?’

  ‘But I’m responsible for you while you’re here … and the way things are looking right now, I don’t think I should go to Norrland with DJ.’

  ‘We can postpone the meeting,’ DJ says, putting the vegetable knife down on the chopping board. ‘I can call the investors.’

  Rex shoots him a look of gratitude.
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  DJ smiles and thinks about how he’s going to kill him: Rex is going to have to crawl down the hallway in the hotel with his back sliced open until he shoots him in the back of the neck.

  Rex squeezes some lime juice into the pan, and Sammy gets the cream from the fridge.

  ‘I don’t need babysitting,’ Sammy says. ‘It may look like I do, but I’m fine.’

  ‘I just don’t want you to be on your own,’ Rex replies as he starts to peel the shrimp.

  ‘You’ve been dreaming about going up there and going hunting,’ Sammy smiles, pretending to aim a rifle. ‘Bang, bang … Bambi’s dead.’

  ‘It’s just business,’ Rex replies.

  ‘And I’m ruining it,’ Sammy says.

  ‘You could come up to the wilds of Norrland with us,’ DJ suggests, imagining a bleeding rabbit crawling across the floor while what’s left of its paws lie on the workbench.

  ‘Dad doesn’t want that,’ Sammy replies quietly.

  ‘Of course I do!’ Rex protests, rinsing his hands.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Sammy says.

  Rex blends the soup together, flash-fries the fat buds of asparagus and grabs the bowl of peeled shrimp.

  ‘It would be great,’ he says enthusiastically. ‘We could make food for the investors, Sammy, and I promise, you’ll love the scenery up there.’

  ‘But I can’t kill animals.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Rex says.

  ‘Maybe you’ll find out you’ve got it in you, when it comes down to it,’ DJ says, trying to force the sound of his mother’s screams from his head.

  Only two of the rapists have been hard to kill. One because he knew it would lead to a lot of media attention and a large police operation, and the other because he lives in Washington DC and had been heavily protected by Blackwater for many years.

  His plan was so ingenious that no one could have spotted it before it was too late.

  He knew that Teddy Johnson would attend the Foreign Minister’s funeral.

  But he had to entice him at exactly the right time, before he found out that any of his other old friends from the Rabbit Hole had died, otherwise he would suspect a trap.

  And then it wouldn’t have made any difference what bait the hunter had set at the back of the rabbit cage.

  But he had walked into the trap, and DJ had managed to give Rex the slip in the crowded church. He made sure he sat on the balcony, close to the stairs, with Sammy off to his right. During one particularly rousing hymn they threw little balls of paper at Rex.

  DJ snuck out of the service, and managed to get up to the top of the tower on Kungs Street ten minutes before the priest’s closing words. He knew that the chaos after Teddy Johnson was shot would hide the fact that he had disappeared. People would be running around screaming. It would take hours before the three of them found each other again, back at Rex’s flat.

  A .300 Win Mag was the obvious weapon of choice. He usually follows his gut feeling when it comes to choosing a weapon.

  When he killed the Foreign Minister he had chosen a pistol with a silencer, because he knew all too well that no matter how carefully you prepare and plan and map your victim’s routines, there are always things you can’t foresee.

  He had been there twice before he broke in to identify the locations of the alarms and cameras and to check the security routines. But unlike most people, a man in the Foreign Minister’s position could very easily have had armed bodyguards in the house.

  The Rabbit Hunter would have preferred to slit his wrists in the bath, but after the prostitute managed to free herself and raise the alarm, he didn’t want to take any risks.

  There were three reasons to kill the Foreign Minister while he had a prostitute tied to his bed. The first was that he knew his victim only arranged that sort of encounter when the rest of his family were away.

  The second was that the Foreign Minister always got rid of his bodyguards before he saw a prostitute.

  The third was that the prostitute increased the likelihood that the circumstances surrounding the Foreign Minister’s death would be hushed up.

  DJ smiles at Rex as they sit down at the table, but inside him his mother screams in terror as the rabbits slip out of the trap. They panic as they try to escape the shovel he’s using to hit them with.

  92

  Joona marches through the hallway on the eighth floor of Police Headquarters. His blond hair is untidy, his grey eyes sharp. He’s wearing a new black suit and a pale grey shirt. The jacket is unbuttoned and the butt of his Colt Combat is visible in the worn leather holster beneath his left shoulder.

  A young woman with laughter lines on her face smiles at him warmly, and a man with a silvery beard who’s standing in the staffroom puts his hand on his heart as Joona walks past.

  Outside his boss’s office is a map showing Sweden’s seven police districts, on which Stockholm is the smallest and the northernmost covers half the entire country.

  Carlos is bent over his aquarium and when Joona walks in he jumps as if he’s been caught doing something illegal.

  ‘You spoil them,’ Joona says, looking at the fish.

  ‘I know, but they love it,’ Carlos nods.

  He’s changed the décor of the aquarium. Instead of the wrecked ship and plastic diver, the fish are now swimming around white spaceships, Stormtroopers, a prone Darth Vader and a Han Solo half hidden by the bubbles from the oxygen pump.

  ‘We’ve got a picture of the murderer’s face now,’ Joona explains. ‘But the photograph doesn’t match anyone with a criminal record or who’s ever been a suspect.’

  Carlos opens the picture on his computer and looks at the face that Johan Jönson was able to extract from the reflection in the silver vase.

  The murderer is a white man in his thirties, with blond hair and a neat, full beard, a straight nose and furrowed brow.

  The face is turned to the side, his thick neck is twisted, and his neck muscles stand out from the shadows. His mouth is slightly open, and his blue eyes are glistening, and have a distant look in them.

  ‘We need to get this picture out to every unit in the force, and it has to come from you,’ Joona says. ‘Top priority. We’ll give it fifteen minutes, then if there’s no response we can get the picture up on the newspapers’ websites and ask for information from the general public—’

  ‘Why is it always such a rush when you …?’

  He cuts himself off when Anja comes into his office without knocking. She walks around the large desk and rolls Carlos and his chair out of the way, as if he’s a barbecue that’s in the way.

  She quickly disseminates the picture across the internal network that covers the entire force, giving it top priority, then opens an attachment to an email she herself has sent, containing a suggested text to newsrooms around the country.

  The killer’s picture appears on Carlos’s own radio display, which is lying next to the keyboard.

  ‘Now we just have to wait,’ she says, folding her arms.

  ‘So, what’s new around here apart from the name?’ Joona asks, looking out at the park through the low window.

  ‘We’re working exactly the same way we were before,’ Carlos replies. ‘Just a little worse.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ Joona says, checking his watch and wondering why Saga hasn’t been in touch.

  A call comes in on another terminal. Carlos realises he’s going to have to answer, and fumbles with the buttons until he manages to switch the speaker function on.

  ‘Rikard Sjögren, Stockholm Response Team,’ the officer says by way of introduction. ‘I don’t know if it’s any use, but I was part of the operation guarding the Foreign Minister’s funeral at St Johannes’ Church, and I’m sure I saw this man among the mourners.’

  ‘But you don’t know who he is?’ Carlos asks, his mouth close to the unit.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was he with anyone else, or near anyone you recognised?’ Joona asks.

  ‘I’m not sure … but I
saw him talking to that chef who’s always on television.’

  ‘Rex Müller?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one, Rex Müller.’

  Anja has already started looking through the newspapers’ and weekly magazines’ archives of photographs from the funeral. Faces sweep past, mostly politicians and businessmen in the bright sunshine outside the church.

  ‘Here he is,’ she says. ‘That’s him, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joona says.

  There’s a man standing in a line of people in the background of a photograph of the President of Estonia. He’s shading his eyes against the sun, which is shining brightly on his blond beard.

  ‘But no name,’ Anja mutters to herself, and goes on looking.

  It doesn’t take long before she finds another photograph of him, this time standing next to Rex Müller and his son. Rex has his arm around his son’s shoulders, and is looking into the camera with a mournful expression on his face, while the murderer is in the process of turning away. His brow is wet with sweat and the look in his eyes seems oddly tense.

  ‘According to the caption, his name is David Jordan Andersen,’ Anja says.

  We’ve identified the murderer, Joona thinks. David Jordan Andersen is the spree killer who is murdering the rapists, one by one.

  Anja quickly looks up his name and discovers that a David Jordan is the founder of the company that produces Rex’s cooking shows, and that he pretty much acts as his manager.

  ‘Where does he live?’ Joona asks.

  ‘He lives … out on Ingarö, and his company has an office on Observatorie Street.’

  ‘Send one team out to Ingarö, one to the office, and another to Rex Müller’s home,’ Joona tells Carlos. ‘But don’t forget that he’s extremely dangerous … he’s very likely to try to kill the first men in.’

  ‘Don’t say such things,’ Carlos mutters.

  Joona and Anja wait while Carlos quickly organises a leadership team and gives the National Operations Unit the order to break into the house on Ingarö, then gives the two other addresses to the local police response teams.

  Before he ends his call he stresses the importance of heavy armaments and protective vests.