The Rabbit Hunter

107

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.

At that moment a black knife slams down into the counter right where his hand had been.

The blade sinks deep into the wood.

Without thinking, Lawrence pushes the computer towards DJ, and the rounded corner of the screen hits one side of his face.

DJ stumbles backwards and almost falls.

The computer’s trajectory changes when it reaches the end of the cable. The screen swings back beneath the desk, comes loose and clatters to the floor.

DJ looks surprised as he raises his hand and feels his face.

Lawrence runs along behind the desk and down the steps to the spa as quickly as he can with his bulky frame.

His first thought is to try to get out through the emergency exit he noticed earlier.

For some reason the sign’s green glow had stuck in his mind.

Without looking, Lawrence hurries past the photographs of women in Jacuzzis and on white massage tables. He passes a smaller reception desk with towels and a shop selling bathing suits, and makes his way into the locker room. When he closes the door he notices that it has a lock.

He tries to turn it but his hands are shaking so badly that he keeps losing his grip.

The lock’s stuck.

Lawrence is gasping for breath and his heart is thudding in his chest as he wipes his hands on his shirt.

Footsteps are approaching.

He pulls at the handle and tries again. It’s stiff, but finally there’s a scraping sound and he pulls harder, turns it, and slowly the lock slides into place before he loses his grip and scrapes his knuckles.

He sucks the wound, listens and is just about to check that the door is completely locked when someone pushes the handle down on the other side.

Lawrence moves back.

DJ tugs at the handle and shoves the door with his shoulder, making the doorframe creak.

Lawrence stumbles backwards, staring at the door, and feels like shouting at him to kill James instead, that James is in Rex’s room.

But instead he retreats further into the dark locker room, thinking in confusion that he needs to find somewhere to hide.

DJ just said that Grace is his mother.

So DJ is the one who’s been getting revenge, Lawrence thinks to himself as he walks past the lockers.

He pushes open a frosted glass door and finds himself in an unlit shower room. He takes a few steps and tries to calm his breathing.

His mouth is completely dry and his chest hurts.

He stands with his back to the wall and looks down at the drain. There are some dried hairs stuck to the grille.

Sweat is running down his sides from his armpits.

Lawrence thinks back to the rape in the Rabbit Hole, how they formed a line, and how he was worried they’d be stopped before he got a chance to do it with her.

When he’d seen her lying there on the floor beneath the others he’d felt a surge of adrenalin and fury against her.

He had always known that Grace was too pretty for him, but now she was lying there with her legs open.

He pushed his way forward, leaned over her, hit her in the face with his beer bottle, and held her chin hard to make her look at him.

At first he felt nothing but jubilant triumph inside.

Afterwards he stood up and spat on her, but then two weeks later he had tried to castrate himself in the bathroom of his dorm. He cut deep, but the pain made him stagger sideways, slip and fall. He hit his face on the sink, and when it broke people came running.

After a month in a junior psychiatric ward he was allowed home, and he immediately handed himself in to the police. They wouldn’t even listen to him: no one had been raped at the school, and the girl he was talking about had moved back to the US.

He rests his hand against the cool polished granite wall, feels the taste of blood in his mouth, and realises he can’t stay in the shower room.

Legs shaking, Lawrence makes his way past the row of showers, the tinted glass door to the sauna, then emerges into the unlit pool area.

All he can hear is the rain against the huge windows.

He knows he has to reach the emergency exit, get out of the hotel and try to find help, or just hide out in the forest.

The pool area is divided by a large, hexagonal bar in the middle.

On one side are the Jacuzzis and the main swimming pool, which still has some water left at the bottom. In the winter you could swim through a plastic curtain right out into the snow, but for now the external part of the pool is covered.

On the other side of the bar, beyond the serving area and relaxation zone, is the emergency exit. The construction workers have dug up the floor and all the furniture has been moved out, and is now blocking the passageway between the bar and the windows. The mountain of wicker chairs and tables is covered with industrial grey tarp.

The only way through to the emergency exit seems to be past the door to the women’s locker room.

Lawrence listens for a while, then starts to creep along the pillared walkway. He keeps his eyes glued to the frosted glass of the door to the women’s locker room. Every little vibration makes him tense in an effort not to run in panic. He can see through the gap around the door that the changing room is unlit, and he holds his breath and moves past, forcing himself to walk slowly past the window to the solarium.

He glances quickly back at the door, then hurries on.

Through the next window he sees a gym full of exercise machines, treadmills and cross-trainers.

Lawrence is walking towards the other side of the bar when he hears a squeaking, clicking sound.

From this angle the pillars block his view of the entrance to the women’s lockers, but a reflected shadow is moving on the wall.

Someone must have come through the door.

Lawrence doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t dare run, so he just walks quietly around the end of the bar, where he sinks to the floor and tries to catch his breath.