109

Lawrence stands still, breathing hard through his mouth. He tries to say something, but is still too out of breath. He’s nothing but a rabbit, darting around in its own blood at the bottom of a tub.

The Rabbit Hunter is getting closer now, trailing the axe across the surface of the water.

He had prepared the tape-player and the cassette, and had intended for Lawrence to be pinned to the reception desk by the dagger when the others came out to look for him.

The dirty water has splashed up over Lawrence’s checked shirt, and there are big sweat-stains under his arms.

‘I know what this is about,’ Lawrence says between strained breaths.

He holds both hands up as if to stop him from coming any closer. The Rabbit Hunter takes a short step forward, grabs one of his hands, stretches his arm out and strikes him with full force just above the elbow with the axe. Lawrence stumbles sideways from the force of the blow, and his scream of pain echoes around the walls of the pool.

Dark blood pumps from the deep wound.

He keeps hold of Lawrence’s hand, twists it slightly, and strikes again.

The blade slices straight through the bone this time.

He lets go and looks at Lawrence, who staggers backwards with his lower arm hanging from a few last sinews before it falls off and splashes into the murky water.

‘Oh God, oh God,’ he whimpers, trying to press the stump of his arm back to his body to stem the bleeding. ‘I don’t know what you want me to do. Please, just tell me. I need help, can’t you see?’

‘Grace is my mother, and you—’

‘They made me do it. I didn’t want to. I was only seventeen,’ he sobs.

He falls silent, breathing hard. His face is white, as if he were already dead. The Rabbit Hunter looks at him intently: the splashes on his glasses, his snot-streaked beard, the blood smeared across his filthy clothes.

‘I understand that you want revenge,’ Lawrence says, gasping for breath. ‘But I’m innocent.’

‘Everyone’s innocent,’ the Rabbit Hunter says in a low voice.

He thinks about Ratjen, sitting on a chair in his kitchen in front of his children. Ratjen died because he provided the keys, because he opened the door to the boarding house and took Grace to the Rabbit Hole. That’s what started it all. If he had said no back then, he could have eaten his macaroni in peace, and then gone to bed with his wife once the children were asleep.

‘Wille made all the decisions,’ Lawrence gasps.

‘Mum identified you. She told me what you did,’ he says calmly.

‘They forced me,’ he sobs. ‘I was a victim, I was also a...’

Lawrence’s voice fades away as the Rabbit Hunter’s ears go deaf. He picks at one ear but still can’t hear anything. He’s lost in the memory of a summer afternoon, the day before his mum’s attempted suicide.

He was hunting with his rifle beyond the main road, past the railway line and down towards the silo. He sat down in the grass, leaned back, and when he woke up it was already evening.

It was as if he’d woken up in a dream.

He lay still in the tall grass, thinking that the silo looked like the Mad Hatter’s big top hat.

At that moment he was as small as a rabbit.

Lawrence is still hoping he can escape, and stumbles off in the direction of the tiled steps again.

A trail of dark blood billows out across the water around him.

The Rabbit Hunter looks at his watch and follows him.

Lawrence passes the plastic curtain, staggers forward, takes one step up and then sits down on one of the bottom steps. He lifts the stump of his arm, whimpering from the pain. Wheezing badly, he tears his shirt apart and winds it around the stump as tightly as he can, pulling at it with his single, trembling hand.

‘God, oh God,’ he keeps whispering to himself.

Blood seeps through the fabric onto the wet steps.

‘You don’t need to worry about bleeding to death,’ the Rabbit Hunter says, brushing the rabbits’ ears from his face. ‘Because before you pass out I’m going to hit you in the neck with the axe, so you’ll die pretty instantaneously.’

Lawrence looks up at him in despair.

‘Did we kill Grace? Why are you killing us, if she’s still alive—’

‘She’s not alive,’ he interrupts. ‘She never got a chance to live.’

Very soon he’s going to go back upstairs and hang James Gyllenborg. He doesn’t know why he wants to hang him, in particular. It was just an idea he had when he was watching him when they were out hunting — that he wanted to see him hang.

A flash of memory: the sound when Grandpa cut his mother down from the beam in the barn.

‘What are you going to do next?’ Lawrence whispers with bloodshot eyes. ‘When you’ve finished getting your revenge? What happens afterwards?’

‘Afterwards?’ the Rabbit Hunter says, resting the axe on his shoulder.

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