The Rabbit Hunter

22

The Foreign Minister is dead, Rex repeats to himself as he leaves the studio where the guests are eating his pasta dish. He hears them praise the food as he pushes the soundproof door open.

Rex runs along the hallway to his dressing room, locks the door behind him, staggers into the bathroom and throws up in the toilet.

Exhausted, he rinses his mouth and face, lies down on the narrow bed and closes his eyes.

‘Fuck me,’ he whispers, releasing the hazy memories of that night three weeks ago.

He had been at a party at Matbaren, and he had a little too much to drink. He decided that he was in love with a woman who worked for some investment company with a stupid name.

Almost every time he got drunk, the night ended with him in bed with a woman. If he was lucky, she wasn’t a production assistant at TV4 or the ex-wife of a colleague. On this occasion, she was a complete stranger.

They got a taxi back to her villa out in Djursholm. She was divorced and her only child was on an exchange trip to the USA. He kissed the back of her neck as she switched the alarm off and let them in. An old golden retriever came padding through the rooms.

They both knew what they wanted, and didn’t talk much. He selected a bottle of wine from the large wine fridge, and remembers swaying as he tried to open it.

She got out some cheese and crackers which they never touched.

With an air of inevitability, he had followed her through the carpeted hallway towards the master bedroom.

She dimmed the wall lights and disappeared into the bathroom.

When she came back she was wearing a silver nightgown and kimono. She opened the drawer of the bedside table and handed him a condom.

He remembers that she wanted to be taken from behind, maybe because she didn’t want to look at his face. She got on all fours, with her pale backside uncovered, the nightgown pulled up, bunched around her waist, and her mid-length hair hanging over her cheeks.

The antique bed creaked and a framed embroidered angel wobbled on the wall.

They were both too tired, too drunk. She didn’t orgasm, didn’t even pretend to, just muttered that she needed to sleep when he was finished, sank onto her stomach and fell asleep with her legs wide apart.

He had gone back to the kitchen, helped himself to a glass of cognac, and leafed through the morning paper, which had just been delivered. The Foreign Minister had made some stupid comment about how there were extreme feminist forces that wanted to destroy the age-old relationship between men and women.

Rex had swept the paper onto the floor and left the house.

He had one thing in mind. He had walked straight down to Germaniaviken and followed the shore all the way to the Foreign Minister’s villa.

He was too drunk to care about any alarms or security cameras. Driven on by a very clear sense of justice, he clambered over the fence, walked right across the grass and up onto the deck. Anyone could have seen him there. The Foreign Minister’s wife could have been standing at the window, or a neighbour could have driven past. Rex didn’t care. One thought was running through his mind: he had to piss in the Foreign Minister’s floodlit swimming pool. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, and he smiled like a prize-fighter as his urine splashed into the turquoise water.