‘No, no, no,’ Oscar whimpers, trying to cling onto the floor.
A lamp topples over, scattering broken glass across the floor. Joona drags Oscar behind him, slaps one of his handcuffs around the man’s wrist, and the other around a column in the wall.
‘Don’t kill me,’ Oscar gasps. ‘Please, listen, I’ll pay you …’
Joona runs to the hole in the floor and jumps in. He plunges down into the cold water. His ears roar as bubbles surround him like the tail of a comet.
His feet hit one of the chairs and slow his descent.
He spins in the water, kicks his legs and swims down into the darkness.
He can’t see anything, but knows he has to get past the floating debris.
With one arm he tries to shove the heavy dining table away, then slides along one side of it and reaches the bottom.
His heavy clothing slows his movements as he searches for the woman among the rough rocks on the seabed.
He moves deeper down the slope, fumbling over the rotting remains of an old rowing boat.
Joona blinks in the dark water and feels the cold hit his eyes.
He swims further down.
His hands slip across colonies of barnacles on one of the boathouse pillars. Suddenly a swaying light spreads down into the water.
Jack is holding a lamp above the surface.
Through the debris and bubbles Joona catches sight of the woman. She’s slid down the sloping rock towards deeper water, and is lying on her side, still bound to the chair.
He kicks off and swims down towards her.
She stares into his eyes, her white lips tightly closed as she holds her breath.
He tugs at the chair, trying to push off from the rock with one foot to gain more momentum, but she is caught in the other chairs that have gathered around the base of the pillar.
He draws his knife and quickly cuts through the tape around her ankles and begins to pull it off. She starts to panic, kicking out with her legs, and can no longer resist the urge to breathe.
The pain as she inhales water into her lungs is instant. Her body jerks backwards as if she’s been hit hard, she tries to cough it up, but succeeds only in drawing more water into her lungs, and starts to cramp and convulse.
Joona cuts the tape from her wrists and waist, working fast as she begins to spasm, blood blossoming from her mouth and nose. Joona lets go of the knife, pulls her free from the chair, kicks off with his legs and swims upward.
Fending off the furniture that is drifting in the current, he kicks one last time and manages to get her face above the surface.
She coughs and vomits water, gets some air into her lungs and coughs again.
Jack is holding a burning oil-lamp above the hole in the floor.
‘The air ambulance is on its way,’ he calls down.
With one arm around the woman’s waist Joona climbs up the ladder and lifts her up onto the edge. She crawls forward on her knees, coughing and gasping for air, sobs and then coughs again, spitting blood as they hear the sound of the helicopter approaching.
‘Take her, you can have her,’ Oscar whimpers to himself. ‘We’re through. I’ll stay here. I won’t say anything, I promise. I haven’t seen either of you.’
Joona helps guide the young woman through the dark house and out onto the rocky hillside behind the house as the helicopter starts to descend. Jack follows them, holding his wounded arm with the other hand as his clothes flap around his body. His eyeliner is streaked across his face.
78
As soon as the helicopter has disappeared across the water, taking Jack and Caroline with it, Joona goes back into the house, grabs a towel from the bathroom and returns to the boathouse.
Oscar von Creutz is sitting with his back to the wall. When he sees Joona come back he stops biting his thumbnail and tries to shuffle away.
Joona walks over and looks at the trapdoors and the empty pulleys in the roof.
The ropes run through the pulleys, so you can gently remove the crossbar beneath the floor and lower the two trapdoors, allowing you to get to your boat.
‘Please, don’t do it, you don’t have to do it,’ the man pleads, trying in vain to pull his hand through the cuff.
‘My name is Joona Linna. I’m a detective with the Swedish National Operational Unit.’
‘Really?’ he mutters confusedly.
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t get it,’ he says, and bites his nail again. ‘This is sick. What the fuck do you want? What are you doing here?’
Joona walks around the edge of the hole, past the drop to the water, stops in front of the trembling man, and waits until their eyes meet.
‘You’re suspected of kidnapping, attempted murder and grievous bodily harm,’ he says calmly.
‘That’s all bullshit. I have the right to defend myself,’ Oscar hisses, and looks down at the floor again. ‘What the fuck do you want with me? I don’t get it …’
He stops speaking and sits for a while with his free hand over his face, breathing hard.
‘Tell me about the Rabbit Hole,’ Joona says.
‘I want to talk to a lawyer first.’
‘Anything that happened back then has passed the statute of limitations.’
‘Really? Doesn’t feel like it,’ Oscar says.
‘Maybe not,’ Joona says darkly.
‘I need protection.’
‘Why?’ Joona asks, picking up Oscar’s glasses from the floor.
‘Someone’s hunting us, killing us, one by one, like rabbits.’
‘You’ve heard the nursery rhyme?’
‘Have I already said all this?’
‘No.’
‘I’m not paranoid. I can tell you everything. I know who it is … I swear, it’s a student from Ludviksberg. He hates us. He’s like a demon, he’s waited thirty years before making his move.’
‘Who?’
‘If you really are a police officer, you have to stop him.’
‘Give me a name,’ Joona says, handing him his glasses.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘No.’
‘I can prove it all,’ Oscar says, putting his glasses back on. ‘It makes sense if you realise who we were … a small gang who ruled that school. We were like gods. You asked about the Rabbit Hole … it was a pavilion that belonged to the Order of the Crusebj?rn Knights, dating back to the court of Fredrik I, blah, blah, blah. We knew all that, but we really didn’t give a shit, it was just one of a thousand little privileges that went with our status. We’d go to the Rabbit Hole to get drunk and sleep with the best-looking girls in school.’
Oscar smiles sardonically to himself and wipes his upper lip before he goes on.
‘It was a different world in there. We used to watch porn and we swapped the portrait of Prince Eugen for a poster of NATO’s Evolution Squadron because they had a Playboy bunny as their logo.’
‘But you burned the pavilion down,’ Joona says gently.
Oscar bites his thumbnail and stares into space.
‘You say someone’s hunting and killing you,’ Joona goes on. ‘Does that have anything to do with the fire?’
‘The fire?’ Oscar says, as if he’s just woken up.
‘Yes.’
‘This is totally fucking real,’ he says, rubbing his face with his free hand. ‘People are dying, I’m not just imagining it …’