The heat made him back away as he listened to Gilbert’s growling roar and watched the contorting body through the flames for nineteen minutes.
The body shrank in on itself and turned black.
Everyone knew that Gilbert was lonely and depressed, and the police would never think of linking his suicide with the other deaths.
Now the Rabbit Hunter stops at the back of the ship, in front of the door leading to a suite bearing the peculiar name ‘Nannerl’. He hears voices behind him as he slips on a pair of vinyl gloves, goes into the suite using the master key-card, and closes the door silently behind him.
He puts his bag down on the floor and takes out a blood-smeared plastic bag from which he pulls out the leather strap with the ten rabbits’ ears fastened to it.
84
The Rabbit Hunter turns towards the mirror in the hall, puts the strap around his head and ties it at the back of his neck. With a familiar gesture he flicks some of the ears away from his face, then looks at his reflection, which fills him with cold power.
Now he’s a hunter again.
He pulls out one of his pay-as-you-go phones and sends the audio file to Oscar. He hears a smartphone beep in the bedroom, then the sound of the rhyme playing.
Oscar is probably alone, but the Rabbit Hunter still checks the bathroom just to be sure, then quickly makes sure the living room is empty.
He can see the oil-black water of the harbour through the streaked windows.
He pushes the bedroom door open and marches in.
A football match is muted on the television. A bluish-grey glow reflects off the walls of the room.
He realises at once that Oscar is hiding in the wardrobe, behind the white glass sliding door, and that he’s probably trying to call the police right now.
Everything is so mundane, yet simultaneously so strange when death comes calling.
There’s a glass of whisky on the bedside table.
He sees the dented table legs, the frayed bedspread, the dark marks on the carpet, and the smears on the mirror.
The Rabbit Hunter hears Oscar drop his phone. Oscar knows that the noise has given him away, but keeps hiding regardless because his brain is trying to tell him that the murderer might not have heard anything, that the murderer might not actually find him.
Some hangers clatter against each other inside the wardrobe.
The floor starts to vibrate as the ferry’s engines warm up.
The Rabbit Hunter waits a few seconds, then walks over and kicks the sliding glass door to pieces. He backs away instinctively as the fragments fall to the floor around Oscar von Creutz’s legs.
The middle-aged man slides to the floor in fear, and ends up crouching in the wardrobe staring up at him.
A flash of memory comes back to him, and he thinks about the rabbits’ terror when he checked the traps, turned the cages upside down, and grabbed them by their back legs.
‘Please, I can pay, I’ve got money, I swear, I—’
The Rabbit Hunter strides over and grabs one of Oscar’s legs, but he squirms and tries to get away, and the Rabbit Hunter loses his grip. He hits Oscar twice in the face, holds his arms back with one hand and grabs his leg again.
Oscar screams as the Rabbit Hunter pulls him out onto the floor and fastens his ankle to one leg of the bed with a zip tie.
‘I don’t want to!’ he roars.
Oscar lands a kick on the Rabbit Hunter’s upper arm, but he flips Oscar over, pushes him down on his side and locks his arms behind his back.
‘Listen, you don’t have to kill us,’ Oscar pants. ‘We were young, we didn’t understand, we—’
The Rabbit Hunter tapes his mouth shut and then takes a couple of steps back and stares at him for a while, watching him struggle to break free, watching him try to move his body even though the zip ties are cutting into his skin.
He did two tours of Iraq, so he knows how state-sanctioned killing feels. He’s aware of the force of will required, and the exhaustion that follows.
He used to think they were all fairly ordinary guys when they were doing their basic training together.
But the killing in southern Nasiriyah made them overconfident.
The targets weren’t people to them, but part of a destructive and dangerous enemy they were risking their lives to fight.
There was a unity, a sense of common purpose.
But killing someone after you’ve come home and are no longer wearing the uniform is different.
It’s lonely, and far more powerful. The decision and responsibility are yours alone.
He looks at the time and pulls out the knife he’s planning to use. It’s an SOCP knife, shaped like a Chinese ring dagger, with the blade and grip fashioned from the same piece of black steel.
It’s a finely honed, well-balanced weapon.
The Rabbit Hunter walks over quickly and blocks Oscar’s free leg with one knee, holds his chest down with one hand, and cuts his shirt open across his torso. He looks at the hairy stomach, which is rising and falling rapidly in time with his breathing, and sticks the knife in ten centimetres below the navel. It slides softly through tissue and membranes as he slices Oscar’s torso open, almost all the way to his breastbone.
Smiling, he looks into Oscar’s bulging eyes as he sticks one hand into the opening in his gut and feels the heat of his body through the plastic of the glove. Oscar’s body is shaking. Blood is streaming down his sides. The Rabbit Hunter grabs his intestines and pulls them out, leaving them hanging between Oscar’s legs. Then suddenly there’s a knock on the door to the suite.
A loud knock.
He stands up, turns up the volume on the television, goes over to the small hallway, closing the bedroom door behind him, and looks through the peephole.
An elderly man dressed in white is waiting outside with a room service cart. Oscar has evidently already ordered food, and now he’s going to have to accept the delivery.
The man knocks again as the Rabbit Hunter pulls his gloves off and closes his bag. He quickly removes his trophies, hangs them on a hanger, looks in the mirror, wipes the blood from his face, turns the light out and opens the door.
‘That was quick,’ he says, blocking the door.
Loud bangs are coming from the bedroom as Oscar tries to attract attention by kicking something.
‘Would you like me to serve in the sitting room, sir?’ the older man asks.
‘Thanks, but I’ll do it myself,’ he replies.
‘I’m happy to do it,’ the man says, glancing into the suite.
‘It’s just that I’m not quite ready to eat,’ he says as the whisky glass crashes on the bedroom floor.
‘Then I’m happy with a signature,’ the man smiles.
The Rabbit Hunter remains in shadow as he takes the receipt and pen. As he signs for the food he realises that the bottom of his right arm is covered in blood, all the way to the elbow.
‘Is everything all right, sir?’ the waiter asks.
He nods, looks the man in the eye and tries to work out if he is going to have to drag him into the bathroom and slit his throat over the Jacuzzi.
‘Why shouldn’t it be?’
‘I didn’t mean to be impertinent, sir,’ the man says apologetically, and turns towards the cart.
The banging from the bedroom starts again as the waiter hands him the tray. The Rabbit Hunter thanks him, backs into the hall and pushes the door shut.
He puts the tray on the floor and looks through the peephole, ready to rush out and grab the waiter. Through the wide-angle lens he sees the old man release the brakes on the small wheels of the trolley, then walk slowly off along the corridor.
He quickly pulls on a fresh pair of gloves, wraps the rabbits’ ears around his head and returns to the bedroom.
It smells like blood, whisky and vomit.
Oscar is about to lose consciousness and is kicking only weakly now, letting his heel fall to the floor. His face is white and sweaty, and his eyes are darting about.
The Rabbit Hunter turns the television off and walks straight over to Oscar, grabs hold of his intestines and pulls them out a whole metre, jerks hard and then lets them fall to the floor.