The lift reaches the top floor just as the lights in the stairwell go out. There’s only one door on this floor, a heavy security door.
After Rex dies, he’s going to cut his ears off, thread them onto a leather strap and wear them around his neck inside his shirt.
The thought fills his head with a crackling sound, which turns into a deafening rattle, like when you push a shopping cart full of bottles across the car park.
The Rabbit Hunter closes his eyes and tries to compose himself. He needs to bring the silence outside in, and impose it on the chaos.
He rings the doorbell and hears footsteps approaching from inside the flat. He looks down at the marble floor only to see it rotating beneath his feet.
The door opens and Rex is standing in front of him, his shirt hanging outside his trousers. He lets him in, takes a few steps back and almost falls over a suitcase.
‘Come in,’ he says gruffly.
The Rabbit Hunter goes in and closes the door behind him, hangs his coat up and unties his shoes while Rex goes back upstairs.
He adjusts the axe hanging under his jacket and slowly follows Rex to the brightly lit first floor.
‘I’m hungry,’ he says when he enters the kitchen.
‘Sorry,’ Rex smiles, and throws his arms out. ‘I was playing guitar instead of preparing the asparagus.’
‘I’ll do it,’ the Rabbit Hunter says, taking out a white plastic chopping board.
‘I’ll start making the stock, then,’ Rex says, grabbing four bunches of green asparagus from the fridge.
The Rabbit Hunter swallows hard. He needs to take his medication as soon as possible. His brain is screaming as if someone were ripping it in half. Rex is one of the men who raped his mother, who left her for dead on a manure heap.
The Rabbit Hunter leans one hand on the counter and pulls a vegetable knife from the block.
Sammy comes into the kitchen holding an apple, glances at the Rabbit Hunter and then turns to his father.
‘Can we keep talking?’ he asks, then blushes.
The Rabbit Hunter holds the knife-blade against his thumb, presses it gently and closes his eyes for a few moments.
‘Sammy,’ Rex says. ‘I don’t have a problem with you living here, that isn’t what I said.’
‘But it isn’t all that fucking great knowing you aren’t wanted,’ he says.
‘Everyone’s going to die anyway,’ the Rabbit Hunter says.
He looks at the knife in his hand and thinks about his mother again, and the terrible rape that destroyed her.
Now he knows that his mother was suffering from recurrent reactive depressive psychosis during his childhood, and that her dark delusions had a serious impact on both of them.
Their aggressive fear of rabbits, and of those repulsive rabbit holes in the ground.
He used to try to keep his childhood memories at arm’s length. The rabbit hunts and his mother’s fears were just one part of a secret past.
But more recently those memories have been surfacing more frequently, breaking through all his defences.
They rush in and head straight for him, as if everything is happening at this very moment.
He doesn’t think he’s psychotic, but the past has proved beyond any doubt that it will never give up.
91
As he chops the shallots, Rex can feel how sore the fingertips of his left hand are from playing the guitar.
‘Why would you say you aren’t wanted?’ he asks tentatively, brushing the chopped onion into a saucepan.
‘Because you’re always talking about how we have to try to get through three weeks together,’ Sammy explains.
Rex scrapes the knife against the edge of the pan, looks at the wide blade, then rinses it in the sink.
‘I don’t mean that I have to put up with you when I say that,’ he says. ‘I mean … I’m pleading with you to put up with me.’
‘Doesn’t feel like it,’ his son says in a thick voice.
‘I’ve never seen Rex as happy as he is now,’ DJ points out as he peels the asparagus.
‘Dad, do you remember last time I was supposed to stay with you?’ Sammy asks. ‘Do you remember that?’
Rex looks at his son, his glistening eyes, sensitive face and thin shoulders. He realises that what he’s about to say isn’t going to be good, but he still wants him to keep going.
‘No, I don’t remember,’ he replies honestly.
‘I was ten years old, and I was so happy. I told all my friends about my dad, and how I was going to live with you in the middle of the city, and how we were going to eat at your restaurant every night.’
Sammy’s voice breaks, he lowers his face and tries to calm down. Rex wishes he could go over and hug him, but doesn’t dare.
‘Sammy … I don’t know what to say, I don’t remember that,’ he says quietly.
‘No,’ Sammy replies. ‘Because you changed your mind when you saw I hadn’t cut my hair.’
‘That’s not true,’ he says.
‘I had long hair, and you kept making a fuss, saying I should get it cut, but I didn’t, and … when I got to your house …’
Sammy’s eyes fill with tears, his face turns red and his lips swell. Rex takes the saucepan off the heat and wipes his hands on his apron.
‘Sammy,’ he says. ‘Now I know what you’re talking about, and it had nothing to do with your hair. Look, it was like this … when your mum brought you, I was so drunk I couldn’t stand up. There was no way she could leave you with me.’
‘No,’ Sammy sniffs, turning his face away.
‘That was when I lived on Drottning Street,’ Rex says. ‘I remember I was lying on the kitchen floor, and I remember you. You were wearing red plimsolls and you had that little cardboard suitcase that …’
He trails off as the realisation spreads through his chest.
‘But you thought it was your hair,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘Of course you did.’
He walks around the kitchen counter and tries to hug Sammy, but his son pulls away.
‘Forgive me,’ Rex says, and gently brushes Sammy’s long fringe away from his face. ‘Forgive me, Sammy.’
DJ slips a Modiodal pill in his mouth and swallows. He doesn’t know how he’s going to be affected emotionally by everything that’s going on. It wouldn’t be good if he suddenly fell asleep on the floor.
He cuts the peeled asparagus stems into slices, saves the tops and then tips the rest into a pan of water.
He’s thinking that he can’t be a hunter right now, that he’s going to have to be DJ the friend for a little while longer.
There’s no hurry. Everything is happening at a perfect pace, in the perfect order.
He remembers his mum showing him a school photograph, with all the students gathered in front of the huge main building. The eyes of nine of them had been pricked out, and the tenth wasn’t on the picture because he was the groundskeeper. He remembers his mother’s trembling hand precisely, and the way the light from the lamp on the table shone through the holes in the paper, like an unfamiliar constellation.
‘I can take care of myself,’ Sammy says in a subdued voice. ‘Don’t you get that yet?’
‘But I’m responsible for you while you’re here … and the way things are looking right now, I don’t think I should go to Norrland with DJ.’
‘We can postpone the meeting,’ DJ says, putting the vegetable knife down on the chopping board. ‘I can call the investors.’
Rex shoots him a look of gratitude.
DJ smiles and thinks about how he’s going to kill him: Rex is going to have to crawl down the hallway in the hotel with his back sliced open until he shoots him in the back of the neck.
Rex squeezes some lime juice into the pan, and Sammy gets the cream from the fridge.
‘I don’t need babysitting,’ Sammy says. ‘It may look like I do, but I’m fine.’
‘I just don’t want you to be on your own,’ Rex replies as he starts to peel the shrimp.
‘You’ve been dreaming about going up there and going hunting,’ Sammy smiles, pretending to aim a rifle. ‘Bang, bang … Bambi’s dead.’
‘It’s just business,’ Rex replies.
‘And I’m ruining it,’ Sammy says.
‘You could come up to the wilds of Norrland with us,’ DJ suggests, imagining a bleeding rabbit crawling across the floor while what’s left of its paws lie on the workbench.