The Leopard hh-8

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Right. I had another chat with Stine Olberg, the girl Elias Skog was so taken by.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It transpires that Skog told her more about what went on in the cabin that night than I had understood at the first interview.’

  ‘I’ve started to believe in second interviews,’ Harry said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Nothing. Come on, out with it.’

  49

  Bombay Garden

  Bombay Garden was the kind of restaurant that did not appear to have the right to keep going, but unlike its trendier competitors it had managed to survive year after year. Its location at the centre of east Oslo was dire, down a side street between a timber warehouse and a disused factory that was now a theatre. The alcohol licence had come and gone after countless breaches of the rules; the same was also true for its licence to serve food. The health inspectors had on one occasion found a species of rodent in the kitchen they had not been able to identify, beyond declaring it had a certain similarity to Rattus norvegicus. In the comments box of the report the inspector had let rip and described the kitchen as a ‘crime scene’ where ‘murders of the foulest kind had unquestionably taken place’. The slot machines along the walls brought in quite a bit of money, but were regularly vandalised and robbed. The Vietnamese owners did not use the place to launder drugs money, as some suspected, though. The reason Bombay Garden could keep its head above water was to be found at the back, behind two closed doors. Concealed there was a so-called private club, and to be allowed in you had to apply for membership. In practice, that meant you signed an application form at the bar of the restaurant, membership was granted on the spot and you paid a hundred kroner as an annual fee. Afterwards you were escorted in and the door was locked behind you.

  Then you stood in a smoke-filled room – as smoking laws do not pertain to private clubs – and in front of you there was a miniature oval racecourse, four metres by two. The course itself was covered with green felt and had seven tracks. Seven flat metal horses, each attached to a pin, moved forward in spasmodic jerks. The speed of each horse was determined by a computer that hummed and buzzed under the table, and was – as far as anyone had ascertained – completely arbitrary and legitimate. That is, the computer program gave some of the horses a greater chance of a higher speed, which was reflected in the odds and thus any eventual payout. Around the racecourse sat the club members – some were regulars, others were new faces – in comfortable leather swivel chairs, smoking, drinking the restaurant’s beer at membership prices, cheering on their horse or the combination they had backed.

  Since the club operated in a legal grey area with respect to gambling laws, the rules were that if twelve or more members were present, the stake was restricted to a hundred kroner per member, per race. If there were fewer than twelve, the club’s regulations stipulated it was regarded as a limited gathering, and at small private gatherings you could not prevent adults from making private wagers. How much they chose to bet was up to the participants. For this reason, it was conspicuous how often precisely eleven people could be counted in the back room of the Bombay Garden. And where the garden came into the picture, no one knew.

  At ten past two in the afternoon a man with the club’s most recent membership, forty seconds old to be precise, was admitted into the room where he soon established that the only people there, apart from himself, were one member sitting in a swivel chair with his back to him and a man of presumably Vietnamese origin who was clearly administrating the races and stakes; at any rate he was wearing the kind of waistcoat croupiers do.

  The back in the swivel chair was broad and filled out the flannel shirt. Black curls hung down onto the collar.

  ‘Are you winning, Krongli?’ Harry asked, sitting in the chair beside him.

  The man’s head of curls twisted round. ‘Harry!’ he shouted, with genuine pleasure in his voice and on his face. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Why do you think I’m looking for you? Perhaps I’m a regular here.’

  Krongli laughed as he watched the horses jerking down the long straight, each with a tin jockey on its back. ‘No, you aren’t. I come here whenever I’m in Oslo, and I’ve never seen you.’

  ‘OK. Someone told me I’d probably find you here.’

  ‘Hell, have I got a reputation? Perhaps it’s not quite appropriate for a policeman to come here, even though it’s on the right side of the law.’

  ‘Regarding right side of the law,’ Harry said, shaking his head to the croupier who pointed to the beer tap with a raised eyebrow. ‘There was something I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Fire away,’ Krongli said, concentrating on the racecourse, where the blue horse on the far track was in the lead, but heading towards a wide outside bend.

  ‘Iska Peller, the Australian woman you gave a lift to from the Havass cabin, says you groped her friend, Charlotte Lolles.’

  Harry didn’t detect any change in Krongli’s concentrated expression. He waited. At length, Krongli looked up.

  ‘Do you want me to react?’

  ‘Only if you want to,’ Harry said.

  ‘I interpret that as you would like me to. Groped is the wrong word. We flirted a bit. Kissed. I wanted to go further. She thought it was enough. I maintained a bit of constructive persuasion, the way women often expect of a man – after all, that’s part of the role play between the sexes. But nothing more than that.’

  ‘That doesn’t match what Iska Peller says Charlotte told her. Do you think Peller’s lying?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘But I do think Charlotte wanted to give a slightly different version to her friend. Catholic girls like to appear more virtuous than they are, don’t they?’

  ‘They decided to spend the night in Geilo rather than at your house. Even though Peller was ill.’

  ‘She was the one who insisted on leaving. I don’t know what was going on between those two, friendship between girls is often a complicated business, isn’t it. And it’s my bet the Peller girl hasn’t got a boyfriend.’ He lifted the half-empty glass in front of him. ‘Where are you going with this, Harry?’

  ‘It’s a bit strange you didn’t say anything to Kaja Solness about meeting Charlotte Lolles when Kaja was in Ustaoset.’

  ‘And it’s a bit strange you’re still working on this case. Thought it was a Kripos matter, especially after the newspaper headlines today.’ Krongli’s mind was back on the horses. Out of the bend came the yellow horse in the third track, leading by a tin horse’s length.

  ‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘But rape cases are still a Crime Squad matter.’

  ‘Rape? Haven’t you sobered up yet, Harry?’

  ‘Well.’ Harry pulled a pack of cigarettes from his trouser pocket. ‘I’m more sober than I hope you were, Krongli.’ He stuffed a crumpled cigarette between his lips. ‘All the times you beat up and raped your ex up there in Ustaoset.’

  Krongli turned slowly to Harry, knocking over his beer glass with his elbow. The beer was soaked up by the green felt; the stain advanced like the Wehrmacht over a map of Europe.

  ‘I’ve just come from the school where she works,’ Harry continued, lighting the cigarette. ‘She was the one who told me I’d probably find you here. She also told me that when she left you and Ustaoset, she was escaping rather than moving out. You-’

  Harry got no further. Krongli was fast, spun his chair round with his foot and was on Harry before he could react. Harry felt the grip around his hand, knew what was coming, knew because this was what they practised from the first year at college: the police power half nelson. And yet he was a second too late, two days’ drinking too sluggish, forty years too stupid. Krongli twisted his wrist and arm behind his back and pushed his temple forward into the felt. The side of his damaged jaw. Harry screamed with pain and blacked out for a second. Then he was back with the pain and made a frenetic attempt to free himself. Harry was strong, always had been, but immediately knew he had no ho
pe against Krongli. The powerfully built officer’s breath was hot and moist against his face.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Harry. You shouldn’t have spoken to the whore. She says whatever comes into her head. Does whatever comes into her head. Did she show you her cunt? Did she, Harry?’

  There was a crunch inside Harry’s head as Krongli increased the pressure. A yellow and then a green horse banged against Harry’s forehead and nose respectively as he brought up his right foot and stamped. Hard. He heard Krongli scream, twisted out of the half nelson, turned and struck. Not with his fist – he had destroyed enough bones with that nonsense – but with his elbow. It hit Krongli where Harry had learned the effect was greatest – not on the point of the chin, but slightly to the side. Krongli staggered backwards, fell over a low swivel chair and landed on the floor with his feet pointing north. Harry noticed that the material of Krongli’s Converse shoe on his right foot was torn and bloodstained after its meeting with an iron plate under a boot that definitely should have been thrown away. He also noticed that his cigarette was still hanging from his lips. And – out of the corner of his eye – that the red horse in the first track rode in as the clear winner.

  Harry bent down, grabbed Krongli’s collar, pulled him up and dumped him in the chair. Took a deep drag, felt it burn and warm his lungs.

  ‘I agree this rape case of mine doesn’t have a lot going for it,’ he said. ‘At least since neither Charlotte Lolles nor your wife reported you. That’s why, as a detective, I have to try and dig a bit deeper, isn’t it. And that’s why I come back to the Havass cabin.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Krongli sounded as if he had caught a bad chill.

  ‘There’s this girl in Stavanger who Elias Skog confided in the same evening he was murdered. They were on a bus and Elias told her about the night at Havass when he’d witnessed what he subsequently thought might have been a rape.’

  ‘Elias?’

  ‘Elias, yes. I suppose he must have been a light sleeper. He was woken in the night by sounds outside the bedroom window and looked out. The moon was up and he saw two people in the shadow under the ridge of the outside toilet roof. The woman was facing him with the man behind her, hiding his face. Elias’s impression was that they were screwing, the woman seemed to be performing a belly dance and the man had his hand over her mouth, obviously so that they wouldn’t disturb anyone. And when the man had dragged her into the toilet, Elias – disappointed not to see a full live show – had gone back to bed. It was only when he read about the murders that he’d started to wonder. Perhaps the woman had been wriggling to get away. The hand over her mouth might have been to suffocate calls for help.’ Harry took another drag. ‘Was it you, Krongli? Were you there?’

  Krongli rubbed his chin.

  ‘Alibi?’ Harry asked airily.

  ‘I was at home, in bed, alone. Did Elias Skog say who the woman was?’

  ‘No. Nor the man, as I said.’

  ‘It wasn’t me. And you’re living dangerously, Hole.’

  ‘Shall I take that as a threat or a compliment?’

  Krongli didn’t answer. But there was a gleam in his eyes, yellow and cold.

  Harry stubbed out his cigarette and got up. ‘By the way, your ex didn’t show me anything. We were in the staffroom. Something tells me she’s afraid of being alone in the same room as a man. So you achieved something, didn’t you, Krongli.’

  ‘Don’t forget to look over your shoulder, Hole.’

  Harry turned. The croupier appeared completely unruffled by the scene and had already set up the horses for another race.

  ‘Wan’ a bet?’ he asked in pidgin Norwegian with a smile.

  Harry shook his head. ‘Sorry, got nothing to bet with.’

  ‘All the more to win,’ the croupier said.

  Harry allowed that to sink in and concluded that either it was a linguistic error or his logic didn’t carry that far. Or it was just another terrible Oriental proverb.

  50

  Corruption

  Mikael Bellman waited.

  This was the best. The seconds waiting for her to open up. Wondering with excitement whether – and yet at the same time sure – she would again exceed his expectations. For every time he saw her he realised that he had forgotten how beautiful she was. Every time the door opened, it was as if he needed a moment to assimilate all her beauty. To let the confirmation sink in. Confirmation that from the selection of men who wanted her – in practice, any heterosexual man with good eyesight – she had chosen him. Confirmation that he was the leader of the pack, the alpha male, the male with the first claim to mate with the females. Yes, it could be articulated in such banal and vulgar terms. Being an alpha male was not something you aspired to, you were born to it. Not necessarily the easiest or the most comfortable life for a man, but if you were called, you could not resist.

  The door opened.

  She was wearing the white high-necked jumper and had put her hair up. She looked tired, her eyes had less sparkle than usual. And still she had the elegance, the class, of which even his wife could only dream. She said ‘Hi’, told him she was sitting on the veranda, turned her back on him and walked through the house. He followed, collecting a beer from the fridge, and sat down in one of the ridiculously large, heavy chairs on the veranda.

  ‘Why do you sit outside?’ he sniffed. ‘You’ll catch pneumonia.’

  ‘Or lung cancer,’ she said, hoisting the half-smoked cigarette from the edge of the ashtray and picking up the book she was reading. He skimmed the cover. Ham on Rye. Charles… he squinted… Bukowski? As in the Swedish auction rooms?

  ‘I’ve got good news,’ he said. ‘We’ve not only averted a minor catastrophe, we’ve turned the whole Leike incident to our advantage. The Ministry of Justice phoned today.’ Bellman put his feet on the table and studied the label on the beer bottle. ‘They wanted to thank me for intervening with such resolution and ensuring Leike was released. They were very worried about what Galtung and his pack of lawyers might have got up to if Kripos hadn’t acted so quickly. And they wanted a personal assurance that I would have my hands on the wheel and no one outside Kripos would have the opportunity to foul things up.’

  He put the bottle to his mouth and drank. Banged it down hard on the table. ‘What do you think, Bukowski?’

  She lowered her book and met his eyes.

  ‘You should show a little interest,’ he said. ‘This concerns you as well, you know. What do you think about the case, my love? Come on. You’re a murder investigator.’

  ‘Mikael…’

  ‘Tony Leike is a violent criminal, and we allowed ourselves to be duped by that. Because we know you can’t rehabilitate violent criminals. The ability and the desire to kill are not granted to all, it’s innate or acquired. But when the killer is in you, it’s damned difficult to get it out again. Perhaps the killer in this case knows we know that? Knows that if he served us up Tony Leike, we would go into a frenzy and all cheer in unison “Hey, the case is cracked, it’s the guy with the violent streak!” And that was why he broke into Tony Leike’s apartment and rang Elias Skog. To stop us searching for any of the others who were in Havass.’

  ‘The call from Leike’s house was before anyone outside the police knew that we had found the link with the Havass cabin.’

  ‘So what? He must have reckoned that it was only a matter of time before we stumbled on it. Damn, we should have found it long before!’ Bellman grabbed the bottle again.

  ‘So who is the killer?’

  ‘The eighth guest in the cabin,’ Mikael Bellman said. ‘The boyfriend Adele Vetlesen took along, but whom no one knows.’

  ‘No one?’

  ‘I’ve had more than thirty officers on the job. We’ve combed Adele’s flat. Nothing in writing. No diaries, no cards, no letters, barely any emails or texts. Those male acquaintances that we have identified have been questioned and eliminated. Also the female ones. And none of them thinks it strange that she
changed partners as frequently as panties and did it without telling anyone. The only thing we have found out is that Adele was supposed to have said to a girlfriend that this cabin escort had a couple of what she termed “turn-ons” and “turn-offs”. The turn-on was that he had asked her to go to a nocturnal rendezvous at an empty factory dressed as a nurse.’

  ‘If that was the turn-on, I dread to think what the turn-off was.’

  ‘The turn-off was apparently that when he spoke he reminded Adele of her flatmate. The girlfriend didn’t have a clue what Adele meant by that.’

  ‘The flatmate isn’t a mate in the biological sense,’ Kaja yawned. ‘Geir Bruun is gay. If this eighth guest tried to shift the murders on to Tony Leike he must have known Leike had a criminal record.’

  ‘The assault conviction is information that’s open to the public. Also the location, i.e. in Ytre Enebakk municipality. Leike was on the way to becoming a murderer while living with his grandfather by Lake Lyseren. If you wanted to direct police suspicions towards Leike, where would you dump Adele Vetlesen’s body? In a place where the police could find a link to him and a conviction on his record, of course. That was why he chose Lake Lyseren.’ Mikael Bellman paused. ‘Tell me, am I boring you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You look so bored.’

  ‘I… I have a lot to think about.’

  ‘When did you start smoking? So, I have a plan for how to find the eighth guest.’

  Kaja stared at him.

  Bellman sighed. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how, darling?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By using the same strategy as he does.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Focusing on an innocent person.’

  ‘Isn’t that the strategy you always use?’

  Mikael Bellman looked up sharply. Something was beginning to dawn on him. Something about being an alpha male.

  He explained the plan to her. Told her how he would entice the man out.