The Leopard hh-8

by Jo Nesbo

  It was the sound of the snowmobile that had woken him.

  He tried not to move. He had done at first, jerked, tensed his body, tried to free himself. But he had given up his attempts fairly quickly. Not because of the meat hooks in his calves – he had lost feeling in his legs long ago. It was the sound. The sound of tearing flesh and sinews, and muscles that snapped and burst when he jerked and twisted, making the chains attached to the storehouse roof sing.

  He stared into the glazed eyes of a stag hanging by its rear legs and looking as if it was in mid-dive, antlers first. He had shot it while poaching. With the same rifle that he had used to kill her.

  He heard the plaintive creak of footsteps in the snow. The door opened, the moonlight plunged inside. Then he was there again. The ghost. And the strange thing was that it was only now, looking at him from upside down, that he was sure.

  ‘It really is you,’ he whispered. It was so strange speaking without any front teeth. ‘It really is you. Isn’t it?’

  The man walked behind him, untied his hands.

  ‘C-can you forgive me, my boy?’

  ‘Are you ready to travel?’

  ‘You killed them all, didn’t you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Harry dug with his right hand. Towards his left hand, the one which was squeezed up against some wire mesh he couldn’t identify. Part of his brain told him he was trapped, that it was a hopeless race against time, seconds, that for every breath he took he was one step nearer death. That all he was doing was prolonging his suffering, postponing the inevitable. The other voice said he would rather die in desperation than in apathy.

  He had managed to dig his way through to the other hand and put the right hand over the wire mesh. Pressed both hands against it and tried to push, but the mesh wouldn’t budge. He sensed that his breathing was already heavier, the snow was becoming smoother and his grave coated with ice. Dizziness came and went, just for a second, but he knew it was the first warning that he was inhaling poisoned air. Soon the drowsiness would come, and the brain would shut down, room by room, like a hotel approaching the low season. And that was when Harry felt it, something he had never experienced before, not even during his worst nights at Chungking Mansion: an overwhelming loneliness. It wasn’t the certainty that he would die that suddenly drained him of all will to live, but that he would die here, without anyone, without those he loved, without his father, Sis, Oleg, Rakel…

  The drowsiness came. Harry stopped digging. Even though he knew this spelt death. A seductive, alluring death taking him into its arms. Why protest, why fight, why choose pain when he could succumb? Why choose anything other than what he had always done? Harry closed his eyes.

  Wait.

  The mesh.

  It had to be the fireguard. The fire. The chimney. Rock. If anything had withstood the avalanche, if there was one place where the mass of snow had not penetrated, it would have to be the chimney.

  Harry pushed against the wire again. It wouldn’t budge a millimetre. His fingers clawed the mesh. Powerless, resigned.

  It was predestined. This was how it would end. His CO2-infected brain sensed a logic to it, but was unsure quite what it was. He accepted it though. He let the sweet, warm sleep envelop him. The sedation. The freedom.

  His fingers slid along the wire. Found something hard, solid. Tips of skis. Dad’s skis. He offered no resistance to the thought. It was less lonely like this, with his hand on Dad’s skis. Together, in step, they would enter the kingdom of death. Take the last steep slope.

  Mikael Bellman stared at what lay before them. Or to be more precise what no longer lay before them. Because it wasn’t there any more. The cabin was gone. From the snow cave it had looked like a little drawing on a large white sheet of paper. That was before the boom and the faraway crash that had woken him. By the time he had finally pulled out his binoculars it was quiet again, there was just a distant, delayed echo reverberating from the Hallingskarvet mountain range. He had stared himself blind through the binoculars, scanned the mountainside beyond. It was as if someone had erased everything from the paper. No drawing, just peaceful and innocently white. It was incomprehensible. A whole cabin buried? They had snapped on their skis and taken eight minutes to arrive at the avalanche scene. Or eight minutes and eighteen seconds. He had noted the time. He was a police officer.

  ‘Christ, the avalanche area is a square kilometre,’ he heard a voice shout behind him and watched the frail yellow beams from their torches sweep across the snow.

  The walkie-talkie crackled. ‘Rescue Ops says the helicopter will be here in thirty minutes. Over.’

  Too long, Bellman thought. What was it he had read: after half an hour the chance of surviving under snow was one in three? And when the helicopter got here, what the hell were they supposed to do? Stick their sonar probes in the snow to detect the remains of a cabin? ‘Thanks, over and out.’ ?rdal came alongside. ‘Spot of luck! There are two sniffer dogs in Al. They’re bringing them up to Ustaoset now. The County Officer in Ustaoset, Krongli, isn’t at home – at least he’s not answering the phone – but there was a man at the hotel with a snowmobile, and he can bring them here.’ He was flapping his arms to keep warm. Bellman looked at the snow beneath them. Kaja was down there somewhere. ‘How often did they say there were avalanches here?’

  ‘Every ten years,’?rdal said.

  Bellman rocked on his heels. Milano was directing the others, who were trudging around prodding the snow with skis and poles.

  ‘Sniffer dogs?’ he said.

  ‘Forty minutes.’

  Bellman nodded. Knowing the dogs would make no difference one way or the other. By the time they arrived almost an hour would have passed since the avalanche.

  The chances of survival would be less than ten per cent even before they started work. After an hour and a half they would be, to all intents and purposes, zero.

  The journey had begun. He was driving a snowmobile. Both light and dark seemed to be coming towards him, as if the diamond-strewn sky was opening itself and welcoming him. He knew that behind him in the snow stood the man, the ghost, aiming at his burned, charred and blistered back through the sights of a gun. But no bullet could reach him now, he was free, he was going where he intended, taking the path he had always been following. To the place where she had gone, along the same route. He was no longer tied up, and if he had been able to move his arms or legs he would have just stood up on the seat, twisted the accelerator and rushed forward even faster. He was cheering as he took off towards the starry sky.

  59

  The Burial

  Harry sank through layers of dreams, memories and half-chewed thoughts. Everything was fine. Apart from one voice intoning the same sentence, again and again. Dad’s voice.

  ‘… and in the end you were bleeding so much that the big boys became alarmed and went on their way.’

  He tried to hold it at arm’s length, to listen to one of the other voices. But even that one belonged to Olav Hole.

  ‘You were scared of the dark, but that didn’t stop you going there.’

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Harry opened his eyes to the dark. Wriggled and twisted in the icy snow’s iron grip. Tried to kick. Started digging in front of the wire. Made himself a bit more room. His fingers found the edge of the fireguard. He wasn’t going to die. Olav Hole would have to go on ahead; he would have to be that much of a bloody father! His hands were paddling like shovels now that they had some room to move. He got both hands on the inside of the fireguard and pulled it towards him. There! It shifted. He pulled again. And felt it. Air. Stinking of ash, heavy. But air nonetheless. For as long as it lasted. He pushed the snow away. Stuffed his hands in; his fingers found something that felt like polystyrene. He realised it was half-burned logs. The fireguard had stood up to the avalanche, the fireplace was free of snow. He continued to dig.

  A few minutes – or perhaps it was seconds – later and he lay curled up in the lar
ge fireplace gulping in air and coughing ash.

  And he realised that so far he had been thinking about only one thing: himself.

  He moved his arm around the corner of the fireplace, to where Dad’s skis had been. Rummaged in the snow until he found what he was searching for. One of the ski poles. He grabbed the basket on the end and pulled. The smooth, light, rigid metal pole slipped through the snow. He brought the pole into the fireplace, placed it between his legs, jammed his boots together and ripped off the basket. Now he had a spear measuring a little more than a metre and a half.

  Kaja and Kolkka couldn’t be far away from where he had been lying. He conjured up an imaginary grid system, the way they did at crime scenes to examine for clues, and started poking. He worked quickly, poking as hard as he could; it was a calculated risk. The worst-case scenario was he connected with an eye or stabbed a throat, but the bestcase scenario was only that they were still breathing. He poked to the left of where he reckoned he must have been lying and felt the point meet some resistance. He retracted the pole, prodded with care and felt it bounce off again. As he tried to retract it again he felt the pole jam. He released his grip and saw the pole pulled from him. Someone was holding the point and pulling it to and fro to show signs of life! Harry pulled the pole again, harder this time, but the other person was holding on with amazing strength. Harry needed the pole – it would be in the way when he started digging – so he put his hand in the wrist strap and even then had to use all his might to release the pole.

  Harry lay wondering why he hadn’t already put down the pole and started digging. Then he knew why. Hesitated for another second. Then he began to poke the snow again, this time to the right of where he had been. At the fourth prod he made contact. The same springy sensation. Stomach? He held the pole with his fingertips to see if he could detect any rising or falling, breathing, but there was no movement.

  The decision ought to have been easy. The shortest way was to the first opening where there had been signs of life. To save whatever could be saved. Harry was already on his knees and digging like a madman. Towards the second.

  His fingers were numb when they reached the body, and he had to use the back of his hand to feel if there was a woollen jumper. The jumper. The white one. He grabbed a shoulder, pushed more snow to the side, freed an arm and pulled the lifeless body through the passage in the snow. Her hair fell across his face; it still had Kaja’s aroma. He managed to haul her head and half her upper body onto the hearth and felt for a pulse in her neck, but his fingertips were like cement. He placed his face against hers, but couldn’t feel any breath. He opened her mouth, made sure her tongue wasn’t in the way, inhaled and breathed into her mouth. Came up for fresh air, suppressed his cough reflex as he inhaled particles of ash and breathed into her mouth again. A third time. He counted: four, five, six, seven. His head was beginning to whirl; he imagined he was back by the fire in the cabin in Lesja, the little boy trying to blow the dying embers into life and his dad laughing as the boy staggered off, dizzy and close to fainting. But he had to go on, he knew the chances of resuscitating her were diminishing by the second.

  Leaning over her to blow for the twelfth time, he felt it: a warm current against his face. He held his breath, waited, hardly daring to believe it could be true. The warm current faded. But then it was back. She was breathing! At that moment her body went into a convulsion and she began to cough. Then he heard her voice, faint.

  ‘Is that you, Harry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where… I can’t see.’

  ‘It’s alright. We’re in the fireplace.’

  Pause.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Digging for Jussi.’

  When Harry got Kolkka’s head into the fireplace, he had no idea how much time had passed. Only that, as far as Jussi was concerned, there was none left. He lit a match and glimpsed the Finn’s large, staring eyes before the flame went out.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Harry said.

  ‘Couldn’t you try mouth-to-mouth…?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said.

  ‘What now?’ Kaja asked in a faint, debilitated whisper.

  ‘We have to get out,’ Harry said, finding her hand. Squeezing it.

  ‘Couldn’t we just wait here until they find us?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘The match,’ she said.

  Harry didn’t answer.

  ‘It went out immediately,’ Kaja said. ‘There’s no air here, either. The whole cabin is buried under snow. That’s why you didn’t want to try to revive him. There’s not even enough air for us two. Harry…’

  Harry was on his feet, trying to force his way up the chimney, but it was too narrow, his shoulders got stuck. He crouched down again, broke both ends off the ski pole to make it into a hollow metal tube, put it up the chimney and got to his feet again, this time with his arms stretched above his head. It just reached. Claustrophobia cut in, but vanished at once, as though the body had decided irrational phobias were a luxury it couldn’t afford right now. He pressed his back against one side of the chimney and used his legs to lever himself upwards. His thigh muscles ached, he was panting and the dizziness had returned. But he continued, one foot up, press, next foot up,… The higher he went, the hotter it was, and he knew that meant that the rising hot air couldn’t escape. And he realised that if the fire had been lit when the avalanche crashed down on them they would have died long ago of carbon monoxide poisoning. That could have been called good luck in bad. Except that the avalanche was not bad luck. The boom they had heard…

  The tube hit something above him. He clambered up. Groped with his free hand. It was an iron grille. The kind they put on the tops of chimneys to keep squirrels and other animals out. He ran his finger along the edge. It had been set in concrete. Fuck!

  Kaja’s faint voice reached him. ‘I’m dizzy, Harry.’

  ‘Breathe in deep.’

  He pushed the tube through the fine-mesh grille.

  There was no snow on the other side!

  He hardly noticed the lactic acid burning in his thighs, as he excitedly pushed the tube further up. Only to experience disappointment when it hit something hard. The chimney cowl. He should have remembered that the cabin had such an attractive black metal cowl at the top of the chimney to protect it against snow and rain. He fumbled around until he angled the tube under the edge of the cowl and felt the hardpacked mass of snow, harder than in the cabin. But that could have been because the snow was now being forced down the opening of the hollow pole. He prayed that for every centimetre of ski pole he pushed into the snow he might feel it, the sudden absence of resistance, which would mean he had broken out of the snow hell. Which meant he could blow the snow out of this suction pipe and suck in air, fresh, life-giving air. Push Kaja up and give her the same injection of anti-death. But the breakthrough never came. He had the tube pressed right through the grille and nothing had happened. He tried anyway, sucked as hard as he could, getting cold, dry snow in his mouth and it was still blocked. He couldn’t stand the pressure on his sides any longer and fell. Shouted, stuck out his arms and legs, felt the skin on his hands being scraped off, but slid further down. He hit the body beneath with both legs.

  ‘Alright?’ Harry asked, climbing up into the chimney again.

  ‘Fine,’ Kaja said with a deep groan. ‘And you? Bad news?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harry said, scrambling down beside her.

  ‘What? You aren’t in love with me now, either?’

  Harry chuckled and drew her to him. ‘Oh, I am now.’

  He felt hot tears on her cheeks as she whispered, ‘Shall we get married then?’

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ Harry said, aware that it was the poison in his brain talking now.

  She laughed. ‘Till death do us part.’

  He felt the warmth of her body. And something hard. Her holster with the service revolver. He released her and groped his way to Kolkka. Already he thought he could see how Kolkka’s cold
face had started to turn to marble. Through the snow by the dead man’s neck he bored his hand down to his chest.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she mumbled weakly.

  ‘I’m getting Jussi’s gun.’

  He heard her stop breathing for a second. Felt her hand on his back, fumbling, like a small animal that has lost its orientation. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t do it… not like that… let’s just fall asleep… Even.’

  It was as Harry surmised. Jussi Kolkka had gone to bed wearing his shoulder holster. He undid the button holding the gun in position, gripped the handle and dragged the gun from the snow. Ran a finger down the barrel. No sights, this was a Weilert. He stood up, too quickly, felt giddy, looked for support. Then everything went black.

  Bellman was standing looking down at the almost four-metre-deep pit when he heard the intermittent whump-whump-whump of the rescue helicopter approaching, like a carpet beater on speed. His men were using rucksacks to transport snow, lifting it up with interlocking trouser belts.

  ‘The window!’ he heard the man in the pit yell.

  ‘Smash it!’ Milano shouted back.

  The glass tinkled.

  ‘Oh my God…’ he heard. And knew the invocation boded bad news.

  ‘Chuck down a ski pole…’

  Bellman heard dogs barking. And tried to work out how many hours it would take to clear the snow from the cabin. Correction: days.

  Harry came to with a terrible pain in his jaw and something warm running down his forehead between his eyes. He guessed he must have hit his head and jaw fracture against the rock when he fell. That was what must have woken him. The strange thing was he was still standing and still holding the pistol in his hand. He tried to inhale air that wasn’t there. He didn’t know if he had enough for a last attempt, but so what? It was simple: there was nothing else he could do. So he stuffed the pistol in his pocket and between gasps climbed up the chimney. Forced his legs against the sides when he was at the top, fumbled with the grille until he found the end of the metal pole that was still stuck in the snow. The pole was vaguely conical with the larger aperture at Harry’s end where he inserted the gun barrel. It jammed two-thirds of the way along its length. Which also meant that it was perfectly aligned with the ski pole. It was like a silencer but one and a half metres long. A bullet would not penetrate one and a half metres of snow, but what if the pole was only a short distance from the end?