The Leopard hh-8

by Jo Nesbo

  That was why Johan Krohan sat listening quietly to the lean man with the round glasses. Listening while Sigurd Altman told a story that was not only the least likely story Krohn had ever heard but also a story he believed. Johan Krohn could already see himself in the courtroom, the sparkling rhetorician, the agitator, the manipulator, who nonetheless never lost sight of legal justice, a delight for both layman and judge. He was therefore disappointed at first when Sigurd Altman revealed the plans he had made. However, after reminding himself of his father’s repeated admonition that the lawyer was there for the client, and not vice versa, he accepted the brief. For Johan Krohn was not really a bad person.

  And when Krohn left Oslo District Prison where Sigurd Altman had been transferred during the day, he saw new potential in the assignment, which in its way, despite everything, was extraordinary. The first thing he did when he got back to his office was contact Mikael Bellman. They had met only once before, at a murder trial of course, but Johan Krohn had immediately known where he was with Bellman. A hawk recognises a hawk. So he appreciated how Bellman was feeling after the day’s headlines about the County Officer’s arrest.

  ‘Bellman.’

  ‘Johan Krohn. Nice to talk to you again.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Krohn.’ The voice sounded formal, but not unfriendly.

  ‘Is it? I imagine you feel you’ve been overtaken down the final straight, don’t you?’

  Short pause. ‘What’s this about, Krohn?’ Teeth clenched. Angry.

  Johan Krohn knew he was on to a winner.

  Harry and Sis sat by their father’s bed at Rikshospital. On the bedside table and on two other tables in the room there were vases of flowers that had appeared from nowhere in the last few days. Harry had done the rounds and read the cards. One of them had been addressed to ‘My dear, dear Olav’, and was signed ‘Your Lise’. Harry had never heard of any Lise, even less considered the notion that there may have been any women in his father’s life other than his mother. The remaining cards were from colleagues and neighbours. It must have reached their ears that the end was nigh. And despite knowing that Olav would not be able to read the cards, they had sent these sweet-smelling flowers to compensate for the fact that they had not taken the time to visit him. Harry saw the flowers surrounding the bed as vultures hovering around a dying man. Heavy, hanging heads on thin stalk necks. Red and yellow beaks.

  ‘You’re not allowed to have your mobile on here, Harry!’ Sis whispered severely.

  Harry took out his phone and read the display. ‘Sorry, Sis. Important.’

  Katrine Bratt got straight to the point. ‘Leike has undoubtedly been in Ustaoset and the surrounding district a fair bit,’ she said. ‘In recent years he’s bought the odd train ticket on the Net, paid for fuel with a credit card at the petrol station in Geilo. The same with provisions, mostly in Ustaoset. The only thing to stand out is a bill for building materials, also in Geilo.’

  ‘Building materials?’

  ‘Yep. I went onto the lists of invoices. Boards, nails, tools, steel cables, leca blocks, cement. Over thirty thousand kroner’s worth. But it’s four years old.’

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘He’s been building himself a little annexe or something up there?’

  ‘He didn’t have a registered cabin to build an annexe on to, we’ve checked. But you don’t stock up with provisions if you’re going to live in a hotel or Tourist Association cabins. I reckon Tony built himself an illegal bolt-hole in the national park, just as he told me he dreamed about. Well hidden from view, of course. A place where he could be very, very undisturbed. But where?’ Harry realised he had got up and was pacing to and fro in the room.

  ‘Well, you tell me,’ said Katrine Bratt.

  ‘Wait! What time of the year did he buy this?’

  ‘Let me see… The 6th of July it says on the printout.’

  ‘If the cabin has to be hidden it must be somewhere off the beaten track. A desolate area without roads. Did you say steel cables?’

  ‘Yes. And I can guess why. When Bergensians built cabins in the most wind-blown parts of Ustaoset in the sixties, they generally used steel cables to anchor the cabins.’

  ‘So Leike’s cabin would be somewhere wind-blown, desolate, and he has to transport thirty thousand kroner’s worth of building materials there. Weighing at least a couple of tons. How do you do that in the summer when there’s no snow, so you can’t use a snowmobile?’

  ‘Horse? Jeep?’

  ‘Over rivers, marshland, up mountains? Keep going.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘But I do. I’ve seen a picture of it. OK, bye.’

  ‘Wait.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You asked me to look into Utmo’s activities during the final days of his life. There’s not very much on him in the electronic world, but he did make some calls. One of the last ones he made was to Aslak Krongli. Just got voicemail, looks like. The very last conversation on his phone was with SAS. I went through their booking system. He booked a plane ticket to Copenhagen.’

  ‘Mm. He doesn’t seem the type to travel much.’

  ‘That’s for sure. A passport was issued to him, but he isn’t registered in a single booking system. And we’re talking many years here.’

  ‘So a man who has barely left his home district suddenly wants to go to Copenhagen. When would he have travelled by the way?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’

  Harry rang off, grabbed his coat, turned in the doorway. Looked at her. The attractive woman who was his sister. Was about to ask if she was coping on her own, without him. But managed to stop himself asking such an idiotic question. When had she not coped without him?

  ‘Take care,’ he said.

  Jens Rath was in the reception area of the shared office block. Inside his jacket and shirt, his back was drenched with perspiration. Because he had just received a call from the office that the police were paying him a visit. He had had a skirmish with the Fraud Squad a few years ago, but the case had been dropped. Nevertheless, he still broke out into a sweat whenever he saw a police car. And now Jens Rath could feel his pores opening big time. He was a small man and looked up at the officer who had just risen to his feet. And continued to rise. Until he towered half a metre above Jens and gave him a cursory, firm handshake.

  ‘Harry Hole, Crime Sq- Kripos. We’ve come about Tony Leike.’

  ‘Anything new?’

  ‘Shall we sit down, Rath?’

  They took a seat in a pair of Le Corbusier chairs, and Rath signalled discreetly to Wenche in reception that she shouldn’t serve them coffee, which was standard policy when investors came visiting.

  ‘I want you to show us where his cabin is,’ the policeman said.

  ‘Cabin?’

  ‘I saw you cancel the coffee, Rath, and that’s fine – like you I don’t have much time. I also know that your Fraud Squad case has been dropped, but it would take me one phone call to reopen it. They may not find anything this time, either, but I promise you that the documentation they will demand you make available…’

  Rath closed his eyes. ‘Oh my God…’

  ‘… will keep you busy for longer than it took to build a cabin for your colleague, pal and bedfellow, Tony Leike. OK?’

  Jens Rath’s sole talent was that he could calculate worthwhile risks faster and more efficiently than anyone else. Accordingly, it took him approximately one second to respond to the calculation with which he had just been presented.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘We’re leaving at nine tomorrow morning.’

  ‘How…?’

  ‘The same way you transported the materials. Helicopter.’ The policeman stood up.

  ‘Just one question. Tony’s always been terribly concerned that no one should know about this cabin – I don’t even think Lene, his fiancee, knows about it – so how…?’

  ‘An invoice for building materials from Geilo, p
lus the photo of you three in work gear sitting on a pile of timber in front of a helicopter.’

  Quick nod of the head from Jens Rath. ‘Course. The photo.’

  ‘Who took it by the way?’

  ‘The pilot. Before we left from Geilo. And it was Andreas’s idea to send it with the press report when we opened the offices. He thought dressing in work clothes was cooler than in suits and ties. And Tony agreed because he reckoned it looked as if we owned the helicopter. Anyway, the financial papers use the photo all the time.’

  ‘Why didn’t you and Andreas mention the cabin when Tony was reported missing?’

  Jens Rath shrugged. ‘Don’t get me wrong, we’re just as keen as you for Tony to return pronto. We’ve got a project in the Congo which will go belly up unless he can find ten million readies. But whenever Tony goes walkabout it’s always because he wants to. He can look after himself. Don’t forget he was a mercenary. I would guess that right now Tony is sitting somewhere with a shot of the hard stuff, some exotic wildcat of a woman on his arm and grinning because he’s come up with a solution.’

  ‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘I assume the feline chomped off his middle finger then. Fornebu Airport nine tomorrow.’

  Jens Rath stood watching the policeman. The sweat was pouring off him, he was being washed away.

  When Harry returned to Rikshospital Sis was still sitting there. She was leafing through a magazine and eating an apple. He surveyed the kettle of vultures. There were more flowers.

  ‘You look worn out, Harry,’ she said. ‘You should go home.’

  Harry chuckled. ‘You can go. You’ve been sitting here on your own for long enough.’

  ‘I haven’t been on my own,’ she said with a mischievous smile. ‘Guess who was here.’

  Harry sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Sis, I do enough guessing as it is in my job.’

  ‘Oystein!’

  ‘Oystein Eikeland?’

  ‘Yes! He brought a bar of milk chocolate with him. Not for Daddy, but for me. Sorry, there’s none left.’ She laughed so much her eyes shrank into her cheeks.

  When she got up to go for a walk, Harry checked his phone. Two missed calls from Kaja. He pushed the chair into the wall and leaned back.

  77

  Fingerprint

  At ten minutes past ten the helicopter landed on a ridge west of the Hallingskarvet mountains. By eleven they had located the cabin.

  It was so well hidden from view that even if they had known more or less where it was, they would have struggled to find it without Jens Rath’s help. The cabin was built on rock high up to the east, the leeward side of the mountain, too high to be affected by avalanches. The stones had been carried there from surrounding areas and cemented in against two enormous rocks forming the side and rear walls. There were no conspicuous right angles. The windows resembled gun slits and were set so deep into the wall that the sun did not reflect off them.

  ‘That’s what I call a decent cabin,’ Bjorn Holm said, unstrapping skis and immediately sinking up to his knees in the snow.

  Harry told Jens that they no longer needed his services, and that he should go back to the helicopter and wait there with the pilot.

  The snow was not so deep by the front door.

  ‘Someone’s been digging here not that long ago,’ Harry said.

  The door was fitted with a plate and a simple padlock which ceded to Bjorn’s crowbar without much protest.

  Before opening the door, they removed their mittens, put on latex gloves and blue plastic bags over their ski boots. Then they entered.

  ‘Wow,’ Bjorn said under his breath.

  The whole cabin consisted of one single room of around five by three metres and was reminiscent of an old-fashioned captain’s berth with porthole-like windows and compact, space-saving solutions. The floor, walls and ceiling were clad with coarse, untreated boards that had been given a couple of coats of white paint to exploit the little light that was let in. The short wall to the right was taken up by a plain worktop with a sink and a cupboard underneath. Plus a divan obviously doubling up as a bed. In the middle of the room there was a table with a single spindleback chair spattered with paint. In front of one window stood a well-used writing desk with initials and snatches of songs carved into the wood. To the left, on the long wall where the rear rock was revealed, there was a black wood burner. To make maximum use of the heat, the flue was diverted around the rock to the right, then rose vertically. The wood basket was filled with birch and newspapers to get the fire started. On the walls hung maps of the local area, but there was also one of Africa.

  Bjorn looked out of the window above the desk.

  ‘And that’s what I call a decent view. Jeez, you can see half of Norway from here.’

  ‘Let’s get cracking,’ Harry said. ‘The pilot’s given us two hours. There’s cloud coming in from the coast.’

  As usual Mikael Bellman had got up at six and jogged himself into consciousness on the treadmill in the cellar. He had been dreaming about Kaja again. She had been riding pillion on a motorbike with her arms around a man who was all helmet and visor. She had smiled so happily, showing her pointed teeth, and waved as they rode away. But hadn’t they stolen the bike? Wasn’t it his? He didn’t know for sure as her hair, which was fluttering in the wind, was so long it covered the number plate.

  After running, Mikael had taken a shower and gone upstairs for breakfast.

  He had steeled himself before opening the morning paper that Ulla – also as usual – had placed next to his plate.

  Lacking a photograph of Sigurd Altman, alias Prince Charming, they had printed one of County Officer Skai. He was standing outside the police station with his arms crossed, wearing a green cap with a long peak, like a bloody bear-hunter. The headline: PRINCE CHARMING ARRESTED? And beside it, above the photograph of a smashed yellow snowmobile: ANOTHER BODY FOUND IN USTAOSET.

  Bellman had scanned the text for the word Kripos or – worst of all – his name. Nothing on the front page. Good.

  He had opened the pages referred to, and there it was, photo and all: The head of Kripos, Mikael Bellman, has said in a brief comment that he does not wish to make a statement until Prince Charming has been questioned. Nor has he anything in particular to say about the arrest of the suspect by Ytre Enebakk police. ‘In general, I can say that all police work is teamwork. In Kripos we do not attach too much importance to individuals who receive the hero’s garlands.’

  He shouldn’t have said the last bit. It was lies, would be perceived as lies and stank from some distance of a bad loser.

  But it didn’t matter. For if what Johan Krohn, the defence counsel, had told him on the phone was true, Bellman had a golden opportunity to fix everything. Well, more than that. To receive the garlands himself. He acknowledged that the price Krohn would demand was high, but also that it wouldn’t be him who had to pay. But the sodding bear-hunter. And Harry Hole and Crime Squad.

  A prison warder held the door to the visitors’ room open and Mikael Bellman let Johan Krohn go first. Krohn had insisted that as this was a conversation, not a formal interview, it should take place, as far as was possible, on neutral ground. Since it was inconceivable that Prince Charming would be allowed out of Oslo District Prison, where he was in custody, Krohn and Bellman agreed on a visitors’ room, one of the ones used for private meetings between inmates and family. No cameras, no microphones, just an ordinary windowless room where half-hearted attempts had been made to jolly the place up with a crocheted cloth on the table and a Norwegian tapestry, a bell-pull, on the wall. Sweethearts and spouses were granted permission to meet here, and the springs on the semen-stained sofa were so worn that Bellman was able to observe Krohn sink into the material as he took a seat.

  Sigurd Altman was sitting on a chair at one end of the table. Bellman sat at the other end so that he and Altman were at almost exactly the same height. Altman’s face was lean, his eyes deep-set, the mouth pronounced with protruding teeth, all of which reminded Bellman
of photos of emaciated Jews in Auschwitz. And the monster in Alien.

  ‘Conversations like this don’t proceed by the book,’ Bellman said. ‘I therefore have to insist that no one takes notes and anything we say does not go beyond these walls.’

  ‘At the same time we have to have a guarantee that the conditions for a confession are fulfilled on the prosecuting authority’s side,’ Krohn said.

  ‘You have my word,’ Bellman said.

  ‘For which I humbly thank you. What else have you got?’

  ‘What else?’ Bellman gave a thin smile. ‘What else would you like? A signed written agreement?’ Arrogant bloody prick of a counsel.

  ‘Preferably,’ Krohn said, passing a sheet of paper across the table.

  Bellman stared at the paper. He skimmed over it, his eyes jumping from sentence to sentence.

  ‘Won’t be shown to anyone, of course, if it doesn’t have to be,’ Krohn said. ‘And the document will be returned when the conditions have been fulfilled. And this -’ he passed a pen to Bellman – ‘is an S.T. Dupont, the best fountain pen you can find.’

  Bellman took the pen and placed it on the table beside him.

  ‘If the story’s good enough, I’ll sign,’ he said.

  ‘If this is supposed to be a crime scene, the person concerned tidied up after themselves pretty well.’

  Bjorn Holm put his hands on his hips and surveyed the room. They had searched high and low, in drawers and cupboards, shone a torch everywhere for blood and taken fingerprints. He had put his laptop on the desk, connected it to a fingerprint scanner the size of a matchbox, similar to those used at some airports now for passenger identification. So far all the prints had matched one person in the case: Tony Leike.