The Leopard hh-8

by Jo Nesbo

  Harry put his thumb and first finger either side of his mouth. Felt the circular ridges. Tried in vain to get a finger underneath one of them. He had a coughing fit and everything went black as he struggled to breathe. He realised the ridges had caused the flesh around his pharynx to swell and he risked suffocation. The wire to the door handle. The severed finger. Was this chance or did Tony Leike know about the Snowman? And was he intending to outdo him?

  Harry kicked the wall and tensed his vocal cords, but the metal ball stifled the scream. He gave up. Leaned against the wall, braced himself for the pain and forced his mouth shut. He had read somewhere that the human bite is not much weaker than that of the white shark. Yet the jaw muscles only just managed to press the ridges down before the mouth was forced back open. There seemed to be a pulse, a living iron heart in his mouth. He touched the wire hanging from the apple. His every instinct shrieked for him to pull it, to pull the apple out. But he had seen a demonstration of what would happen, he had seen photos of crime scenes. If he had not seen…

  And at that second Harry knew. Knew not only how he himself would die but also how the others had died. And why it had been done like that. He experienced an absurd desire to laugh. It was so devilishly simple. So devilishly simple that only a devil could have devised it.

  Tony Leike’s alibi. He hadn’t had an accomplice. That is to say, the victims themselves had been his accomplices. When Borgny and Charlotte had come to after being drugged they hadn’t a clue what it was they had in their mouths. Borgny had been locked in a cellar. Charlotte had been outside, but the wire from her mouth had led to the boot of the wrecked car in front of her, and however much she struggled, scraped and pulled at the boot lid it was, and remained, locked. Neither of them had a chance in hell of escaping from where they were, and when the pain was too great they had taken the predictable route. They had pulled the wire. Had they anticipated what would happen? Had the pain made them give way to hope, the hope that pulling the wire would retract the circular ridges in the mysterious object? And while the girls had slowly but surely gone through the agonies of doubt and conjecture before the inevitable act, Tony Leike was many kilometres away at a dinner or a lecture, secure in the knowledge that the girls would perform the final part of the job themselves. Giving him the best possible alibi for the time of the death. In the strictest sense, he hadn’t even murdered them.

  Harry twisted his head to see what radius of movement he had without tightening the steel wire.

  He had to do something. Anything. He groaned, thought the wire seemed to tighten; he stopped breathing, stared at the door. Waited for it to open, for…

  Nothing happened.

  He tried to remember Van Boorst’s demo of the apple, how long the ridges remained out if there was no resistance. If only he could open his mouth even wider, if only his jaws…

  Harry closed his eyes. It struck him how strangely normal and obvious the idea seemed, how little resistance he felt. Quite the opposite, he felt relief. Relief at inflicting even more pain on himself, if necessary risking his own life in an attempt to survive. It was logical, simple, the black void of doubt repressed by a bright, clear, insane idea. Harry turned round on his stomach with his head against the U bolt so that there was some slack in the wire. Then he cautiously got up onto his knees. Touched his jaw. Found the point. The point where everything centred: the pain, the jaw joint, the knot, the jumble of nerves and muscles that only just held his jaw together after the incident in Hong Kong. He wouldn’t be able to hit himself hard enough, there had to be body weight behind it. His first finger tested the nail. It protruded about four centimetres from the wall. A standard nail with a large, broad head. It would smash through everything that came in its path if there was enough force. Harry took aim, rested his jaw against the nail in rehearsal, stood up to calculate at what angle he would have to fall. How deep the nail would have to penetrate. And how deep it must not penetrate. Neck, nerves, paralysis. Did calculations. Not coldly and calmly. But he calculated anyway. Forced himself. The nail head was not like the top of a T, it sloped down towards the shank so that it would not necessarily tear everything with it on its way out. Finally, he tried to identify anything he hadn’t considered. Until he realised this was his brain trying to delay events.

  Harry took a deep breath.

  His body would not obey. It protested, resisted. Wouldn’t lower his head.

  ‘Idiot!’ Harry strove to shout, but it turned into a whistle. He felt a hot tear trickle down his cheek.

  Enough crying, he thought. Time to die a little now.

  Then he brought his head down.

  The nail received him with a deep sigh.

  Kaja was fumbling for her mobile phone. The Carpenters had just shouted a three-part ‘Stop!’ And Karen Carpenter answered ‘Oh, yes, wait a minute.’ The SMS alert.

  Outside the car, night had fallen with sudden brutality. She had sent three messages to Harry. Told him what had happened and that she was parked up the road from the house Lene Galtung had entered, awaiting further instructions and a sign of life. Well done. Come and pick me up from the street to the south of the church. Easy to find, it’s the only brick house. Come straight in, it’s open. Harry.

  It was in Norwegian. She passed on the address to the taxi driver who nodded, yawned and switched on the engine.

  Kaja texted back in Norwegian On my way as they drove north along the illuminated streets. The volcano lit up the night sky like an incandescent lamp, obliterating the stars and lending everything a faint bloodred shimmer.

  A quarter of an hour later they found themsleves in a darkened bomb crater of a street. A couple of paraffin lamps hung outside a shop. Either there was another power cut or this neighbourhood didn’t have electricity.

  The driver stopped and pointed. Van Boorst. Sure enough, there it was, a brick house. Kaja looked around. Further up the street she saw two Range Rovers. Two bleating mopeds passed with wobbly lights. Heavy African disco came belting out of one door. Here and there she could see the glow of cigarettes and white eyes.

  ‘Wait here,’ Kaja said, pushing her hair up into the peaked cap and ignoring the driver’s warning cries when she opened the door and slipped out.

  She walked quickly up to the house. She had no naive preconceptions about the chances a white woman had in a town like Goma after nightfall, but right now darkness was her best friend.

  She could make out the door with black lava boulders on either side, knew she had to hurry, she felt it coming, she would have to pre-empt it. She almost stumbled, rushed onwards, breathing through an open mouth. Then she was there. She placed her fingers on the door handle. Although the temperature had sunk surprisingly fast after the sun had set, sweat was streaming down between her shoulder blades and her breasts. She forced herself to press the handle down. Listened. It was so eerily quiet. As quiet as the time when…

  Tears thickened like a viscous cement mix in her throat.

  ‘Come on,’ she whispered. ‘Not now.’

  She closed her eyes. Concentrated on breathing. Emptied her brain of any thoughts. She would manage this now. Her thoughts slowed. Delete, delete. That’s the way. Just one tiny thought left, then she could open the door.

  Harry woke with something yanking at the corner of his mouth. He opened his eyes. It was dark. He must have fainted. Then he became aware of the wire pulling at the ball that was still in his mouth. His heart started, accelerated, hammered away. He pushed his mouth up against the bolt, absolutely clear that none of this would help if someone opened the door.

  A strip of light from outside struck the wall above him. The blood glistened. He guided his fingers into his mouth, placed them over the teeth in his lower jaw and pressed. The pain made everything go black for a second, but he felt his jaw give. It was dislocated! As he pressed his jaw down with one hand, he took the apple with the other and pulled.

  He heard sounds outside the door. Fuck, fuck, fuck! He still couldn’t get the apple past his
teeth. He pressed his jaw down further. The sound of bone and tissue crunching and tearing resonated as if it came from his ears. He might just be able to pull his jaw down so far on one side that he could get the apple out sideways, but there was a cheek in the way. He could see the door handle moving. There wasn’t time. No time. Time stopped here.

  That last tiny thought. The Norwegian SMS. Gaten. Kirken. The street. The church. Harry didn’t use those endings. Gata. Kirka. That’s what he said. Kaja opened her eyes. What was it he had said on her veranda when they were talking about the title of the Fante book? He never texted. Because he didn’t want to lose his soul, because he preferred not to leave any traces when he disappeared. She had never received a single text from him. Not until now. He would have rung. This didn’t stack up; this was not her brain finding excuses not to open the door. This was a trap.

  Kaja gently let go of the door handle. She felt a warm current of air on her neck. As though someone was breathing on her. She cancelled the ‘as though’ and turned.

  There were two of them. Their faces melded into the darkness.

  ‘Looking for someone, lady?’

  The feeling of deja vu struck her before she had answered. ‘Wrong door, that’s all.’

  At that moment she heard a car start up; she turned and saw the rear lights of her taxi swaying along the street.

  ‘Don’t worry, lady,’ the voice said. ‘We paid him.’

  She turned back and looked down. At the pistol pointing at her.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  Kaja considered the alternatives. Didn’t take long. There weren’t any.

  She walked ahead of them towards the two Range Rovers. The rear door of one swung open as they approached. She got in. It smelt of spiced aftershave and new leather. The door slammed behind her. He smiled. His teeth were large and white, the voice gentle, cheerful.

  ‘Hi, Kaja.’

  Tony Leike was wearing a yellow-and-grey combat uniform. Holding a red mobile in his hand. Harry’s.

  ‘You were told to go straight in. What stopped you?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Fascinating,’ he said, angling his head.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘You don’t seem the slightest bit afraid.’

  ‘Why should I be?’

  ‘Because you’re going to die soon. Have you really not understood?’

  Kaja’s throat constricted. Even though part of her brain was screaming this was an idle threat, that she was a police officer, he would never take the risk, it was unable to drown the other part, the one that said Tony Leike was sitting in front of her and knew exactly what the situation was. She and Harry were two kamikaze clods a long way from home, without authorisation, without backup, without a plan B. Without a hope.

  Leike pressed a button and the window slid down.

  ‘Go and finish him off, then take him up there,’ he said to the two men, and the window slid back up.

  ‘I think it would have added a touch of class if you had opened the door,’ Leike said. ‘I sort of think we owe Harry a poetic death. Now, though, we’ll have to opt for a poetic farewell.’ He leaned forward and peered up at the sky. ‘Beautiful red colour, isn’t it?’ She could see it in his face now. Heard it. And her voice – the one that told the truth – told her. She really was going to die.

  86

  Calibre

  Kinzonzi pointed to Van Boorst’s brick house and told Oudry to drive the Range Rover right to the door. He could see the light behind the curtains and remembered that Mister Tony had determined it was to be left on when they were not there. So that the white man could see what awaited him. Kinzonzi got out and waited for Oudry to pocket the car key and follow. The order was simple: kill him and take him there. It aroused no emotion. No fear, no pleasure, not even tension. It was a job.

  Kinzonzi was nineteen years old. He had been a soldier since he was eleven. The PDLA, the People’s Democratic Liberation Army, had stormed his village. They had smashed his brother’s head with the stock of a Kalashnikov and raped his two sisters while forcing his father to watch. Afterwards the commander had said that if his father didn’t perform intercourse with his younger sister in front of them, they would kill Kinzonzi and his elder sister. But before the commander had finished his sentence, Kinzonzi’s father had impaled himself on one of their machetes. Their laughter had filled the air.

  Before leaving, Kinzonzi had eaten the first decent meal he’d had for several months and was given a beret which the commander said was his uniform. Two months later he had a Kalashnikov and had shot his first human, a mother in a village who refused to hand over her blankets to the PDLA. He had been twelve when he queued with other soldiers to rape a young girl not far from where he had been recruited. When it was his turn it suddenly struck him that the girl could have been his sister, the age would have been right. But when he studied her face he saw that he could no longer remember their faces: Mum, Dad, his sisters. They were gone, erased from his memory.

  Four months later, he and two comrades chopped the arms off the commander and watched him bleed to death, not out of revenge or hatred but because the CFF, the Congo Freedom Front, had promised to pay them better. For five years he had lived off what the CFF raids in the northern Kivu jungle brought in, but all the time they had had to watch out for other guerrillas, and the villages they came to had been so plundered by others over time that they could barely feed themselves. For a while the CFF had negotiated with the government army: disarmament for an amnesty and employment. But discussions broke down over wages.

  Hungry and desperate, the CFF attacked a mining company extracting coltan, even though they were aware that mining companies had better weapons and soldiers than they did. Kinzonzi had never had any illusions that he would live a long life or that he would die any other way than fighting. So he hadn’t even blinked when he came round and found himself staring up the gun barrel of a white man speaking to him in a foreign language. Kinzonzi had just nodded for him to get it over with. Two months later the wounds were healed, and the mining company was his new employer.

  The white man was Mister Tony. Mister Tony paid well but showed no mercy if he saw the slightest sign of disloyalty. Yes, he spoke to them and was the best boss Kinzonzi had ever had. And yet Kinzonzi would not have hesitated for a second to shoot him if it had been worth his while. But it wasn’t.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Kinzonzi said to Oudry, loading his pistol. He knew it could take time for the white policeman to die from the metal apple that would be activated in his mouth when they opened the door, so he would shoot him at once in order to get going to Nyiragongo, where Mister Tony and the women were waiting.

  A man who had been seated on a chair smoking outside the adjacent shop got up and was lost in the darkness, mumbling angrily.

  Kinzonzi regarded the door handle. The first time he had been here was to pick up Van Boorst. It was also the first time he had seen the legendary Alma. At that time Van Boorst had been spending all his money on Singapore sling, protection and Alma, who was not exactly cheap to maintain. Then Van Boorst, in his desperation, committed the final mistake of his life: blackmailing Mister Tony with threats of going to the police. The Belgian had seemed more resigned than surprised when they came, and had finished his drink. They had carved him up into suitably large pieces to feed to the paradoxically fat pigs outside the refugee camp. Mister Tony had taken over Alma. Alma of the hips, gold tooth and the sleepy fuck-me look that could have given Kinzonzi another reason to put a bullet in Mister Tony’s head. If it had been worth his while.

  Kinzonzi pressed the handle. And pulled the door hard. It swung open but was stopped halfway by a thin steel wire fastened to the inside of the door. The moment it tightened, there was a loud, clear click and the sound of metal on metal, like the sound of a bayonet thrust into an iron sheath. The door opened with a creak.

  Kinzonzi stepped in, dragged Oudry after him and slammed the door. The bitter smell of vomit stung their nostrils
.

  ‘Switch on the light.’

  Oudry did as he was ordered.

  Kinzonzi stared at the end of the room. On the wall, drenched in blood, a banknote hung from a bare nail, from which a red stream led down to the floor. On the bed, in a pool of yellow sick, lay a bloodcovered metal ball with long needles sticking out, like rays of a sun. But no white policeman.

  The door. Kinzonzi whirled around with his gun at the ready.

  No one there.

  He dropped to his knees and looked under the bed. No one.

  Oudry opened the door to the only cupboard in the room. Empty.

  ‘He’s fled,’ Oudry said to Kinzonzi, who was standing by the bed pressing a finger into the mattress.

  ‘What is it?’ Oudry asked, going closer.

  ‘Blood.’ He took the torch from Oudry. Shone it on the floor. Followed the trail of blood to where it stopped in the middle. A trapdoor with an iron ring. He advanced on the hatchway, ripped open the door and shone the torch down into the darkness beneath. ‘Get your gun, Oudry.’

  His comrade went outside and returned with his AK-47.

  ‘Cover me,’ said Kinzonzi, descending the ladder.

  He reached the bottom and held the pistol and torch in a double grip as he swivelled round. The torchlight swept over cupboards and shelves along the wall. Continued over a free-standing unit in the middle of the floor with grotesque white masks on the shelves. One with rivets for eyebrows, a lifelike one with a red asymmetrical mouth going right up to the ear on one side, one with empty eyes and a spear tattooed on both cheeks. He shone the light on the shelves on the facing wall. And stopped suddenly. Kinzonzi went rigid. Weapons. Guns. Ammunition. The brain is a fantastic computer. In a fraction of a second it can register tons of data, crunch them and reason its way to the correct answer. So when Kinzonzi swung the torch back on the masks, it already had the right answer. The light fell on the white mask with the asymmetrical mouth. Displaying the molars. Glistening red. The same way the blood on the wall under the nail had glistened.