The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  “Yes. We contacted him to find out if he knew where you were living. The long and short of it is he’s ill.”

  She looked down at the table.

  Heard him exhale. The drowsiness was back in his voice. “Seriously ill?”

  “Yes. And I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this.”

  She still did not dare to raise her gaze. Ashamed. Waited. Listened to the machine-gun sounds of Cantonese on the TV behind Li Yuan’s counter. Swallowed and waited. She would have to sleep soon.

  “When does the plane leave?”

  “At eight,” she said. “I’ll pick you up in three hours outside here.”

  “I’ll get there under my own steam. There are a couple of things I have to fix first.”

  He held out his palm. She questioned him with her eyes.

  “For that I need the passport. And then you should eat. Get a bit of meat on your bones.”

  She wavered. Then she handed him the passport and the ticket.

  “I trust you,” she said.

  He sent her a blank look.

  Then he was gone.

  The clock above Gate C4 in Chek Lap Kok Airport showed a quarter to eight, and Kaja had given up. Of course he wasn’t coming. It was a natural reflex for animals and humans to hide when hurt. And Harry Hole was definitely hurt. Reports on the Snowman case had described in detail the murders of all the women. But Gunnar Hagen had added what had not been included. How Harry Hole’s ex-girlfriend, Rakel, and her son, Oleg, had ended up in the clutches of the deranged killer. How she and her son had fled the country as soon as the case was over. And how Harry had handed in his resignation and left town. He had been more hurt than she had realized.

  Kaja had already handed in her boarding pass, was on her way up to the ramp and beginning to consider the formulation of her report on the failed mission, when she saw him jogging through the slanted sunbeams that penetrated the terminal building. He was carrying a plain carry-on bag over his shoulder and a bag from a duty-free shop and was puffing away furiously at a cigarette. He stopped at the gate. But instead of giving the waiting personnel his boarding pass, he put down his bag and sent Kaja a despairing look.

  She went back to the gate.

  “Problems?” she asked.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Can’t come.”

  “Why not?”

  He pointed to the duty-free bag. “Just remembered that in Norway the allowance per person is one carton of cigarettes. I’ve got two. So unless …” He didn’t bat an eye.

  She rolled her eyes heavenward, trying not to look relieved. “Give it to me.”

  “Thank you very much,” he said, opening the bag, which she happened to notice did not contain any bottles, and passing her an opened carton of Camels with one pack already gone.

  She walked in front of him to the plane so that he would not be able to see her smile.

  Kaja stayed awake long enough to catch take-off, Hong Kong disappearing beneath them, and Harry’s eyes watching the cart as it approached fitfully with its joyful clink of bottles. And him closing his eyes and answering the stewardess with a barely audible, “No, thank you.”

  She wondered whether Gunnar Hagen was right, whether the man beside her was really what they needed.

  Then she was gone, unconscious, dreaming that she was standing in front of a closed door. She heard a lone, frozen birdcall from the forest and it sounded so strange because the sun was shining high in the sky. She opened the door …

  She woke with her head lolling on his shoulder and dried saliva at the corners of her mouth. The captain’s voice announced that they were approaching the runway at London Heathrow.

  5

  The Park

  Marit Olsen liked to ski in the mountains. But she hated jogging. She hated her wheezing gasps after only a hundred yards, the tremorlike vibrations in the ground as she planted each foot, the slightly bemused looks from walkers and the images that appeared when she saw herself through their eyes: the quivering chins, the flab that bounced around in the stretched tracksuit and the helpless, open-mouthed, fish-out-of-water expression she herself had seen on very overweight people who were exercising. That was one of the reasons she scheduled her three runs per week in Frogner Park for ten o’clock at night: The place was as good as deserted. The people who were there saw as little as possible of her as she puffed her way between the few lamps that illuminated the paths crisscrossing Oslo’s largest park. And of those few who saw her there were fewer still who recognized the Socialist MP for Finnmark. Forget “recognized.” There were few people who had ever seen Marit Olsen. When she spoke—usually on behalf of her home region—she did not attract the attention that others, her more photogenic colleagues, did. In addition, she had not said or done anything wrong in the course of the two sessions she had been sitting as a Stortinget representative. At least that was how she explained it to herself. The Finnmark Dagblad editor’s explanation, that she was a political lightweight, was no more than malicious wordplay on her physical appearance. The editor had not, however, ruled out the possibility that one day she might be seen in a Socialist government, since she met the most telling requirements: She was not educated, not male and not from Oslo.

  Well, he might have been right that her strengths did not lie in large, complicated castles in the air. But she had a common touch, she was folksy enough to know the opinions of ordinary men and women and she could be their voice here among all the self-centered, self-satisfied voters in the capital. For Marit Olsen shot from the hip. That was her real qualification; that was what had taken her to where she was, after all. With her verbal intelligence and wit—which southerners liked to call “northern Norwegian” and “gritty”—she was a sure winner in the few debates in which she had been allowed to participate. It was just a question of time before they would have to take note of her. So long as she could get rid of these extra pounds. Surveys proved that people had less confidence in overweight public figures, who were subconsciously perceived to be lacking in self-control.

  She came to an incline, clenched her teeth and slowed her pace, went into what seemed very much like a walk, if she was honest. Power walk. Yes, that’s what it was. The march toward power. Her weight was decreasing, her eligibility for office increasing.

  She heard the crunch of gravel behind her and automatically her back went rigid, her pulse rising a few further notches. It was the same sound she had heard while out jogging three days ago. And two days before that. Both times someone had been running behind her for close to two minutes before the sound had gone. Marit had turned around on the previous occasion and seen a black tracksuit and a black hood, as though it were a commando training behind her. Except that no one, and especially not a commando, could find any purpose in jogging as slowly as Marit.

  Of course, she could not be sure that this was the same person, but something about the sound of the footsteps told her it was. There was just a bit of a slope up to the Monolith, then it was an easy downhill run home, to Skøyen, her husband and a reassuringly unprepossessing, overfed Rottweiler. The steps came closer. And now it was not so wonderful that it was ten at night and the park was dark and deserted. Marit Olsen was frightened of several things, but primarily she was frightened of foreigners. Yes, indeed, she knew it was xenophobia and ran counter to party policy, but fearing whatever is alien nevertheless constitutes a sensible survival strategy. Right now she wished she had voted against all the immigrant-friendly bills her party had pushed, and that she had shot from her notorious hip a bit more.

  Her body was moving all too slowly, her thigh muscles ached, her lungs were screaming for air and she knew that soon she would not be able to move at all. Her brain tried to combat the fear, tried to tell her she was not exactly an obvious target for rape.

  Fear had borne her aloft; she could see over the hill now, down to Madserud Allé. A car was reversing out of a driveway. She could make it—there was little more than a hundred yards left. Marit Olsen ran onto th
e slippery grass and down the slope, only just managing to stay on her feet. She could no longer hear the steps behind her; everything was drowned out by her panting. The car had backed onto the road now; there was a grinding of gears as the driver went from reverse to first. Marit was nearing the bottom, only a few yards before the road, the blessed cones of light emitted by the headlights. Her considerable body weight had a slight start on her in the descent, and now it was relentlessly pulling her forward, to the point that her legs could no longer keep up. She fell headlong into the road, into the light. Her stomach, encased in sweaty polyester, hit the pavement, and she half-slid, half-rolled forward. Then Marit lay still, the bitter taste of road dust in her mouth and her grazed palms stinging from contact with gravel.

  Someone was standing over her. Grabbed her shoulders. With a groan she rolled onto her side and held her arms over her face in defense. Not a commando, just an elderly man wearing a hat. The car door behind him was open.

  “Are you all right, frøken?” he inquired.

  “What do you think?” said Marit Olsen, feeling the anger boil inside her.

  “Wait! I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

  “Well, that’s a shock,” she said, waving away his helping hand and struggling noisily to her feet.

  “Aren’t you on that comedy show?”

  “You …” she said, staring into the dark, silent void of the park and massaging her notorious hip. “Mind your own fucking business, grandpa.”

  6

  Homecoming

  A Volvo Amazon, the last to roll out of the Volvo factory in 1970, had stopped in front of the pedestrian crossing by the arrivals terminal at Gardermoen Airport in Oslo.

  A line of nursery-school children paraded past the car in chafing rain gear. Some of them glanced with curiosity at the strange old car with rally stripes along the hood, and at the two men behind the windshield wipers that swished away the morning rain.

  The man in the passenger seat, Politioverbetjent (shortened to POB) Gunnar Hagen, knew that the sight of children walking in hand in hand ought to make him smile and think of solidarity, consideration for others and a society where everyone looked after everyone else. But Hagen’s first association was a search party hunting for a person they expected to find dead. That was what working as the head of Crime Squad did to you. Or, as some wit had written in English on Harry Hole’s office door: I SEE DEAD PEOPLE.

  “What the heck’s a nursery-school class doing at an airport?” asked the man in the driver’s seat. His name was Bjørn Holm, and the Amazon was his dearest possession. The mere smell of the noisy but uncannily efficient heater, the sweat-ingrained imitation leather and the dusty rear shelf gave him inner peace. Especially if it was accompanied by the engine at the right speed, that is, about fifty miles an hour on flat road, and Hank Williams on the cassette player. Bjørn Holm from Krimteknisk, the Forensics Unit in Bryn, was a hillbilly from Skreia with snakeskin cowboy boots, a moon face and bulging eyes, which lent him a constantly surprised expression. This face had caused more than one leader of an investigation to misjudge Bjørn Holm. The truth was that he was the greatest crime-scene talent since the glory days of Weber. Holm was wearing a soft suede jacket with fringes and a knitted Rastafarian hat, under which grew the most vigorous, intensely red sideburns Hagen had seen this side of the North Sea, and they as good as covered his cheeks.

  Holm swung the Amazon into the short-term parking lot, where it stopped with a gasp, and the two men got out. Hagen turned up his coat collar, which of course did nothing to prevent the rain from bombarding his shiny pate. It was wreathed by black hair so thick and so fertile that some suspected Gunnar Hagen of having perfectly normal hair growth but an eccentric hairdresser.

  “Tell me—is that jacket really waterproof?” Hagen asked as they strode toward the entrance.

  “Nope,” said Holm.

  Kaja Solness had called them while they were in the car and informed them that the Scandinavian Airlines plane had landed ten minutes early. And that she had lost Harry Hole.

  After entering through the swinging doors, Gunnar Hagen looked around, saw Kaja sitting on her suitcase by the taxi counter, signaled her with a brief nod and headed for the door to the customs area. He and Holm slipped in as it opened for passengers leaving. A guard moved to stop them, but nodded, indeed almost bowed, when Hagen held up his ID card and barked a curt “Police.”

  Hagen turned right and walked straight past the customs officials and their dogs, past the metal counters that reminded him of the carts at the Pathology Institute, and into the cubicle behind.

  There he came to such a sudden halt that Holm walked into him from behind. A familiar voice wheezed between clenched teeth. “Hi, boss. Regretfully, I’m unable to stand to attention right now.”

  Bjørn Holm peered over Hagen’s shoulder.

  It was a sight that would haunt him for years.

  Bent over the back of a chair was the man who was a living legend not just at Oslo Police HQ but in every police station across Norway, for good or ill. A man with whom Holm himself had worked closely. But not as closely as the male customs official standing behind the legend with a latex-clad hand, partially obscured by the legend’s pale white buttocks.

  “He’s mine,” Hagen said to the official, waving his ID card. “Let him go.”

  The official stared at Hagen and seemed reluctant to release him, but when an older officer with gold stripes on his epaulets came in and nodded briefly with closed eyes, the customs official twisted his hand around one last time and removed it. The victim gave a loud groan.

  “Get your pants on, Harry,” Hagen said, and turned away.

  Harry pulled up his trousers and said to the official peeling off the latex glove, “Was it good for you, too?”

  Kaja Solness rose from the suitcase when her three colleagues came back through the door. Bjørn Holm went to drive the car around while Gunnar Hagen went to get something to drink from the kiosk.

  “Are you often checked?” Kaja asked.

  “Every time,” Harry said.

  “Don’t think I’ve ever been stopped at customs.”

  “I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because there are a thousand small telltale signs they look for, and you have none of them. Whereas I have at least half.”

  “Do you think customs officers are so prejudiced?”

  “Well, have you ever smuggled anything?”

  “No.” She laughed. “OK, then, I have. But if they’re so good, they should have seen that you’re also a policeman. And let you through.”

  “They did see.”

  “Come on. That only happens in films.”

  “They saw, all right. They saw a fallen policeman.”

  “Oh, yes?” said Kaja.

  Harry rummaged for his pack of cigarettes. “Let your eyes drift over to the taxi counter. There’s a man with narrow eyes, a bit slanted. See him?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s tugged at his belt twice since we came out. As if there were something heavy hanging from it. A pair of handcuffs or a baton. An automatic reaction if you’ve been in patrol cars or in lockup for a few years.”

  “I’ve worked in patrol cars, and I’ve never—”

  “He’s working for Narc now and keeps an eye open for people who look a bit too relieved after passing through customs. Or go straight to the bathroom because they can’t stand having the goods up their rectum any longer. Or suitcases that change hands between a naïve, helpful passenger and the smuggler who got the idiot to carry the luggage containing all the dope through customs.”

  She tilted her head and squinted at Harry with a little smile playing on her lips. “Or he might be a normal guy whose pants keep slipping down, and he’s waiting for his mother. And you’re mistaken.”

  “Certainly,” said Harry, looking at his watch and the clock on the wall. “I’m always making mistakes. Is that really the time?”

  The Volvo
Amazon glided onto the highway as the streetlights came on.

  In the front seats Holm and Solness were deep in conversation as Townes Van Zandt sang in controlled sobs on the cassette player. In the backseat, Gunnar Hagen was stroking the smooth pig-leather briefcase he was holding on his lap.

  “I wish I could say you looked good,” he said in a low voice.

  “Jet lag, boss,” said Harry, who was lying more than sitting.

  “What happened to your jaw?”

  “It’s a long, boring story.”

  “Anyway, welcome back. Sorry about the circumstances.”

  “I thought I had handed in my resignation.”

  “You’ve done that before.”

  “So how many times do you want it?”

  Gunnar Hagen looked at his former inspector and lowered his eyebrows and voice even further. “As I said, I’m sorry about the circumstances. And I appreciate that the last case took a lot out of you. That you and your loved ones were involved in a way that … well, could make anyone wish for a different life. But this is your job, Harry, this is what you’re good at.”

  Harry sniffed as though he had already contracted the typical homecoming cold.

  “Two murders, Harry. We’re not even sure how they’ve been carried out, only that they’re identical. But thanks to recent costly experiences, we know what we’re facing.” The POB paused.

  “Doesn’t hurt to say the words, boss.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  Harry looked out at the snowless brown countryside. “People have cried wolf a number of times, but events have shown that a serial killer is a rare beast.”

  “I know.” Hagen nodded. “The Snowman is the only one we’ve seen in this country during my period in office. But we’re pretty certain this time. The victims have nothing to do with each other, and the sedative found in their blood is identical.”

  “That’s something. Good luck.”

  “Harry …”