The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

“Find someone qualified for the job, boss.”

  “You’re qualified.”

  “I’ve gone to pieces.”

  Hagen took a deep breath. “Then we’ll put you together again.”

  “Beyond repair,” Harry said.

  “You’re the only person in this country with the skills and the experience to deal with a serial killer.”

  “Fly in an American.”

  “You know very well things don’t work like that.”

  “Then I’m sorry.”

  “Are you? Two people dead so far, Harry. Young women …”

  Harry waved a dismissive hand when Hagen opened his briefcase and pulled out a brown file.

  “I mean it, boss. Thank you for buying my passport and all that, but I’m finished with photos and reports full of blood and gore.”

  Hagen gave Harry a wounded expression, but still kept the file on his lap.

  “Peruse this—that’s all I’m asking. And don’t tell anyone we’re working on this case.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?”

  “It’s complicated. Just don’t mention it to anyone, OK?”

  The conversation in the front of the car had died, and Harry focused on the back of Kaja’s head. Since Bjørn Holm’s Amazon had been made long before anyone used the term whiplash, there was no headrest, and, with her hair pinned up, Harry could see her slim neck, see the white down on her skin, and he mused about how vulnerable she was, how quickly things changed, how much could be destroyed in a matter of seconds. That was what life was: a process of destruction, a disintegration from what at the outset was perfect. The only suspense involved was whether we would be destroyed in one sudden act or slowly. It was a sad thought, yet he clung to it. Until they were through the Ibsen Tunnel, a gray, anonymous component of the capital’s traffic machinery that could have been in any city in the world. Nevertheless it was at that particular moment that he felt it. A huge, unalloyed pleasure at being here. In Oslo. Home. The feeling was so overwhelming that for a few seconds he was oblivious to why he had returned.

  Harry gazed at 5 Sofies Gate as the Amazon sailed out of view behind him. There was more graffiti on the front of the building than when he had left, but the blue paint beneath was the same.

  So he had refused to take the case. He had a father lying in the hospital. That was the only reason he was here. What he didn’t tell them was that if he’d had the choice of knowing about his father’s illness or not, he would have chosen not to know. Because he hadn’t returned out of love. He had returned out of shame.

  Harry peered up at the two black windows on the second floor that were his.

  Then he opened the door and walked into the backyard. The garbage can was standing where it always had. Harry pushed open the lid. He had promised Hagen he would take a look at the case file. Mostly so that his boss would not lose face—after all, the passport had cost Crime Squad quite a few kroner. Harry dropped the file onto the burst plastic bags leaking coffee grounds, diapers, rotten fruit and potato peels. He inhaled and wondered at how surprisingly international the smell of garbage was.

  Nothing had been touched in his two-room flat, yet something was different. A powder-gray hue, as though someone had just left but his frosty breath was still there. He went into the bedroom, put down his bag and fished out the unopened carton of cigarettes. Everything was the same there, gray as the skin of a two-day-old corpse. He fell back onto the bed. Closed his eyes. Greeted the familiar sounds. Such as the drip from the hole in the gutter onto the lead flashing around the window frame. It wasn’t the slow, comforting drip-drip from the ceiling in Hong Kong, but a feverish drumming, somewhere in the transition between dripping and running water, like a reminder that time was passing, the seconds were racing, the end of a number line was approaching. It had made him think of the main character in La Linea, the Italian cartoon, who, after four minutes, always ended up falling off the edge of the cartoonist’s line into oblivion.

  Harry knew that there was a half-full bottle of Jim Beam in the cupboard under the sink. Knew that he could start where he had left off in this flat. Shit, he had been wrecked even before he got into the taxi to the airport that day several months ago. No wonder he had not managed to drag himself to Manila.

  He could go straight into the kitchen now and pour the contents down the sink.

  Harry groaned.

  Wondering who she resembled was so much nonsense. He knew who she resembled. She resembled Rakel. They all resembled Rakel.

  7

  Gallows

  “But I’m scared, Rasmus,” said Marit Olsen. “That’s what I am!”

  “I know,” said Rasmus Olsen, in that muted, congenial voice that had accompanied and comforted his wife for more than twenty-five years, through political decisions, driving tests, bouts of fury and the odd panic attack. “It’s just natural,” he said, putting his arm around her. “You work hard, you have a lot on your mind. Your brain doesn’t have any spare capacity to shut out that kind of thought.”

  “That kind of thought?” she said, turning to face him on the sofa. She had lost interest in the DVD they were watching—Love Actually—a long time before. “That kind of thought, that kind of nonsense—is that what you mean?”

  “The important thing is not what I think,” he said, his fingertips poised to touch. “The important—”

  “Thing is what you think,” she said, mimicking his voice. “For Christ’s sake, Rasmus, you’ve gotta stop watching that Dr. Phil show.”

  He released a silky-smooth chuckle. “I’m just saying that you, as a member of Stortinget, can obviously ask for a bodyguard to accompany you if you feel threatened. But is that what you want?”

  “Mm,” she purred as his fingers began to massage the exact spot where she knew he knew she loved it. “What do you mean by what you want?”

  “Give it some thought. What do you imagine is going to happen?”

  Marit Olsen gave it some thought. Closed her eyes and felt his fingers massaging calm and harmony into her body. She had met Rasmus when she had been working at the Norwegian employment service in Alta, Finnmark. She had been elected as an official for NTL, a union for state employees, and they had sent her south to a training workshop at the Sørmarka Conference Center. There a thin man with vivid blue eyes beneath a fast-receding hairline had approached her the first evening. He had talked in a way that was reminiscent of redemption-happy Christians at the youth club in Alta. Except that he was talking politics. He worked in the secretariat for the Socialist party, helping MPs with practical office jobs, travel and the press and even, on the odd occasion, writing a speech for them.

  Rasmus had bought her a beer, asked if she wanted to dance and, after four increasingly slow popular numbers, with increasingly close physical contact, had asked if she wanted to join him. Not in his room, but in the party.

  After returning home she had started going to party meetings in Alta, and in the evenings she and Rasmus had long telephone conversations about what they had done and thought that day. Of course, Marit had never said it aloud: that sometimes she thought the best time they had spent together was when they were twelve hundred miles apart. Then the Appointments Committee had called, put her on a list and, presto, she was elected to the Alta Town Council. Two years later she was the vice chairperson of the Alta Socialist party, the next year she was sitting on the County Council, and then there was another telephone call, and this time it was the Appointments Committee for Stortinget.

  And now she had a tiny office in Stortinget, a partner who helped her with her speeches, and prospects of climbing the ladder as long as everything went according to plan—and she avoided blunders.

  “They’ll detail a policeman to keep an eye on me,” she said. “And the press will want to know why a woman MP no one has ever heard of should be walking around with a fucking bodyguard at the taxpayers’ expense. And when they find out why—she suspected someone had been following her in the park—they will write that with that k
ind of reasoning every woman in Oslo will be asking for state-subsidized police protection. I don’t want any protection. Drop it.”

  Rasmus laughed silently and used his fingers to massage his approval.

  The wind howled through the leafless trees in Frogner Park. A duck with its head drawn deep into its plumage drifted across the pitch-black surface of the lake. Rotting leaves stuck to the tiles of the empty pools at Frogner Park. The place seemed abandoned for all eternity, a lost world. The wind blew up a storm in the deep pool and sang its monotonous lament beneath the thirty-two-foot-high diving tower, which stood out against the night sky like a gallows.

  8

  Snow Patrøl

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Harry awoke. He opened his bag, put on a set of clean clothes, found a woolen coat in the closet and went out. The drizzle roused Harry enough for him to look moderately sober as he entered the brown smoky rooms of Schrøder’s. His table was taken, so he went into the corner, under the TV.

  He looked around. He spotted a couple of people he hadn’t seen before, hunched over beer glasses; otherwise time had stood still. Rita came and placed a white mug and a steel carafe of coffee in front of him.

  “Harry,” she said. Not as a form of welcome, but to confirm that it was indeed he.

  Harry nodded. “Hi, Rita. Old newspapers?”

  Rita scuttled off to the back room and returned with a pile of yellowing papers. Harry had never been given a clear explanation as to why they kept newspapers at Schrøder’s, but he had benefited from this arrangement on more than one occasion.

  “Been a long time,” said Rita, and was gone. And Harry remembered what he liked about Schrøder’s, apart from its being the closest bar to his flat. The short sentences. And respect for your private life. Your return was noted; no elucidation was required.

  Harry downed two mugs of the surprisingly unpleasant coffee while flicking through the newspapers in a fast-forward kind of way, to furnish himself with a general perspective of what had happened in the kingdom over the last months. Not much, as usual. Which was what he liked best about Norway.

  Someone had won Norwegian Idol, a celeb had been eliminated from a dance competition, a soccer player in the third division had been caught taking cocaine and Lene Galtung, daughter of the shipping magnate Anders Galtung, had preinherited some of the millions and gotten engaged to a better-looking but presumably less affluent man, an investor named Tony. The editor of Liberal, Arve Støp, wrote that it was beginning to be embarrassing that Norway, which wanted to stand out as a social-democratic model, was still a monarchy. Nothing had changed.

  In the December newspapers Harry saw the first articles about the murders. He recognized Kaja’s description of the crime scene, a basement in an office complex under construction in Nydalen. The cause of death was unclear, but the police suspected foul play.

  Harry thumbed through, preferring to read about a politician who boasted that he was resigning to spend more time with his family.

  Schrøder’s newspaper archives were by no means complete, but the second murder appeared in a paper dated a couple of weeks later.

  The woman had been found behind a wrecked Datsun dumped at the edge of some woods by Lake Dausjøen in Maridalen. The police did not rule out a “criminal act,” but nor did they reveal any details about the cause of death.

  Harry’s eyes scanned the article and established that the reason for police silence was the usual: They had no leads, nada; the radar was sweeping across an open sea of nothingness.

  Only two murders. Yet Hagen had seemed so certain of his facts when he said this was a serial killer. So what was the connection? What was it that the press didn’t say? Harry could feel his brain beginning to pursue the old, familiar paths; he cursed himself for his inability to refrain and continued to leaf through.

  When the coffee carafe was empty, he left a crumpled banknote on the table and went into the street. He tightened his coat around him and squinted up at the gray sky.

  He hailed a taxi, which pulled over to the curb. The driver leaned across and the rear door swung open. A trick you rarely saw nowadays, and one Harry decided to reward with a tip. Not just because he could step right in, but because the window in the door had reflected a face at the wheel of a car parked behind the cab.

  “Rikshospital,” Harry said, wriggling to the middle of the backseat.

  “Right away,” said the driver.

  Harry studied the rearview mirror as they drove off. “Oh, could you go to Five Sofies Gate first, please?”

  At Sofies Gate the taxi waited, its diesel engine clattering away, while Harry mounted the staircase with long, quick strides and his brain assessed the range of possibilities. The triad? Herman Kluit? Or good old paranoia? The gear lay where he had left it before taking off, in the toolbox in the food cupboard. The old, expired ID card. Two sets of Hiatt handcuffs with a spring-loaded arm for speed-cuffing. And the service revolver, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson.

  Returning to the street, he looked neither left nor right, just jumped straight into the taxi.

  “Rikshospital?” asked the driver.

  “Drive in that direction, at any rate,” Harry answered, studying the mirror as they turned up Stensberggata and then Ullevålsveien. He saw nothing. Which meant one of two things. It was good old paranoia. Or the guy was a pro.

  Harry hesitated, then said finally, “Rikshospital.”

  He continued to keep an eye on the mirror as they passed Vestre Aker Church and Ullevål University Hospital. Whatever he did, he mustn’t lead them straight to where he was most vulnerable. Where they would always try to strike. The family.

  The country’s biggest hospital was situated high above the town.

  Harry paid the driver, who thanked him for the tip and repeated the trick with the rear door.

  The façades of the buildings rose in front of Harry and the low cloud cover seemed to sweep away the roofs.

  He took a deep breath.

  Olav Hole’s smile from the hospital pillow was so gentle and frail that Harry had to swallow.

  “I was in Hong Kong,” Harry replied. “I had to do some thinking.”

  “Did you get it done?”

  Harry shrugged. “What do the doctors say?”

  “As little as possible. Hardly a good sign, but I’ve noticed that I prefer it like that. Tackling life’s realities has, as you know, never been our family’s strong suit.”

  Harry wondered whether they would talk about Mom. He hoped not.

  “Do you have a job?”

  Harry shook his head. His father’s hair hung over his forehead, so tidy and white that Harry felt as if it weren’t his hair but an accessory that had been handed out with the pajamas and slippers.

  “Nothing?” his father said.

  “I’ve had an offer to lecture at a police college.”

  It was almost the truth. Hagen had offered him that after the Snowman case, as a kind of leave of absence.

  “Teacher?” His father chuckled cautiously, as if any further effort would be the end of him. “I thought one of your principles was never to do anything I had done.”

  “It was never like that.”

  “That’s all right. You’ve always done things your way. This police stuff … Well, I suppose I should just be grateful you haven’t done what I did. I’m no model for anyone to follow. You know, after your mother died …”

  Harry had been sitting in the white hospital room for twenty minutes and already felt a desperate urge to flee.

  “After your mother died, I struggled to make sense of anything. I retreated into my shell, found no joy in anyone’s company. It was as though loneliness brought me closer to her, or so I thought. But it’s a mistake, Harry.” His father’s smile was as gentle as an angel’s. “I know losing Rakel hit you hard, but you mustn’t do what I did. You mustn’t hide, Harry. You mustn’t lock the door and throw away the key.”

  Harry looked down at his hands, nodded an
d felt ants crawling all over his body. He had to have something, anything.

  A nurse came in, introduced himself as Altman, held up a syringe and said, with a slight lisp, that he was going to give “Olav” something to help him sleep. Harry felt like asking if he had something for him, too.

  His father lay on his side, the skin on his face sagging; he looked older than he had on his back. He gazed at Harry with heavy, blank eyes.

  Harry stood up so abruptly that the chair legs scraped loudly on the floor.

  “Where are you going?” Olav asked.

  “Out for a smoke,” Harry said. “I won’t be long.”

  Harry sat on a low brick wall with a view of the parking lot and lit up a Camel. On the other side of the highway he could see Blindern and the university buildings where his father had studied. There were those who asserted that sons always became, to some degree or other, disguised variants of their fathers, that the experience of breaking out was never more than an illusion; you returned; the gravity of blood was not only stronger than your willpower, it was your willpower. To Harry it had always seemed he was evidence of the contrary. So why had seeing his father’s naked, ravaged face on the pillow been like looking into a mirror? Listening to him speak like hearing himself? Hearing him think, the words … like a dentist’s drill that found Harry’s nerves with unerring accuracy. Because he was a copy. Shit! Harry’s searching gaze had found a white Corolla in the parking lot.

  Always white—that was the most anonymous color. The color of the Corolla outside Schrøder’s, the one with the face behind the wheel, the same face that had stared at him with its narrow, slanting eyes less than twenty-four hours before.

  Harry tossed away his cigarette and hurried inside. Slackened his pace when he entered the corridor leading to his father’s room. He turned where the corridor widened to an open waiting area and pretended to search through a pile of magazines on the table while scanning the people sitting there from the corner of his eye.