The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  “Hey, Stine,” he said. “I think you’re avoiding me.”

  “Oh, hi, Elias,” she said, without shifting her gaze from the rain-wet pavement. Why had she sat so far back in the bus, so far from the driver?

  “You shouldn’t be out alone on a night like this, you know.”

  “Shouldn’t I?” she mumbled, hoping someone would come, anyone.

  “Don’t you read the newspapers? Those two women in Oslo. And now, the other day, that MP. What was her name again?”

  “No idea,” Stine lied, feeling her heart rate gallop.

  “Marit Olsen,” Elias said. “Socialist party. The other two were Borgny and Charlotte. Sure you don’t recognize the names, Stine?”

  “I don’t read newspapers,” Stine said. Someone had to come soon.

  “Great women, all three of them,” he said.

  “ ’Course, you knew them, didn’t you?” Stine regretted the sarcastic tone immediately. It was fear.

  “Not well though,” Elias said. “But the first impression was good. I’m—as you know—the kind who attaches a lot of importance to first impressions.”

  She stared at the hand he cautiously placed on her knee.

  “You …” she said, and even in that one syllable she could hear herself begging.

  “Yes, Stine?”

  She looked up at him. His face was as open as a child’s, his eyes genuinely curious. She wanted to scream, jump up, when she heard the steps and voice up by the driver. A passenger. A man. He came to the back of the bus. Stine tried to catch his eye, to make him understand, but the brim of his hat covered the upper half of his face, and he was busy checking his change and putting the ticket in his wallet. Her breathing was lighter when he took a seat right behind them.

  “It’s incredible that the police haven’t discovered the connection between them,” Elias said. “It shouldn’t be so difficult. They must know that all three women liked to go cross-country skiing in the mountains. They stayed at the cabin in Håvass on the same night. Do you think I should tell them?”

  “Maybe,” Stine whispered. If she was quick, perhaps she could squeeze past Elias and jump off the bus. But she had hardly articulated the thought in her mind before the hydraulics hissed, the doors slid shut and the bus set off. She closed her eyes.

  “I just don’t want to be involved. I hope you can understand that, Stine.”

  She nodded slowly, her eyes still closed.

  “Good. Then I can tell you about someone else who was there. Someone I’m sure you know.”

  24

  Stavanger

  “It smells of …” Kaja said.

  “Shit,” Harry said. “Cow variety. Welcome to the district of Jæren.”

  The dawn light leaked from the clouds sweeping across the spring-green fields. From behind stone walls cows stared mutely at their taxi. They were on their way downtown from Stavanger Sola Airport.

  Harry leaned forward between the front seats. “Could you speed it up, driver?” He held up his ID card. The driver beamed and gave it some gas, and they accelerated onto the highway.

  “Are you afraid we’re too late?” Kaja asked as Harry fell back.

  “Didn’t answer the phone, didn’t turn up for work,” Harry said, not needing to complete his reasoning.

  After he had spoken to Katrine Bratt the night before, Harry had skimmed over what he had noted down. He had the names, telephone numbers and addresses of two living persons who had probably stayed in a cabin in November with the three murder victims. He had checked his watch, worked out it was early morning in Sydney and called Iska Peller’s number. She had answered and sounded very surprised when Harry broached the topic of the Håvass cabin. She hadn’t been able to tell Harry much about the overnight stay because she had been stuck in a bedroom with a high fever. Perhaps because she had been wearing wet, sweaty clothes for too long, perhaps because skiing from cabin to cabin had been a baptism of fire for an inexperienced langlaufer like herself. Or perhaps simply because flu strikes at random. At any rate, she had only just managed to drag herself to Håvass, where she had been ordered straight to bed by her companion, Charlotte Lolles. There, Iska Peller had drifted in and out of dream-filled sleep as her body ached, sweated and froze in turn. Whatever had gone on among the others in the cabin, whoever they were, well, she hadn’t picked up anything, as she and Charlotte had been the first to arrive. The next day she had stayed in bed until the others had left, and she and Charlotte were collected on a snowmobile by a local policeman Charlotte had managed to contact. He had driven them to his place, where he had invited them to stay overnight since he said the only hotel was full. They had accepted, but that night they changed their minds and caught a late train to Geilo to stay at a hotel there. Charlotte hadn’t told Iska anything in particular about the night in the Håvass cabin. An uneventful night, apparently.

  Five days after the ski trip Iska had left Oslo for Sydney, still with a temperature, and had kept in regular email contact with Charlotte but hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. That is, until she received the shocking news that her friend had been found dead behind a wrecked car on the edge of some woods by Lake Dausjøen, just outside the urban sprawl of Oslo.

  Harry had explained to Iska Peller with some care, but without beating around the bush, that they were worried about the people who had been in the cabin on the night of November 7 and that, after hanging up, he would call the head of the crime division in Sydney South Police District, Neil McCormack, whom Harry had worked for on one occasion. McCormack, he said, would require further details from her and—even though Australia was a long way from Oslo—provide police protection until further notice. Iska Peller seemed to accept this with equanimity.

  Then Harry had called the second number he had been given, the number in Stavanger. He had tried four times, but no one had answered. He knew, of course, that this did not mean anything in itself. Not everyone slept with his cell switched on beside him. But Kaja Solness clearly did. She answered on the second ring, and when Harry said they were going to Stavanger on the first flight and that she should be on the airport express by five past six, she had uttered one word: “OK.”

  They had arrived at Oslo’s Gardermoen Airport at half past six and Harry had tried the number again, without success. An hour later they had landed at Stavanger Sola Airport, and Harry called with the same result. On their way to the taxi line, Kaja managed to contact the employer, who said that the person they were looking for had not turned up for work at the usual time. She had informed Harry, and he had gently placed his hand on the small of her back and led her firmly past the taxi line and into a taxi in the face of loud protests, which he met with: “Thank you, and may you have a wonderful day, folks.” It was exactly 8:16 when they arrived at the address, a white timber house in Våland. Harry let Kaja pay, got out and left the door open. Studied the house front, which revealed nothing. Inhaled the damp, fresh, though still mild Vestland air. Braced himself. Because he already knew. He might be mistaken, of course, but he knew with the same certainty that he knew Kaja would say, “Thank you,” after being given the receipt.

  “Thank you.” The car door closed.

  The name was next to the middle of the three bells, by the front door.

  Harry pressed the button and heard the bell ring somewhere in the house’s innards.

  One minute and three attempts later he pressed the bottom bell.

  The old lady who opened the door smiled at them.

  Harry noted that Kaja instinctively knew who should speak. “Hello, I’m Kaja Solness. We’re from the police. The floor above you isn’t answering. Do you know if anyone is at home?”

  “Probably. Even though it’s been quiet there this morning,” the lady said. And, on seeing Harry’s elevated eyebrows, hastened to add: “You can hear everything here, and I heard people last night. Since I rent out the flat I think I ought to keep an ear open.”

  “Keep an ear open?” Harry queried.

/>   “Yes, but I don’t stick …” The lady’s cheeks flushed pink. “There’s nothing wrong, is there? I mean, I’ve never had any problems at all with—”

  “We don’t know,” Harry said.

  “The best thing to do would be to check,” Kaja said. “So if you have a key …” Harry knew a variety of set phrases would be whirring around Kaja’s brain now, and waited for the continuation with interest. “Then we would like to assist you in ensuring that everything is in order.”

  Kaja Solness was a bright woman. If the house owner agreed to the proposal and they found something, the report would say they were summoned. There was no question of their having forced their way in or having ransacked the place without a warrant.

  The woman hesitated.

  “But you can also let yourself in after we’ve gone.” Kaja smiled. “And then call the police. Or the ambulance. Or …”

  “I think it’s best if you come with me,” the woman said after a deep furrow of concern entrenched itself in her brow. “Wait here and I’ll fetch the keys.”

  The flat they entered one minute later was clean, tidy and almost completely unfurnished. At once Harry recognized the silence that is so present, so oppressive, in bare flats in the morning, when the hustle and bustle of the working day is a scarcely audible noise on the outside. But there was also a smell he recognized. Glue. He spotted a pair of shoes, though no outdoor clothing.

  In the kitchenette there was a large teacup in the sink, and on the shelf above cans proclaiming they contained teas of unknown origin to Harry: oolong, Anji Bai Cha. They advanced through the flat. On the sitting-room wall was a picture Harry thought was K2, the popular killing machine of a mountain in the Himalayas.

  “Check that one, will you?” Harry asked, nodding to the door with a heart on it, and walked to what he assumed must be the bedroom door. He took a deep breath, pressed down the handle and pushed open the door.

  The bed was made, the room tidy. A window was ajar, no smell of glue, air as fresh as a child’s breath. Harry heard the landlady take up a position in the doorway behind him.

  “So odd,” she said. “I heard them last night, I did. But there was only one person’s steps.”

  “Them?” Harry said. “You’re sure there was more than one person?”

  “Yes, I heard voices.”

  “How many?”

  “Three, I would say.”

  Harry peered into the closet. “Men? Women?”

  “You can’t hear absolutely everything, I’m afraid.”

  Clothes. A sleeping bag and a knapsack. More clothes.

  “Why would you say there were three?”

  “After one left, I heard noises from up here.”

  “What sort of noises?”

  The landlady’s cheeks flushed again. “Banging. As if … well, you know.”

  “But no voices?”

  The landlady considered the question. “No, no voices.”

  Harry walked out of the room. And to his surprise saw that Kaja was still standing in the hall by the bathroom door. There was something about the way she was standing—as though facing a strong headwind.

  “Something up?”

  “Not at all,” Kaja said quickly, lightly. Too lightly.

  Harry went over and stood beside her.

  “What is it?” he asked in a whisper.

  “I … just have a tiny problem with closed doors.”

  “OK,” Harry said.

  “That’s … that’s just how I am.”

  Harry nodded. And that was when he heard the sound. The sound of allotted time, of a line running out, of seconds disappearing, a quick, hectic drumming of water that doesn’t quite flow and doesn’t quite drip. A tap on the other side of the door. And he knew he had not been mistaken.

  “Wait here,” Harry said. He pushed open the door.

  The first thing he noticed was that the smell of glue was even stronger inside.

  The second was that a jacket, a pair of jeans, pants, a T-shirt, two black socks, a hat and a thin wool sweater were lying on the floor.

  The third was that water was dripping in an almost continuous line from the tap into a bathtub so full that water was escaping down the overflow at the side.

  The fourth was that the water in the bath was red—blood, from what he could tell.

  The fifth was that the glazed eyes above the taped mouth of the naked, corpse-white person lying at the bottom of the bath faced the side. As if trying to glimpse something in the blind spot, something he hadn’t seen coming.

  The sixth was that he couldn’t see any indications of violence, no external injuries that would explain all the blood.

  Harry cleared his throat and wondered how he could ask the landlady in the most considerate way possible to come in and identify her lodger.

  But he didn’t have to; she was already at the door.

  “Omigod!” she groaned. And then, stressing every single syllable: “Oh my God!” And, finally, in a wailing tone invoking even greater emphasis: “Oh my Lord God Almighty …”

  “Is it …?” Harry began.

  “Yes,” the woman said with a tear-filled voice. “That’s him. That’s Elias. Elias Skog.”

  25

  Territory

  The woman had clasped her hands in front of her mouth, and mumbled through her fingers. “But what have you done, dear Elias? A vein?”

  “I’m not sure he did anything,” Harry said, leading her from the bathroom to the front door of the flat. “Could I ask you to call the police station in Stavanger and tell them to send forensics officers? Tell them we have a crime scene here.”

  “Crime scene?” Her eyes were large and black with shock.

  “Yes, say that. Use the emergency number, one-one-two, if you like. OK?”

  “Y-yes.”

  They heard the woman stomping down the stairs to her flat.

  “We’ve got about a quarter of an hour before they get here,” Harry said. They removed their shoes, put them in the hall and walked into the bathroom in stockinged feet. Harry looked around. The sink was full of long blond hair, and on the bench a tube was squeezed flat.

  “That looks like toothpaste,” Harry said, bending over the tube, trying not to touch it.

  Kaja went closer. “Super Glue,” she stated. “Strongest there is.”

  “That’s the stuff you shouldn’t get on your fingers, isn’t it?”

  “Works in no time. If your fingers are pressed together for too long, they’ll be stuck. Then you’ll either have to cut them apart or tug until the skin comes off.”

  Harry stared first at Kaja. Then at the body in the bath.

  “Fucking hell,” he said slowly. “This can’t be true …”

  POB Gunnar Hagen had had his doubts. Perhaps it was the stupidest thing he had done since he came to Police HQ. Forming a group to run an investigation, against the ministry’s orders, could get him into trouble. Making Harry Hole the leader was asking for trouble. And trouble had just knocked on the door and walked in. Now it was standing in front of him in the shape of Mikael Bellman. And as Hagen listened, he noticed the strange marks on the Kripos POB’s face, which were shining whiter than usual, as if they were illuminated by something red hot inside, cooled fission in a nuclear reactor, a potential explosion that was under control for the moment.

  “Beate Lønn from Krimteknisk asked us to carry out a cabin-to-cabin search in the Lake Lyseren area around an old ropery. One of her officers was said to have found out that the rope used to hang Marit Olsen originates from there. So far, so good …”

  Mikael Bellman rocked back on his heels. He hadn’t even taken off his floor-length trench coat. Gunnar Hagen steeled himself for what was to follow. Which came in painfully protracted form, with somewhat perplexed intonation.

  “But when we spoke to the officer in Ytre Enebakk, he told me that the herostratic Harry Hole was one of three officers involved in the investigation. Hence, one of your men, Hagen.”

 
; Hagen didn’t answer.

  “I assume you are aware of the consequences of placing yourself above Ministry of Justice orders, Hagen.”

  Hagen still didn’t answer, but he met Bellman’s glare.

  “Listen,” Bellman said, loosening a button on his coat and sitting down after all. “I like you, Hagen. I think you’re a good policeman, and I will need good men.”

  “When Kripos has total power, you mean?”

  “Exactly. I could benefit from having someone like you in a prominent position. You have a military academy background, you know the importance of thinking tactically, of avoiding battles you can’t win, of realizing when retreat is the best way to win …”

  Hagen nodded slowly.

  “Good,” Bellman said, rising to his feet. “Let’s say Harry Hole inadvertently found himself by Lake Lyseren; it was a coincidence, had nothing to do with Marit Olsen. And such coincidences are hardly likely to recur. Can we agree on that … Gunnar?”

  Hagen flinched involuntarily when he heard his first name in the other man’s mouth, like an echo of a first name he himself had once spoken, his predecessor’s, in an attempt to create a joviality for which there was no basis. But he let it go. For he knew that this was the kind of battle Bellman had been talking about. And that, furthermore, he was about to lose the war. And that the conditions of surrender that Bellman had offered him could have been worse. A lot worse.

  “I’ll have a word with Harry,” he said and took Bellman’s outstretched hand. It was like squeezing marble: hard, cold and lifeless.

  Harry took a swig and unhooked the final joint of his forefinger from the handle of the landlady’s translucent coffee cup.

  “So you’re Inspector Harry Hole from Oslo Police District,” said the man sitting on the opposite side of the landlady’s coffee table. He had introduced himself as Inspector Colbjørnsen, “with a C,” and now he repeated Harry’s title, name and affiliation with the stress on Oslo. “And what brings the Oslo Police to Stavanger, Herr Hole?”