The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  “The usual,” Harry said. “Fresh air, beautiful mountains.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “The fjord. Cliff jumping from Pulpit Rock, if we have time.”

  “So Oslo has sent us a comedian? You’re participating in an extreme sport—I can tell you that much. Any good reason why we were not informed of this visit?”

  Inspector Colbjørnsen’s smile was as thin as his mustache. He was sporting one of those funny little hats only very old men and super-self-aware hipsters have. Harry was reminded of “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection. And guessed that Colbjørnsen would not shy away from sucking a lollipop or stopping on his way out of the door with an “Oh, just one more thing.”

  “I would guess there must be a fax at the bottom of the in-tray,” Harry said, looking up at the man in the white outfit as he entered. The forensics officer’s overalls rustled as he took off his white hood and plumped down into a chair. He looked straight at Colbjørnsen and muttered a local profanity.

  “Well?” asked Colbjørnsen.

  “He’s right,” the crime scene officer said and nodded in Harry’s direction, without glancing at him. “The kid up there has been stuck to the bottom of the bathtub with Super Glue.”

  “ ‘Has been’?” said Colbjørnsen, looking at his subordinate with a quizzical eyebrow. “Passive form. Aren’t you a bit premature in ruling out the possibility that Elias Skog did it himself?”

  “And managed to turn on the tap so he would drown in the slowest, most painful manner conceivable?” Harry suggested. “After taping up his mouth so that he couldn’t scream?”

  Colbjørnsen sent Harry another razor-thin smile. “I’ll tell you when you can interrupt, Oslo.”

  “Stuck fast from top to toe,” the officer continued. “The back of his head was shaved and smeared with glue. The same with his shoulders and back. Buttocks. Arms. Both legs. In other words—”

  “In other words,” Harry said, “when the killer was finished with the gluing job, Elias had been lying there for a while and the adhesive had been hardening. He turned the tap a little way and left Elias Skog to a slow death by drowning. And Elias began his fight against time and death. The water rose slowly but his strength was ebbing away. Until mortal fear had him in its grip and gave him the energy for a last desperate attempt to pull himself free. And he did. He freed the strongest of his limbs from the bottom of the bathtub. His right leg. He simply tore it off, and you can see the skin left on the bath surface. Blood spurted into the water as Elias banged his foot to rouse the landlady downstairs. And she heard the banging.”

  Harry nodded toward the kitchen, where Kaja was trying to calm and console the elderly lady. They could hear her bitter sobs.

  “But she misunderstood. She thought her lodger was bonking a girl who had accompanied him home.”

  He looked at Colbjørnsen, who had turned pale and no longer exhibited any signs of wanting to interrupt.

  “And all the time Elias was losing blood. A lot of blood. All the skin from his leg was gone. He became weaker, more tired. In the end, his determination began to fade. He gave up. Perhaps he was already unconscious from loss of blood as the water rose into his nostrils.” Harry fixed his eyes on Colbjørnsen. “Or perhaps not.”

  Colbjørnsen’s Adam’s apple was running a shuttle service.

  Harry looked down at the dregs in the coffee cup. “And now I think Detective Solness and I should thank you for your hospitality and return to Oslo. Should you have any more questions, you can reach me here.” Harry jotted down a number in the margin of a newspaper, tore it off and passed it over the table. Then he got to his feet.

  “But …” said Colbjørnsen, getting to his feet as well. Harry towered eight inches above him. “What was it you wanted with Elias Skog?”

  “To save him,” Harry said, buttoning up his coat.

  “Save? Was he mixed up in something? Wait, Hole—we have to get to the bottom of this.” But there was no longer the same authority in Colbjørnsen’s voice.

  “I’m sure you officers in the Stavanger force are perfectly capable of working this out for yourselves,” Harry said, walking to the kitchen door and motioning to Kaja that they were leaving. “If not, I can recommend Kripos. Say hello to Mikael Bellman from me, if you have to.”

  “Save him from what?”

  “From what we were unable to save him from,” Harry said.

  In the taxi on the way to Sola, Harry stared out of the window at the rain hammering down on the unnaturally green fields. Kaja didn’t say a word. For which he was grateful.

  26

  The Needle

  Gunnar Hagen was in Harry’s chair waiting for them when Harry and Kaja stepped into the hot, damp office.

  Bjørn Holm, who was sitting behind Hagen, shrugged and gestured that he didn’t know what the POB wanted.

  “Stavanger, I hear,” Hagen said, getting up.

  “Yes,” Harry said. “Don’t get up, boss.”

  “It’s your chair. I’ll be going soon.”

  “Oh?”

  Harry inferred that it was bad news. Bad news of a certain significance. Bosses don’t hasten down the culvert to Botsen Prison to tell you your travel invoice has been completed incorrectly.

  Hagen remained standing, so Holm was the only person in the room to be seated.

  “I’m afraid I have to inform you that Kripos has already discovered that you are working on the murders. And I have no choice but to close the investigation.”

  In the ensuing silence Harry could hear the boiler rumbling in the adjacent room. Hagen ran his eyes over them, meeting each gaze in turn and stopping at Harry. “I can’t say this is an honorable discharge, either. I gave you clear instructions that this was to be a discreet operation.”

  “Well,” Harry said, “I asked Beate Lønn to leak information about a certain ropery to Kripos, but she promised she would do it in a way that made Krimteknisk appear to be the source.”

  “And I’m sure she did,” Hagen said. “It was the county officer in Ytre Enebakk who gave you away, Harry.”

  Harry rolled his eyes and uttered a low curse.

  Hagen clapped his hands together and a dry bang resounded between the brick walls. “So that’s why, sadly, I have to command you to drop all investigative work immediately. And to clear this office within forty-eight hours. Gomen nasai.”

  Harry, Kaja and Bjørn looked at one another as the iron door closed and Hagen’s hurried footsteps faded down the culvert.

  “Forty-eight hours,” Bjørn said at length. “Anyone want fresh coffee?”

  Harry kicked the garbage can beside the desk. It hit the wall with a crash, spilling its modest contents and rolling back toward him.

  “I’ll be at Rikshospital,” he said and strode toward the door.

  Harry had positioned the hard wooden chair by the window and listened to his father’s regular breathing as he flicked through the newspaper. A wedding and a funeral side by side. On the left, pictures of Marit Olsen’s funeral, showing the Norwegian prime minister’s serious, compassionate face, party colleagues’ black suits and the husband, Rasmus Olsen, behind a pair of large, unbecoming sunglasses. On the right, an article announcing that the shipping magnate’s daughter Lene would get her Tony in the spring, with photos of the (A-list) wedding guests who would all be flown into St. Tropez. On the back page, it said that the sun would go down today at precisely 5:15 in Oslo. Harry looked at his watch and established that it was in fact doing that now, behind the low clouds that would not release either rain or snow. He watched the lights coming on in all the homes on the side of the ridge around what had once been a volcano. In a way, it was a liberating thought that the volcano would open beneath them one day, swallow them up and remove all traces of what had once been a contented, well-organized and slightly sad town.

  Forty-eight hours. Why? It wouldn’t take them more than two hours to clear out their so-called office.

  Harry closed his eyes and considered
the case. Wrote a last mental report for his personal archive.

  Two women killed in the same way, drowning in their own blood, with ketanome in the bloodstream. One woman hanged from a diving tower, with a rope taken from an old ropery. One man drowned in his own bathtub. All the victims had probably been in the same cabin at the same time. They didn’t know yet who else had been there, what the motive behind the murders could be or what had gone on in the Håvass cabin that day or night. There was just effect, no cause. Case closed.

  “Harry …”

  He hadn’t heard his father wake, and he turned.

  Olav Hole looked renewed, but perhaps that was because of the color in his cheeks and the feverish glow in his eyes. Harry got up and moved his chair over to his father’s bedside.

  “Have you been here long?”

  “Ten minutes,” Harry lied.

  “I’ve slept so well,” Olav said. “And had such wonderful dreams.”

  “I can see. You look like you’re ready to get up and leave.”

  Harry plumped his pillow, and his father let him do it even though they both knew that it wasn’t necessary.

  “How’s the house?”

  “Fine,” Harry said. “It will stand forever.”

  “Good. There’s something I want to talk to you about, Harry.”

  “Mm?”

  “You’re a grown man now. You’ll lose me in a natural way. That’s how it should be. Not how you lost your mother. You were on the verge of going insane.”

  “Was I?” Harry said, straightening the pillowcase.

  “You demolished your room. You wanted to kill the doctors, those who had infected her, and even me. Because I had … well, because I hadn’t discovered it earlier, I suppose. You were so full of love.”

  “Of hatred, you mean?”

  “No, of love. It’s the same currency. Everything starts with love. Hatred is just the other side of the coin. I’ve always thought that your mother’s death was what drove you to drink. Or rather the love for your mother.”

  “Love is a killer,” Harry mumbled.

  “What?”

  “Just something someone once said to me.”

  “I did everything your mother asked me to do. Apart from one thing. She asked me to help her when the time came.”

  It felt as if someone had injected ice-cold water into Harry’s chest.

  “But I couldn’t. And do you know what, Harry? It has given me nightmares. Not a day has passed when I haven’t thought about not being able to fulfill that wish for her, for the woman I loved above all else on this earth.”

  The thin wooden chair creaked as Harry jumped up. He walked over to the window. He heard his father draw breath a couple of times behind him, deep, trembling. Then it came.

  “I know that this is a heavy burden to impose on you, son. But I also know that you’re like me—it will haunt you if you don’t. So let me explain what you do …”

  “Dad,” Harry said.

  “Can you see this hypodermic needle?”

  “Dad! Stop!”

  Everything went quiet behind him. Except for the rasp of his breathing. Outside, Harry saw the black-and-white film of a town with facelike clouds pressing their blurred, leaden-gray features against the rooftops.

  “I want to be buried in Åndalsnes,” his father said.

  Buried. The word sounded like an echo from Easter with Mom and Dad in Lesja, when Olav Hole, with great earnestness, explained to Harry and Sis what they should do if they were buried in an avalanche and they had constrictive pericarditis, a hardened sac around the heart that prevented it from expanding. An armored heart. Around them were flat fields and gently sloping ridges; it was a bit like when stewardesses on domestic flights over Inner Mongolia explain how to use life jackets. Absurd, but nevertheless it gave them a feeling of security, the sense that they would all survive if they just did the right things. And now Dad was saying that wasn’t true, after all.

  Harry coughed. “Åndalsnes … to be with Mom …?”

  Harry fell quiet.

  “And I want to lie alongside my fellow villagers.”

  “You don’t know them.”

  “Well, who do we know? At least they and I are from the same place. Perhaps ultimately that’s what it’s about. The tribe. We want to be with our tribe.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yes, we do. Whether we are aware of it or not, that’s what we want.”

  The nurse named Altman came in, flashed a quick smile at Harry and tapped his watch.

  Harry went downstairs and met two uniformed policemen on their way up. He nodded automatically; it was a convention. They stared at him in silence, as though he were a stranger.

  Usually Harry longed for solitude and all the benefits that came with it: peace, calm, freedom. But, standing at the tram stop, suddenly he didn’t know where to go. Or what to do. He just knew that being alone in the house in Oppsal would be unbearable right now.

  He dialed Øystein’s number.

  Øystein was on a long trip to Fagernes, but suggested a beer at Lompa at around midnight to celebrate the relatively satisfactory completion of another day in Øystein Eikeland’s life. Harry reminded Øystein that Harry was an alcoholic, and received the response that even an alcoholic had to go on a bender once in a while, didn’t he?

  Harry wished Øystein a safe journey and hung up. Glanced at his watch. And the question arose again. Forty-eight hours. Why?

  A tram stopped in front of him and the doors banged open. Harry peered into the invitingly warm, lit carriage. Then he turned and began to walk down toward town.

  27

  Kind, Light-Fingered and Tight-Fisted

  “I was in the vicinity,” Harry said. “But I suppose you’re on your way out.”

  “Not at all.” Kaja, who was standing in the doorway with a thick down jacket on, smiled. “I was sitting on the veranda. Come in. Take the slippers over there.”

  Harry removed his shoes and followed her through the living room. They each sat down on an enormous wooden chair on the covered veranda. It was quiet and deserted on Lyder Sagens Gate, only one parked car. But on the first floor of the house across the road Harry could see the outline of a man in an illuminated window.

  “That’s Greger,” Kaja said. “He’s eighty now. He’s sat like that and followed everything that’s happened on the street since the war, I think. I like to believe he looks after me.”

  “Yes, we need that,” Harry said, taking out a pack of cigarettes. “To believe someone is looking after us.”

  “Do you have a Greger as well?”

  “No,” Harry said.

  “Can I have one?”

  “A cigarette?”

  She laughed. “I smoke occasionally. It makes me … calmer, I think.”

  “Mm. Thought about what you’re going to do? After these forty-eight hours, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “Back to Crime Squad. Feet on the table. Wait for a murder that is trivial enough for Kripos not to whisk it away from under our noses.”

  Harry tapped out two cigarettes, put them between his lips, lit both and passed her one.

  “Now, Voyager,” she said. “Hen … Hen … What was the name of the man who did that?”

  “Henreid,” Harry said. “Paul Henreid.”

  “And the woman whose cigarette he lit?”

  “Bette Davis.”

  “Killer film. Would you like to borrow a thicker jacket?”

  “No, thanks. Why are you sitting on the veranda, by the way? It’s not exactly a tropical night.”

  She held up a book. “My brain is sharper in cold air.”

  Harry read the front cover. “Materialistic Monism. Hm. Long-forgotten fragments from philosophy studies spring to mind.”

  “Right. Materialism holds that everything is matter and energy. Everything that happens is a part of a larger calculation, a chain reaction, consequences of something that has already happened.”

  “And free will is i
llusory?”

  “Yep. Our actions are determined by our brain’s chemical composition, which is determined by who chose to have children with whom, which in turn is determined by their brain chemistry. And so on. Everything can be taken back to the big bang, for example, and even farther back. Including the fact that this book came to be written, and what you’re thinking right now.”

  “I remember that part.” Harry nodded and blew smoke into the winter night. “Made me think of the meteorologist who said that if only he had all the relevant variables he could forecast all future weather.”

  “And we could prevent murders before they took place.”

  “And predict that cigarette-cadging policewomen would sit on cold verandas with expensive philosophy books.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t buy the book myself; I found it on the shelf here.” She pouted and sucked at the cigarette, and got smoke in her eyes. “I never buy books—I only borrow them. Or steal them.”

  “I don’t exactly see you as a thief.”

  “No one does—that’s why I’m never caught,” she said, resting the cigarette on the ashtray.

  Harry coughed. “And why do you pilfer?”

  “I only steal from people I know and who can afford it. Not because I’m greedy, but because I’m a little cheap. When I was in college, I stole toilet-paper rolls from the school restrooms. By the way, have you thought of the title of the Fante book that was so good?”

  “No.”

  “Text me when you remember it.”

  Harry chuckled. “Sorry, I don’t text.”

  “Why not?”

  Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t like the concept. Like native people who don’t want their photo taken because they think they’ll lose a bit of their souls, maybe.”

  “I know!” she said with enthusiasm. “You don’t want to leave traces. Tracks. Irrefutable evidence of who you are. You want to know that you are going to disappear, utterly and totally.”

  “You’ve hit the nail on the head,” Harry said drily, and inhaled. “Do you want to go back in?” He nodded toward her hands, which she had put between her thighs and the chair.