The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  “I didn’t mean to criticize you.”

  “I promise to be better in my next life,” Harry said, looking down and rubbing his neck. “Which, if the Hindus are right, will probably be as a bark beetle. But I’ll be a nice bark beetle.”

  He looked up and saw that what Rakel called his “damned boyish charm” was having an effect. “Listen, Kaja, I’ve come here to make you an offer.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.” Harry heard the solemnity in his voice. The voice of a man with no capacity to forgive, no consideration, no thoughts for anything except his own objectives. And plied the inverted persuasion technique that had worked for him far too often. “Which I would recommend you decline. I have, you see, a tendency to destroy the lives of those I become involved with.”

  To his astonishment, he saw that her face had flushed scarlet.

  “But I don’t think it would be right to do this without you,” he continued. “Not now that we’re so close.”

  “Close … to what?” The blush had gone.

  “Close to apprehending the guilty party. I’m on my way to the prosecutor now to request a warrant for his arrest.”

  “Oh … of course.”

  “Of course?”

  “I mean, arrest whom?” She heaved herself back to the desk. “For what?”

  “Our killer, Kaja.”

  “Really?” He watched her pupils grow slowly, pulsating. And knew what was going on inside her. The blood rush before bringing down, felling the wild animal. The arrest. Which would be on her CV. How could she resist?

  Harry nodded. “His name is Tony Leike.”

  The color returned to her cheeks. “Sounds familiar.”

  “He’s about to marry the daughter of—”

  “Oh, yes, he’s engaged to the Galtung girl.” She frowned. “Do you mean to say you have evidence?”

  “Circumstantial. And coincidences.”

  He saw her pupils contract again.

  “I’m sure this is our man, Kaja.”

  “Convince me,” she said, and he could hear the hunger. The desire to swallow everything raw, to have a pretext for making the craziest decision of her life so far. And he had no intention of protecting her against herself. For he needed her. She was media-perfect: young, intelligent, a woman, ambitious. With an appealing face and record. In short, she had everything he did not have. She was a Joan of Arc the Ministry of Justice would not want to burn at the stake.

  Harry breathed in. Then he repeated the conversation he had had with Tony Leike. In detail. Without wondering at how he was able to reproduce what had been said word for word. His colleagues had always considered this ability remarkable.

  “Håvass cabin, Congo and Lake Lyseren,” Kaja said after he had finished. “He’s been to all the places.”

  “Yes, and he’s been convicted for violence. And he admits his intention was to kill.”

  “Great. But—”

  “The really great part comes now. He called Elias Skog. Two days before Skog was found murdered.”

  Her pupils were black suns.

  “We’ve got him,” she said softly.

  “Does the we mean what I think it does?”

  “Yes.”

  Harry sighed. “You realize the risks of joining me in this? Even if I’m right about Leike, there’s no guarantee that this arrest and a successful prosecution of the case are enough to tip the balance of power in Hagen’s favor. And then you’ll be in the doghouse.”

  “What about you?” She leaned across the desk. Her tiny piranha teeth glistened. “Why do you think it’s worth the risk?”

  “I’m a washed-up cop with little to lose, Kaja. For me, it’s this or nothing. I can’t do Narc or Sexual Offenses, and Kripos will never make me an offer. But for you personally this is probably a poor decision.”

  “My decisions usually are,” she said, serious now.

  “Good,” Harry said, standing up. “I’ll go and get the prosecutor. Don’t run away.”

  “I’ll be here, Harry.”

  Harry pivoted straight into the face of a man who had clearly been standing in the doorway for some time.

  “Sorry,” the man said with a broad smile. “I’d just like to borrow the lady for a while.”

  He nodded toward Kaja, laughter dancing in his eyes.

  “Be my guest,” Harry said, giving the man his abbreviated form of a smile, and strode off down the corridor.

  “Aslak Krongli,” Kaja said. “What brings a country boy to the big bad city?”

  “The usual, I suppose,” said the officer from Ustaoset.

  “Excitement, neon lights and the buzz of the crowd?”

  Aslak smiled. “Work. And a woman. Can I take you out for a cup of coffee?”

  “Not right now,” Kaja said. “Things are happening, so I have to hold the fort. But I’d be happy to buy you a cup in the cafeteria. It’s on the top floor. If you go ahead, that’ll give me time to make a phone call.”

  He gave her a thumbs-up and was gone.

  Kaja closed her eyes and drew in a long, quivering breath.

  The prosecutor’s office was on the sixth floor, so Harry didn’t have far to walk. The lawyer on duty, a young woman who had obviously been taken on since Harry last visited the office, peered over her glasses as he stepped in.

  “Need a blue chit,” Harry said.

  “And you would be?”

  “Harry Hole, Inspector.”

  He presented his ID card even though he could see from her somewhat frenetic reaction that she had heard of him. He could just imagine what, and decided not to go there. For her part, she noted down his name on the search-and-arrest warrant and scrutinized his card with an exaggerated squint, as though the spelling were extremely complicated.

  “Two check marks?” she asked.

  “Fine,” Harry said.

  She put a check next to “arrest” and “search” and leaned back in her chair in a way that Harry bet was a copy of the you’ve-got-thirty-seconds-to-persuade-me pose she had seen more seasoned lawyers adopt.

  Harry knew from experience that the first argument was the weighty one—that was when prosecutors made up their minds—so he started with the call Leike had made to Elias Skog two days before the murder. This despite Leike’s assertions when talking to Harry that he didn’t know Skog and hadn’t spoken to him at the cabin. Argument number two was the assault conviction that Leike admitted was attempted murder, and Harry could already see that the blue chit was in the bag. So he spiced things up with the coincidences of the Congo and Lake Lyseren, without entering into too much detail.

  She removed her glasses.

  “Basically, I’m sympathetic,” she said. “However, I need to give the matter a little more thought.”

  Harry cursed inwardly. A more experienced lawyer would have given him the warrant there and then, but she was so green she didn’t dare without consulting one of the others. There should have been an “in training” sign on her door, so that he could have gone to one of the others. Now it was too late.

  “It’s urgent,” Harry said.

  “Why’s that?”

  She had him there. Harry made an airy gesture with his hand, the kind that is supposed to say everything, but says nothing.

  “I’ll make a decision right after lunch”—she pointedly peered down at the form—“Hole. I’ll put the blue chit in your mailbox, if it gets clearance.”

  Harry clenched his teeth to make sure he didn’t say anything hasty. Because he knew she was behaving in a proper manner. Naturally, she was overcompensating for the fact that she was young, inexperienced and a woman in a male-dominated world. But she showed a determination to be respected; from the outset she demonstrated that the steamroller technique would not work on her. Well done. He felt like grabbing her glasses and smashing them.

  “Could you call my inside line when you’ve made up your mind?” he said. “For the moment my office is quite a distance from the mailboxes.”

 
; “Fine,” she said graciously.

  Harry was in the culvert, about fifty yards from the office, when he heard the door open. A figure came out, hastily locked up after himself, turned and began to hurry toward Harry. And stiffened when he caught sight of him.

  “Did I startle you, Bjørn?” Harry asked gently.

  The distance between them was still over twenty yards, but the walls cast the sound toward Bjørn Holm.

  “A little,” said the man from Toten, straightening the multicolored Rasta hat covering his red hair. “You sneak up on people.”

  “Mm. And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What are you doing here? I thought you had enough to do in Kripos. You’ve been given a wonderful new job, I hear.” Harry stopped two yards from Holm, who was obviously taken aback.

  “Not sure about wonderful,” Holm said. “I’m not allowed to work on what I like best.”

  “Which is?”

  “Forensics. You know me.”

  “Do I?”

  “Eh?” Holm frowned. “Coordination of forensics and strategic planning—what’s that s’posed to be when it’s at home? Passing on messages, calling meetings, sending out reports.”

  “It’s a promotion,” Harry said. “The start of something good, don’t you think?”

  Holm snorted. “Know what I think? I think Bellman’s put me there to keep me out of the loop, to make sure I don’t get any firsthand info. Because he suspects that if I do, he’s not sure he’ll get it before you.”

  “But he’s mistaken there,” Harry said, standing face-to-face with the forensics officer.

  Bjørn Holm blinked twice. “What the fuck is this, Harry?”

  “Yes, what the fuck is it?” Harry heard the anger making his voice tight, metallic. “What the fuck were you doing in the office, Bjørn? All your crap is gone now.”

  “Doing?” Bjørn said. “Fetching this.” He held up his right hand. It was clutching a book. “You said you’d leave it in reception, remember?”

  Hank Williams: The Biography.

  Harry felt shame flood into his cheeks.

  “Mm.”

  “Mm,” Bjørn mimicked.

  “I had it with me when we moved out,” Harry said. “But we did a U-turn halfway down the culvert and came back. Then I forgot all about it.”

  “OK. Can I go now?”

  Harry stepped aside, and listened to Bjørn stomping down the culvert between curses.

  He unlocked the office.

  Flopped into the chair.

  Looked around.

  The notebook. He flicked through. He hadn’t taken any notes from the conversation, nothing that would pinpoint Tony Leike as a suspect. Harry opened the drawers in the desk to see if there were any signs of someone having rifled them. It all looked untouched. Could Harry have been wrong after all? Could he hope that Holm was not leaking information to Mikael Bellman?

  Harry glanced at his watch. Praying the new prosecutor ate quickly. He struck an arbitrary key on the computer and the screen came to life. It was still showing the page with his last Google search. In the search box the name shone out at him: Tony Leike.

  41

  The Blue Chit

  “So,” said Aslak Krongli, twirling his coffee cup.

  Kaja thought it looked like an egg cup in his large hand. She had taken a seat opposite him at the table closest to the window. The police cafeteria was situated on the top floor and was of standard Norwegian design—that is, light and clean, but not so cozy that people would be tempted to sit for longer than necessary. The great advantage of the room was its view of the town, but that didn’t seem to interest Krongli much.

  “I checked the guest books at the other self-service cabins in the area,” he went on. “The only people who had written in the book that they were planning to spend the next night at Håvass cabin were Charlotte Lolles and Iska Peller, who were in Tunvegg the night before.”

  “And we already know about them,” Kaja said.

  “Yes. So in fact I have only two things that might be of interest to you.”

  “And they are?”

  “I was speaking on the phone to an elderly couple who were at the Tunvegg cabin the same night as Lolles and Peller. They said that a man had turned up in the evening, had a bite to eat, changed his shirt, then went on his way heading southwest. Even though it was dark. And the only cabin in that direction is Håvass.”

  “And this person …”

  “They barely saw him. Seemed as if he didn’t want to be seen, either; he didn’t take off his balaclava or his old-fashioned slalom goggles, not even when changing his shirt. The wife said she thought he might have had a serious injury at one time.”

  “Why was that?”

  “She could only remember thinking this, couldn’t say why. Nevertheless, he might have changed direction when he was out of sight, and skied to another cabin.”

  “Suppose so,” Kaja said, checking her watch.

  “Anyone come forward in response to your crime alert, by the way?”

  “No,” Kaja said.

  “You look as though you mean yes.”

  Kaja’s eyes shot up at Aslak Krongli, who reacted by holding up his palms. “Country clod in town! Sorry—I didn’t mean anything by that.”

  “All right,” Kaja said.

  They both inspected their coffee cups.

  “You said there were two things I might be interested in,” Kaja said. “What’s the second?”

  “I know I’m going to regret saying this,” Krongli said. The quiet laughter was back in his eyes.

  Kaja guessed immediately which direction the conversation was going to take and knew he was right: He would regret it.

  “I’m staying at the Plaza and wondered if you would like to have dinner with me there tonight.”

  She could see by his expression that her own was not difficult to read.

  “I don’t know anyone else in town,” he said, contorting his mouth into a grimace that might have been intended as a disarming smile. “Apart from my ex, that is, and I don’t dare call her.”

  “Would’ve been nice …” Kaja began, and paused. Past Conditional. She saw that Aslak Krongli was already regretting his approach. “But I’m afraid I’m otherwise engaged.”

  “Fine—this was short notice.” Krongli smiled, threaded his fingers through his unruly, curly hair. “What about tomorrow?”

  “I … er, I’m pretty busy these days, Aslak.”

  Krongli nodded, apparently to himself. “Of course. Of course you’re busy. The man who was in your room when I arrived is perhaps the reason?”

  “No, I’ve got new bosses now.”

  “It wasn’t bosses I had in mind.”

  “Oh?”

  “You said you were in love with a policeman. And it seemed to me he didn’t have much difficulty persuading you. Less than me, anyway.”

  “No, no, that wasn’t him! Are you out of your mind? I … erm, must have had too much to drink that night.” Kaja could hear her own inane laughter and felt the blood rising up her neck.

  “Oh, well,” Krongli said, finishing his coffee. “I’ll have to go out into the big, cold city. I suppose there are museums to visit and bars to patronize.”

  “Yes, you have to make the most of the opportunity.” He arched an eyebrow and his eyes danced. The way Even’s had at the end.

  Kaja accompanied him out. As he shook her hand, she couldn’t help herself. “Call me if it gets too lonely and I’ll see if I can slip away.”

  She interpreted his smile as gratitude for allowing him the chance to decline an offer or at least to decide not to take her up on it.

  Standing in the elevator to the sixth floor, Kaja was reminded of what he had said, “… didn’t have much difficulty persuading you.” How long had he actually been standing there by the door, eavesdropping?

  At one o’clock the telephone in front of Kaja rang.

  It was Harry. “I’ve finally got the blue c
hit. Ready?”

  She could feel her heart beating faster. “Yes.”

  “Vest?”

  “Vest and a weapon.”

  “Delta will take care of weapons. They’re ready in a vehicle outside the garage, just have to go down. And bring the blue chit from my mailbox, OK?”

  “OK.”

  Ten minutes later they were in one of Delta’s blue twelve-seaters heading west through downtown. Kaja listened to Harry explaining that he had called Leike half an hour earlier at the building where he rented an office and they had said he was working off-site today. Harry had called his home number on Holmenveien, Tony Leike had answered and Harry had hung up. To lead the operation, Harry had specifically requested Milano, a dark, squat man with massive eyebrows, who did not have a drop of Italian blood in his veins, despite his surname.

  They passed through the Ibsen Tunnel, and rectangles of reflected light slid over the helmets and visors of the eight elite officers, who appeared to be in deep meditation.

  Kaja and Harry sat in the rear seat. Harry was wearing a black jacket with POLITI written in large yellow letters at the front and back, and had taken out his service revolver to check that there were bullets in all the chambers.

  “Eight men from Delta and a blender,” Kaja said, referring to the blue light rotating on the roof of the minivan. “Sure this isn’t a bit over the top?”

  “It has to be over the top,” Harry said. “If we want to attract attention to the person who initiated this arrest, then we need a bigger party factor than usual.”

  “Did you leak it to the press?”

  Harry eyed her.

  “If you want attention, I mean,” she said. “Imagine it—Leike, the celebrity, being arrested for the murder of Marit Olsen. They would pass up on the birth of a princess for that.”

  “And what about if his fiancée is there?” Harry said. “Or the mother? Are they going to be in the papers and on live TV, too?” He jerked the revolver and the cylinder clicked into place.

  “What are we going to do with the big party factor, then?”

  “The press come later,” Harry said. “They question the neighbors, passersby, us. They find out what a magnificent show it was. That’ll do me. No innocents involved, and we get our front page.”