The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  He inspected his front teeth in the hall mirror and checked that his silk tie was straight. The press were bound to be out in force.

  How long would he be able to keep Kaja? He thought he had detected some doubts in her last night. And a lack of enthusiasm in their lovemaking. But he also knew that as long as he was heading for the top, as he had been doing so far, he would be able to control her. It wasn’t that Kaja was a gold digger, with clear objectives of what he, as overall boss, could do for her own career. It wasn’t about intellect; it was pure biology. Women could be as modern as they liked, but when it came to submitting to the alpha male, they were still at primate level. However, if she was beginning to entertain doubts because she thought that he would never renounce his wife for her sake, perhaps it was time to give her some encouragement. After all, he needed her to feed him with inside info about Crime Squad for a while yet, until all the loose ends were tied up, until this battle was over. And the war won.

  He went over to the window while buttoning up his coat. The house they had taken over from his parents was in Manglerud, not the best area of town, if you asked the West Enders. But those who had grown up here had a tendency to stay; it was a quarter with soul. And it was his quarter. With a view over the rest of Oslo. Which would also soon be his.

  “They’re coming now,” the uniformed officer said. He stood in the doorway of one of the new interview rooms at Kripos.

  “OK,” Mikael Bellman said.

  Some interrogators liked to have the interviewee led to the room first, to keep him or her waiting, to make it clear who was in charge. So that they could enjoy the great entrance and go in hard right away while they had the perp at his or her most defensive and vulnerable. Bellman preferred to be seated and ready when the suspect was ushered in. To mark his territory, to announce who owned the room. He was still able to keep the suspect waiting while he skimmed through his papers, able to feel the nervousness mounting in the room and then—when the time was ripe—raise his eyes and shoot. But these were the fine details of interview techniques. Which, naturally, he was happy to discuss with other competent chief interrogators. Again, he checked that the red recording light was switched on. Fiddling with technical equipment after the suspect had arrived could spoil the preliminary establishment of status.

  Through the window he saw Beavis and Kolkka enter the adjacent office. Between them walked Tony Leike, whom they had brought from the lockup at Police HQ.

  Bellman took a deep breath. Yes, his pulse was a little faster now. A mixture of aggression and nerves. Tony Leike had declined the opportunity to have a lawyer present. In essence, of course, that was an advantage for Kripos; it gave them greater latitude. But at the same time it was a signal that Leike thought he had little to fear. Poor sucker. He can’t have known that Bellman had proof that Leike had called Elias Skog just before he was murdered. Skog, whose name Leike had claimed he didn’t even know.

  Bellman looked down at the papers and heard Leike entering the room. Beavis closed the door behind him, as he had been instructed.

  “Take a seat,” Bellman said without looking up.

  He heard Leike do what he was told.

  Bellman stopped at an arbitrary piece of paper and stroked his lower lip with a forefinger while slowly counting to himself, from one upward. The silence quivered in the small, enclosed room. One, two, three. He and his colleagues had been sent to a workshop on the new interrogation methods they were being instructed to use—so-called investigative viewing—the point of which, according to these ungrounded academic types, was openness, dialogue and trust. Four, five, six. Bellman had listened quietly—after all, the program had been chosen at the highest level—but what sort of characters did these people actually think Kripos interviewed? Sensitive but obliging souls who tell you everything you want to know in exchange for a shoulder to cry on? They insisted that the methods the police had employed until now, those used in the traditional nine-step American FBI model, were inhuman and manipulative and made innocent people confess to crimes they hadn’t committed, and therefore were counterproductive. Seven, eight, nine. OK, so say it put the odd suggestible chicken in the coop, but what was that compared with the grinning scum who strolled away, doubled over in laughter at “openness, dialogue and trust”?

  Ten.

  Bellman pressed his fingertips together and raised his eyes.

  “We know you called Elias Skog from Oslo, and that two days later you were in Stavanger. And that you killed him. These are the facts we have, but what I am wondering is why. Or didn’t you have a motive, Leike?”

  That was step one of the nine-step model drawn up by the FBI agents Inbau, Reid and Buckley: the confrontation, the attempt to use the shock effect to land a knockout punch right away, the declaration that the interrogators knew everything already, so there was no point denying guilt. This had one sole aim: confession. Here Bellman combined step one with another interviewing technique: linking one fact with one or several nonfacts. In this case he linked the incontestable date of the phone call with the contention that Leike had been to Stavanger and he was a killer. Hearing the proof for the first claim, Leike would automatically conclude that they also had concrete proof for the others. And that these facts were so simple and irrefutable that they could jump straight to the only thing left to answer: Why?

  Bellman saw Leike swallow, saw him bare his white milestone-size teeth in an attempted smile, saw the confusion in his eyes and knew that they had already won.

  “I didn’t call any Elias Skog,” Leike said.

  Bellman sighed. “Do you want me to show you the listed calls from Telenor?”

  Leike shrugged. “I didn’t call. I lost my cell phone a while back. Maybe someone called him using that?”

  “Don’t try to be smart, Leike. We’re talking about your landline.”

  “I didn’t call him—I’m telling you.”

  “I heard. According to official records, you live alone.”

  “Yes, I do. That is—”

  “Your fiancée sleeps over now and then. And sometimes you get up earlier than she does and go to work while she’s still in your house?”

  “That happens. But I’m at hers more often than not.”

  “Well, now. Does Galtung’s heiress daughter have a more luxurious pad than you, Leike?”

  “Maybe. Cozier, at any rate.”

  Bellman crossed his arms and smiled. “Nonetheless, if you didn’t call Skog from your house, she must have. I’m giving you five seconds to start talking sense to us, Leike. In five seconds, a patrol car on the streets of Oslo will receive orders to drive with sirens blaring to that cozy little pad of hers, handcuff her, bring her here and allow her to phone her father to tell him you’re accusing her of calling Skog. So that Anders Galtung can gather the meanest pack of hard-bitten lawyers in Norway for his daughter, and you gain a real adversary. Four seconds … three seconds.”

  Leike shrugged again. “If you think that’s enough to issue an arrest warrant for a young woman with a perfect, unblemished record, go ahead. But I somehow doubt it would be me who gained an adversary.”

  Bellman observed Leike. Had he underrated him, after all? He was more difficult to read now. Anyway, that was step one over. Without a confession. Fine, there were eight left. Step two in the nine-step model was to sympathize with the suspect by making his actions seem normal. But that presupposed he knew the motive or he was working with something he could make seem normal. A motive for killing all the guests who had happened to stay over at a ski cabin was not selfevident, over and above the obvious truism that most serial killers’ motives are hidden in the psyche where the majority of us never go. In his preparations Bellman had therefore decided to tread lightly on the sympathy step before jumping straight into the motivation step: giving the suspect a reason to confess.

  “My point, Leike, is that I’m not your adversary. I’m just someone who wants to understand why you do what you do. What makes you tick. You’re clearly an
able, intelligent person; you only have to look at what you’ve achieved in business. I’m fascinated by people who set objectives and pursue them, regardless of what others think. People who set themselves apart from the madding crowd of mediocrity. I may even say that I can recognize myself in that bracket. Maybe I understand you better than you think, Tony.”

  Bellman had asked a detective to call one of Leike’s stock exchange buddies to find out whether Leike preferred his first name pronounced as “Toeny” or “Tonny.” The answer was “Toeny.” Bellman hit the right pronunciation, caught his eye and attempted to hold it.

  “Now I’m going to say something perhaps I shouldn’t, Tony. Because of a number of internal issues, we can’t devote a lot of time to this case, and that is why I would like a confession. Normally we wouldn’t offer a deal to a suspect with such overwhelming evidence against him, but it would expedite procedures. And for a confession—which, in fact, we do not even need to obtain a conviction—I will offer you a reduced sentence, which will be considerable. I am afraid I’m restricted by legal guidelines with regards to offering a specific figure, but let’s just say between you and me that it will be considerable. All right, Tony? It’s a promise. And now it’s on tape.” He pointed to the red light on the table between them.

  Leike subjected Bellman to a long, reflective look. Then he opened his mouth. “The two who brought me in told me your name was Bellman.”

  “Call me Mikael, Tony.”

  “They also said you were a very intelligent man. Tough, but trustworthy.”

  “I think you will discover that to be borne out, yes.”

  “You said considerable, didn’t you?”

  “You have my word.” Bellman felt his pulse rising.

  “All right,” Leike said.

  “Good,” said Mikael Bellman lightly, touching his lower lip with thumb and forefinger. “Shall we start at the beginning?”

  “Fine,” Leike said, taking from his back pocket a piece of paper that Truls and Jussi must have let him keep. “I was given the dates and times by Harry Hole so this should be quick. Borgny Stem-Myhre died somewhere between ten and eleven p.m. on the sixteenth of December in Oslo.”

  “Correct,” Bellman said, sensing an incipient exultation in his heart.

  “I checked the calendar. At that time I was in Skien, in the Peer Gynt Room, Ibsen House, where I was talking about my coltan project. This can be confirmed by the person who arranged for the room and roughly one hundred and twenty potential investors who were present. I assume you know it takes about two hours to drive there. The next was Charlotte Lolles between … let’s see … it says between eleven o’clock and midnight on the third of January. At that time I was having dinner with a few minor investors in Hamar. Two hours by car from Oslo. By the way, I took the train, and I tried to find the ticket, but sadly without any luck.”

  He smiled in apology to Bellman, who had stopped breathing. And for a second Leike’s milestone teeth appeared between his lips as he concluded: “But I hope that at least some of the twelve witnesses present during the dinner may be regarded as reliable.”

  “Then he said there was a possibility he could be charged with the murder of Marit Olsen, because even though he had been at home with his fiancée, he had, in fact, also been alone for two hours skiing on the floodlit course in Sørkedalen that evening.”

  Mikael Bellman shook his head and stuffed his hands even deeper into his coat pockets as he examined The Sick Child.

  “At the time when Marit Olsen died?” Kaja asked, inclining her head and looking at the mouth of the pale, presumably dying girl. She generally concentrated on one thing whenever they met at the Munch Museum. Sometimes it could be the eyes, another time the landscape in the background, the sun or simply Edvard Munch’s signature.

  “He said that neither he nor the Galtung woman—”

  “Lene,” Kaja corrected.

  “Could remember exactly when, but it could have been quite late; it usually was, because he liked to have the course to himself.”

  “So Tony Leike could have been in Frogner Park instead. If he was in Sørkedalen he would have passed through the toll booths twice, on the way out and back in. If he has an AutoPASS on his windshield the time is automatically recorded. And then—”

  She had turned and stopped abruptly when she met his frigid eyes.

  “But of course you’ve already checked that,” she said.

  “We didn’t need to,” Mikael said. “He doesn’t have an AutoPASS—he stops and pays cash. And so there is no record of the journey.”

  She nodded. They strolled on to the next picture, stood behind a few Japanese tourists who were noisily pointing and gesticulating. The advantage of meeting at the Munch Museum during the week—apart from the fact that it lay between Kripos in Bryn and Police HQ in Grønland—was that it was one of those tourist destinations where you were guaranteed never to meet colleagues, neighbors or acquaintances.

  “What did Leike say about Elias Skog and Stavanger?” Kaja asked.

  Mikael shook his head again. “He said he could probably be charged with that one, too. Since he had slept alone that night, and thus had no alibi. So I asked him if he had gone to work the next day and he answered that he couldn’t remember, but he assumed he had turned up at seven, as usual. And that I could check with the receptionist at his office if I considered it important. I did, and it transpired that Leike had booked one of the meeting rooms for a quarter past nine. And, talking with a few of the investor types in the office, I found out that two of them had been at the meeting with Leike. If he had left Elias Skog’s place at three in the morning he would have needed a plane to make it. And his name is not on any passenger lists.”

  “That doesn’t mean much. He may have been traveling under a false name and ID. And anyway, we still have his phone call to Skog. How did he explain that away?”

  “He didn’t even try—he just denied it.” Bellman snorted. “What is it that people think is so good about The Dance of Life? They don’t even have proper faces. Look like zombies, if you ask me.”

  Kaja studied the dancers in the painting. “Perhaps they are,” she said.

  “Zombies?” Bellman chuckled. “Do you mean that?”

  “People who go around like dancers, but feel dead inside, buried, decomposing. No question.”

  “Interesting theory, Solness.”

  She hated it when he used her surname, which he did as a rule when he was angry or simply found it appropriate to remind her of his intellectual superiority. Which she let him do because it was obviously important to him. And perhaps he was intellectually superior. Wasn’t it part of what had made her fall for him, his conspicuous intelligence? She didn’t have a clear recollection anymore.

  “I have to go back to work,” she said.

  “And do what?” Mikael asked, yawning and looking at the security guard behind the rope at the back of the room. “Count files and wait for Crime Squad to be wound up? You know you’ve given me a massive problem with this Leike, don’t you?”

  “I have?” she burst out, incredulous.

  “Keep it down, dear. You were the one who tipped me off about what Harry had dug up on Leike. Told me he was going to arrest him. I trusted you. I trusted you so much that I arrested Leike on the basis of your tip-off and subsequently as good as told the press the case was in the bag. And now this shit has exploded in our fucking faces. The guy has a watertight alibi for at least two of the murders. We’re going to have to let him go at some point today. Daddy-in-law Galtung is no doubt already amassing the lawyers from hell to sue us, and the minister of justice will want to know how the fuck we could have committed such a blunder. And now the head on the block won’t be yours, Hole’s or Hagen’s, but mine, Solness. Do you understand? Mine alone. And we’re going to have to do something about that. You’re going to have to do something about it.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Not much, a trifle, and we’ll sort out
the rest. I want you to take Harry out. Tonight.”

  “Out? Me?”

  “He likes you.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Didn’t I tell you I saw you two sitting and smoking on the veranda?”

  Kaja went pale. “You arrived late, but you didn’t say anything about having seen us.”

  “You were so preoccupied with each other you didn’t hear the car, so I parked and watched. He likes you, my love. Now I want you to take him somewhere. For a couple of hours, no more.”

  “Why?”

  Mikael Bellman smiled. “He’s spending too much time sitting at home. Or lying. Hagen should never have given him time off; people like Hole can’t deal with it. And we don’t want him to drink himself to death up in Oppsal, do we now? Take him to eat somewhere. The movies. A beer. Just make sure he isn’t at home between eight and ten. And be careful. I don’t know if he’s sharp or just paranoid, but he examined my car very closely the night he left your place. All right?”

  Kaja didn’t answer. Mikael’s smile was the one she could dream about in the long periods when he wasn’t there, when job and family obligations prevented him from meeting her. So how come the same smile now made her feel as if her stomach were being turned inside out?

  “You … you weren’t thinking of …”

  “I’m thinking of doing whatever I have to,” Mikael said, looking at his watch.

  “Which is?”

  He shrugged. “What do you think? Swapping the head on the block, I guess.”

  “Don’t ask me to do this, Mikael.”

  “But I’m not asking you, dear. I’m ordering you.”

  Her voice was barely audible. “And if … if I were to refuse?”

  “Then I’ll not only crush Hole, I’ll crush you, too.”