The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  “It wasn’t Marit Olsen, anyway,” Kaja said.

  “Mm. Why not?”

  “Because she was the only fat woman there, so Elias Skog would have recognized her and used her name when describing the scene.”

  “Same conclusion I came to. But was it rape, you think?”

  “Sounds like it. He put his hand over her mouth, stifled her cries, pulled her inside the outhouse—what else could it have been?”

  “But why didn’t Elias Skog automatically think it was rape?”

  “I don’t know. Because there was something about the way … the way they were standing, their body language.”

  “Exactly. The subconscious understands much more than the conscious mind. He was so sure it was consensual sex that he simply went back to bed. It wasn’t until long after, reading about the murders and being reminded of a half-forgotten scene, that he had formed the idea it might have been rape.”

  “A game,” Kaja said. “That might smack of rape. Who does that? Not a man and a woman who have just met at a cabin and sneak out to become a little better acquainted. You have to be a bit more comfortable with each other.”

  “So it’s two people who’ve been together before,” Harry said. “Which to our knowledge can only be …”

  “Adele and the mystery man. The eighth guest.”

  “Either that or someone else turned up that night.” Harry flicked ash off the cigarette.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” Kaja asked.

  “Through the hall to the left.”

  He watched the cigarette smoke curl upward into the lamp shade over the table. Waited. He hadn’t heard the door open. He got up and went after her.

  She was standing in the hall staring at the door. In the dim light he could see her taking gulps of air, could see a moist pointed tooth glistening. He placed a hand on her back and even there, through her clothes, he could feel her heart beating. “Do you mind if I open it?”

  “You must think I’m mental,” she said.

  “We all are. I’m opening it now, OK?”

  She nodded, and he opened the door.

  Harry was sitting at the kitchen table when she returned. She had put on her raincoat.

  “Think I’ll have to go home now.”

  Harry nodded and accompanied her to the front door. Watched as she stooped to pull on her boots.

  “It only happens when I’m tired,” she said. “The door stuff.”

  “I know,” Harry said. “I’m the same with elevators.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Another time, maybe. Who knows—perhaps we’ll see each other again.”

  She fell quiet. Took a long time to zip up her boots. Then, all of a sudden, she stood up, so close to him that he was aware of her scent following her, like an echo.

  “Tell me now,” she said with a wild expression in her eyes he was unable to interpret.

  “Well,” he said, his fingertips tingling, as if he had been cold and was warming up again. “When we were young my little sister had very long hair. We had been visiting my mother in the hospital and were about to get into the elevator. Dad was waiting downstairs—he couldn’t stand hospitals. Sis stood too near to the gap and her hair got caught between the elevator and the wall. And I was so horror-stricken that I couldn’t move. I watched Sis being dragged up by her hair.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  They were standing a bit too close, he thought. They were standing at the limits of their personal space. And they knew. He took a breath.

  “She lost a lot of hair. It grew back. I … lost something else. Which didn’t grow back.”

  “You think you failed her.”

  “It’s a fact that I failed her.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Old enough to fail her.” He smiled. “Think that’s almost enough self-pity for one night, don’t you? My father liked you curtsying.”

  Kaja chuckled. “Good night.” She curtsied.

  He opened the front door for her. “Good night.”

  She moved onto the steps and turned.

  “Harry?”

  “Yes?”

  “Weren’t you lonely in Hong Kong?”

  “Lonely?”

  “I watched you while you were asleep. You looked so … alone.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I was lonely. Good night.”

  They stood there half a second too long. Five tenths of a second before and she would have been down the steps and he would have been on his way back to the kitchen.

  Her fingers closed around his neck and pulled his head down as she hoisted herself up on tiptoes. Her eyes lost focus, became a glittering sea and then she shut them. Her lips were half open as they met his. She held him and he didn’t move, just felt the sweet dagger in his stomach, like a rush of morphine.

  She let go of him.

  “Sleep well, Harry.”

  He nodded.

  She turned and walked away. He closed the door quietly behind him.

  He cleared away the cups, rinsed the kettle and had just put it away when the doorbell rang.

  He went to answer it.

  “I forgot something,” she said.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  She lifted her hand and stroked his brow. “What you look like.”

  He pulled her close. Her skin. The scent. He fell, a wonderful dizzying spiral downward.

  “I want you,” she whispered. “I want to make love to you.”

  “And I want you, too.”

  They let go. Looked at each other. A sudden formality seemed to come between them, and for a moment it appeared to him that she had regrets. That he also had regrets. It was too much, too quickly. There were too many other things, there was too much baggage, too many good reasons. Nonetheless she took his hand, timid almost, whispered, “Come on,” and led him up the stairs.

  The bedroom was cold and smelled of parents. He switched on the light.

  The spacious double bed was made with two duvets and pillows.

  Harry helped her to change the bed linens.

  “Which side is his?” she asked.

  “This one.” Harry pointed.

  “And he continued to sleep there after she was gone,” she said, as if to herself. “Just in case.”

  They undressed without peeking. Crept under the duvets and met there.

  At first they lay close to each other, kissing, exploring, careful not to ruin anything before they knew how it would be. Listened to each other’s breathing and the odd isolated car rushing by. Then their kisses became greedier, their touching bolder, and he heard the excited hiss of her breath against his ear.

  “Are you frightened?” he asked.

  “No,” she groaned, grabbing hold of his erection, adjusting her hips and guiding him in, but he moved her hand and did it himself.

  There was barely a sound, only a gasp as he penetrated her. He closed his eyes, lay still, enjoying the sensations. Then he began to move slowly, carefully. Opened his eyes, met hers. She seemed on the verge of tears.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered.

  Her tongue coiled around his, smooth underneath, rough on top. Faster and deeper, slower and deeper. She rolled him over without letting go of his tongue and sat astride him. She pressed against his stomach every time she came down on him. Then her tongue released his, and she leaned back and let out a moan. Twice, a deep animal noise that rose, and became high-pitched as she gasped for air and went quiet again. Her throat was thick with the scream that didn’t come. He raised his hand, placed his fingers against the quivering blue artery under the skin on her neck.

  And then she screamed, as if in pain, in anger, in liberation. Harry felt his scrotum tighten and came. It was perfect, so unbearably perfect that he threw his hand in the air and banged the wall behind him with his fist. And, as though she had been given a lethal injection, she collapsed on top of him.

  They lay like
this, limbs strewn randomly, like the dead. Harry felt the blood rush in his ears and well-being surge through his body. That and something he could have sworn was happiness.

  He slept and was woken by her getting back into bed and snuggling up close to him. She was wearing one of Olav’s undershirts. She kissed him, mumbled something and was gone, her breathing light and serene. Harry stared at the ceiling. Letting his thoughts churn, knowing there was no point resisting.

  It had been so good. It hadn’t been so good since … since …

  The blind wasn’t pulled down and at half past five cones of light from passing cars began to travel across the ceiling as Oslo woke and dragged itself off to work. He looked at her again. And then he was gone, too.

  53

  Heel Hook

  When Harry woke it was nine o’clock, the room was bathed in daylight and there was no one lying beside him. There were four messages on his phone.

  The first was from Kaja, saying she was on her way home to get changed for work. And thanking him for … he couldn’t hear what, just a shriek of laughter before she hung up.

  The second was from Gunnar Hagen, who was wondering why Harry had not answered any of his calls and saying the press were on his back because of Tony Leike’s unjustified arrest.

  The third was from Günther, who repeated the Dirty Harry witticism and said the Leipzig police had not found Juliana Verni’s passport and therefore could not confirm whether it had been stamped in Kigali or not.

  The fourth was from Mikael Bellman, who simply told Harry to be at Kripos by two. He assumed Solness had passed on his instructions.

  Harry got up. He felt good. Better than good. Fantastic, maybe. He listened to his body. OK—fantastic was an exaggeration.

  Harry went downstairs, took out a packet of crispbreads and made the important phone call first.

  “You’re talking to Søs Hole.” It was Søs, or Sis, as Harry called her. Her voice sounded so formal he had to smile.

  “And you’re talking to Harry Hole,” he said.

  “Harry!” She screamed his name two more times.

  “Hi, Sis.”

  “Dad said you were home! Why haven’t you called before?”

  “I wasn’t ready, Sis. Now I am. Are you?”

  “I’m always ready, Harry. You know that.”

  “Yes, I do. Lunch in town before visiting Dad sometime soon? My treat.”

  “Yes! You sound happy, Harry. Is it Rakel? Have you been speaking to her? I spoke to her yesterday. What was that sound? Harry?”

  “Just the crispbreads falling out of the packet onto the floor. What did she want?”

  “To ask about Dad. She’d heard he’s ill.”

  “Was that all?”

  “Yes. No. She said Oleg was fine.”

  Harry swallowed. “Good. Let’s talk soon, then.”

  “Don’t forget. I’m so happy you’re home, Harry! I have so much to tell you!”

  Harry put the phone on the countertop and was bending down to pick up the crispbreads when the phone hummed again. Sis was like that, remembering things she should have said after they had hung up. He straightened up.

  “What is it?”

  Sonorous clearing of throat. Then a voice introduced itself as Abel. The name was familiar, and Harry instantly ransacked his memory. There were the files of old murder cases, neatly organized with data that never seemed to be deleted: names, faces, house numbers, dates, sound of a voice, color and year of a car. But he could suddenly forget the name of neighbors who had lived in his building for three years or when Oleg’s birthday was. They called that the detective memory.

  Harry listened without interrupting.

  “I see,” he said at length. “Thank you for calling.”

  He hung up and tapped in a new number.

  “Kripos,” answered a weary receptionist. “You are trying to get through to Mikael Bellman.”

  “Yes. Hole from Crime Squad. Where’s Bellman?”

  The receptionist informed him of the POB’s whereabouts.

  “Logical,” Harry said.

  “I beg your pardon.” She yawned audibly.

  “That’s what he’s doing, isn’t it?”

  Harry slipped the phone into his pocket. Stared out of the kitchen window. Crispbread crunched under his feet as he walked.

  SKØYEN CLIMBING CLUB it said on the glass door facing the parking lot. Harry pushed the door and entered. On his way in, he had to wait for a class of excited schoolchildren on their way out. He flipped off his boots by a shoe rack at the bottom of the stairs. In the large hall, there were half a dozen people climbing up the thirty-foot walls, although they looked more like the artificial papier-mâché mountainsides of Tarzan films Harry and Øystein had seen at the Symra Cinema when they were kids. Except that these were peppered with multicolored holds and pegs with loops and carabiner hooks. A discreet smell of soap and sweaty feet emanated from the blue mats on the floor that Harry walked across. He stopped beside a bow-legged, squat man staring intently up at the overhang above them. A rope went from his climbing harness to a man who at that moment was swinging like a pendulum from one arm twenty-seven feet above them. At the end of one arc he swung up a foot, threaded the heel under a pink pear-shaped hold, put the other foot on a piece of the structure and clipped the climbing rope into the top anchor in one elegant sweeping movement.

  “Gotcha!” he shouted, and leaned back on the rope and placed his legs against the wall.

  “Great heel hook,” Harry said. “Your boss is a bit of a poseur, isn’t he?”

  Jussi Kolkka neither answered nor graced Harry with a glance, just pulled the lever on the rope brake.

  “Your receptionist told me you’d be here,” Harry said to the man being lowered toward them.

  “Regular slot every week,” Bellman said. “One of the perks of being a policeman is being able to train during working hours. How are you, Harry? Muscles look defined, at any rate. Lots of muscle per pound, I reckon. Ideal for climbing, you know.”

  “For limited ambitions,” Harry said.

  Bellman landed with legs shoulder-width apart and pulled down some rope so that he could slacken the figure-eight knot.

  “I didn’t understand that.”

  “I can’t see the point of climbing so high. I clamber around a few crags now and then.”

  “Clambering,” Bellman snorted, loosening the harness and stepping out of it. “You know, it hurts more to fall from six feet without a rope than it does from ninety feet with one?”

  “Yes,” Harry said, a smile tugging at his mouth. “I know.”

  Bellman sat down on one of the wooden benches, pulled off the ballet-shoe-like climbing slippers and rubbed his feet while Kolkka brought down the rope and started to gather it in a coil. “You got my message?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s the hurry? I’m seeing you at two.”

  “That was what I wanted to clarify with you, Bellman.”

  “Clarify?”

  “Before we meet the others. Agreeing on the conditions for me to join the team.”

  “The team?” Bellman laughed. “What are you talking about, Harry?”

  “Do you want me to spell it out for you? You don’t need me to call Australia and persuade a woman to come here to act as a decoy—you can do that yourself without a problem. What you’re asking for is help.”

  “Harry! Really now …”

  “You look exhausted, Bellman. You’ve started to feel it, haven’t you? You’ve felt the pressure escalate since Marit Olsen.” Harry sat down on the bench beside him. Even then, he was almost four inches taller. “Feeding frenzy in the press every fucking day. Impossible to walk past a newspaper stand or switch on the TV without being reminded of the Case. The Case you haven’t solved. The Case your bosses are nagging you about all the time. The Case that requires a press conference a day, where the vultures scream questions into one another’s beaks. And now the man you yourself released has vanished int
o the blue beyond. The vultures swarm in, some of them cackling in Swedish, Danish and even English. I’ve been where you are now, Bellman. Soon they’ll be talking fucking French. For this is the Case you have to solve, Bellman. And the Case has gone stale.”

  Bellman didn’t answer, but his jaw muscles were grinding. Kolkka had packed the rope in the sack and came toward them, but Bellman waved him away. The Finn turned and waddled toward the exit like an obedient terrier.

  “What do you want, Harry?”

  “I’m offering you the chance to get this sorted out one-on-one, instead of at a meeting.”

  “You want me to ask you for help?”

  Harry saw Bellman’s complexion redden.

  “What sort of bargaining position do you imagine you’re in, Harry?”

  “Well, I imagine it’s better than it has been for a while.”

  “You’re mistaken there.”

  “Kaja Solness doesn’t want to work for you. Bjørn Holm you’ve already promoted, and if you send him back to being a crime scene officer he’ll be only too pleased. The only person you can hurt now is me, Bellman.”

  “Have you forgotten I can lock you up so that you can’t visit your father before he dies?”

  Harry shook his head. “There’s no one to visit anymore, Bellman.”

  Mikael Bellman arched an eyebrow in surprise.

  “They called from the hospital this morning,” Harry said. “My father went into a coma last night. Dr. Abel says he won’t come out of it. Whatever was left unsaid between my father and me will remain unsaid.”

  54

  Tulip

  Bellman looked at Harry in silence. That is, the brown deerlike eyes were directed toward Harry, but his gaze was inverted. Harry knew that a committee meeting was in progress there, a meeting with a lot of dissenting opinions, it seemed. Bellman slowly loosened the strings of the chalk bag hanging around his waist, as if to gain time. Time to think. Then he angrily stuffed the chalk bag in his knapsack.

  “If—and only if—I asked you for help without having anything to pressure you with,” he said, “why on earth would you do it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bellman stopped packing and looked up. “You don’t know?”