The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  Harry walked over to the desk to see if there was anything he could use to scrape off the burned bits. He pulled out the top drawer. Empty. Harry pulled out the others—all empty. Apart from a sheet of paper in the bottom one. He picked it up. It wasn’t paper but a photograph, facedown. The first thing that struck Harry was that it was strange to have a family portrait in a Tourist Association cabin. The photo had been taken in the summer, in front of a farmhouse. A woman and a man sitting on a step with a boy between them. The woman in a blue dress and head scarf, no makeup, a tired smile. The man, with a pinched mouth, stern expression and the serious, closed face you find on embarrassed men who look as though they’re hiding a dark secret. But it was the boy in the middle who caught Harry’s attention. He resembled the mother; he had her open smile and gentle eyes. But he looked like someone else, too. Those large, white teeth …

  Harry went back to the wood stove; he was suddenly cold again. The stench of smoking pork … He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing deeply and calmly through his nose a couple of times, but felt the nausea coming nonetheless.

  At that moment Bellman stomped in with a broad smile on his face. “Hope you like venison.”

  Harry woke wondering what had roused him. Was it a sound? Or the absence of sound? For he realized the room was utterly still; the wind had stopped blowing outside. He threw off the blanket and stood up from the sofa.

  Walked over to the window and peered outside. It was as if someone had waved a magic wand over the countryside. What, six hours previously, had been hard, merciless wilderness was now gentle, maternal, almost beautiful in the bewitching moonlight. Harry realized he was looking for prints in the snow. He had heard a sound. It could have been anything. A bird. An animal. He listened and heard light snoring from behind one bedroom door. So it wasn’t that Bellman had gotten up. His gaze followed the footprints leading from the cabin to the storehouse. Or from the storehouse to the cabin? Or both—there were many. Could they be Bellman’s from six hours ago? When had it stopped snowing?

  Harry pulled on his boots, went out and looked toward the outhouse. No tracks there. He turned his back on the storehouse and pissed against the cabin wall. Why did men do that; why did they have to piss on something? The remnants of a territory-marking instinct? Or … Harry became aware that it wasn’t what he was pissing on but what he had his back to that was important. The storehouse. He suspected he was being observed from there. He buttoned up, turned and looked at it. Then he moved toward it. Grabbed the spade as he passed the snowmobile. The plan had been to walk straight in, but instead he stood in front of the plain stone steps to the low door. Listened. Nothing. What the hell was he doing? There was no one here. He went up the steps, tried to raise his hand and grasp the handle, but it wouldn’t move. What the hell was going on? His heart was beating so hard in his chest that it hurt, as if it wanted to burst out. He was sweating and his body refused to obey orders. And it slowly dawned on Harry that this was exactly how he had heard it described. A panic attack. It was the anger that saved him. He kicked open the door with immense force and crashed into the dark. The door swung shut. There was a strong smell of fat, smoked meat and dried blood. Something moved in the stripe of moonlight and a pair of eyes flashed. Harry swung the spade. And he hit something. Heard the dead sound of meat, felt it give. The door behind him fell open again and the moonlight streamed in. Harry stared at the dead deer hanging in front of him. At the other animal carcasses. He dropped the spade and sank to his knees. Then it came, all at once. The wall cracking, the snow consuming him alive, panicking that he couldn’t breathe, the long gasp of pure white fear as he fell toward the black rocks. So lonely. For they had all gone. His father was in a coma, in transit. And Rakel and Oleg were silhouettes against the light at an airport, also in transit. Harry wanted to go back. Back to the dripping room. The solid, damp walls. The sweaty mattress and the sweet smoke that transported him to where they were. Transit. Harry bowed his head and felt hot tears streaming down his face.

  I have printed a photo of Jussi Kolkka from Dagbladet’s website and pinned it up on the wall next to the others. There wasn’t a word in the news about Harry Hole and the other police officers who were there. Or Iska Peller, for that matter. Was it a bluff? They’re trying, anyway. And now there is a dead policeman. They’re going to try harder. They have to try harder. Do you hear me, Hole? No? You should. I’m so close I could whisper it in your ear.

  64

  State of Health

  Olav Hole’s condition was unchanged, Dr. Abel had said.

  Harry sat by the hospital bed looking at his unchanged father while a heart monitor played its beep-beep song, interspersed with skipped beats. Sigurd Altman came in, greeted Harry and noted down the screen’s figures on a pad.

  “Actually, I’m here to visit a Kaja Solness,” Harry said, getting up. “But I don’t know which ward she’s in. Could you …?”

  “Your colleague who was brought in by helicopter the other night? She’s in intensive care. Only until they have all the test results. She’d been buried in the snow for quite a while. When they said Håvass, I assumed she must have been this witness from Sydney the police were talking about on the radio.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear, Altman. While Kaja was lying in the snow the Australian lady was safe and warm in Bristol, with her own guards and full room service.”

  “Hang on.” Altman scrutinized Harry. “Were you buried in the snow as well?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The unsteady step you just took. Dizzy?”

  Harry shrugged.

  “Confused?”

  “Constantly,” Harry said.

  Altman smiled. “You’ve got a bit too much carbon dioxide in you. The body disposes of it quickly when you breathe in oxygen, but you ought to have a blood test so that we can check your levels.”

  “No, thank you,” Harry said. “How’s he getting on?” He nodded toward the bed.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “Unchanged. I’m asking you.”

  “I’m not a doctor, Harry.”

  “So you don’t need to answer like one. Give me an estimate.”

  “I can’t—”

  “It’ll remain between us.”

  Sigurd Altman eyed Harry. Was on the point of saying something. Changed his mind. Chewed his lower lip. “Days,” he said.

  “Not even weeks?”

  Altman didn’t answer.

  “Thanks, Sigurd,” Harry said and went to the door.

  Kaja’s face was pale and beautiful against the pillowcase. Like a flower in an herbarium, Harry thought. Her hand was small and cold in his. On the bedside table was today’s Aftenposten, with the avalanche-buries-cabin-in-Håvass headline. It described the tragic event and quoted Mikael Bellman, who said it was a great loss that Officer Kolkka had died protecting Iska Peller. He was thankful, however, that the witness had survived and was now safe.

  “So the avalanche was started with dynamite?” Kaja said.

  “Yes, it’s beyond doubt,” Harry replied.

  “So you and Bellman worked well together up there?”

  “Yes, indeed.” Harry turned to shield his coughing fit.

  “Heard you found a snowmobile at the bottom of a ravine. With a possible body underneath.”

  “Yes. Bellman stayed in Ustaoset to go back to the site with the local county officer.”

  “Krongli?”

  “No, he couldn’t be located. But his deputy, Roy Stille, seemed solid. They’ve quite a job on their hands, though. We weren’t sure where we were, more snow has fallen and it’s drifting, and in that terrain …” Harry shook his head.

  “Any idea who the body might be?”

  Harry shrugged. “I would be very surprised if it wasn’t Tony Leike.”

  Kaja’s head spun around. “Oh?”

  “I haven’t told anyone yet, but I saw the corpse’s fingers.”

  “What about them
?”

  “They were twisted. Tony Leike had arthritis.”

  “Do you think he started the avalanche? And then drove over the precipice in the dark?”

  Harry shook his head. “Tony told me he knew the area well; it was his terrain. It was a clear day and the snowmobile wasn’t going fast—it landed only ten feet from the point where it took off. And he had a burned arm, which was not caused by dynamite. And the snowmobile was not burned.”

  “Wha—?”

  “I think Tony Leike was tortured, killed and then dumped with the snowmobile so that we wouldn’t find the body.”

  Kaja made a face.

  Harry rubbed his little finger. He wondered whether it could have frostbite. “What do you think about this Krongli?”

  “Krongli?” Kaja chewed on that one. “If it’s true he tried to rape Charlotte Lolles, he should never have become a policeman.”

  “He beat his wife up, too.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No.”

  He looked at her. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  Kaja shrugged. “He’s a colleague, and I thought he was just drunk, nothing I would spread around, but, yes, I’ve had a glimpse of that side of him. He came to my place and insisted in a pretty persistent way that we should get intimate.”

  “But?”

  “Mikael was there.”

  Harry felt himself twitch.

  Kaja pushed herself up into a sitting position. “You don’t seriously think Krongli might have—”

  “I don’t know. I only know that whoever started the avalanche must have known the area well. Krongli has a connection with some of those women at Håvass. In addition, Elias Skog said before he was killed that he had seen something that might have been a rape at Håvass. Aslak Krongli sounds like he can be violent.

  “And then there’s this avalanche. If you wanted to kill a woman you thought was alone with a detective in a remote mountain cabin, how would you do it? Starting an avalanche doesn’t exactly give you a guaranteed result. So why not make it simple and effective—take along your favorite murder weapon and go straight to the cabin? Because he knew that Iska Peller and the detective were not on their own. He knew we were waiting for him. So he sneaked in and attacked in the only way that would allow him to escape afterward. We’re talking about an insider. Someone who knew about our Håvass theories and understood what was going on when he heard us naming a witness at a press conference. The local county officer at Ustaoset—”

  “Geilo,” Kaja corrected him.

  “Krongli definitely received the urgent call from Kripos requesting permission to land the police helicopter in the national park that night. He must have known the circumstances.”

  “Then he should also have known that Iska Peller wasn’t there, that we wouldn’t have endangered the life of a witness,” Kaja said. “So it’s odd he didn’t keep well away.”

  Harry nodded. “Good point, Kaja. I agree. I don’t think Krongli thought for a second that Peller was in the cabin. I think the avalanche was a continuation of what he’s been doing for some time.”

  “Which is?”

  “Playing with us.”

  “Playing?”

  “I received a call from Tony Leike’s phone while we were at the cabin. Tony saved my number, and I’m pretty certain it wasn’t he who phoned me. The thing is the caller didn’t hang up quickly enough—voice mail started recording and I could hear something for a second before the connection was cut. I’m not sure, but to me it sounded like laughter.”

  “Laughter?”

  “The laughter of someone who is amused. Because he’d just heard my message saying that I would have no network coverage for a couple of days. Let’s imagine it was Aslak Krongli, who had just had his suspicions confirmed that I was at the cabin in Håvass waiting for the killer.”

  Harry paused and stared into the air, deep in thought.

  “Well?” Kaja said after a while.

  “I just wanted to hear how the theory sounded when I said it aloud,” Harry said.

  “And?”

  He got to his feet. “Sounded half-assed, in fact. But I’ll check Krongli’s alibis for the dates of the murders. See you.”

  “Truls Berntsen?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Roger Gjendem, Aftenposten. Do you have time to answer a few questions?”

  “Depends. If you’re going to pester me about Jussi, you’d better talk to—”

  “This is not about Jussi Kolkka, but my condolences, by the way.”

  “OK.”

  Roger was sitting with his feet up on his office desk in the Post Office Tower, gazing at the low buildings that constituted Oslo Central Station and down to the opera house, which would soon be open. After the conversation with Bent Nordbø at Stopp Pressen he had spent the whole day—and parts of the night—poring over research on Mikael Bellman in greater detail. Apart from the rumor that the temp at Stovner Police Station had been beaten up, there were not a lot of tangible facts. But, as a crime journalist, Roger Gjendem had gathered a number of regular and reliable sources over the years who would gladly inform on their grandmothers for the price of a bottle of booze or a pouch of tobacco. And three of them lived in Manglerud. After a few calls it turned out all three of them had grown up there, too. Perhaps it was true what he had heard someone say—that no one moves from Manglerud. Or to Manglerud.

  There were obviously very few secrets there, because all three remembered Mikael Bellman. Partly because he had been a bastard of a policeman at Stovner. But mostly because he had made a beeline for Julle’s woman while Julle was serving a twelve-month sentence for an earlier drug conviction, which had been suspended but then was converted to jail time after someone had given him up for stealing gasoline. The woman was Ulla Swart, Manglerud’s finest, and a year older than Bellman. When Julle’s sentence was up and he strolled out of prison, having vowed to all and sundry that he was going to take care of Bellman, there had been two guys waiting in the garage where Julle kept his Kawasaki. They were wearing face masks and beat him black and blue with iron bars and promised there would be more where that came from if he touched either Bellman or Ulla. Rumor was that neither of the two had been Bellman. But one of them had been someone they called Beavis, Bellman’s eternal lackey. It was the only card Roger Gjendem had when he called Truls “Beavis” Berntsen. All the more reason to pretend he had four aces.

  “I just wanted to ask if there was any truth in the assertion that on instructions from Mikael Bellman you once beat up Stanislav Hesse, who was a deputy in the payroll department at the Stovner Police Station.”

  Thunderous silence at the other end.

  Roger cleared his throat. “Well?”

  “That’s a damned lie.”

  “Which part?”

  “I was never given any instructions by Mikael to do that. Everyone could see the fucking Pole was hitting on Bellman’s wife. Could have been anyone taking matters into their own hands.”

  Roger Gjendem tended to believe the former, the part about the instructions. But not the latter, the part about “anyone.” None of Bellman’s other colleagues at Stovner that Roger had spoken to had anything directly bad to say about Bellman; however, it was evident that Bellman was not beloved, not a man for whom they would have answered a call to arms. Apart from one.

  “Thank you—that was all,” Roger Gjendem said.

  Harry rummaged in his jacket pocket and put his phone to his ear.

  “Yes?”

  “Bjørn Holm here.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Christ. Didn’t think you would have bothered to set up a contact list.”

  “I have. You should feel honored. You’re one of the four names in it.”

  “What’s the racket in the background? Where are you, actually?”

  “Gamblers cheering because they think they’re going to win. I’m at a horse race.”

>   “What?”

  “Bombay Garden.”

  “Isn’t that a … Did they let you in?”

  “I’m a member. What do you want?”

  “Jesus, Harry, are you gambling on horses? Didn’t you learn anything in Hong Kong?”

  “Relax—I’m here checking up on Aslak Krongli. According to his office he was on police business in Oslo when both Charlotte and Borgny were killed. Not that unusual, actually, because it turns out he’s quite often in Oslo. And I’ve just discovered the reason.”

  “Bombay Garden?”

  “Yup. Aslak Krongli has a not-insubstantial gambling problem. Thing is, I’ve checked his credit card payments on the computer here. Time of payment and everything. Krongli has used his card a lot, and the times give him an alibi. Unfortunately.”

  “I see. And they’ve got the computer in the same room as the race-course?”

  “Eh? They’re in the final stretch now—you’ll have to talk louder!”

  “They’ve … Forget it. I’m calling to say we’ve got semen off the ski pants that Adele Vetlesen was wearing at Håvass.”

  “What? You’re kidding! That means—”

  “We may soon have the DNA of the eighth guest. If it’s his semen. And the only way we can be sure is by excluding the other men at Håvass.”

  “We need their DNA.”

  “Yes,” said Bjørn Holm. “Elias Skog’s fine, of course—we’ve got his DNA. Not so good with Tony Leike. We’d have found it at his house, no problem, but for that we need a warrant. And after what happened last time it’s gonna be really tough.”

  “Leave it to me,” Harry said. “We should also have Krongli’s DNA profile. Even though he didn’t kill either Charlotte or Borgny, he may have raped Adele.”

  “OK. How do we get it?”

  “As a policeman he must have been at a crime scene at some point or other,” Harry said. It was unnecessary to conclude his reasoning. Bjørn Holm knew where he was going with it. To avoid confusion and identity mistakes, fingerprints and DNA were routinely taken from all officers who had been present at a crime scene and had potentially contaminated it.