The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  “ ’Course. I didn’t mean—”

  “There were some letters on the wall. From what I could see they were blackmail letters. Maybe someone had already discovered him.”

  A fireman came toward them. His clothes creaked and groaned as he walked.

  “Kripos, aren’t you?” The man’s voice resonated in a way that matched the helmet and boots. And he had body language that said boss.

  Harry hesitated, but confirmed with a nod; no reason to complicate matters.

  “What actually happened in there?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping you boys will eventually be able to tell us,” Harry said. “But in general terms I think we can say that whoever found himself a rent-free office in there had a clear plan for dealing with uninvited guests.”

  “Oh?”

  “I should have known as soon as I saw the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. If they’d been working, the tenant wouldn’t have needed a desk lamp. The switch was connected to something else, some kind of ignition device.”

  “You think so? Well, we’ll get some experts in tomorrow morning.”

  “What does it look like inside?” Holm asked. “The room where it started.”

  The fireman scrutinized Holm. “PSG on the walls and ceiling, son. What do you think it looks like?”

  Harry was tired. Tired of being on the receiving end, tired of being afraid, tired of always being too late. But right now most tired of grown men who never wearied of playing cock of the walk. Harry spoke in a low voice, so low that the fireman had to lean in to hear.

  “Unless you’re seriously interested in what my forensics officer thinks about the room you’ve just sent umpteen smoke divers into, I suggest you spit out what you know in concise but exhaustive terms. You know there was a guy sitting there planning six or seven murders. Which he carried out. And we’re very interested to know if we can expect to find clues that might help us to stop this very, very bad man. Can you be concise like that?”

  The fireman straightened. Coughed. “PSG is extremely—”

  “Listen. We’re asking you for the consequences, not the cause.”

  The fireman’s face had gone a color that was not solely due to the heat from the burning PSG. “Burned out. Totally burned out. Papers, furniture, computer, everything.”

  “Thank you, boss,” Harry said.

  The two policemen watched the fireman’s back as he left.

  “My forensics officer?” Holm repeated, making a face as if he had swallowed something nasty.

  “Had to sound like a bit of a boss, too.”

  “Good to outsmart someone when you’ve just been outsmarted yourself, isn’t it?”

  Harry nodded and pulled the blanket around him more tightly. “He said burned out, didn’t he?”

  “Burned out. How does that feel?”

  Harry stared miserably at the smoke still seeping out of the factory windows into the fire company’s searchlights.

  “Like being knobbed in Nydalen,” he answered, draining the rest of his cold coffee.

  Harry drove away from Nydalen, but got no farther than the red light on Uelandsgate before Bjørn Holm rang again.

  “Forensics has done tests on the semen on Adele’s ski pants, and we’ve got a DNA profile.”

  “Already?” Harry exclaimed.

  “Partial profile. But enough for them to state with ninety-three percent certainty that we have a match.”

  Harry sat up straight in the seat.

  Match. What a wonderful word. Perhaps the day wasn’t a waste, after all.

  “Out with it!” Harry said.

  “You’ve got to learn to savor dramatic pauses,” Holm said.

  Harry groaned.

  “OK, OK. They found the matching DNA profile with hair from Tony Leike’s hairbrush.”

  Harry stared into the distance.

  Tony Leike had raped Adele Vetlesen at the cabin.

  Harry hadn’t seen it coming. Tony Leike? He couldn’t make it compute. Violent criminal, yes, but to rape a woman who’d come to a cabin with another man? Elias Skog said he’d seen him holding her mouth and pulling her into the outhouse. Perhaps it wasn’t a rape when it came down to it?

  And then—all of a sudden—the pieces fell into place.

  Harry saw it, crystal clear.

  It wasn’t a rape. And there it was: the motive.

  The cars behind hooted. The light had turned green.

  67

  Prince Charming

  It was a quarter to eight, and the day hadn’t yet adjusted for color and contrast. The countryside was a grainy black-and-white version of itself in the gray morning light as Harry parked beside the only other car by Lake Lysern and ambled down to the jetty. County Officer Skai was standing at the edge with a fishing rod in his hand and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Wisps of mist hung in the air like cotton wool around the reeds that poked up from the black, oil-smooth water.

  “Hole,” said Skai without turning. “Up early.”

  “Your wife said you were here.”

  “Every morning from seven to eight. Only chance I have to think before the hustle and bustle starts.”

  “What have you caught?”

  “Nothing. But there are pike in the reeds.”

  “Sounds familiar. ’Fraid the hustle and bustle starts a little earlier today. I’ve come about Tony Leike.”

  “Tony, yes. His granddad’s farm was in Rustad, east of Lake Lyseren.”

  “So you remember him well?”

  “This is a small place, Hole. My father and old Leike were friends, and Tony was here every summer.”

  “What memories do you have of him?”

  “Erm, funny guy. Lots of people liked him. Especially the women. He was palsy with the girls, a sort of Elvis type. And managed to surround himself with a lot of mystery. Rumor was he had grown up alone with his unhappy, alcoholic mother until one day she sent him packing because the man she was with didn’t like the boy. But women around here liked him a lot. And he them. That occasionally got him into some trouble.”

  “Like when he cozied up to your daughter?”

  Skai flinched, as if he had gotten a bite.

  “Your wife,” Harry said. “I asked her about Tony, and she told me. It was your daughter Tony and a local boy were fighting over that time.”

  The policeman shook his head. “They weren’t fighting—it was butchery, pure and simple. Poor Ole, he’d gotten it into his head that he and Mia were a couple because he’d fallen in love with her and was allowed to drive Mia and her friend to a dance. He wasn’t a fighter, Ole—he was more the bookish kind. But he went after Tony. Who laid him out flat, drew a knife and … It was pretty nasty—we’re not used to that sort of thing here.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He cut off half his tongue. Put it in his pocket and left. We arrested Tony half an hour later at his grandfather’s, told him the tongue was needed in surgery. Tony said he’d fed it to the crows.”

  “What I wanted to ask was whether you had ever suspected Tony of rape. Then or at any other time.”

  Skai spun around.

  “Let me put it this way, Hole. Mia was never the same happy-go-lucky girl again. She still wanted the headcase, of course, but that’s the way girls are at that age. And Ole moved away. Every time the poor kid opened his mouth around here it was a reminder for him and others of the dreadful humiliation. So, yes, I would say that Tony Leike is the violent type. But, no, I don’t think he raped anyone. If so, he would have raped Mia, if I can put it like that.”

  “She—?”

  “They were in the woods behind the dance hall. She didn’t let Tony have his way. And he accepted that.”

  “You’re sure? Sorry I have to ask, but it’s—”

  The hook leapt out of the water toward them. It glinted in the first horizontal rays of the sun.

  “That’s fine, Hole. I’m police, too, and I know what you’re working on. Mia’s a decent girl and doe
sn’t lie. Not even on the witness stand. You can have the report if you want the details. I would just prefer it if Mia didn’t have to go through all of this again.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Harry said. “Thank you.”

  Harry had informed the detectives assembled in the Odin conference room that the person he had seen under the snowmobile—who had still not been found, despite the increased police effort—had Tony Leike’s arthritic fingers. And then recounted his theory. He leaned back and waited for reactions.

  The Pelican peered over her glasses at Harry, but seemed to be addressing the whole morning gathering.

  “What do you mean you think Adele was willing? She was screaming for help, for goodness sake!”

  “That was what Elias Skog thought at a later point,” Harry said. “His first impression was that he was watching two people having consensual sex.”

  “But a woman who takes a man with her to a cabin doesn’t have sex with a casual interloper in the middle of the night! Do you really have to be a woman to understand that?” she hissed, and with her new, sensationally unbecoming dreadlocks, she reminded Harry of a furious Medusa.

  The response came from Harry’s neighbor. “Do you really think gender automatically affords you superior knowledge of the sexual preferences of half of the earth’s population?” Ærdal paused and studied the freshly cleaned nail on his little finger. “Hasn’t it already been made clear that Adele Vetlesen changed partners at the drop of a hat? She agreed to have sex with a man she hardly knew at a disused factory in the middle of the night, didn’t she?”

  Ærdal lowered his hand, started work on the ring finger and mumbled so low that only Harry heard it. “Anyway, I’ve fucked more women than you, you scrawny bird.”

  “Women fell easily for Tony and vice versa,” Harry said. “Tony arrived at the cabin late, Adele’s boyfriend was annoyed about something and had gone to bed. He and Adele were able to flirt undisturbed. He was having trouble on the home front, and she had started to lose interest in the man she was there with. Adele and Tony were attracted to each other, but there were people everywhere in the cabin. So later that night they sneaked out and met by the outhouse. They kissed, groped, he stood behind her, pulled down his pants and was now so excited that there was what they call in the Sexual Offenses Unit ‘pre-ejaculatory fluid’ on the tip of his penis, which went over her ski pants before he could pull them down, and they had intercourse. She was so loud in her ecstasy that she awoke Elias Skog, who watched them from the window. And I believe they woke her boyfriend up as well and that he saw them from his room. I don’t think she could have cared less. Tony, on the other hand, tried to stifle her cries.”

  “If she couldn’t have cared less, why would he?” the Pelican burst out. “After all, it’s women who are stigmatized by this kind of looseness while men’s status is only enhanced. Among other men, mind you!”

  “Tony Leike had at least two good motives for stifling her cries,” Harry said. “First of all, you would hardly wish to broadcast extracurricular sex if you’re a fiancé plastered across the tabloids, and especially if your future father-in-law’s money is about to rescue your investments in the Congo. Second, Tony Leike is an experienced mountaineer who knows the area well.”

  “What the heck does that have to do with the case?”

  A chuckle was heard, and everyone turned to the head of the table, where Mikael Bellman was sitting.

  “Avalanche,” he said with a laugh. “Tony Leike was frightened Adele’s howls would set off an avalanche.”

  “Tony must have known that many avalanches are triggered by humans,” Harry said.

  Guffaws of laughter spread around the table. Even the Pelican had to allow herself a smile.

  “But what makes you think Adele’s boyfriend saw them?” she asked. “And that Adele didn’t care? Perhaps she was so enthralled that she forgot herself.”

  “Because,” said Harry, leaning back in the chair, “Adele has done this before. She once texted her boyfriend a picture of herself being screwed by another man. A heartless message that would leave no one in any doubt. Her friends said she didn’t get together with this boyfriend again after the trip to Håvass.”

  “Interesting,” Bellman said. “But where does it take us?”

  “To the motive,” Harry said. “For the first time in this case we have a possible ‘why.’ ”

  “So we’re moving away from the theory of a crazy serial killer?” Ærdal asked.

  “The Snowman also had a motive,” said Beate Lønn, who had just walked in and taken a seat at the end of the table. “Insane, but definitely a motive.”

  “This is simpler,” Harry said. “Good old-fashioned jealousy. Motive for two out of three murders in this country. And in most other countries. In this sense, we humans are quite predictable.”

  “It may explain the murders of Adele Vetlesen and Tony Leike,” said the Pelican, “but what about the others?”

  “They had to be eliminated,” Harry said. “They were all potential witnesses to the events at the cabin and could have told the police, and provided us with the motive we lacked. And maybe even worse: They had been witness to his total humiliation—he had been cheated on in public. For an unstable person that would be motive enough on its own.”

  Bellman clapped his hands. “I hope we have some answers soon. I’ve spoken to Krongli on the phone and he says the weather in the search area has improved, so now they can send in the dogs and use helicopters. Any reason you didn’t mention why you suspected the body of being Tony Leike before, Harry?”

  Harry shrugged. “I had assumed we would reach the body much more quickly, so I saw no reason to speculate aloud. After all, arthritis is not that unusual.”

  Bellman rested his gaze on Harry for a second before addressing the rest. “We have a suspect, folks. Anyone want to christen him?”

  “The Eighth Guest,” said Ærdal.

  “Prince Charming,” declared the Pelican.

  For a few moments there was total silence, as though something had come up that required time to digest before they went on.

  “Now, I’m no strategist,” Beate Lønn began, in the secure knowledge that everyone in the room knew that Beate Lønn never commented on anything she hadn’t researched thoroughly first, “but isn’t there something here that makes you sit up and wonder? Leike had an alibi for the times of the murders, but what about all these leads pointing to him? What about the call from his home phone to Elias Skog? What about the murder weapon that was acquired in the Congo? Furthermore from an area where Leike had financial interests. Chance?”

  “No,” Harry said. “From day one Prince Charming has guided us toward Tony Leike. It was Prince Charming who paid Juliana Verni to go to the Congo because he knew that any clue pointing to the Congo would point to Tony Leike. And as far as his phone call to Elias Skog is concerned, today I checked something we should have checked long ago, but that we typically let go when we are getting close to a result. Because we resist any weakening of our evidence. Around the time the call went out from Leike’s house to Skog there were three calls made from Leike’s direct line in the Aker Brygge office building. Leike can’t have been in two places at the same time. I’d bet two hundred kroner he was in Aker Brygge. Any takers?”

  Silent but wide-eyed faces.

  “Do you mean that Prince Charming called Elias Skog from Leike’s house?” said the Pelican. “How—”

  “When Leike came to Police HQ he told me there had been a break-in through the cellar door a few days earlier. That matches the time of the phone call to Skog. Prince Charming took a bike to disguise it as a standard burglary, innocent enough for us to make a note of it, but no more than that. Leike knows we don’t do anything about that kind of break-in, so he didn’t even report it. And with that Prince Charming had planted some irrefutable evidence against Leike.”

  “What a snake!” the Pelican erupted.

  “I buy the explanation of how,” Be
ate Lønn said. “But why? Why finger Tony Leike?”

  “Because he knew that sooner or later we would link the murders with the Håvass cabin,” Harry said. “And that would limit the number of suspects in such a way that everyone who had been there that night would have the spotlight on them. There were two reasons he tore out the page from the guest book. Number one, he had the names of those who were there, so that he could find them and kill them at his leisure, while we didn’t and were therefore unable to stop him. Number two, and more important, he could keep his own name hidden.”

  “Logical,” Ærdal said. “And to make quite sure we didn’t go after him, he had to supply us with an apparent guilty party. Tony Leike.”

  “And that’s why he had to wait until the end to kill Tony Leike,” said one of the detectives, a man with an abundant Fridtjof Nansen mustache and whose surname was all Harry could recall.

  His neighbor, a young man with bright, shiny skin and eyes, neither of whose names Harry could remember, interjected: “But unfortunately for him, Tony had an alibi for the times of the deaths. And since Tony’s role as a scapegoat was redundant now, it was finally time to kill enemy número uno.”

  The temperature in the room had risen, and the pale, tentative winter sun seemed to be brightening the proceedings. They were making progress; the knot had finally loosened. Harry could see that Bellman was sitting farther forward in his chair.

  “That’s all well and good,” Beate Lønn said, and while Harry was waiting for the “but,” he guessed what she was going to ask, knew she was going to play devil’s advocate because she knew he had the answers. “But why has Prince Charming made this so unnecessarily complicated?”

  “Because humans are complicated,” Harry said, and could hear an echo of something he had heard and forgotten. “We want to do things that are complex, that mesh, where we control our fates and can feel like rulers of our own universes. The room that burned down at the Kadok factory—do you know what it reminded me of most? A control room. The headquarters. And it’s not certain he even planned to take Leike’s life. Perhaps he just wanted him arrested and convicted.”