The Leopard

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘You asked people who were at the cabin to come forward, so it’s my civic duty, isn’t it?’ He sent Harry a questioning look. And then pulled a face. ‘Christ, I was frightened, wasn’t I. I knew that those who were there that night were next for the chop. Jumped in my car and drove straight here.’

  ‘Has anything happened recently to make you concerned?’

  ‘No.’ Tony Leike scented the air thoughtfully. ‘Apart from a break-in through the cellar door a few days ago. Christ, I should get an alarm, shouldn’t I.’

  ‘Did you report it to the police?’

  ‘No, they only took a bike.’

  ‘And you think serial killers do a spot of cycle-nicking on the side?’

  Leike shook his head with a smile. Not the sheepish smile of someone who is ashamed of having said something stupid, Harry thought. But the disarming, winning smile that says ‘you got me there, pal’, the gallant congratulation from someone used to their own victories.

  ‘Why did you ask for me?’

  ‘The papers said you were in charge, so I thought it only natural. Anyway, as I said, I was hoping it would be possible to keep this between as few people as possible, so I came straight to the top.’

  ‘I’m not the top, Leike.’

  ‘Aren’t you? Aftenposten gave the impression you were.’

  Harry stroked his jutting jaw. He hadn’t made up his mind about Tony Leike. He was a man with a groomed exterior and bad-boy charm that reminded Harry of an ice-hockey player he had seen in an underwear ad. He seemed to want to present an air of unruffled, worldly-wise smoothness but also to come across as a sincere human being with feelings which could not be hidden. Or perhaps it was the other way round; perhaps the smoothness was sincere and the feelings were pretence.

  ‘What were you doing at Håvass, Leike?’

  ‘Skiing of course.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Yes. I’d had a few stressful days at work and needed some time off. I go to Ustaoset and Hallingskarvet a lot. Sleep in cabins. That’s my terrain, you could say.’

  ‘So why haven’t you got your own cabin there?’

  ‘Where I would like to have a cabin you can’t get planning permission any more. National park regulations.’

  ‘Why wasn’t your fiancée with you? Doesn’t she ski?’

  ‘Lene? She . . .’ Leike took a sip of coffee. The kind of sip you take in mid-sentence when you need a bit of thinking time, it struck Harry. ‘She was at home. I … we . . .’ He looked at Harry with an expression of mild desperation, as though pleading for help. Harry gave him none.

  ‘Shit. No pressure then, eh?’

  Harry didn’t answer.

  ‘OK,’ Leike said as though Harry had given a response in the affirmative. ‘I needed a breather, to get away. To think. Engagement, marriage … these are grown-up issues. And I think best on my own. Especially up there on the snowy plains.’

  ‘And thinking helped?’

  Leike flashed the enamel wall again. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember any of the others in the cabin?’

  ‘I remember Marit Olsen, as I said. She and I had a glass of red wine together. I didn’t know she was an MP until she said.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘There were a few others sitting around I barely greeted. But I arrived quite late, so some must have gone to bed.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘There were six pairs of skis in the snow outside. I remember that clearly because I put them in the hall in case of an avalanche. I remember thinking the others were perhaps not very experienced mountain skiers. If the cabin is half buried under three metres of snow you’re in a bit of a fix without any skis. I was first up in the morning – I usually am – and was off before the others had stirred.’

  ‘You say you arrived late. You were skiing alone in the dark, were you?’

  ‘Head torch, map and compass. The trip was a spontaneous decision, so I didn’t catch the train to Ustaoset until the evening. But, as I said, they are familiar surroundings, I’m used to finding my way across the frozen wastes in the dark. And the weather was good, moonlight reflecting off the snow, I didn’t need a map or a light.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything about what happened in the cabin while you were there?’

  ‘Nothing happened. Marit Olsen and I talked about red wine and then about the problems of keeping a modern relationship going. That is, I think her relationship was more modern than mine.’

  ‘And she didn’t say anything had happened in the cabin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘They sat by the fire talking about skiing trips, and drinking. Beer perhaps. Or some kind of sports drink. Two women and a man, between twenty and thirty-five, I would guess.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘We just nodded and said hello. As I said, I had gone up there to be alone, not to make new friends.’

  ‘Appearance?’

  ‘It’s quite dark in these cabins at night, and if I say one was blonde, the other dark, that might be way off the mark. As I said, I don’t even remember how many people were there.’

  ‘Dialects?’

  ‘One of the women had a kind of west coast dialect, I think.’

  ‘Stavanger? Bergen? Sunnmøre?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not much good at this sort of thing. It might have been west coast, could have been south.’

  ‘OK. You wanted to be alone, but you talked to Marit Olsen about relationships.’

  ‘It just happened. She came over and sat down next to me. Not exactly a wallflower. Talkative. Fat and cheery.’ He said that as if the two words were a natural collocation. And it struck Harry that the photo of Lene Galtung he had seen was of an extremely thin woman – to judge by the latest average weight for Norwegians.

  ‘So, aside from Marit Olsen, you can’t tell us anything about any of the others? Not even if I showed you photos of those we know to have been there?’

  ‘Oh,’ Leike said with a smile, ‘I think I can do that.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘When I was in one room looking for a bunk to crash out on, I had to switch on the light to see which was free. And I saw two people asleep. A man and a woman.’

  ‘And you think you can describe them?’

  ‘Not in great detail, but I’m pretty sure I would recognise them.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You sort of remember faces when you see them again.’

  Harry knew that what Leike said was right. Witnesses’ descriptions were way out as a rule, but give them a line-up and they rarely made a mistake.

  Harry walked over to the filing cabinet they had dragged back to the office, opened the respective victims’ files and removed the photographs. He gave the five photos to Leike, who flipped through them.

  ‘This is Marit Olsen, of course,’ he said, passing it back to Harry. ‘And these are the two women who were sitting by the fire, I think, but I’m not sure.’ He passed Harry the pictures of Borgny and Charlotte. ‘This may have been the boy.’ Elias Skog. ‘But none of these were asleep in the bedroom. I’m sure about that. And I don’t recognise this one either, he said, passing back the photo of Adele.

  ‘So you’re unsure about the ones you were in the same room with for a good while, but you’re sure about those you saw for a couple of seconds?’

  Leike nodded. ‘They were asleep, weren’t they.’

  ‘Is it easier to recognise people asleep?’

  ‘No, but they don’t look back at you, do they. So you can stare unobserved.’

  ‘Mm. For a couple of seconds.’

  ‘Maybe a bit longer.’

  Harry put the photos back in the files.

  ‘Have you got any names?’ Leike asked.

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Yes. As I said, I was the first up and I had a couple of slices of bread in the kitchen. The guest book was in there and I hadn’t signed in. While I was eating I opened it and studied the n
ames that had been entered the night before.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ Tony rolled his shoulders. ‘It’s often the same people on these mountain skiing trips. I wanted to see if there was anyone I knew.’

  ‘Was there?’

  ‘No. But if you give me the names of people you know or think were there, maybe I can remember if I saw them in the guest book.’

  ‘Sounds reasonable, but I’m afraid we don’t have any names. Or addresses.’

  ‘Well then,’ Leike said, buttoning up his woollen coat. ‘I’m afraid I can’t be of much help, can I. Except that you can cross my name off.’

  ‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘Since you’re here, I’ve got a couple more questions. So long as you have time?’

  ‘I’m my own boss,’ Leike said. ‘For the time being, anyway.’

  ‘OK. You say you have a murky past. Could you give me a rough idea of what you mean?’

  ‘I tried to kill a guy,’ Leike said without embellishment.

  ‘I see,’ Harry said, leaning back in his chair. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Because he attacked me. He maintained I’d stolen his girl. The truth was that she was neither his girl nor wanted to be, and I don’t steal girls. I don’t have to.’

  ‘Mm. He caught you two in the act and hit her, did he?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m trying to understand what sort of situation may have led to you trying to kill him. If you mean it literally, that is.’

  ‘He hit me. And that was why I did my best to kill him. With a knife. And I was well on the way to succeeding when a couple of my pals dragged me off him. I was convicted for aggravated assault. Which is pretty cheap for attempted murder.’

  ‘You realise that what you’re saying now could make you a prime suspect?’

  ‘In this case?’ Leike looked askance at Harry. ‘You kidding me? You lot have a bit more nous than that, don’t you?’

  ‘If you’ve wanted to kill once . . .’

  ‘I’ve wanted to kill several times. I assume I’ve done it, too.’

  ‘Assume?’

  ‘It’s not so easy to see black men in the jungle at night. For the most part you shoot indiscriminately.’

  ‘And you did that?’

  ‘In my depraved youth, yes. After paying for my crime, I went into the army and from there straight to South Africa and got a job as a mercenary.’

  ‘Mm. So you were a mercenary in South Africa?’

  ‘Three years. And South Africa is just the place where I enlisted; the fighting took place in the surrounding countries. There was always war, always a market for pros, especially for whites. The blacks still think we’re smarter, you know. They trust white officers more than their own.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve been to the Congo, too?’

  Tony Leike’s right eyebrow formed a black chevron. ‘How so?’

  ‘Went there a while back, so I wondered.’

  ‘It was called Zaire then. But most of the time we weren’t sure which bloody country we were in. It was just green, green, green and then black, black, black until the sun rose again. I worked for a so-called security firm at some diamond mines. That was where I learned to read a map and compass from a head torch. The compass is a waste of time there, too much metal in the mountains.’

  Tony Leika leaned back in his chair. Relaxed and unafraid, Harry noted.

  ‘Talking of metal,’ Harry said, ‘think I read somewhere that you’ve got a mining business down there.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What sort of metal?’

  ‘Heard of coltan?’

  Harry nodded slowly. ‘Used in mobile phones.’

  ‘Exactly. And in games consoles. When world mobile phone production took off in the nineties my troops and I were on a mission in the north-east of the Congo. Some Frenchmen and some natives ran a mine there, employing kids with pickaxes and spades to dig out the coltan. It looks like any old stone but you use it to produce tantalum, which is the element that’s really valuable. And I knew that if I could just get someone to finance me I could run a proper, modern mining business and make my partners and myself wealthy men.’

  ‘And that was what happened?’

  Tony Leike laughed. ‘Not quite. I managed to borrow money, was screwed by slippery partners and lost everything. Borrowed more money, was screwed again, borrowed even more and earned a bit.’

  ‘A bit?’

  ‘A few million to pay off debts. But I had a network of contacts and some headlines, as of course I was counting chickens before they hatched, which was enough to be adopted into the circle where the big money was. To become a member, it’s the number of digits in your fortune that counts, not whether there’s a plus or minus in front.’ Leike laughed again, a hearty ringing laugh, and it was all Harry could do to restrain a smile.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now we’re waiting for the big coup because it’s time for coltan to be harvested. Yes indeed, I’ve said it for long enough, but this time it’s true. I’ve had to sell my shares in the project in exchange for call options so that I could pay my debts. Now things are set fair, and all I have to do is get hold of money to redeem my shares so that I can become a full partner again.’

  ‘Mm. And the money?’

  ‘Someone will see the sense in lending me the money against a small share. The return is enormous, the risk minimal. And all the big investments have been made, including local bribes. We have even cleared a runway into the jungle so that we can load directly on to freight planes and get the stuff out via Uganda. Are you wealthy, Harry? I can see if there’s any chance for you to have a slice of the action.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘Been to Stavanger recently, Leike?’

  ‘Hm. In the summer.’

  ‘Not since then?’

  Leike gave the question some thought, then shook his head.

  ‘You’re not absolutely sure?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I’m presenting my project to potential investors, and that means a lot of travelling. Must have been to Stavanger three or four times this year, but not since the summer, I don’t think.’

  ‘What about Leipzig?’

  ‘Is this the point where I have to ask whether I need a solicitor, Harry?’

  ‘I just want you eliminated from the case as soon as possible, so that we can concentrate on more relevant issues.’ Harry ran his forefinger across the bridge of his nose. ‘If you don’t want the media to catch wind of this, I assume you won’t want to involve a solicitor, or to be summoned to formal interviews, etc?’

  Leike nodded slowly. ‘You’re right, of course. Thank you for your advice, Harry.’

  ‘Leipzig?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Leike said, with genuine regret in his voice and face. ‘Never been there. Should I have been?’

  ‘Mm. I also have to ask you where you were on certain days and what you were doing.’

  ‘Carry on.’

  Harry dictated the four dates in question while Leike wrote them into a Moleskine notebook.

  ‘I’ll check as soon as I’m in my office,’ he said. ‘Here’s my number by the way.’ He passed Harry a business card with the inscription Tony C. Leike, Entrepreneur.

  ‘What does the C stand for?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Leike said, getting to his feet. ‘Tony’s only short for Anthony of course, so I thought I needed an initial. Gives a bit more gravitas, don’t you think? Think foreigners like it.’

  Instead of taking the culvert, Harry accompanied Leike up the stairs to the prison, knocked on the glass window and a guard came and let them in.

  ‘Feels like I’m taking part in an episode with the Olsen Gang,’ Leike said when they were standing on the gravel path outside old Botsen Prison’s fairly imposing walls.

  ‘It’s a little more discreet like this,’ Harry said. ‘You’re beginning to become a recognisable face, and staff are arriving for work now at Police HQ.’

  ‘Talking of faces, I see
someone has broken your jaw.’

  ‘Must have fallen and hit myself.’

  Leike shook his head and smiled. ‘I know something about broken jaws. That one’s from a fight. You’ve just let it grow together again, I can see. You should go and have it seen to, it’s not a big job.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip.’

  ‘Did you owe them a lot of money?’

  ‘Do you know something about that, too?’

  ‘Yes!’ Leike exclaimed, his eyes widening. ‘Unfortunately.’

  ‘Mm. One last thing, Leike—’

  ‘Tony. Or Tony C.’ Leike flashed his shiny masticatory apparatus. Like someone without a care in the world, Harry thought.

  ‘Tony. Have you ever been to Lake Lyseren? The one in Øst—?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Are you crazy!’ Tony laughed. ‘The Leike farm is in Rustad. I went to my grandfather’s there every summer. Lived there for a couple of years, too. Fantastic place, isn’t it? Why d’you want to know?’ His smile vanished at once. ‘Oh, shit, that’s where you found the woman! Bit of a coincidence, eh?’

  ‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘it’s not so unlikely. Lyseren is a big lake.’

  ‘True enough. Thanks again, Harry.’ Leike proffered his hand. ‘And if any names crop up to do with the Håvass cabin, or someone comes forward, just ring me and I’ll see if I can remember them. Full cooperation, Harry.’

  Harry watched himself shake hands with the man he had just decided had killed six people in the last three months.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes had passed since Leike left when Katrine Bratt rang.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Negative on four of them,’ she said.

  ‘And the fifth?’

  ‘One hit. Deep in digital information’s innermost intestinal tract.’

  ‘Poetic.’

  ‘You’ll like it. On the 16th of February Elias Skog was called by a number that is not registered in anyone’s name. A secret number, in other words. And that could be the reason that Oslo—’

  ‘Stavanger.’

  ‘—Police haven’t seen the link before. But inside the innermost intestines—’

  ‘By which you mean on Telenor’s internal, highly protected register?’