by Jo Nesbo
‘He was all wild-eyed and asked if Lund-Helgesen was still alive! As though he was terrified the guy had died. As though that was the worst thing that could have happened. And when I said yes and that he was being taken away in the ambulance he yelled that we had to remove Lund-Helgesen’s shoelaces and belt and make sure he didn’t commit suicide. Have you ever heard anything like it? Showing that much care for a guy who’d just tried to snuff your ex?’
37
DAY 22.
Dad.
JONAS THOUGHT HE HAD HEARD THE METALLIC JANGLE of the wind chimes, but had gone back to sleep. It was only when he heard the choking sounds that he opened his eyes. There was someone in the room. It was Dad; he was sitting on the edge of his bed.
And the choking sounds were him crying.
Jonas sat up in bed. He placed a hand on his father’s shoulder and felt it shaking. It was odd; he had never noticed that his father had such narrow shoulders.
‘They … they’ve found her,’ he sobbed. ‘Mum’s …’
‘I know,’ Jonas said. ‘I dreamt it.’
The father swivelled round in surprise. In the moonlight seeping through the curtains Jonas could see the tears running down his cheeks.
‘It’s just us now, Dad,’ he said.
His father opened his mouth. Once. Twice. But nothing came out. Then he stretched out his arms, wrapped them around Jonas and drew him close. Held him tight. Jonas laid his head against his father’s neck, felt the hot tears wetting his scalp.
‘Do you know what, Jonas?’ he whispered through the tears. ‘I love you so much. You’re the dearest thing I have. You’re my boy. Do you hear? My boy. And you always will be. We’ll manage, won’t we? Don’t you think?’
‘Yes, Dad,’ Jonas whispered. ‘We’ll manage. You and me.’
38
DECEMBER 2004.
The Swans.
IT WAS DECEMBER AND THE FIELDS OUTSIDE THE HOSPITAL windows lay bare and brown under a steel-grey sky. On the motorway, studded tyres crunched on dry tarmac and pedestrians scuttled across the footbridge with coat collars turned up and closed faces. But inside the walls of the building people huddled closer. And on the table in the ward the two candles marked the second Sunday of Advent.
Harry pulled up in the doorway. Ståle Aune was sitting up in bed and had obviously just made a witticism because the head of Krimteknisk, Beate Lønn, was still laughing. On her lap sat a red-cheeked baby looking at Harry with big round eyes and an open mouth.
‘My friend!’ Ståle growled as he caught sight of the policeman.
Harry walked in, stooped, gave Beate a hug and offered Ståle Aune a hand.
‘You look better than when I saw you last,’ Harry said.
‘They say I’ll be discharged before Christmas,’ Aune said and turned Harry’s hand in his. ‘That’s some fiendish claw. What happened?’
Harry allowed him to study his right hand. ‘The middle finger was chopped off and couldn’t be saved. They sewed together the sinews in the index finger, and the nerve ends will grow a millimetre a month and try to find each other. Though the doctors say I’ll have to live with permanent paralysis on one side of it.’
‘A high price.’
‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Small beer.’
Aune nodded.
‘Any news about when the case is due to come up?’ asked Beate who had got to her feet to put the baby in the carrycot.
‘No,’ Harry said, watching the forensic officer’s efficient movements.
‘The defence will try to have Lund-Helgesen declared mad,’ Aune said, preferring the demotic form ‘mad’ which in his opinion was not only a suitable description but also poetic. ‘And not to achieve that would take an even worse psychologist than me.’
‘Oh yes, he’ll get life anyway,’ Beate said, angling her head and straightening the baby’s blanket.
‘Just a shame life isn’t life,’ Aune growled and put out a hand for the glass on his bedside table. ‘The more aged I become, the more I tend to the view that evil is evil, mental illness or no. We’re all more or less disposed to evil actions, but our disposition cannot exonerate us. For heaven’s sake, we’re all sick with personality disorders. And it’s our actions which define how sick we are. We’re equal before the law, we say, but it’s meaningless as long as no one is equal. During the Black Death seamen who coughed were immediately heaved overboard. Of course they were. For justice is a blunt knife, both as a philosophy and as a judge. All we have is fortunate or less fortunate medical prospects, my dears.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Harry said, staring down at the still bandaged stump of a middle finger, ‘in this case, it’ll be for life.’
‘Oh?’
‘Unfortunate medical prospects.’
The silence filled the room.
‘Did I say that I was offered a finger prosthesis?’ Harry announced waving his right hand. ‘But basically I like my hand as it is. Four fingers. Cartoon hand.’
‘What did you do with the finger that was there?’
‘Tried to donate it to the Anatomy Department, but they weren’t interested. So I’ll have it stuffed and put it on my desk, just like Hagen does with the Japanese little finger. Thought an upright middle finger might be a suitable Hole welcome.’
The other two laughed.
‘How are Oleg and Rakel doing?’ Beate asked.
‘Surprisingly well,’ Harry said. ‘Toughies.’
‘And Katrine Bratt?’
‘Better. I visited her last week. She starts work again in February. Going back to her old unit in Bergen.’
‘Really? Didn’t she almost shoot someone in her excitement?’
‘Wrong call. Turns out she was walking around with an empty revolver. That was why she dared to press the trigger so far back. And I should have known that.’
‘Oh?’
‘When you move from one police station to another you hand in your service revolver and get a new one with two boxes of ammo. There were two unopened boxes in her desk drawer.’
A moment of silence followed.
‘It’s good she’s well again,’ Beate said, stroking the baby’s hair.
‘Yes,’ Harry said absent-mindedly, and it occurred to him that it was true; she did seem to be getting better. When he had visited Katrine in her mother’s flat in Bergen she had just had a shower after a long run on Sandviken Mountain. Her hair had still been wet and her cheeks red as her mother had served tea and Katrine had talked about how her father’s case had become an obsession. And she had apologised for having dragged him into the matter. He hadn’t seen any regret in her eyes, though.
‘My psychiatrist says that I’m just a few notches more extreme than most people,’ she had laughed, and shrugged. ‘But now I’m done with all that. It’s pursued me from my childhood. Now he’s finally had his name cleared and I can move on with my life.’
‘Shuffling papers for the Sexual Offences Unit?’
‘We’ll start there, then we’ll see. Even top politicians make comebacks.’
Then her eyes had glided towards the window, across the fjord. Towards Finnøy perhaps. And as Harry had left he’d known the damage was there and always would be.
He looked down at his hand. Aune was right; if every baby was a perfect miracle, life was basically a process of degeneration.
A nurse coughed by the door. ‘Time for a few jabs, Aune.’
‘Oh, please let me off, sister.’
‘No one is let off here.’
Ståle Aune sighed. ‘Sister, what is worse? Taking the life of a person who wants to live or taking death from a person who wants to die?’
Beate, the nurse and Ståle laughed, and no one noticed Harry twitch in his chair.
Harry walked up the steep hills from the hospital to Lake Sognsvann. There weren’t many people around, only the loyal throng of Sunday walkers doing their fixed circuit around the lake. Rakel waited for him by the roadblock.
They gave each other a hug and sta
rted the circuit in silence. The air was sharp and the sun matt in a pale blue sky. Dry leaves crackled and disintegrated beneath their heels.
‘I’ve been sleepwalking,’ Harry said.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. And I’ve probably been doing it for a while.’
‘It’s not so easy to be fully present all the time,’ she said.
‘No, no.’ He shook his head. ‘Quite literally. I think I’ve been up and walking through the flat at night. God knows what I’ve been up to.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘The night after I came home from the hospital I was standing in the kitchen looking at the floor, at some wet footprints. And then I realised I hadn’t got a stitch on, except for my rubber boots, it was the middle of the night and I was holding a hammer in my hand.’
Rakel smiled and looked down. Skipped a pace so that they were walking in rhythm. ‘I started sleepwalking for a while. Right after I became pregnant.’
‘Aune told me adults sleepwalk at times of stress.’
They stopped at the water’s edge. Watched a pair of swans float past, immobile and noiseless, on the grey surface.
‘I knew from the very first moment who Oleg’s father was,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t know that he and I were having a child when he was informed that his girlfriend in Oslo was pregnant.’
Harry filled his lungs with the sharp air. Felt it bite. It tasted of winter. He closed his eyes to the sun and listened.
‘By the time I found out, he had already made his decision and left Moscow for Oslo. I had two options. To give the child a father in Moscow who would love and look after him as if he were his own – so long as he thought he was his own – or for the child to have no father. It was absurd. You know what I feel about lying. If someone had told me that I – I of all people – would one day choose to live the rest of my life based on a lie, I would of course have denied it vehemently. You think everything is simple when you’re young; you know nothing about the impossible decisions you may have to face. And if I’d only had myself to consider, this would have been a simple decision, too. But there were so many things to take into account. Not only whether I would crush Fjodor and affront his family, but also whether I would destroy things for the man who had gone to Oslo and his family. And then there was Oleg to take into account. Oleg came first.’
‘I understand,’ Harry said. ‘I understand everything.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand why I haven’t told you this before. With you there was no one else to take into account. You must think that I’ve tried to appear to be a better person than I am.’
‘I don’t think that,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t believe that you’re a better person than you are.’
She rested her head on his shoulder.
‘Do you believe it’s true what they say about swans?’ she asked. ‘That they’re faithful to each other until death do them part?’
‘I believe they’re faithful to the promises they’ve made,’ Harry said.
‘And what promises do swans make?’
‘None, I would assume.’
‘So you’re talking about yourself now? In fact, I liked you better when you made promises and broke them.’
‘Would you like more promises?’
She shook her head.
When they started walking again she hooked her arm under his.
‘I wish we could begin afresh,’ she sighed. ‘Pretend nothing had happened.’
‘I know.’
‘But you also know that that’s no good.’
Harry could hear that the intonation implied this was a statement; however, hidden somewhere there was still a tiny weeny question mark.
‘I’ve been thinking of going away,’ he said.
‘Oh yes? Where?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t come looking for me. Especially not in North Africa.’
‘North Africa?’
‘It’s a Marty Feldman line in a film. He wants to escape and be found at the same time.’
‘I see.’
A shadow flitted across them and over the grey-yellow, leached forest floor. They looked up. It was one of the swans.
‘How did it work out in the film?’ Rakel asked. ‘Did they find each other again?’
‘Of course.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘Never,’ Harry replied. ‘I’m never coming back.’
In a cold cellar in a Tøyen high-rise two worried representatives of the residents’ committee were standing and looking at a man in a boiler suit wearing glasses with unusually thick lenses. The breath was coming out of the man’s mouth like white plaster dust as he spoke.
‘That’s the thing about mould. You can’t see it’s there.’
He paused. Pressed his middle finger against the wisp of hair that was stuck to his forehead.
‘But it is.’
PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA
Copyright © 2011 Jo Nesbo
English translation copyright © 2011 Don Bartlett
Published by agreement with Salomonsson Agency
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2011 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Harvill Secker, an imprint of the Random House Group Limited, London. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nesbø, Jo, 1960–
The leopard / Jo Nesbø; translated by Don Bartlett.
(The Harry Hole mystery series; 8)
Translation of: Panserhjerte.
eISBN: 978-0-307-35974-2
I. Bartlett, Don II. Title. III. Series: Nesbø, Jo, 1960–. Harry Hole mystery series; 8.
PT8951.24.E83P3513 2011 839.82374 C2010-904264-6
v3.1
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Map
Part One Chapter 1 - The Drowning
Chapter 2 - The Illuminating Darkness
Chapter 3 - Hong Kong
Chapter 4 - Sex Pistols
Chapter 5 - The Park
Chapter 6 - Homecoming
Chapter 7 - Gallows
Chapter 8 - Snow Patrøl
Chapter 9 - The Dive
Part Two Chapter 10 - Reminders
Chapter 11 - Print
Chapter 12 - Crime Scene
Chapter 13 - Office
Chapter 14 - Recruitment
Chapter 15 - Strobe Lights
Chapter 16 - Speed King
Chapter 17 - Fibres
Chapter 18 - The Patient
Chapter 19 - The White Bride
Chapter 20 - Øystein
Chapter 21 - Snow White
Chapter 22 - Search Engine
Chapter 23 - Passenger
Part Three Chapter 24 - Stavanger
Chapter 25 - Territory
Chapter 26 - The Needle
Chapter 27 - Kind, Light-Fingered and Tight-Fisted
Chapter 28 - Drammen
Chapter 29 - Kluit
Chapter 30 - Guest Book
Chapter 31 - Kigali
Chapter 32 - Police
Chapter 33 - Leipzig
Chapter 34 - Medium
Chapter 35 - T
he Dive
Part Four Chapter 36 - Helicopter
Chapter 37 - Profile
Chapter 38 - Permanent Scarring
Chapter 39 - Relational Search
Chapter 40 - The Offer
Chapter 41 - The Blue Chit
Chapter 42 - Beavis
Chapter 43 - House Call
Chapter 44 - The Anchor
Chapter 45 - Questioning
Part Five Chapter 46 - Red Beetle
Chapter 47 - Fear of the Dark
Chapter 48 - Hypothesis
Chapter 49 - Bombay Garden
Chapter 50 - Corruption
Chapter 51 - Letter
Chapter 52 - Visit
Chapter 53 - Heel Hook
Chapter 54 - Tulip
Chapter 55 - Turquoise
Part Six Chapter 56 - Decoy
Chapter 57 - Thunder
Chapter 58 - Snow
Chapter 59 - The Burial
Chapter 60 - Pixies and Dwarfs
Chapter 61 - The Drop
Chapter 62 - Transit
Chapter 63 - The Storehouse
Part Seven Chapter 64 - State of Health
Chapter 65 - Kadok
Chapter 66 - After the Fire
Chapter 67 - Prince Charming
Chapter 68 - Pike
Chapter 69 - Looped Writing
Chapter 70 - Blind Spot
Chapter 71 - Bliss
Chapter 72 - Boy
Chapter 73 - Arrest
Chapter 74 - Bristol Cream
Part Eight Chapter 75 - Perspiration
Chapter 76 - Redefinition
Chapter 77 - Fingerprint
Chapter 78 - The Deal
Chapter 79 - Missed Calls
Chapter 80 - The Rhythm
Chapter 81 - The Cones of Light
Chapter 82 - Red
Part Nine Chapter 83 - The End of the World
Chapter 84 - Reunion
Chapter 85 - Edvard Munch
Chapter 86 - Calibre