The Leopard: An Inspector Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  Harry contemplated the dregs in the bottle a second time. “Mm. A tough order. Do you think the press will swallow the story after you were standing with your hands raised, taking the credit for the arrest?”

  “I assumed responsibility, the press release will say. I saw fronting the arrest as a management responsibility, even though we had misgivings that a policeman might have committed a blunder. But when Harry Hole later insisted on being allowed to take his place at the front, I didn’t stand in his way because he was an experienced inspector and didn’t even work for Kripos.”

  “And my motivation is that if I don’t sign I will be charged with drug smuggling and possession?”

  Bellman pressed his fingertips together and rocked back in the chair.

  “Correct. But more important for your motivation is perhaps the fact that I can see to it that you’re held on remand, effective immediately. Shame, since I know you would have liked to be at the hospital with your father, who, I understand, has little time left. Very sad business.”

  Harry leaned back against the sofa. He knew he ought to have been angry. The old—the younger—Harry would have been. But what this Harry wanted most was to bury himself in the sweat-and-vomit-stained sofa, close his eyes and hope they would get lost, Bellman, Kaja, the shadows by the window. But his brain continued its automatic acquired reasoning.

  “Quite apart from me,” he heard himself say, “why would Leike bear out this version? He knows it was Kripos who arrested him, who questioned him.”

  Harry knew the answer before Bellman spelled it out.

  “Because Leike knows that there will always be an unpleasant shadow hanging over someone who has been arrested. Especially unpleasant for someone such as Leike, who at this moment is trying to win the trust of investors, of course. The best way to rid himself of this shadow is to endorse a version that maintains the arrest was due to a loose cannon, an isolated unprofessional element in the police force who ran amok. Agreed?”

  Harry nodded.

  “Anyway, as far as the force is concerned—”

  “I am protecting the name of the entire force by assuming all the guilt,” Harry said.

  Bellman smiled. “I’ve always held you to be a relatively intelligent man, Hole. Does that mean we have reached an understanding?”

  Harry considered. If Bellman went now he could see whether there really were a few drops of whiskey left in the bottle. He nodded.

  “Here’s the press release. I want your name there.” Bellman pushed pen and paper across the coffee table. It was too dark to read. That didn’t matter. Harry signed.

  “Good,” said Bellman, taking the piece of paper and getting up. The light from a street lamp outside fell onto his face, causing the war paint to shine. “This is best for all of us. Think about it, Harry. And get some rest.”

  The victor’s merciful attentions, Harry thought, closing his eyes and feeling Morpheus welcome him into his arms. Then he opened his eyes again, struggled to his feet and followed Bellman down the steps. Kaja was still standing, with arms crossed, beside her car.

  Harry saw Bellman send a nod of acknowledgment to Kaja, who responded with a shrug of the shoulders. Watched him cross the street, get into a car, the same one he had seen on Lyder Sagens Gate that evening, watched him start the engine and drive off. Kaja had come to the foot of the steps. Her voice was still thick with tears.

  “Why did you hit Bjørn Holm?”

  Harry turned to go in, but she was faster, taking two steps at a time. She came between him and the door and blocked the way. Her breathing was accelerated and hot against his face.

  “You hit him when you knew he was innocent. Why?”

  “Go now, Kaja.”

  “I’m not going!”

  Harry looked at her. Knowing it was something he could not explain. How much it had hurt and surprised him when he realized the ramifications. Hurt him enough to make him lash out, punch the astonished, innocent moon-shaped face, the very reflection of his own gullible naïveté.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked and heard the metallic tone, the fury creeping into his voice. “I really believed in you, Kaja. So I should congratulate you. Congratulate you on a job well done. Can you go away now?”

  He saw the tears well up in her eyes again. Then she stepped aside, and he staggered in and slammed the door behind him. Remained in the hall in the soundless vacuum after the bang, in the good silence, the void, the wonderful nothingness.

  47

  Fear of the Dark

  Olav Hole blinked into the darkness.

  “Is that you, Harry?”

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  “It’s night, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s night.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m alive.”

  “Let me put on the light.”

  “No need. I’m going to tell you something.”

  “I recognize the tone. I’m not sure I want to hear.”

  “You’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow anyway.”

  “And you have a different version you want to tell me?”

  “No, I just want to be first.”

  “Have you been drinking, Harry?”

  “Do you want to hear?”

  “Your grandfather drank. I loved him. Drunk or sober. There are not many people who can say that about a drunken father. No, I don’t want to hear.”

  “Mm.”

  “And I can say that to you, too. I have loved you. Always. Drunk or sober. You weren’t even difficult. Although you were always argumentative. You were at war with most people, not least with yourself. But loving you, Harry, is the easiest thing I have done.”

  “Dad—”

  “There’s no time to talk about trivia, Harry. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, Harry; I feel as if I have, but sometimes we think things so often that we simply believe they have been said aloud. I’ve always been proud of you, Harry. Have I told you that often enough?”

  “I—”

  “Yes?” Olav Hole listened in the dark. “Are you crying, son? That’s fine. Do you know what made me proudest? I’ve never told you this, but when you were in your teens one of your teachers called us. He said you’d been fighting in the playground again. With two of the boys from the grade above, but this time it hadn’t turned out so well—they’d had to send you to the hospital to have your lip sewn and a tooth taken out. I stopped your allowance, remember? Anyway, Øystein told me about the fight later. You flew at them because they’d filled Tresko’s knapsack with water from the school fountain. If I remember correctly, you didn’t even like Tresko much. Øystein said the reason you’d been hurt so badly was that you didn’t give in. You got up time after time and in the end you were bleeding so much that the big boys became alarmed and went on their way.”

  Olav Hole laughed quietly. “I didn’t think I could tell you at the time—it would only have been asking for more fights—but I was so proud I could have wept. You were brave, Harry. You were scared of the dark, but that didn’t stop you going there. And I was the world’s proudest dad. Did I ever say that, Harry? Harry? Are you there?”

  Free. The Champagne bottle smashes against the wall, and the bubbles run down the wallpaper like boiling cerebral matter, over the pictures, the newspaper clippings, the printout off the Net showing Harry Hole accepting the blame. Free. Free of blame, free to send the world into hell again. I tread on the broken glass, tread it into the floor, hear it crunch. And I’m barefoot. I skid on my own blood. Laughing until I howl. Free. Free!

  48

  Hypothesis

  Neil McCormack, the head of the crime division, Sydney South, ran a hand through his thinning mop of hair while studying the bespectacled woman across the table in the interview room. She had come straight from the publishing house where she worked. Her suit was plain and creased, but there was nevertheless something about Iska Peller that made him presume it was expensive, wasn’t just meant to impress simple
souls like himself. However, her address suggested that she was not particularly well off. Bristol was not the most fashionable area of Sydney. She seemed adult and sensible. Definitely not the type to dramatize, exaggerate, attract attention for attention’s sake. Besides, they were the ones who had called her in; she hadn’t come to the Sydney Police of her own accord. He looked at his watch. McCormack had arranged to go sailing with his son this afternoon; they were due to meet in Watsons Bay, where the boat was moored. That’s why he hoped this wouldn’t take long. And everything had been fine until the last snippet of information.

  “Miss Peller,” McCormack said, leaning back and folding his hands over his impressive potbelly, “why didn’t you tell anyone about this before?”

  She hunched her shoulders. “Why should I? No one asked, and I can’t see that it has any relevance to Charlotte’s murder. I’m telling you now because you’ve asked me in such detail. I thought what happened in the cabin was what you were interested in, not the kind of … incident that took place afterward. And that was what it was. A tiny incident, soon over, soon forgotten. You find idiots like him everywhere. As an individual you can’t take on the task of reporting every single creep.”

  McCormack growled. Of course she was right. And he didn’t feel like following up on the matter, either. There was always so much more trouble, unpleasantness and, not least, work when the person in question had a professional handle that either started or finished with the word police. He gazed out of the window. The sun was glittering on the sea by Port Jackson and on the Manly side, where smoke was still rising despite the fact that it had been a week since the season’s last bush fire had been extinguished. The smoke was drifting south. A fine, warm northerly. Perfect for sailing. McCormack had liked Hole. Or “Holy,” as he called the Norwegian. He had done a brilliant job when he’d helped them with the clown murder. But the lofty, fair-haired Norwegian had sounded weary on the phone. McCormack genuinely hoped that Holy wasn’t going to keel over again.

  “Let’s take it from the start, shall we, Miss Peller?”

  Mikael Bellman entered the Odin conference room and heard the conversations stop at once. He strode over to the speaker’s chair, put down his notes, connected his laptop to the USB port and stood in the middle of the floor with his legs anchored. The investigation unit numbered thirty-six officers, three times what was normal for murder cases. They had been working for so long without results that he had had to boost morale a couple of times, but, generally speaking, they had stuck to it like heroes. That was why Bellman had allowed not only himself but his staff to enjoy what had seemed like their great triumph: the arrest of Tony Leike.

  “You will have read the papers today,” he opened, surveying the assembly.

  He had saved their hides. The front pages of two of the three biggest newspapers bore the same photograph: Tony Leike getting into a car outside Police HQ. The third had a picture of Harry Hole, an archive photo from a talk show where he had been discussing the Snowman.

  “As you can see, Inspector Hole has assumed responsibility. Which is only right and proper.”

  His words bounced back to him off the walls, and he met the silent officers’ morning-weary gazes. Or was it a different kind of tiredness? In which case, it would have to be confronted. Because things were coming to a head now. The Kripos boss had dropped by to say that the Ministry of Justice had called and was asking questions. The sands of time were running out.

  “We don’t have a prime suspect anymore,” he said. “But the good news is we have fresh leads. And they all take us from the Håvass cabin to Ustaoset.”

  He went to the laptop and tapped a key, and the first page of a PowerPoint presentation he had prepared came to life.

  Half an hour later he had been through all the facts they possessed, with names, times and assumed routes.

  “The question,” he said, switching off the computer, “is what kind of murders we are dealing with here. I think we can exclude the typical serial killer. The victims have not been chosen at random inside a demographic group; they are tied to a specific place and a specific time. Accordingly, there is reason to believe that we are also talking about a specific motive that may even be perceived as rational. If so, that makes the task considerably easier for us: find the motive and we have the killer.”

  Bellman saw several detectives nod.

  “The problem is that there are no witnesses to tell us anything. The only one we know to be alive, Iska Peller, was ill in bed, alone. The others either are dead or have not come forward. We know, for example, that Adele Vetlesen was with a man she had met recently, but no one in her circle of acquaintances seems to know anything about him, so we have to assume it was a short-lived relationship. We’re looking at the men she contacted by phone or on the Net, but it will take time to work our way through them. And in the absence of witnesses we will have to find our own starting point. We need hypotheses for the motive. What is the motive for killing at least four people?”

  “Jealousy or hearing voices,” someone from the back replied.

  “All our experience tells us that.”

  “Agreed. Who might hear voices commanding them to kill?”

  “Anyone with a psychiatric record,” came a singsong response from Finnmark.

  “And anyone without one,” said someone else.

  “Good. Who might be jealous?”

  “Partner or spouse of someone there.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “But we’ve checked the victims’ partners’ alibis and potential motives,” another said. “That’s the first thing we do. And either they didn’t have partners or we eliminated them from our inquiries.”

  Mikael Bellman knew all too well they were just putting their foot on the accelerator while the wheels spun around in the same rut they had been in for a while, but the important point now was that they were ready to do exactly that: accelerate. For he was in no doubt that the Håvass cabin was a plank that could be levered under the wheel to get them out of the rut.

  “We didn’t eliminate all the partners and spouses,” Bellman said, rocking on his heels. “We just didn’t think every one was a suspect. Who didn’t have an alibi for the time his wife was killed?”

  “Rasmus Olsen!”

  “Correct. And when I went to Stortinget and spoke to Rasmus Olsen he admitted that there had been what he called a little ‘jealous patch’ some months ago. A woman Rasmus had been flirting with. And Marit Olsen went to the Håvass cabin for a couple of days to think things over. The days may match. Perhaps she did more than think. Perhaps she paid him back in kind. And here’s a thought. On the night in question, when the victims were at the Håvass cabin, Rasmus Olsen was not in Oslo; he was booked into a hotel in Ustaoset. What was Rasmus doing in the area if his wife was in Håvass? And did he spend the night in the hotel or did he go for a longish ski trip?”

  The eyes in front of him were no longer heavy-lidded or tired—quite the opposite; he was igniting a spark in them. He waited for an answer. Working in such a large investigative group was not normally the most efficient way to do this kind of improvised brainstorming, but they had worked on the case for so long that all the participants had had their opinions, their surefire hunches and fanciful hypotheses rejected and their egos flattened.

  A young detective attempted a punt. “He may have arrived at the cabin in the evening unannounced and caught her in the act. The guy saw and sneaked off again. Then planned the whole thing at his leisure.”

  “Maybe,” Bellman said, going over to the speaker’s chair and holding up a note. “Argument one in favor of such a theory: I’ve just been given this by Telenor. It shows that Rasmus Olsen spoke to his wife on the phone sometime that morning. So let’s assume he knew which cabin she was going to. Argument two in favor of this hypothesis is the weather report, which shows there was a moon and clear visibility all evening and night, so he could easily have skied there, as Tony Leike did. Argument one against the hyp
othesis: Why kill anyone apart from his wife and her alleged partner?”

  “Maybe she had more than one,” shouted one of the female detectives, a short, buxom number Bellman had figured was sufficiently lesbian for him to have toyed with the idea of inviting her to Kaja’s one night. No more than a passing thought, of course. “Perhaps there was a whole fucking orgy going on up there.”

  Laughter all around. Good—that lightened the atmosphere.

  “He may not have seen who she was having sex with, didn’t even know if it was a woman or a man, just that someone was under the covers with her,” another voice said. “And so he hedged his bets.”

  More laughter.

  “Come on—we can’t waste time on this garbage,” said Eskildsen, a veteran, though no one knew exactly how long he had been a detective. The room fell silent. “Any of you young ’uns remember the case they solved at Crime Squad a few years back, when everyone thought there was a serial killer on the loose?” Eskildsen continued. “When they got the killer it turned out he only had a motive for murdering number three. But because he knew he would come under suspicion if she was the only victim, he killed the others to camouflage it as an insane rampage.”

  “Jesus Christ,” shouted a young officer. “Did the Crime Squad actually manage to solve a case? Must have been a fluke.”