The Leopard

by Jo Nesbo

  Jussi marched towards the bar, po-faced, as if he had carried out the rubbish. Truls whinnied and grunted. He would never understand Finns or Samis or Eskimos or whatever the hell they were.

  From further back in the room a man had stood up and made his way to the door. Truls hadn’t seen him at Kripos before, but he had the circumspect eye of a policeman under all that dark, curly hair.

  ‘Tell me if you need any help with him, sheriff,’ someone shouted from his table.

  Three minutes later, when Celine Dion had been turned back up and the chatting had resumed its previous levels, Truls ventured forth, put his foot on the hundred-krone note and took it to the bar.

  Harry had his breath back. And he spewed. Once, twice. Then he collapsed again. The tarmac was so cold it stung his ribs through his shirt and so heavy he seemed to be supporting it and not vice versa. Blood-red spots and wriggling black worms danced in front of his eyes.

  ‘Hole?’

  Harry heard the voice, but knew that if he showed he was conscious it would be open season for a kicking. So he kept his eyes closed.

  ‘Hole?’ The voice had come closer and he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  Harry also knew that the alcohol would have reduced his speed, accuracy and ability to judge distances, but he did it anyway. He opened his eyes, twisted over and aimed for the larynx. Then he collapsed again.

  He had missed by half a metre.

  ‘I’ll get you a taxi,’ the voice said.

  ‘Will you fuck,’ Harry groaned. ‘Piss off, you bloody bastard.’

  ‘I’m not Kripos,’ the voice said. ‘My name’s Krongli. The County Officer from Ustaoset.’

  Harry turned and squinted up at him.

  ‘I’m just a bit pissed,’ Harry said hoarsely and tried to breathe calmly so that the pain wouldn’t force the contents of his stomach up again. ‘No big deal.’

  ‘I’m a bit pissed, too,’ Krongli smiled, putting an arm around Harry’s shoulders. ‘And, to be frank, I have no idea where to get a taxi. Can you stand upright?’

  Harry got one and then two legs beneath him, blinked a couple of times and established that at least he was vertical again. Semi-embracing an officer from Ustaoset.

  ‘Where are you sleeping tonight?’ Krongli asked.

  Harry looked askance at the officer. ‘At home. And preferably on my own, if that’s alright with you.’

  At that moment a police car pulled up in front of them, and the window slid down. Harry heard the tail end of some laughter and then a composed voice.

  ‘Harry Hole, Crime Squad?’

  ‘Sme,’ Harry sighed.

  ‘We’ve just received a phone call from one of the Kripos detectives requesting that we drive you home safe and sound.’

  ‘Open the door then!’

  Harry got onto the back seat, lolled against the headrest, closed his eyes, started to feel everything rotating, but preferred that to watching the two in the front ogling him. Krongli asked them to ring him at a number when ‘Harry’ was safely home. What the hell gave him the idea he was his pal? Harry heard the hum of the window and then the pleasant voice from the front seat again.

  ‘Where do you live, Hole?’

  ‘Keep going straight ahead,’ Harry said. ‘We’re going to pay someone a visit.’

  When Harry felt the car set off, he opened his eyes, turned and saw Aslak Krongli still standing on the pavement in Møllergata.

  43

  House Call

  KAJA LAY ON HER SIDE STARING INTO THE DARKNESS OF her bedroom. She had heard the gate open and now there were footsteps on the gravel outside. She held her breath and waited. Then the doorbell rang. She slipped out of bed, into her dressing gown and over to the window. Another ring. She opened the curtains a fraction. And sighed.

  ‘Drunken police officer,’ she said out loud in the room.

  She put her feet into slippers and shuffled into the hall towards the door. Opened it and stood in the doorway with crossed arms.

  ‘Hello there, schweedie,’ the policeman slurred. Kaja wondered if he was trying to perform the drunkard sketch. Or if it was the pitiful original version.

  ‘What brings you here so late?’ Kaja asked.

  ‘You. Can I come in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you said I could get in touch if I was too lonely. And I was.’

  ‘Aslak Krongli,’ she said. ‘I’m in bed. Go to your hotel now. We can have a coffee tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I need a coffee now, I reckon. Ten minutes and we’ll ring for a taxi, eh? We can talk about murders and serial killers to pass the time. What do you say?’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m not on my own.’

  Krongli straightened up at once, with a movement that made Kaja suspect he was not as drunk as he had seemed at first. ‘Really? Is he here, that policeman you said you were so hung up on?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Are they his?’ the officer drawled, kicking the enormous shoes beside the doormat.

  Kaja didn’t answer. There was something in Krongli’s voice, no, behind it, something she hadn’t heard there before. Like a low-frequency, barely audible growl.

  ‘Or have you just put the shoes there to frighten off unwanted visitors?’ Laughter in his eyes. ‘There’s no one here, is there, Kaja?’

  ‘Listen, Aslak—’

  ‘The policeman you’re talking about, Harry Hole, came a cropper earlier this evening. Turned up at Justisen as drunk as a skunk, picked a fight and got one. A patrol car passed by to give him a lift home. So you must be free tonight after all, eh?’

  Her heart beat faster; she was no longer cold under the dressing gown.

  ‘Perhaps they drove him here instead,’ she said and could hear her voice was different now.

  ‘No, they rang me and said they had driven him way up the hill to visit someone. When they found out he wanted to go to Rikshospital and they strongly advised against it, he just jumped out at the traffic lights. I like my coffee strong, OK?’

  An intense gleam had come into his eyes, the same Even used to get when he wasn’t well.

  ‘Aslak, go now. There are taxis in Kirkeveien.’

  His hand shot out and before she could react he had grabbed her arm and pushed her inside. She tried to free herself, but he put an arm around her and held her tight.

  ‘Do you want to be just like her?’ his voice hissed in her ear. ‘To cut and run, to scram? To be like all you bloody lot . . .’

  She groaned and twisted, but he was strong.

  ‘Kaja!’

  The voice came from the bedroom where the door stood open. A firm, imperious man’s voice that, under different circumstances, Krongli might have recognised. As he had heard it only an hour earlier at Justisen.

  ‘What’s going on, Kaja?’

  Krongli had already let go and was staring at her, with eyes wide and jaw agape.

  ‘Nothing,’ Kaja said, not letting Krongli out of her sight. ‘Just a drunken bumpkin from Ustaoset who’s on his way home.’

  Krongli backed towards the front entrance without a word. Slipped out and slammed the door. Kaja went over, locked it and rested her forehead against the cold wood. She felt like crying. Not out of fear or shock. But despair. Everything around her was collapsing. Everything she had thought was clean and right had finally begun to appear in its real light. It had been happening for some time, but she hadn’t wanted to see. Because what Even had said was true: no one is as they seem, and most of life, apart from honest betrayal, is lies and deceit. And the day we discover we are no different is the day we no longer want to live.

  ‘Are you coming, Kaja?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kaja pushed off from the door through which she would so much have liked to flee. Went into the bedroom. The moonlight fell between the curtains and onto the bed, onto the bottle of champagne he had brought with him to celebrate, onto his naked, athletic torso, onto the face she had once thought the most handsome on this earth.
The white patches on his face shimmered like luminous paint. As if he were aglow inside.

  44

  The Anchor

  KAJA STOOD IN THE DOORWAY LOOKING AT HIM. MIKAEL Bellman. To outsiders: a competent, ambitious POB, a happily married father of three and soon-to-be head of the new Kripos leviathan that would lead all murder investigations in Norway. To her, Kaja Solness: a man she had fallen in love with from the moment they’d met, who had seduced her with all the arts at his disposal, plus a few others. She had been easy game, but that wasn’t his fault, it was hers. By and large. What was it Harry had said? ‘He’s married and says he’ll leave his wife and kids for you, but never does?’

  He had hit the nail on the head. Of course. That’s how banal we are. We believe because we want to believe. In gods, because that dulls the fear of death. In love, because it enhances the notion of life. In what married men say, because that is what married men say.

  She knew what Mikael would say. And then he said it.

  ‘I have to be off. She’ll start wondering.’

  ‘I know,’ Kaja sighed and, as usual, did not ask the questions that always popped up when he said that: Why not stop her wondering? Why not do what you’ve said for so long? And now a new question emerged: Why am I no longer sure I want him to do this?

  Harry clung to the banisters on his way up to the Haematology Department at Rikshospital. He was soaked in sweat, frozen, and his teeth were chattering like a two-stroke engine. And he was drunk. Drunk on Jim Beam, drunk and full of devilry, full of himself, full of shit. He staggered along the corridor; he could already make out the door to his father’s room at the end.

  A nurse’s head poked out from a duty room, looked at him and was gone again. Harry had fifty metres to go to the door when the nurse, plus a skinhead male nurse, skidded into the corridor and cut him off.

  ‘We don’t keep medicines on this ward,’ the skinhead said.

  ‘What you are saying is not only a gross lie,’ Harry said, trying to control his balance and the chattering of his teeth, ‘but a gross insult. I’m not a junkie, but a son here to visit his father. So please, move out of my way.’

  ‘I apologise,’ said the female nurse who seemed quite reassured by Harry’s immaculate pronunciation. ‘But you smell like a brewery, and we cannot allow—’

  ‘A brewery is beer,’ Harry said. ‘Jim Beam is bourbon. Which would require you to say I smell like a distillery, frøken. It’s . . .’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ the male nurse said, grabbing Harry by the elbow. And let it go just as quickly when his own hand was twisted round. The nurse groaned and grimaced with pain before Harry released him. Harry rose to his full height and eyeballed him.

  ‘Ring the police, Gerd,’ the nurse said softly without letting Harry out of his sight.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll deal with this,’ said a voice with a suggestion of a lisp. It was Sigurd Altman. He was walking with a file under his arm and a friendly smile on his face. ‘Have you got time to come with me to where we keep drugs, Harry?’

  Harry swayed back and forth twice. Focused on the small, thin man with the round glasses. Then he nodded.

  ‘This way,’ said Altman, who had already continued walking.

  Altman’s office was, strictly speaking, a storeroom. There were no windows, there was no noticeable ventilation, but there was a desk and computer, a camp bed, which he explained was for night shifts, so that he could sleep or be roused whenever needed. And a lockable cabinet Harry assumed contained a range of chemical uppers and downers.

  ‘Altman,’ Harry said, sitting on the edge of the bed, smacking his lips loudly as though they were coated with glue. ‘Unusual name. Only know one person called that.’

  ‘Robert,’ said Sigurd, sitting on the only chair in the room. ‘I didn’t like who I was in the little village where I grew up. As soon as I got away I applied to change my surname from a much too common -sen. I justified my application by saying, as was the truth, that Robert Altman was my favourite director. And the case officer must have had a hangover that day because it was passed. We can all do with being reborn once in a while.’

  ‘The Player,’ Harry said.

  ‘Gosford Park,’ Altman said.

  ‘Short Cuts.’

  ‘Ah, a masterpiece.’

  ‘Good, but overrated. Too many themes. The direction and editing make the plot unnecessarily complicated.’

  ‘Life is complicated. People are complicated. Watch it again, Harry.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘How’s it going? Any progress on the Marit Olsen case?’

  ‘Progress,’ Harry said. ‘The guy who did it was arrested today.’

  ‘Jeez, well, I can understand you celebrating.’ Altman pressed his chin to his chest and peered over his glasses. ‘I have to confess I’m hoping I can tell my grandchildren that it was my information about ketanome that cracked the case.’

  ‘By all means, but it was a phone call to one of the victims that gave him away.’

  ‘Poor things.’

  ‘Poor who?’

  ‘Poor all of them, I assume. So why the haste to see your father right now, tonight?’

  Harry put his hand in front of his mouth and produced a noiseless belch.

  ‘There is a reason,’Altman said. ‘However drunk you are, there’s always a reason. On the other hand, that reason is none of my business, so perhaps I should keep my mou—’

  ‘Have you ever been asked to carry out euthanasia?’

  Altman shrugged. ‘A few times, yes. As an anaesthetic nurse, I’m an obvious choice. Why?’

  ‘My father asked me.’

  Altman nodded slowly. ‘It’s a heavy burden to place on someone. Is that why you came here now? To get it over with?’

  Harry’s gaze had already wandered around the room to see if there was anything alcoholic to drink. Now it did another round. ‘I came to ask for forgiveness. For not being able to do it for him.’

  ‘You hardly need forgiveness for that. Taking a life is not something you can demand of anyone, let alone of your own son.’

  Harry rested his head in his hands. It felt hard and heavy, like a bowling ball.

  ‘I’ve done it once before,’ he said.

  Altman’s voice sounded more surprised than actually shocked. ‘Carried out euthanasia?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Refused to carry it out. To my worst enemy. He has an incurable, fatal and very painful disease. He is slowly being suffocated by his own shrinking skin.’

  ‘Scleroderma,’ Altman said.

  ‘When I arrested him, he tried to make me shoot him. We were alone at the top of a tower, just him and me. He had killed an unknown number of people and hurt me and people I love. Permanent damage. My gun was pointing at him. Just us. Self-defence. I didn’t risk a thing by shooting him.’

  ‘But you preferred him to suffer,’ Altman said. ‘Death was too easy for him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you feel you’re doing the same with your father, you’re making him suffer rather than allowing him release.’

  Harry rubbed his neck. ‘It’s not because I hold with the principles of the sanctity of life or any of that bullshit. It’s weakness, pure and simple. It’s cowardice. Christ, you haven’t got anything to drink here, have you, Altman?’

  Sigurd Altman shook his head. Harry wasn’t sure if it was in answer to his last question or the other things he had said. Perhaps both.

  ‘You can’t just disregard your own feelings like that, Harry. You, like everyone else, are trying to leapfrog the fact that we are governed by notions of what’s right and wrong. Your intellect may not have all the arguments for these notions, but nonetheless they are rooted deep, deep inside you. Right and wrong. Perhaps it’s things you were told by your parents when you were a child, a fairy tale with a moral your grandmother read, or something unfair you experienced at school and you spent time thinking through. The sum of all these half-forgotten things.’ Altman
leaned forward. ‘Anchored deep within is in fact a pretty apposite expression. Because it tells you that you may not be able to see the anchor in the depths, but you damn well can’t move from the spot, that’s what you float around and that’s where your home is. Try and accept that, Harry. Accept the anchor.’

  Harry stared down at his folded hands. ‘The pain he has . . .’

  ‘Physical pain is not the worst thing a human has to deal with,’ Altman said. ‘Believe me, I see it every day. Not death, either. Nor even fear of death.’

  ‘What is the worst then?’

  ‘Humiliation. To be deprived of honour and dignity. To be disrobed, to be cast out by the flock. That’s the worst punishment, it’s akin to burying a person alive. And the only consolation is that the person will perish fairly quickly.’

  ‘Mm.’ Harry kept eye contact with Altman. ‘You don’t have anything in that cupboard to lighten the atmosphere, do you?’

  45

  Questioning

  MIKAEL BELLMAN HAD BEEN DREAMING ABOUT FREE FALL again. Climbing solo in El Chorro, the fingerhold that isn’t, the mountain wall racing past your eyes, the ground accelerating towards you. The alarm clock ringing at the last moment. He wiped the egg yolk from his mouth and looked up at Ulla standing right behind him and filling his cup with coffee from the cafetière. She had learned to recognise the precise moment when he was ready to eat, and it was then and not a second before that he wanted his coffee, boiling hot, poured into the blue cup. And that was only one of the reasons he appreciated her. Another was that she kept herself in such good shape that she still attracted admiring glances at the parties they were invited to more and more often. Ulla had, after all, been Manglerud’s undisputed beauty queen when they got together, he had been eighteen, she nineteen. A third reason was that Ulla, without making any great fuss about it, had set aside her dreams of further education so that he could prioritise his job. But the three most important reasons sat around the table arguing about who should have the plastic figure in the cornflakes box and who should sit in front today when she drove them to school. Two girls, one boy. Three perfect reasons to appreciate the woman and her genes’ compatibility with his.