The Leopard

by Jo Nesbo

  Harry shook his head. ‘Sorry, got nothing to bet with.’

  ‘All the more to win,’ the croupier said.

  Harry allowed that to sink in and concluded that either it was a linguistic error or his logic didn’t carry that far. Or it was just another terrible Oriental proverb.

  50

  Corruption

  MIKAEL BELLMAN WAITED.

  This was the best. The seconds waiting for her to open up. Wondering with excitement whether – and yet at the same time sure – she would again exceed his expectations. For every time he saw her he realised that he had forgotten how beautiful she was. Every time the door opened, it was as if he needed a moment to assimilate all her beauty. To let the confirmation sink in. Confirmation that from the selection of men who wanted her – in practice, any heterosexual man with good eyesight – she had chosen him. Confirmation that he was the leader of the pack, the alpha male, the male with the first claim to mate with the females. Yes, it could be articulated in such banal and vulgar terms. Being an alpha male was not something you aspired to, you were born to it. Not necessarily the easiest or the most comfortable life for a man, but if you were called, you could not resist.

  The door opened.

  She was wearing the white high-necked jumper and had put her hair up. She looked tired, her eyes had less sparkle than usual. And still she had the elegance, the class, of which even his wife could only dream. She said ‘Hi’, told him she was sitting on the veranda, turned her back on him and walked through the house. He followed, collecting a beer from the fridge, and sat down in one of the ridiculously large, heavy chairs on the veranda.

  ‘Why do you sit outside?’ he sniffed. ‘You’ll catch pneumonia.’

  ‘Or lung cancer,’ she said, hoisting the half-smoked cigarette from the edge of the ashtray and picking up the book she was reading. He skimmed the cover. Ham on Rye. Charles … he squinted … Bukowski? As in the Swedish auction rooms?

  ‘I’ve got good news,’ he said. ‘We’ve not only averted a minor catastrophe, we’ve turned the whole Leike incident to our advantage. The Ministry of Justice phoned today.’ Bellman put his feet on the table and studied the label on the beer bottle. ‘They wanted to thank me for intervening with such resolution and ensuring Leike was released. They were very worried about what Galtung and his pack of lawyers might have got up to if Kripos hadn’t acted so quickly. And they wanted a personal assurance that I would have my hands on the wheel and no one outside Kripos would have the opportunity to foul things up.’

  He put the bottle to his mouth and drank. Banged it down hard on the table. ‘What do you think, Bukowski?’

  She lowered her book and met his eyes.

  ‘You should show a little interest,’ he said. ‘This concerns you as well, you know. What do you think about the case, my love? Come on. You’re a murder investigator.’

  ‘Mikael . . .’

  ‘Tony Leike is a violent criminal, and we allowed ourselves to be duped by that. Because we know you can’t rehabilitate violent criminals. The ability and the desire to kill are not granted to all, it’s innate or acquired. But when the killer is in you, it’s damned difficult to get it out again. Perhaps the killer in this case knows we know that? Knows that if he served us up Tony Leike, we would go into a frenzy and all cheer in unison “Hey, the case is cracked, it’s the guy with the violent streak!” And that was why he broke into Tony Leike’s apartment and rang Elias Skog. To stop us searching for any of the others who were in Håvass.’

  ‘The call from Leike’s house was before anyone outside the police knew that we had found the link with the Håvass cabin.’

  ‘So what? He must have reckoned that it was only a matter of time before we stumbled on it. Damn, we should have found it long before!’ Bellman grabbed the bottle again.

  ‘So who is the killer?’

  ‘The eighth guest in the cabin,’ Mikael Bellman said. ‘The boyfriend Adele Vetlesen took along, but whom no one knows.’

  ‘No one?’

  ‘I’ve had more than thirty officers on the job. We’ve combed Adele’s flat. Nothing in writing. No diaries, no cards, no letters, barely any emails or texts. Those male acquaintances that we have identified have been questioned and eliminated. Also the female ones. And none of them thinks it strange that she changed partners as frequently as panties and did it without telling anyone. The only thing we have found out is that Adele was supposed to have said to a girlfriend that this cabin escort had a couple of what she termed “turn-ons” and “turn-offs”. The turn-on was that he had asked her to go to a nocturnal rendezvous at an empty factory dressed as a nurse.’

  ‘If that was the turn-on, I dread to think what the turn-off was.’

  ‘The turn-off was apparently that when he spoke he reminded Adele of her flatmate. The girlfriend didn’t have a clue what Adele meant by that.’

  ‘The flatmate isn’t a mate in the biological sense,’ Kaja yawned. ‘Geir Bruun is gay. If this eighth guest tried to shift the murders on to Tony Leike he must have known Leike had a criminal record.’

  ‘The assault conviction is information that’s open to the public. Also the location, i.e. in Ytre Enebakk municipality. Leike was on the way to becoming a murderer while living with his grandfather by Lake Lyseren. If you wanted to direct police suspicions towards Leike, where would you dump Adele Vetlesen’s body? In a place where the police could find a link to him and a conviction on his record, of course. That was why he chose Lake Lyseren.’ Mikael Bellman paused. ‘Tell me, am I boring you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You look so bored.’

  ‘I … I have a lot to think about.’

  ‘When did you start smoking? So, I have a plan for how to find the eighth guest.’

  Kaja stared at him.

  Bellman sighed. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how, darling?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By using the same strategy as he does.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Focusing on an innocent person.’

  ‘Isn’t that the strategy you always use?’

  Mikael Bellman looked up sharply. Something was beginning to dawn on him. Something about being an alpha male.

  He explained the plan to her. Told her how he would entice the man out.

  Afterwards, he was shaking from cold and anger. He didn’t know what made him angrier. The fact that she didn’t respond with either a negative or a positive comment. Or that she sat there smoking, to all outward signs completely untouched by the case. Didn’t she understand that his career, his moves, in these very critical days would be decisive for her future as well? If she couldn’t count on being the next fru Bellman, she could at least rise through the ranks under his auspices, provided that she was loyal and continued to deliver. Or perhaps his anger was a result of the question she had asked. It had been about him. The other one. The old, doddery alpha male.

  She had asked about opium. Asked if he really would have used it, if Hole had not ceded to his demand that he should accept the responsibility for Leike’s arrest.

  ‘Of course,’ Bellman said, trying to see her face, but it was too dark. ‘Why shouldn’t I have? He had smuggled drugs.’

  ‘I’m not thinking of him. I’m thinking of whether you would have brought discredit on the police force.’

  He shook his head. ‘We can’t let ourselves be corrupted by that sort of consideration.’

  Her laughter sounded dry as it met the dense night cold. ‘You indisputably corrupted him.’

  ‘He’s corruptible,’ Bellman said, draining the bottle in one swig. ‘That’s the difference between him and me. Now, Kaja, are you trying to tell me something?’

  She opened her mouth. Wanted to say it. Should have said it. But at that moment his mobile rang. She saw him clutch his pocket as he did what he usually did, formed his lips into a pout. Which did not signify a kiss, but that she should shut up. In case it was his wife, his boss or anyone else he didn’t want to know th
at he came here to fuck a Crime Squad officer who gave him all the information he needed to outmanoeuvre the unit competing for murder investigations. To hell with Mikael Bellman. To hell with Kaja Solness. And above all to hell with . . .

  ‘He’s gone,’ Mikael Bellman said, putting the phone back in his pocket.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tony Leike.’

  51

  Letter

  Hi Tony,

  You’ve been wondering who I could be for a long time now. So long that I think it may be time I revealed my hand. I was at the cabin in Håvass that night, but you didn’t see me. No one saw me, I was as invisible as a ghost. But you know me. Know me all too well. And now I’m coming to get you. The only person who can stop me now is you. Everyone else is dead. There’s just you and me left, Tony. Is your heart beating a bit faster now? Does your hand grope for a knife? Do you slash blindly through the dark, dizzy with terror that your life will be taken from you?

  52

  Visit

  SOMETHING HAD WOKEN HIM. A SOUND. THERE WERE HARDLY any sounds out here, none he didn’t know anyway, and those didn’t wake him. He got up, placed the soles of his feet on the cold floor and peered through the window. His terrain. Some called it a deserted wasteland, whatever that meant. Because it was never deserted here, there was always something. Like now. An animal? Or could it be him? The ghost? There was something outside, that was for certain. He looked at the door. It was locked and bolted on the inside. The rifle was in the storehouse. He shivered in the thick, red flannel shirt he wore both day and night up here. The sitting room was so empty. It was so empty out there. So empty in the world. But it wasn’t deserted. There were the two of them, the two of them who were left.

  Harry was dreaming. About a lift with teeth, about a woman with a cocktail stick between cochineal-red lips, a clown with his smiling head under his arm, a bride dressed in white at the altar with a snowman, a star drawn in the dust of a TV screen, a one-armed girl on a diving board in Bangkok, the sweet smell of urinal blocks, the outline of a human body on the inside of a blue plastic waterbed, a compressor drill and blood spurting into his face, hot and death-bringing. Alcohol had acted as a cross, garlic and holy water against ghosts, but tonight there had been a full moon and a virgin’s blood, and now they came swarming from the darkest corners and deepest graves and tossed him between them in their dance, fiercer and wilder than ever, to the cardiac rhythms of mortal fear and the incessant shrill fire alarm here in hell. Then there was sudden silence. Complete silence. It was here again. It filled his mouth. He couldn’t breathe. It was cold and pitch black and he was unable to move, he . . .

  Harry twitched and blinked in the darkness, dazed. An echo reverberated between the walls. An echo of what? He grabbed his revolver from the bedside table, placed the soles of his feet on the cold floor and went downstairs, into the living room. Empty. The empty drinks cabinet was still lit. There had been a solitary bottle of Martell cognac. His dad had always been careful with alcohol – he knew what genes he was carrying – and the cognac was to offer guests. There had not been many guests. The dusty, half-full bottle had disappeared in the tidal wave with Captain Jim Beam and Able Seaman Harry Hole. Harry sat down in the armchair, stuck his finger through the tear on the armrest. He closed his eyes and visualised himself filling a glass half full. The deep gurgles from the bottle, the sparkling golden-brown liquid. The smell, the quiver as he put the glass to his mouth and he felt his body fighting it, panicstricken. Then he emptied the contents down his throat.

  It was like a blow to the temple.

  Harry opened his eyes wide. It had gone all quiet again.

  And just as suddenly it was there again.

  It bored its way along his auditory canals. The fire alarm in hell. The same one that had woken him. The doorbell. Harry looked at his watch. Half past twelve.

  He went into the hall, switched on the outside light, saw an outline through the wavy glass, held the revolver in his right hand while grabbing the lock with his left thumb and forefinger and tore the door wide open.

  In the moonlight he could see ski tracks crossing the drive. They were not his. And ghosts didn’t leave trails, did they?

  They went round the house, to the back.

  At that moment it struck him that the bedroom window was open, he should have … He held his breath. Someone seemed to be breathing with him. Not someone, something. An animal.

  He turned. Opened his mouth. His heart had stopped beating. How could it have moved so quickly, without making a sound, how could it have got so … close?

  Kaja stared at him.

  ‘May I come in?’ she asked.

  She was wearing an oversized raincoat, her hair was sticking up in all directions, her face was pale and drawn. He blinked hard a couple of times to check he wasn’t still dreaming. She had never been more beautiful.

  Harry tried to spew as quietly as he could. He hadn’t tasted booze for more than a day, and his stomach was a sensitive creature of habits that rebelled against sudden bouts of drinking and sudden abstinence. He flushed, carefully drank a glass of water and returned to the kitchen. The kettle was making rumbling sounds on the stove and Kaja was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs looking up at him.

  ‘So Tony Leike’s gone,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Mikael had given instructions that he was to be contacted. But no one could find him; he wasn’t at home, in his office, and he hadn’t left any messages. No Leike on any airline or ferry passenger lists for the last twenty-four hours. Eventually a detective managed to contact Lene Galtung. She believes he may have gone into the mountains. To think. Apparently he does that. If so, he must have caught the train because the car’s still in the garage.’

  ‘Ustaoset,’ Harry said. ‘He said that was his terrain.’

  ‘Anyway, he’s definitely not gone to a hotel.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘They think he’s in danger.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Bellman. Kripos.’

  ‘I thought that was we. And why would Bellman want to contact Tony Leike anyway?’

  She closed her eyes. ‘Mikael has concocted a plan. To lure the killer out.’

  ‘Uh-uh?’

  ‘The killer’s trying to remove everyone who was at the Håvass cabin that night. So he wanted to try to persuade Leike to be the decoy in a set-up. Get Leike to go for an interview with a newspaper, talk about the tough time he’s been through and how he was going to relax on his own at a particular place to be revealed in the paper.’

  ‘Where Kripos would set a trap.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But now the plan’s up the creek, and that’s why you’re here?’

  She gazed at him without blinking. ‘We have one person left we can use as a decoy.’

  ‘Iska Peller? She’s in Australia.’

  ‘And Bellman knows she’s under police protection, and you’ve been in contact with her and someone called McCormack. Bellman wants you to persuade her to come here.’

  ‘Why should I agree?’

  She looked down at her hands. ‘You know. Same coercion tactics as last time.’

  ‘Mm. When did you discover there was opium in the cigarette carton?’

  ‘When I was putting the carton on the shelf in my bedroom. You’re right, it has a strong smell. And I remembered the smell from your hostel. I opened the carton and saw the seal on the bottom packet had been broken. And found the clump inside. I told Mikael. He told me to hand over the carton whenever you asked.’

  ‘Perhaps that made it easier for you to betray me. Knowing I had used you.’

  She slowly shook her head. ‘No, Harry. It didn’t make it easier. Perhaps it should have done, but . . .’

  ‘But?’

  She shrugged. ‘Passing on this message is the last favour I do for Mikael.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Then I’m going to tell him I won’t see him any more.’

  The kettle’s rumbling no
ises stopped.

  ‘I should have done this a long time ago,’ she said. ‘I have no intention of asking you to forgive me for what I’ve done, Harry, that’s too much to ask. But I thought I would tell you face to face so that you can understand. That’s actually why I’ve come to see you now. To tell you that I did it out of stupid, stupid love. Love corrupted me. And I didn’t think I was corruptible.’ She put her head in her hands. ‘I deceived you, Harry. I don’t know what to say. Except that deceiving myself feels even worse.’

  ‘We’re all corruptible,’ Harry said. ‘We just demand different prices. And different currencies. Yours is love. Mine is anaesthetisation. And do you know what … ?’

  The kettle sang again, this time an octave higher.

  ‘… I think it makes you a better person than me. Coffee?’

  He spun right round and stared at the figure. It was standing straight in front of him, unmoving, as if it had been there a long time, as if it were his shadow. It was so quiet; all he could hear was his own breathing. Then he sensed a movement, something being lifted in the dark, heard a low whistle through the air, and at that moment a strange thought struck him. The figure was just that, his very own shadow. He . . .

  The thought appeared to falter, time was dislocated, the visual connection was broken for a second.

  He stared before him in amazement and felt a hot bead of sweat run down his forehead. He spoke, but the words were meaningless, there was a fault in the connection between brain and mouth. Again he heard a low whistle. Then the sound was gone. All sound – he couldn’t even hear his own breathing. And he discovered that he was kneeling and that the telephone was on the floor beside him. Ahead, a white stripe of moonlight ran across the coarse floorboards, but it vanished when the sweat reached the bridge of his nose, ran into his eyes and blinded him. And he understood it was not sweat.

  The third blow felt like an icicle being driven through his head, throat and into his body. Everything froze.

  I don’t want to die, he thought, and tried to raise a protective arm over his head, but he was unable to move a single limb, and realised he was paralysed.