The Leopard (19 page)

Harry stared first at Kaja. Then at the body in the bath.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said slowly. ‘This can’t be true . . .’

POB Gunnar Hagen had had his doubts. Perhaps it was the most stupid thing he had done since he came to Police HQ. Forming a group to run an investigation against the ministry’s orders could get him into trouble. Making Harry Hole the leader was asking for trouble. And trouble had just knocked on the door and walked in. Now it was standing in front of him in the shape of Mikael Bellman. And as Hagen listened, he noticed the strange marks on the Kripos POB’s face shining whiter than usual, as if they were illuminated by something red hot inside, cooled fission in a nuclear reactor, a potential explosion that was under control for the moment.

‘I know for certain that Harry Hole and two of his colleagues have been to Lake Lyseren to investigate the murder of Marit Olsen. Beate Lønn from Krimteknisk asked us to carry out a cabin-to-cabin search in the area around an old ropery. One of her officers was said to have found out that the rope used to hang Marit Olsen originates from there. So far so good . . .’

Mikael Bellman rocked back on his heels. He hadn’t even taken off his floor-length trench coat. Gunnar Hagen steeled himself for what was to follow. Which came in painfully protracted form, with somewhat perplexed intonation.

‘But when we spoke to the officer in Ytre Enebakk, he told me that the herostratic Harry Hole was one of three officers involved in the investigation. Hence, one of your men, Hagen.’

Hagen didn’t answer.

‘I assume you are aware of the consequences of placing yourself above Ministry of Justice orders, Hagen.’

Hagen still didn’t answer, but he met Bellman’s glare.

‘Listen,’ Bellman said, loosening a button on his coat and sitting down after all. ‘I like you, Hagen. I think you’re a good policeman, and I will need good men.’

‘When Kripos has total power, you mean?’

‘Exactly. I could benefit from having someone like you in a prominent position. You have a military academy background, you know the importance of thinking tactically, of avoiding battles you can’t win, of realising when retreat is the best way to win . . .’

Hagen nodded slowly.

‘Good,’ Bellman said, rising to his feet. ‘Let’s say Harry Hole inadvertently found himself by Lake Lyseren; it was a coincidence, had nothing to do with Marit Olsen. And such coincidences are hardly likely to reoccur. Can we agree on that … Gunnar?’

Hagen flinched involuntarily when he heard his first name in the other man’s mouth, like an echo of a first name he himself had once spoken, his predecessor’s, in an attempt to create a joviality for which there was no basis. But he let it go. For he knew that this was the kind of battle Bellman had been talking about. And that, furthermore, he was about to lose the war. And that the conditions of surrender which Bellman had offered him could have been worse. A lot worse.

‘I’ll have a word with Harry,’ he said and took Bellman’s outstretched hand. It was like squeezing marble: hard, cold and lifeless.

Harry took a swig and unhooked the final joint of his forefinger from the handle of the landlady’s translucent coffee cup.

‘So you’re Inspector Harry Hole from Oslo Police District,’ said the man sitting on the opposite side of the landlady’s coffee table. He had introduced himself as Inspector Colbjørnsen, with a ‘c’, and now he repeated Harry’s title, name and affiliation with the stress on Oslo. ‘And what brings Oslo Police to Stavanger, herr Hole?’

‘The usual,’ Harry said. ‘Fresh air, beautiful mountains.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘The fjord. Base jumping from Pulpit Rock, if we have time.’

‘So Oslo have sent us a comedian, have they? You’re participating in an extreme sport, I can tell you that much. Any good reason why we were not informed of this visit?’

Inspector Colbjørnsen’s smile was as thin as his moustache. He was sporting one of those funny little hats only very old men and super-self-aware hipsters have. Harry was reminded of Popeye Doyle in
The French Connection
. And guessed that Colbjørnsen would not shy away from sucking a lollipop or stopping on his way out of the door with an ‘Oh, just one more thing’.

‘I reckon there must be a fax at the bottom of the in tray,’ Harry said, looking up at the man in the white outfit as he came in. The material of the forensics officer’s overalls rustled as he took off the white hood and plumped down into a chair. He looked straight at Colbjørnsen and muttered a local profanity.

‘Well?’ asked Colbjørnsen.

‘He’s right,’ the crime scene officer said and nodded in Harry’s direction, without glancing at him. ‘The lad up there has been stuck to the bottom of the bath with superglue.’

‘Has been?’ said Colbjørnsen, looking at his subordinate with a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Passive form. Aren’t you a bit premature in ruling out the possibility that Elias Skog did it himself ?’

‘And managed to turn on the tap so he would drown in the slowest, most painful manner conceivable?’ Harry suggested. ‘After taping up his mouth so that he couldn’t scream?’

Colbjørnsen sent Harry another razor-thin smile. ‘I’ll tell you when you can interrupt,
Oslo
.’

‘Stuck fast from top to toe,’ the officer continued. ‘The back of his head was shaved and smeared with glue. The same with his shoulders and back. Buttocks. Arms. Both legs. In other words—’

‘In other words,’ Harry said, ‘when the killer was finished with the glueing job, Elias had been lying there for a while and the adhesive had been hardening. He turned the tap a little way and left Elias Skog to a slow death by drowning. And Elias began his fight against time and death. The water rose slowly but his strength was ebbing away. Until mortal fear had him in its grip and gave him the energy for a last desperate attempt to pull himself free. And he did. He freed the strongest of his limbs from the bottom of the bathtub. His right leg. He simply tore it off and you can see the skin left on the bath surface. Blood spurted into the water as Elias banged his foot to rouse the landlady downstairs. And she heard the banging.’

Harry nodded towards the kitchen where Kaja was trying to calm and console the elderly lady. They could hear her bitter sobs.

‘But she misunderstood. She thought her lodger was bonking a girl who had accompanied him home.’

He looked at Colbjørnsen, who had turned pale and no longer exhibited any signs of wanting to interrupt.

‘And all the time Elias was losing blood. A lot of blood. All the skin from his leg was gone. He became weaker, more tired. In the end, his determination began to fade. He gave up. Perhaps he was already unconscious from loss of blood as the water rose into his nostrils.’ Harry fixed his eyes on Colbjørnsen. ‘Or perhaps not.’

Colbjørnsen’s Adam’s apple was running a shuttle service.

Harry looked down at the dregs in the coffee cup. ‘And now I think Detective Solness and I should thank you for your hospitality and return to
Oslo
. Should you have any more questions, you can reach me here.’ Harry jotted down a number in the margin of a newspaper, tore off a section and passed it over the table. Then he got to his feet.

‘But . . .’ said Colbjørnsen, getting to his feet as well. Harry towered twenty centimetres over him. ‘What was it you wanted with Elias Skog?’

‘To save him,’ Harry said, buttoning up his coat.

‘Save? Was he mixed up in something? Wait, Hole, we have to get to the bottom of this.’ But there was no longer the same authority in Colbjørnsen’s use of the imperative form.

‘I’m sure you officers in the Stavanger force are perfectly capable of working this out for yourselves,’ Harry said, walking to the kitchen door and motioning to Kaja that they were leaving. ‘If not, I can recommend Kripos. Say hello to Mikael Bellman from me, if you have to.’

‘Save him from what?’

‘From what we were unable to save him from,’ Harry said.

In the taxi on the way to Sola, Harry stared out of the window at the rain hammering down on the unnaturally green fields. Kaja didn’t say a word. For which he was grateful.

26

The Needle

G
UNNAR
H
AGEN WAS IN
H
ARRY’S CHAIR WAITING FOR THEM
when Harry and Kaja stepped into the hot, damp office.

Bjørn Holm, who was sitting behind Hagen, shrugged and gestured that he didn’t know what the POB wanted.

‘Stavanger, I hear,’ Hagen said, getting up.

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t get up, boss.’

‘It’s your chair. I’ll be going soon.’

‘Uh-uh?’

Harry inferred that it was bad news. Bad news of a certain significance. Bosses don’t hasten down the culvert to Botsen Prison to tell you your travel invoice has been completed incorrectly.

Hagen remained standing, so Holm was the only person in the room to be seated.

‘I’m afraid I have to inform you that Kripos has already discovered that you are working on the murders. And I have no choice but to close the investigation.’

In the ensuing silence Harry could hear the boiler rumbling in the adjacent room. Hagen ran his eyes over them, meeting each gaze in turn and stopping at Harry. ‘I can’t say this is an honourable discharge, either. I gave you clear instructions that this was to be a discreet operation.’

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘I asked Beate Lønn to leak information about a certain ropery to Kripos, but she promised she would do it in a way that made Krimteknisk appear to be the source.’

‘And I’m sure she did,’ Hagen said. ‘It was the County Officer in Ytre Enebakk who gave you away, Harry.’

Harry rolled his eyes and uttered a low curse.

Hagen clapped his hands together and a dry bang resounded between the brick walls. ‘So that’s why, sadly, I have to command you to drop all investigative work with immediate effect. And to clear this office within forty-eight hours.
Gomen nasai
.’

Harry, Kaja and Bjørn looked at one another as the iron door closed and Hagen’s hurried footsteps faded down the culvert.

‘Forty-eight hours,’ Bjørn said at length. ‘Anyone want fresh coffee?’

Harry kicked the bin beside the desk. It hit the wall with a crash, spilling its modest contents and rolling back towards him.

‘I’ll be at Rikshospital,’ he said and strode towards the door.

Harry had positioned the hard wooden chair by the window and listened to his father’s regular breathing as he flicked through the newspaper. A wedding and a funeral side by side. On the left, pictures of Marit Olsen’s funeral, showing the Norwegian Prime Minister’s serious, compassionate face, party colleagues’ black suits, and the husband, Rasmus Olsen, behind a pair of large, unbecoming sunglasses. On the right, an article announcing that the shipping magnate’s daughter, Lene, would get her Tony in the spring, with photos of the (A-list) wedding guests who would all be flown in to St Tropez. On the back page, it said that the sun would go down today at precisely 16.58 in Oslo. Harry looked at his watch and established that it was in fact doing that now, behind the low clouds that would not release either rain or snow. He watched the lights coming on in all the homes on the side of the ridge around what had once been a volcano. In a way, it was a liberating thought that the volcano would open beneath them one day, swallow them up and remove all traces of what had once been a contented, well-organised and slightly sad town.

Forty-eight hours. Why? It wouldn’t take them more than two hours to clear their so-called office.

Harry closed his eyes and considered the case. Wrote a last mental report for his personal archive.

Two women killed in the same way, drowning in their own blood, with ketanome in the bloodstream. One woman hanged from a diving tower, with a rope taken from an old ropery. One man drowned in his own bathtub. All the victims had probably been in the same cabin at the same time. They didn’t know yet who else had been there, what the motive behind the murders could be or what had gone on in the Håvass cabin that day or night. There was just effect, no cause. Case closed.

‘Harry . . .’

He hadn’t heard his father wake, and he turned.

Olav Hole looked renewed, but perhaps that was because of the colour in his cheeks and the feverish glow in his eyes. Harry got up and moved his chair over to his father’s bedside.

‘Have you been here long?’

‘Ten minutes,’ Harry lied.

‘I’ve slept so well,’ Olav said. ‘And had such wonderful dreams.’

‘I can see. You look like you’re ready to get up and leave.’

Harry plumped his pillow, and his father let him do it even though they both knew that it wasn’t necessary.

‘How’s the house?’

‘Fine,’ Harry said. ‘It will stand for ever.’

‘Good. There’s something I want to talk to you about, Harry.’

‘Mm?’

‘You’re a grown man now. You’ll lose me in a natural way. That’s how it should be. Not how you lost your mother. You were on the verge of going insane.’

‘Was I?’ Harry said, straightening the pillowslip.

‘You demolished your room. You wanted to kill the doctors, those that had infected her, and even me. Because I had … well, because I hadn’t discovered it earlier, I suppose. You were so full of love.’

‘Of hatred, you mean?’

‘No, of love. It’s the same currency. Everything starts with love. Hatred is just the other side of the coin. I’ve always thought that your mother’s death is what drove you to drink. Or rather the love for your mother.’

‘Love is a killer,’ Harry mumbled.

‘What?’

‘Just something someone once said to me.’

‘I did everything your mother asked me to do. Apart from one thing. She asked me to help her when the time came.’

It felt as if someone had injected ice-cold water into Harry’s chest.

‘But I couldn’t. And do you know what, Harry? It has given me nightmares. Not a day has passed when I haven’t thought about not being able to fulfil that wish for her, for the woman I loved above all else on this earth.’

The thin wooden chair creaked as Harry jumped up. He walked over to the window. He heard his father draw breath a couple of times behind him, deep, trembling. Then it came.