The Leopard (34 page)

The reporter turned to the camera for an outro, but was drowned out by the round of applause at Justisen.

Truls ordered another beer as one of the detectives got up onto a chair and proclaimed that Crime Squad could suck his dick, at least the tip, if they said pretty please. Laughter resounded around the packed, sweaty, fetid room.

At that moment the door opened and in the mirror Truls saw a figure fill the entrance.

He felt a strange excitement at the sight, a tremulous certainty that something was going to happen, that someone would be hurt.

It was Harry Hole.

Tall, broad-shouldered, lean-faced with deep-set bloodshot eyes. He just stood there. And although no one shouted for the crowd to shut up the silence spread from the front to the back of Justisen, until a last shh was heard to quieten two garrulous forensics officers. When the silence was total, Hole spoke.

‘So you’re celebrating the job you succeeded in stealing from us, are you?’

The words were low, almost a whisper, and yet every syllable reverberated around the room.

‘You’re celebrating having a boss who’s prepared to step over dead bodies – those that have piled up outside and those that will soon be carried from the sixth floor at Police HQ – just so that he can be the Sun King of fucking Bryn. Well, here’s a hundred-krone note.’

Truls could see Hole waving a note.

‘You don’t have to steal this. Here, buy yourselves beer, forgiveness, a dildo for Bellman’s threesome . . .’ He screwed up the note and tossed it onto the floor. From the corner of his eye he could see Jussi was already moving. ‘… or another snitch.’

Hole lurched to the side to gain balance, and it was then that Truls realised that the guy – despite enunciating with the diction of a priest – was as stewed as a prune.

The next moment Hole performed a half-pirouette as Jussi Kolkka’s right hook hit him on the chin, and then a deep, almost gallant bow, as the Finn’s left buried itself in his solar plexus. Truls guessed that in a few seconds Hole – when he had got some air back in his lungs – was going to spew. In here. And Jussi was obviously thinking the same, that he would be better outside. It was a wonder to see how the tubby, almost log-shaped Finn lifted his foot high with the suppleness of a ballerina, placed it against Harry’s shoulder and gently pushed so that the crumpled detective rocked backwards and through the door whence he had come.

The drunkest and youngest of them howled with laughter, but Truls grunted. A couple of the older ones yelled, and one screamed that Kolkka should bloody well behave himself. But no one did anything. Truls knew why. Everyone here remembered the story. Harry had dragged the uniform through the dirt, shat in the nest, taken the life of one of their best men.

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

K
AJA 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

K
AJA STOOD IN THE DOORWAY LOOKING AT HIM.
M
IKAEL
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.