Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Altman nodded.

‘Many years pass. Ole has established himself somewhere new, has a job where he is well liked and respected for his abilities. He has friends, not many, but enough; all that counts is that they don’t know his past. What’s missing in his life is a woman. He has met some, via dating websites, personal ads, on the odd occasion at a restaurant. But they soon evaporate. Not because of his tongue, but because he carries the defeat with him like a rucksack full of shit. Because of ingrained self-denigrating modes of speech, anticipations of rejection and suspicion of women who behave as if they actually do want him. The usual stuff. The stench of defeat that everyone flees. Then one day something happens. He meets a woman who has done the rounds. She even lets him live out his sexual fantasies; they have sex in a disused factory. He invites her on a skiing trip in the mountains, as a first sign he means business. Her name is Adele Vetlesen, and she joins him with some reluctance.’

Bjorn Holm turned off by Gronmo where the smoke from incinerated refuse rose into the air.

‘They have a great skiing trip in the mountains. Maybe. Or maybe Adele is bored, she’s a restless soul. They go to a cabin in Havass where there are already five people. Marit Olsen, Elias Skog, Borgny Stem-Myhre, Charlotte Lolles and a sick Iska Peller who is sleeping off her fever in a room alone. After dinner they light the fire and someone opens a bottle of red wine while others go to bed. Like Charlotte Lolles. And Ole who is lying in a sleeping bag in the bedroom waiting for his Adele. But Adele would rather be up. Perhaps at last she has begun to notice the stench. Then something happens. One last person arrives late at night. The walls are thin and Ole hears a new man’s voice from the sitting room. He stiffens. It’s the voice from his worst nightmare, from his sweetest dreams of revenge. But it can’t be him, it can’t be. Ole listens. The voice talks to Marit Olsen. For a while. Then it talks to Adele. He hears her laughing. But gradually they lower their voices. He hears the others go to bed in adjoining rooms. But not Adele. And not this man with the familiar voice. Then he hears nothing. Until the sounds outside reach his ears. He creeps over to the window, looks out, sees them, sees her eager face, recognises her moans of pleasure. And he knows the impossible is happening; history is repeating itself. For he recognises the man standing behind Adele, who is taking her. It’s him. It’s Tony Leike.’

Bjorn Holm turned up the heating. Harry pushed himself back in the seat.

‘When the others get up the following morning, Tony has left. Ole acts as if nothing has happened. Because he is stronger now; many years of hatred have hardened him. He knows the others have seen Adele and Tony, they have seen his humiliation, just like before. But he is calm. He knows what he is going to do. He might have been longing for it, this last nudge, the free fall. A couple of days later he has a plan ready. He returns to the Havass cabin, maybe gets a lift there on a snowmobile, and tears out the page in the guest book detailing their names. For this time it won’t be him who flees the witnesses in shame; they are the ones who are going to suffer. And Adele. But the person who will suffer most is Tony. He will have to carry all the shame Ole has carried; his name will be dragged through the mud; his life will be destroyed; he will be smitten by the same unjust God who allows tongues of the lovelorn to be severed.’

Sigurd Altman rolled down the window and a soft whistling sound filled the car.

‘The first thing Ole has to do is find himself a room, a headquarters where he can work undisturbed and without fear of being discovered. And what could be more natural than the disused factory where he experienced the happiest night of his life? There he starts gathering information about his victims and planning in detail. Of course, he has to kill Adele Vetlesen first as she was the only person at Havass to know his full identity. Names that may have been exchanged up there would have been forgotten soon enough and no copy of the guest book page existed. Sure about the cigarette, boys?’

No answer. Harry sighed.

‘So he arranges to meet her again. He picks her up in a car. Which he has covered internally with plastic. They drive to an undisturbed spot, probably the Kadok factory. There he takes out a large knife with a yellow handle. He forces her to write a postcard he dictates and to address it to her flatmate in Drammen. Afterwards he kills her. Bjorn?’

Bjorn Holm coughed and changed down a gear. ‘The autopsy shows he punctured her carotid artery.’

‘He gets out of the car. Takes a picture of her sitting in the passenger seat with a knife in the neck. The photograph. Confirmation of revenge, of triumph. It’s the first photo that goes on his office wall in the Kadok factory.’

An oncoming car swerved out of its lane, but went back in and hooted its horn as it passed.

‘Perhaps it was easy to kill her. Perhaps not. Nevertheless, he knows she is the most critical victim. They hadn’t met very often, but he can’t know for sure how much she has told her friends about him. He only knows that if she is found dead and her death can be linked to him, a dumped lover will be the police’s main suspect. If she is found. If, on the other hand, she apparently disappears, for example during a trip to Africa, he is safe.

‘So Ole sinks her body in a place he knows well, where the water is deep and what’s more where people keep well away. The place with the jilted bride in the window. The ropery by Lake Lyseren. Then he travels to Leipzig and pays the prostitute, Juliana Verni, to take the postcard Adele wrote with her to Rwanda, to stay at a hotel under Adele’s name and send the card to Norway. Furthermore, she has to bring Ole something back from the Congo. A murder weapon. A Leopold’s apple. The special weapon is not plucked out of the air, of course, it has to have some connection with the Congo and prompt the police to become suspicious about the Congo traveller, Tony Leike. Ole pays Juliana on her return to Leipzig. And perhaps it is there, standing over the trembling Juliana, in tears as she opens her mouth to receive the apple, that he begins to experience the joy, the ecstasy of sadism, an almost sexual pleasure he has developed and nourished for years with his lonely daydreams of revenge. Afterwards he dumps her in the river, but the body surfaces and is found.’

Harry took a deep breath. The road had become narrower, and the forest had slunk in, was dense on both sides now.

‘In the course of the next weeks he kills Borgny Stem-Myhre and Charlotte Lolles. Unlike with Adele and Juliana he doesn’t try to hide their bodies, quite the contrary. Nevertheless, the police investigation does not lead them to Tony Leike, as Ole has hoped. So he has to continue killing, continue to leave a trail, to push them. He kills Marit Olsen, the MP, exhibits her in Frogner Lido. Now the police have to see the connection between the women, have to find the man with the Leopold’s apple. But it doesn’t happen. And he knows he will have to intervene, give a helping hand, take a risk. He watches Tony’s house in Holmenveien until he sees him leave. Then he breaks in through the cellar, goes up to the living room and calls the next victim, Elias Skog, from Tony’s phone on the desk. On the way out he steals a bike to make the break-in appear normal. Leaving fingerprints upstairs in the living room doesn’t bother Ole; everyone knows the police don’t investigate run-of-the-mill burglaries. Then he goes to Stavanger. At this point his sadism is in full bloom. He kills Elias by glueing him to the bathtub and leaving the tap running. Hey, petrol station! Anyone hungry?’