Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Only two murders. Yet Hagen had seemed so certain of his facts when he said this was a serial killer. So, what was the connection? What was it that the press didn’t say? Harry could feel his brain beginning to pursue the old, familiar paths; he cursed himself for his inability to refrain and continued to leaf through.

When the steel coffee jug was empty, he left a crumpled banknote on the table and went into the street. Tightened his coat around him and squinted up at the grey sky.

He hailed an unoccupied taxi, which pulled into the kerb. The driver leaned across and the rear door swung open. A trick you rarely saw nowadays, and one Harry decided to reward with a tip. Not just because he could step right in, but because the window in the door had reflected a face at the wheel of a car parked behind Harry.

‘Rikshospital,’ Harry said, wriggling to the middle of the back seat.

‘Righto,’ said the driver.

Harry studied the rear-view mirror as they drove off from the kerb. ‘Oh, could you go to Sofies gate 5 first, please?’

In Sofies gate the taxi waited, its diesel engine clattering away, while Harry mounted the staircase with long, quick strides and his brain assessed the range of possibilities. The Triad? Herman Kluit? Or good old paranoia. The gear lay where he had left it before taking off, in the toolbox in the food cupboard. The old, expired ID card. Two sets of Hiatt handcuffs with a spring-loaded arm for speed-cuffing. And the service revolver, a. 38 calibre Smith amp; Wesson.

Returning to the street, he looked neither left nor right, just jumped straight into the taxi.

‘Rikshospital?’ asked the driver.

‘Drive in that direction at any rate,’ Harry answered, studying the mirror as they turned up Stensbergata and then Ullevalsveien. He saw nothing. Which meant one of two things. It was good old paranoia. Or the guy was a pro.

Harry hesitated, then said finally, ‘Rikshospital.’

He continued to keep an eye on the mirror as they passed Vestre Aker Church and Ulleval Hospital. Whatever he did, he mustn’t lead them straight to where he was most vulnerable. Where they would always try to strike. The family.

The country’s biggest hospital was situated high above the town.

Harry paid the driver, who thanked him for the tip and repeated the trick with the rear door.

The facades of the buildings rose in front of Harry and the low cloud cover seemed to sweep away the roofs.

He took a deep breath.

Olav Hole’s smile from the hospital pillow was so gentle and frail that Harry had to swallow.

‘I was in Hong Kong,’ Harry replied. ‘I had to do some thinking.’

‘Did you get it done?’

Harry shrugged. ‘What do the doctors say?’

‘As little as possible. Hardly a good sign, but I’ve noticed that I prefer it like that. Tackling life’s realities has, as you know, never been our family’s strong suit.’

Harry wondered whether they would talk about Mum. He hoped not.

‘Have you got a job?’

Harry shook his head. His father’s hair hung over his forehead, so tidy and white that Harry assumed it wasn’t his hair but an accessory that had been handed out with the pyjamas and slippers.

‘Nothing?’ his father said.

‘I’ve had an offer to lecture at a police college.’

It was almost the truth. Hagen had offered him that after the Snowman case, as a kind of leave of absence.

‘Teacher?’ His father chuckled cautiously, as if any further effort would be the end of him. ‘I thought one of your principles was never to do anything I had done.’

‘It was never like that.’

‘That’s alright. You’ve always done things your way. This police stuff… Well, I suppose I should just be grateful you haven’t done what I did. I’m no model for anyone to follow. You know, after your mother died…’

Harry had been sitting in the white hospital room for twenty minutes and already felt a desperate urge to flee.

‘After your mother died, I struggled to make sense of anything. I retreated into my shell, found no joy in anyone’s company. It was as though loneliness brought me closer to her, or so I thought. But it’s a mistake, Harry.’ His father’s smile was as gentle as an angel’s. ‘I know losing Rakel hit you hard, but you mustn’t do what I did. You mustn’t hide, Harry. You mustn’t lock the door and throw away the key.’

Harry looked down at his hands, nodded and felt ants crawling all over his body. He had to have something, anything.

A nurse came in, introduced himself as Altman, held up a syringe and said, with a slight lisp, that he was going to give ‘Olav’ something to help him sleep. Harry felt like asking if he had something for him, too.

His father lay on his side, the skin on his face sagging; he looked older than he had on his back. He gazed at Harry with heavy, blank eyes.

Harry stood up so abruptly that the chair legs scraped loudly on the floor.

‘Where are you going?’ Olav asked.

‘Out for a smoke,’ Harry said. ‘I won’t be long.’

Harry sat on a low brick wall with a view of the car park and lit up a Camel. On the other side of the motorway he could see Blindern and the university buildings where his father had studied. There were those who asserted that sons always became, to some degree or other, disguised variants of their fathers, that the experience of breaking out was never more than an illusion; you returned; the gravity of blood was not only stronger than your willpower, it was your willpower. To Harry it had always seemed he was evidence of the contrary. So why had seeing his father’s naked, ravaged face on the pillow been like looking into a mirror? Listening to him speak like hearing himself? Hearing him think, the words… like a dentist’s drill that found Harry’s nerves with unerring accuracy. Because he was a copy. Shit! Harry’s searching gaze had found a white Corolla in the car park.

Always white, that’s the most anonymous colour. The colour of the Corolla outside Schroder’s, the one with the face behind the wheel, the same face that had been staring at him with its narrow, slanting eyes less than twenty-four hours before.

Harry tossed away his cigarette and hurried inside. Slackened his pace when he entered the corridor leading to his father’s room. He turned where the corridor widened to an open waiting area and pretended to search through a pile of magazines on the table while scanning the people sitting there from the corner of his eye.

The man had hidden himself behind a copy of Liberal.

Harry picked up a Se og Hor gossip rag with a picture of Lene Galtung and her fiance and left.

Olav Hole was lying with his eyes closed. Harry bent down and put his ear to Olav’s mouth. He was breathing so lightly it was barely audible, but Harry felt a current of air on his cheek.

He sat for a while on the chair beside the bed watching his father as his mind played back poorly edited childhood memories in arbitrary order and with no other central theme than that they were things he remembered clearly.

Then he placed the chair by the door, which he opened a crack, and waited.

It was half an hour before he saw the man come from the waiting area and walk down the corridor. Harry noticed that the squat, robustlooking man was unusually bow-legged; he seemed to be walking with a beach ball stuck between his knees. Before entering a door marked with the international sign for the men’s toilet, he plucked at his belt. As if something heavy was hanging from it.

Harry got up and followed.

Stopped outside the toilet and breathed in. It had been a long time. Then he pushed open the door and slipped in.

The toilet was like the whole hospital: clean, nice, new and too big. Along the main wall there were six cubicle doors, none with a red square above the lock. On the shorter wall four basins, and on the other long wall four porcelain urinals at hip height. The man was standing at a urinal, with his back to Harry. On the wall above him ran a horizontal pipe. It looked solid. Solid enough. Harry took out his revolver and handcuffs. International etiquette in men’s toilets is not to look at each other. Eye contact, even unintentional, is cause for murder. Accordingly, the man didn’t turn to look at Harry. Not when Harry locked the outside door with infinite care, not when he walked over slowly and not when he placed the gun barrel against the roll of fat between the man’s neck and head and whispered what a colleague used to claim all police officers should be allowed to say at least once in their careers: ‘Freeze.’