Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Mikael Bellman had daily press conferences. In a TV talk show he demonstrated his pedagogic skills and flashed his winsome smile explaining how the case had been cracked. His version of the story, that went without saying. And made it seem like an oversight that the killer had not been arrested; the important thing first off was that Tony ‘Prince Charming’ Leike had been unmasked, rendered ineffective, sidelined.

The dark descended a few minutes later every evening. Everyone was waiting for spring or frost, one of the two, but neither came.

The cones of light swept across the ceiling.

Harry lay on his side, staring at the smoke from his cigarette curling up towards the ceiling in intricate and ever-unpredictable patterns.

‘You’re so quiet,’ Kaja said, snuggling up to his back.

‘I’ll be here until the funeral,’ he said. ‘Then I’m off.’

He took another drag. She didn’t answer. Then, to his surprise, he felt something warm and wet on his shoulder blade. He put the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and turned to her. ‘Are you crying?’

‘Trying not to,’ she laughed with a sniffle. ‘I don’t know what’s got into me.’

‘Do you want a cigarette?’

She shook her head and dried the tears. ‘Mikael rang today, wanting to meet.’

‘Mm.’

She laid her head against his chest. ‘Don’t you want to know what I answered?’

‘Only if you want to tell me.’

‘I said no. Then he said I would regret that. He said you would drag me down. That it wasn’t the first time you had done that to someone.’

‘Well, he’s right.’

She lifted her head. ‘But that doesn’t matter, don’t you understand? I want to be wherever you are.’ Tears began to roll again. ‘And if it’s down, I want to be there, too.’

‘But there’ll be nothing,’ Harry said. ‘Not even me. I’ll have gone. You saw me in Chungking. It would be like right after the avalanche. The same cabin, but alone and abandoned.’

‘But you found me and got me out. I can do the same for you.’

‘What about if I don’t want to get out? You haven’t got any more dying fathers to entice me with.’

‘But you love me, Harry. I know you love me. That’s a good enough reason, isn’t it? I’m a good enough reason.’

Harry caressed her hair, her cheeks, caught her tears with his fingers, carried them to his mouth and kissed them.

‘Yes,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘You are reason enough.’

She took his hand, kissed it where he had kissed it.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t say it. Don’t say that’s why you’re going. So that you don’t drag me down. I’ll follow you to the end of the world, you see?’

He pulled her into him. And at once felt something slacken, like a muscle that had been held in quivering tension for a long time without his realising. He let go, gave up, let himself fall. And the pain that had been there melted away, became something warm following the bloodstream around his body, softening it, giving it peace. The feeling of free fall was so liberating that he felt his throat thicken. And knew part of him had wanted it, this, also up there in the snowy mist above the scree.

‘To the end of the world,’ she whispered, already breathing faster.

The cones of light swept across the ceiling, again and again.

Harry was sitting by his father’s bedside.It was still dark when a nurse came in with a cup of coffee, asked him whether he had had any breakfast and dropped a glossy mag in his lap.

‘You have to think about something else, you know,’ she said, angling her head and giving the impression she was about to stroke his cheek.

Harry dutifully flicked through the magazine while she tended to his father. But he couldn’t distract himself in the celebrity press, either. Photographs of Lene Galtung leaving premieres, gala lunches in her new Porsche. MISSING TONY was the headline, and the assertion was underpinned by comments not from Lene herself, but from celebrity friends. There were pictures outside the gates of a house in London, but no one had seen Lene there, either. At least no one had recognised her. There was a grainy photograph taken from a distance of a red-haired woman in front of Credit Suisse in Zurich, which the magazine claimed was Lene Galtung, because they were able to quote Lene’s hairstylist who Harry assumed had been paid a sizeable sum to say: ‘She asked me to curl her hair and dye it brick red.’ Tony was referred to as a ‘suspect’ in what was portrayed as an average society scandal rather than one of the country’s worst ever murder cases.

Harry got up, went into the corridor and rang Katrine Bratt. It still wasn’t even seven o’clock, but she was up. She was leaving today. Beginning at Bergen Police Station over the weekend.

He hoped she would take it easy at the start. Although it was difficult to imagine Katrine Bratt taking anything easy.

‘Last job,’ he said.

‘And after that?’ she asked.

‘Then I’m off.’

‘No one will miss you.’

‘… more than I will.’

‘There was a full stop at the end, dear.’

‘It’s about Credit Suisse in Zurich. I’d like to know if Lene Galtung has an account there. She’s supposed to have been given a whopping preinheritance. Swiss banks are tricky. Probably take a bit of time.’

‘Fine, I’m getting the hang of this now.’

‘Good. And there’s a woman whose movements I want you to check.’

‘Lene Galtung?’

‘No.’

‘No? What’s the name of the beast?’

Harry spelt it for her.

At a quarter past eight Harry pulled up outside the fairy-tale homestead in Voksenkollen. There were a couple of cars parked, and through the raindrops Harry could make out the tired faces and the long telephoto lenses of paparazzi. They seemed to have been camping there the whole night. Harry rang the bell by the gate and went in.

The woman with the turquoise eyes was standing by the door, waiting.

‘Lene’s not here,’ she said.

‘Where is she?’

‘Somewhere they won’t find her,’ she said, motioning to the cars outside the gate. ‘And you lot promised me you would leave her alone after the last interview. Three hours it lasted.’

‘I know,’ Harry lied. ‘But it was you I wanted to talk to.’

‘Me?’

‘May I come in?’

He followed her into the kitchen. She gestured to a chair, turned her back on him and filled a cup from a coffee machine on the worktop.

‘What’s the story?’

‘Which story?’

‘The one about you being Lene’s mother.’

The coffee cup hit the floor and smashed into a thousand pieces. She clutched the worktop, and he could see her back heaving. Harry hesitated for a moment, but then took a deep breath and said what he’d made up his mind to say.

‘We’ve done a DNA test.’

She whirled around, furious. ‘How? You haven’t…’ She came to an abrupt halt.

Harry’s gaze met her turquoise eyes. She had fallen for the bluff. He was aware of a vague sense of discomfort. Which could have been caused by shame. It melted away, nonetheless.

‘Get out!’ she hissed.

‘Out to them?’ Harry asked, nodding towards the paparazzi. ‘I’m finishing my police career, going to travel. I could do with a bit of capital. If a hairstylist can be paid twenty thousand kroner for saying which hair colour Lene requested, how much do you think I’d get for telling them who her real mother is?’

The woman took a step forward, raising a hand in anger, but then her tears flowed, the burning light in her eyes extinguished and she sank into a kitchen chair, impotent. Harry cursed himself, knowing he had been unnecessarily brutal. But time was not on his side for any finely attuned stratagems.