Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

‘After Borgny’s murder a letter came signed “Charlotte”, who wrote that she had been behind the previous letter. I saw that I was caught in a game. It could have been another bluff or it could have been anyone who was in the Havass cabin that night. So I went up to have a look at the guest book, but the page for that night had been torn out. So I killed Charlotte. And waited for the next letter. It came. I killed Marit. And then Elias. After that things went quiet. Then I read in the paper that they were asking people who had been to the Havass cabin the same night as the murder victims to come forward. I knew, of course, that no one would guess I had been there, but also that if I came forward I might find out from the police who had been there. Find out who was after me. Who was left to kill. So I went straight to the person I assumed would know most. This detective, Harry Hole. I tried to pump him about the other guests. Fat lot of good that did. Instead, this Mikael Bellman came along and arrested me. Someone had used my phone to call Elias Skog, he told me. And then I saw the light. This wasn’t about money; someone was trying to get me arrested. Imprisoned. Who could stand by and cold-bloodedly watch people being murdered and still persist… with this crusade against me? Who could hate me so much? Then the final letter arrived. This time he didn’t reveal his identity, just wrote he had been to the Havass cabin that night, as invisible as a ghost. Said I knew him all too well. And he was coming to get me. And then it clicked. At last he had found me. Dad.’

Tony paused for breath.

‘He had planned the same for me as I had planned for him. To be buried alive, incarcerated for life. But how had he managed it? I wondered if he had kept the Havass cabin under surveillance. Is that how he knew I was alive? Had he been following me from a distance? After I got engaged to you, the celeb gossip press started printing pictures of me, and perhaps even Dad occasionally flicked through those magazines. But he had to be working with someone. For example, he couldn’t have gone to Oslo and broken in, he couldn’t have taken the photo of Adele with the knife in her neck. Or could he? I found out that he had fled the farm, the slippery bastard. What he didn’t know was that I was now much more familiar with the area than him after searching for my mother for all those years. I found him at the Tourist Association cabin in Kjeften. I was as happy as a child. But it was an anticlimax.’

Rustling of silk.

‘I derived less pleasure from torturing him than I had hoped. He didn’t even recognise me, the blind idiot. But it didn’t matter. I wanted him to see me as he himself had never managed to be. A success. I wanted to humiliate him. Instead he saw me as himself. A killer.’ He sighed. ‘And I began to realise he hadn’t been working with anyone. And he didn’t have the ability to do all this alone, he was too fragile, too frightened and too cowardly. I started the avalanche at Havass, almost in a panic. Because I knew now: there was someone else. An invisible, inaudible hunter standing in the dark somewhere with his breathing attuned to mine. I had to get away. Out of the country. Somewhere I couldn’t be found. So here we are, my love. On the edge of a jungle the size of Western Europe.’

Lene was trembling uncontrollably. ‘Why are you doing this, Tony? Why are you telling me… this?’

She felt his hand on her cheek. ‘Because you deserve it, my love. Because your name is Galtung and you will have a long commemorative speech when you die. Because I think it’s right you should hear all about me before you give me your answer.’

‘Answer to what?’

‘Whether you want to marry me.’

Her brain was in a spin now. ‘Whether I want… want…’

‘Open your eyes, Lene.’

‘But I…’

‘Open them, I said.’

She did as she was told.

‘This is for you,’ he said.

Lene Galtung gasped.

‘It’s made of gold,’ Tony said. The sunlight gleamed on the matt goldenbrown metal as it lay on a sheet of paper on the coffee table between them. ‘I want you to wear it.’

‘Wear it?’

‘After you’ve signed our marriage contract, of course.’

Lene blinked repeatedly. Tried to rouse herself from the nightmare. The hand with the distorted fingers moved across the table, covering hers. She looked down, looked at the pattern on the burgundy silk of his dressing gown.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘That the money you’ve brought with you will only last a while, but marriage will give me certain inheritance rights when you die. You’re wondering if I intend to take your life. Aren’t you?’

‘Are you?’

Tony chuckled and squeezed her hand. ‘Do you intend to stand in my way, Lene?’

She shook her head. All she wanted was to be there for someone. For him. As though in a trance she took the pen he passed her. Guided it down to the paper. Her tears fell on her signature causing the ink to blotch. He seized the document.

‘That’ll do nicely,’ he said, blowing on it and motioning towards the coffee table. ‘Let’s see you wearing it then.’

‘What do you mean, Tony? It’s not a ring.’

‘I mean I want you to open wide, Lene.’

Harry blinked. A single lit bulb hung from the ceiling. He was supine on a mattress. He was naked. It was the same dream, except that he wasn’t dreaming. Above him a nail stuck out of the wall, and on the nail was impaled the head of Edvard Munch. A Norwegian banknote. He yawned so hard it seemed his shattered jaw would tear, and yet the pressure continued, almost exploding his head. He wasn’t dreaming. The ketanome had worn off and the pain allowed no further dreams. How long had he been lying here? How long till the pain drove him mad? He carefully twisted his head and scanned the room. He was still in Van Boorst’s house and he was alone. He wasn’t shackled, he could stand up if he wanted.

His gaze followed the wire attached to the handle of the front door and running through the room to the wall behind him. He carefully twisted his head the other way. The wire ran through the U bolt in the wall right behind his head. And from there to his mouth. Leopold’s apple. He was tethered firmly in position. The door opened outwards so that the first person to pull would release the needles that would pierce his head from inside. And if he moved too much that would also release the needles.

Harry put his thumb and first finger either side of his mouth. Felt the circular ridges. Tried in vain to get a finger underneath one of them. He had a coughing fit and everything went black as he struggled to breathe. He realised the ridges had caused the flesh around his pharynx to swell and he risked suffocation. The wire to the door handle. The severed finger. Was this chance or did Tony Leike know about the Snowman? And was he intending to outdo him?

Harry kicked the wall and tensed his vocal cords, but the metal ball stifled the scream. He gave up. Leaned against the wall, braced himself for the pain and forced his mouth shut. He had read somewhere that the human bite is not much weaker than that of the white shark. Yet the jaw muscles only just managed to press the ridges down before the mouth was forced back open. There seemed to be a pulse, a living iron heart in his mouth. He touched the wire hanging from the apple. His every instinct shrieked for him to pull it, to pull the apple out. But he had seen a demonstration of what would happen, he had seen photos of crime scenes. If he had not seen…

And at that second Harry knew. Knew not only how he himself would die but also how the others had died. And why it had been done like that. He experienced an absurd desire to laugh. It was so devilishly simple. So devilishly simple that only a devil could have devised it.