Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Bjorn Holm groaned and rolled over to face the wall.

Stine woke with a start.

In the dark she heard a grinding sound. She rolled onto her side. The ceiling was dimly lit; the light came from the floor beside the bed. What was the time? Three o’clock in the morning? She stretched and grabbed her mobile phone.

‘Yes?’ she said with a voice that made her seem more sleepy than she was.

‘After the delta I was sick of snakes and mozzies, and me and the motorbike headed north along the Burmese coast to Arakan.’

She recognised the voice straight away.

‘To the island of Sai Chung,’ he said. ‘There’s an active mud volcano I heard was about to explode. And on the third night I was there, it erupted. I thought there would just be mud, but, you know, it spewed good old-fashioned lava as well. Thick lava that flowed so slowly through the town that we could blithely walk away from it.’

‘It’s the middle of the night,’ she yawned.

‘Yet still it wouldn’t stop. Apparently they call it cold lava when it’s so sticky, but it consumed everything in its path. Trees with fresh green leaves were like Christmas trees for four seconds until they were turned to ashes and were gone. The Burmese tried to escape in cars loaded with the chattels they had snatched, but they had spent too much time packing. The lava was moving that fast after all! When they emerged with the TV set, the lava was already up to their walls. They threw themselves inside their cars, but the heat punctured the tyres. Then the petrol caught fire and they clambered out like human torches. Do you remember my name?’

‘Listen, Elias-’

‘I said you would remember.’

‘I have to sleep. I’ve got classes tomorrow.’

‘I am such an eruption, Stine. I’m cold lava. I move slowly, but I’m unstoppable. I’m coming to where you are.’

She tried to remember if she had told him her name. And automatically directed her gaze to the window. It was open. Outside, the wind soughed, peaceful, reassuring.

His voice was low, a whisper. ‘I saw a dog entangled in barbed wire, trying to flee. It was in the path of the lava. But then the stream veered left, it would pass right by. A merciful God, I supposed. But the lava brushed against it. Half the dog simply vanished, evaporated. Before the rest burned up. So it was ashes, too. Everything turns to ashes.’

‘Yuk, I’m ringing off.’

‘Look outside. Look, I’m already up against the house.’

‘Stop it!’

‘Relax, I’m only teasing.’ His loud laughter pealed in her ears.

Stine shuddered. He must have been drunk. Or he was mad. Or both.

‘Sleep tight, Stine. See you soon.’

He broke the connection. Stine stared at the phone. Then she switched it off and threw it to the foot of her bed. Cursed because she already knew. She would get no more sleep that night.

It was 6.58. Harry Hole, Kaja Solness and Bjorn Holm were walking through the culvert, a three-hundred-metre-long subterranean corridor connecting Police HQ and Oslo District Prison. Now and then it was used to transport prisoners to Police HQ for questioning, sometimes for sports training sessions in the winter and in the bad old days for extremely unofficial beatings of particularly intractable prisoners.

Water from the ceiling dripped onto the concrete with wet kisses that echoed down the dimly lit corridor.

‘Here,’ Harry said as they reached the end.

‘HERE?’ asked Bjorn Holm.

They had to bend their heads to pass under the stairs leading to the prison cells. Harry turned the key in the lock and opened the iron door. The musty smell of heated dank air hit him.

He pressed the light switch. Cold, blue light from neon tubes enveloped a square concrete room with grey-blue lino on the floor and nothing on the walls.

The room had no windows, no radiators, none of the facilities you expect in a space supposed to function as an office for three people.

Apart from desks with chairs and a computer each. On the floor there was a coffee machine stained brown and a water cooler.

‘The boilers heating the whole prison are in the adjacent room,’ Harry said. ‘That’s why it’s so hot in here.’

‘Basically not very homely,’ Kaja said, sitting at one of the desks.

‘Right, bit reminiscent of hell,’ Holm said, pulling off his suede jacket and undoing one shirt button. ‘Is there mobile coverage here?’

‘Just about,’ Harry said. ‘And an Internet connection. We have everything we need.’

‘Apart from coffee cups,’ Holm said.

Harry shook his head. From his jacket pocket he produced three white cups, and he placed one on each of the three desks. Then he pulled a bag of coffee from his inside pocket and went over to the machine.

‘You’ve taken them from the canteen,’ Bjorn said, raising the cup Harry had put down in front of him. ‘Hank Williams?’

‘Written with a felt pen, so be careful,’ Harry said, tearing open the coffee pouch with his teeth.

‘John Fante?’ Kaja read on her cup. ‘What have you got?’

‘For the time being, nothing,’ Harry said.

‘And why not?’

‘Because it will be the name of our main suspect of the moment.’

Neither of the other two said anything. The coffee machine slurped up the water.

‘I want three names on the table by the time this is ready,’ Harry said.

They were well down their second cup of coffee and into the sixth theory when Harry interrupted the session.

‘OK, that was the warm-up, just to get the grey matter working.’

Kaja had just launched the idea that the murders were sexually motivated and that the killer was an ex-con with a record for similar crimes who knew that the police had his DNA and therefore did not spill his seed on the ground, but masturbated into a bag or some such receptacle before leaving the scene. Accordingly, she said, they should start going through criminal records and talking to staff in the Sexual Offences Unit.

‘But don’t you believe we’re onto something?’ she said.

‘I don’t believe anything,’ Harry answered. ‘I’m trying to keep my brain clear and receptive.’

‘But you must believe something?’

‘Yes, I do. I believe the three murders have been carried out by the same person or persons. And I believe it’s possible to find a connection which in turn might lead us to a motive which in turn – if we’re very, very lucky – will lead us to the guilty party or parties.’

‘Very, very lucky. You make it sound as if the odds are not good.’

‘Well.’ Harry leaned back on his chair with his hands behind his head. ‘Several metres of specialist books have been written about what characterises serial killers. In films, the police call in a psychologist who, after reading a couple of reports, gives them a profile which invariably fits. People believe that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is a general description. But in reality serial killers are, sad to say, as different from each other as everyone else. There is only one thing which distinguishes them from other criminals.’

‘And that is?’

‘They don’t get caught.’

Bjorn Holm laughed, realised it was inappropriate, and shut up.

‘That’s not true, is it?’ Kaja said. ‘What about…?’

‘You’re thinking of the cases where a pattern emerged and they caught the person. But don’t forget all the unsolved murders we still think are one-offs, where a connection was never found. Thousands.’

Kaja glanced at Bjorn who was nodding meaningfully.

‘You believe in connections?’ she said.

‘Yep,’ Harry said. ‘And we have to find one without going down the path of interviewing people, which might give us away.’