Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

‘So, my congratulations. You’ve kept your part of the bargain. Now, as for mine…’

‘Save your breath and wipe that grin off your face. I didn’t mean it. I’m of unsound mind, didn’t you realise?’

She smacked down the receiver.

She was alone on the bus. Stine rested her forehead against the window so that she wouldn’t see her reflection. Stared out into the deserted, pitch-black bus station. Hoping someone would come. Hoping no one would come.

He had been sitting by a window in Krabbe with a beer in front of him staring at her, motionless. Woollen hat, blond hair and those wild blue eyes. His eyes laughed, penetrated, implored, called her name. In the end she had told Mathilde that she wanted to go home. But Mathilde had just started a conversation with an American oil guy and wanted to stay a bit longer. So Stine had grabbed her coat, run from Krabbe to the bus station and got on a bus to Valand.

She looked at the red numbers on the digital clock above the driver. Hoping the doors would shut and the bus would start moving. One minute left.

She didn’t raise her eyes, not even when she heard the running footsteps, heard the breathless voice request a ticket from the driver at the front, nor when he sat down on the seat beside her.

‘Hey, Stine,’ he said. ‘I think you’re avoiding me.’

‘Oh, hi, Elias,’ she said without shifting her gaze from the rainwet tarmac. Why had she sat so far back in the bus, so far from the driver?

‘You shouldn’t be out alone on a night like this, you know.’

‘Shouldn’t I?’ she mumbled, hoping someone would come, anyone.

‘Don’t you read the newspapers? Those two girls in Oslo. And now, the other day, that MP. What was her name again?’

‘No idea,’ Stine lied, feeling her heart rate gallop.

‘Marit Olsen,’ Elias said. ‘Socialist Party. The other two were Borgny and Charlotte. Sure you don’t recognise the names, Stine?’

‘I don’t read newspapers,’ Stine said. Someone had to come soon.

‘Great girls, all three of them,’ he said.

‘Course, you knew them, didn’t you?’ Stine regretted the sarcastic tone immediately. It was fear.

‘Not well though,’ Elias said. ‘But the first impression was good. I’m – as you know – the kind who attaches a lot of importance to first impressions.’

She stared at the hand he cautiously placed on her knee.

‘You…’ she said, and even in that one syllable she could hear herself begging.

‘Yes, Stine?’

She looked up at him. His face was as open as a child’s, his eyes genuinely curious. She wanted to scream, jump up, when she heard the steps and voice up by the driver. A passenger. A man. He came to the back of the bus. Stine tried to catch his eye, to make him understand, but the brim of his hat covered the upper half of his face, and he was busy checking his change and putting the ticket in his wallet. Her breathing was lighter when he took a seat right behind them.

‘It’s incredible that the police haven’t discovered the connection between them,’ Elias said. ‘It shouldn’t be so difficult. They must know that all three women liked to go cross-country skiing in the mountains. They stayed at the cabin in Havass on the same night. Do you think I should tell them?’

‘Maybe,’ Stine whispered. If she was quick perhaps she could squeeze past Elias and jump off the bus. But she had hardly articulated the thought in her mind before the hydraulics hissed, the doors slid shut and the bus set off. She closed her eyes.

‘I just don’t want to be involved. I hope you can understand that, Stine.’

She nodded slowly, her eyes still closed.

‘Good. Then I can tell you about someone else who was there. Someone I’m sure you know.’

‘It smells of…’ Kaja said.

‘Shit,’ Harry said. ‘Cow variety. Welcome to the district of J?ren.’

The dawn light leaked from the clouds sweeping across the springgreen fields. From behind stone walls cows stared mutely at their taxi. They were on their way from Sola Airport to Stavanger city centre.

Harry leaned forward between the front seats. ‘Could you put your foot down, driver?’ He held up his ID card. The driver beamed, gave it some gas, and they accelerated onto the motorway.

‘Are you afraid we’re too late?’ Kaja asked as Harry fell back.

‘Didn’t answer the phone, didn’t turn up for work,’ Harry said, not needing to complete his reasoning.

After he had spoken to Katrine Bratt the night before, Harry had skimmed over what he had noted down. He had the names, telephone numbers and addresses of two living persons who had probably stayed in a cabin in November with the three murder victims. He had checked his watch, worked out it was early morning in Sydney and rung Iska Peller’s number. She had answered and sounded very surprised when Harry broached the topic of the Havass cabin. She hadn’t been able to tell Harry much about the overnight stay because she had been stuck in a bedroom with a high temperature. Perhaps because she had been wearing wet, sweaty clothes for too long, perhaps because skiing from cabin to cabin had been a baptism of fire for an inexperienced langlaufer like herself. Or perhaps simply because flu strikes at random. At any rate, she had only just managed to drag herself to Havass, where she had been ordered straight to bed by her companion Charlotte Lolles. There, Iska Peller had drifted in and out of dream-filled sleep as her body ached, sweated and froze in turn. Whatever had gone on between the others in the cabin, whoever they were, well, she hadn’t picked up anything, as she and Charlotte had been the first to arrive. The next day she had stayed in bed until the others had left, and she and Charlotte were collected on a snow scooter by a local policeman Charlotte had managed to contact. He had driven them to his place where he had invited them to stay overnight as the only hotel was full, so he informed them. They had accepted, but that night they changed their minds and caught a late train to Geilo to stay at a hotel there. Charlotte hadn’t told Iska anything in particular about the night in the Havass cabin. An uneventful night, apparently.

Five days after the skiing trip Iska had left Oslo for Sydney, still with a temperature, and had kept in regular email contact with Charlotte but hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. Until she received the shocking news that her friend had been found dead behind a wrecked car on the edge of a wood by Lake Daudsjoen, just outside the urban sprawl of Oslo.

Harry had explained to Iska Peller with some care, but without beating around the bush, that they were worried about the people who had been in the cabin on the night of the 7th of November and that, after ringing off, he would call the head of Crime Squad in Sydney South Police District, Neil McCormack, whom Harry had worked for on one occasion. McCormack, he said, would require further details from her and – even though Australia was a long way from Oslo – provide police protection until further notice. Iska Peller seemed to accept this with equanimity.

Then Harry had rung the second number he had been given, the number in Stavanger. He had tried four times, but no one had answered. He knew, of course, that this did not mean anything in itself. Not everyone slept with their mobile switched on beside them. But Kaja Solness clearly did. She answered on the second ring, and when Harry said they were going to Stavanger on the first flight and that she should be on the airport express by five past six, she had uttered one word: ‘OK.’

They had arrived at Oslo’s Gardemoen Airport at half past six and Harry had tried the number again, without success. An hour later they had landed at Sola Airport, and Harry rang with the same result. On their way to the taxi queue, Kaja managed to contact the employer, who said that the person they were looking for had not turned up for work at the usual time. She had informed Harry, and he had gently placed his hand on the small of her back and led her firmly past the taxi queue and into a taxi in the face of loud protests, which he met with: ‘Thanking you, and may you have a wonderful day, folks.’