Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

‘Good luck, Harry.’

‘Good luck to you, too.’

He rang off. Of course he could have asked her who she was having dinner with, but if that had been relevant to the investigation she would probably have told him.

Harry sat on the balcony until the bar closed and the clinking of bottles stopped, to be replaced by the sounds of lovemaking from an open window above. Throaty, monotonous cries. They reminded him of the gulls at Andalsnes when he and his grandfather used to get up at the crack of dawn to go fishing. His father never went with him. Why not? And why had Harry never thought about it, why hadn’t he instinctively known that Olav didn’t feel at home in a fishing boat? Had he already understood, as a five-year-old, that his father had opted for an education and left the farm precisely so that he wouldn’t have to sit in boat? Nevertheless, his father wanted to return and spend eternity there. Life was strange. Death, at any rate.

Harry lit up a cigarette. The sky was starless and black apart from above the Nyiragongo crater, where a red glow smouldered. Harry felt a smarting pain as an insect stung him. Malaria. Methane gas. Lake Kivu glittered in the distance. Very nice, very deep.

A boom resounded from the mountains, and the sound rolled across the lake. Vocanic eruption or just thunder? Harry looked up. Another clap; the echo rang between the mountains. And another echo, distant, reached Harry at the same time.

Very deep.

He stared, wide-eyed, into the darkness, hardly noticing that the heavens were opening and the rain was hammering down and drowning the gull cries.

‘I’m glad you got away from the Havass cabin before this swept in,’ Officer Krongli said. ‘You could have been stranded there for several days.’ He nodded towards the hotel restaurant’s large panoramic window. ‘But it’s wonderful to see, don’t you think?’

Kaja looked out at the heavy snowfall. Even had been like that, too; he was excited by the power of nature, regardless of whether it was working for or against him.

‘I hope my train will finally get through,’ she said.

‘Yes, of course,’ Krongli said, fingering his wine glass in a way that suggested to Kaja that wining and dining was not something he did that often. ‘We’ll make sure it does. And sort out the guest books from the other cabins.’

‘Thank you,’ Kaja said.

Krongli ran a hand through his unruly locks and put on a wry smile. Chris de Burgh with ‘Lady in Red’ oozed like syrup through the loudspeakers.

There were only two other guests in the restaurant, two men in their thirties, each sitting at a table with a white cloth, each with a beer in front of them, staring at the snow, waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen.

‘Doesn’t it get lonely here sometimes?’ Kaja asked.

‘Depends,’ the rural policeman said, following her glance. ‘If you don’t have a wife or family, it means you tend to gather at places like this.’

‘To be lonely together,’ Kaja said.

‘Yep,’ Krongli said, pouring more wine into their glasses. ‘But I suppose it’s the same in Oslo, too?’

‘Yes,’ Kaja said. ‘It is. Have you got any family?’

Krongli shrugged. ‘I did live with someone. But she found life too empty here, so she moved down to where you live. I can understand her. You have to have an interesting job in a place like this.’

‘And you do?’

‘I think so. I know everyone here, and they know me. We help each other. I need them and they… well…’ He twirled the glass.

‘They need you,’ Kaja said.

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘And that’s important.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Krongli said firmly, looking up at her. Even’s eyes. Which had the embers of laughter in them; something amusing or something to be happy about always seemed to have just happened. Even if it hadn’t. Especially when it hadn’t.

‘What about Odd Utmo?’ Kaja said.

‘What about him?’

‘He left as soon as he had dropped me off. What does he do on an evening like tonight?’

‘How do you know he isn’t sitting at home with his wife and children?’

‘If I’ve ever met a recluse, Officer-’

‘Call me Aslak,’ he said, laughing and tipping back his glass. ‘And I can see that you’re a real detective. But Utmo hasn’t always been like that.’

‘He hasn’t?’

‘Before his son went missing he was apparently pretty approachable. Yes, now and then he was nothing less than affable. But I suppose he’s always had a dangerous temper.’

‘I would have thought a man like Utmo would be single.’

‘His wife was good-looking, too. When you consider how ugly he is. Did you see his teeth?’

‘I saw he was wearing an orthodontic brace, yes.’

‘He says it’s so that his teeth don’t go crooked.’ Aslak Krongli shook his head, with laughter in his eyes, though not in his voice. ‘But it’s the only way to make sure they don’t fall out.’

‘Tell me, was that really dynamite he was carrying on his snow – mobile?’

‘You saw it,’ Krongli said. ‘Not me.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There are lots of residents up here who can’t quite see the romanticism of sitting for hours with a fishing rod by the mountain lakes, but who would like to have the fish they regard as their own on the dinner table.’

‘They chuck dynamite in the lakes?’

‘As soon as the ice has gone.’

‘Isn’t that somewhat illegal?’

Krongli held up his hands in defence. ‘As I said, I didn’t see anything.’

‘No, that’s true, you only live here. Have you got dynamite, too, by any chance?’

‘Just for the garage. Which I’m planning to build.’

‘Right. What about Utmo’s gun? Looked modern with the telescopic sights and so on.’

‘Certainly is. Utmo was good at hunting bears. Until he went half blind.’

‘I saw his eye. What happened?’

‘Apparently his boy spilt a glass of acid on him.’

‘Apparently?’

Krongli rolled his shoulders. ‘Utmo is the only person left who knows what happened. His son went missing when he was fifteen. Soon afterwards his wife disappeared as well. But that was eighteen years ago, before I moved up here. Since then Utmo has lived alone in the mountains, no TV, no radio, doesn’t even read the papers.’

‘How did they disappear?’

‘You tell me. There are lots of sheer drops around Utmo’s farm where you might fall. And the snow. The son’s shoe was found after an avalanche, but there was no sign of him after the snow melted that year, and it was strange to lose a shoe like that up in the snow. Some thought it was a bear. Though, as far as I know, there weren’t any bears up here eighteen years ago. And then there were those who reckoned it was Utmo.’

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘We-ell,’ Aslak said, dragging it out, ‘the boy had a bad scar on his chest. Folk reckoned he’d got that from his father. It was something to do with the mother, Karen.’

‘How so?’

‘They were competing for her.’

Aslak shook his head at the question in Kaja’s eyes. ‘This was before my time. And Roy Stille, who has been an officer here since the dawn of time, went to the house, but only Odd and Karen were there. And they both said the same. The boy had gone out hunting and hadn’t returned. But this was in April.’

‘Not hunting season?’

Aslak shook his head. ‘And since then no one has seen him. The following year, Karen went missing. Folk here believe it was the grief that broke her and she took a one-way ticket off a cliff.’

Kaja thought she detected a little quiver in the officer’s voice, but concluded it must have been the wine.