Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

‘What do you believe?’ she asked.

‘I believe it’s true. The boy was caught by an avalanche. He suffocated under the snow. The snow melted and he was carried into a lake and that’s where he is. With his mother, let’s hope.’

‘Sounds nicer than the bear story, anyway.’

‘Well, it isn’t.’

Kaja looked up at Aslak. There was no laughter in his eyes now.

‘Buried alive in an avalanche,’ he said, and his gaze wandered out of the window, to the drifting snow. ‘The darkness. The loneliness. You can’t move, it holds you in its iron grip, laughs at your attempts to free yourself. The certainty that you’re going to die. The panic, the mortal fear when you can’t breathe. There’s no worse way to go.’

Kaja took a gulp of wine. She put down the glass. ‘How long were you lying there?’ she asked.

‘I thought it was three, maybe four hours,’ Aslak said. ‘When they dug me out, they said I had been trapped for fifteen minutes. Another five and I would have been dead.’

The waiter came and asked if they wanted anything else; he would call last orders in ten minutes. Kaja said no, and the waiter responded by putting the bill in front of Aslak.

‘Why does Utmo carry a gun?’ Kaja asked. ‘As far as I’m aware, it isn’t the hunting season now.’

‘He says it’s because of beasts of prey. Self-defence.’

‘Are there any here? Wolves?’

‘He never tells me exactly what kind of animal he means. By the way, there’s a rumour going round that at night the boy’s ghost walks the plains. And that if you see him, you have to be careful, because it means there’s a sheer drop or an avalanche nearby.’

Kaja finished her drink.

‘I can have drinking hours extended for a bit if you like.’

‘Thanks, Aslak, but I have to be up early tomorrow.’

‘Ooh,’ he said, laughing with his eyes and scratching his locks, ‘now that sounds like I…’ He paused.

‘What?’ Kaja said.

‘Nothing. I suppose you have a husband or boyfriend down south.’

Kaja smiled, though didn’t answer.

Aslak stared at the table, and said quietly, ‘Well, there you go: provincial policeman couldn’t take his drink and started wittering.’

‘That’s alright,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got a boyfriend. And I like you. You remind me of my brother.’

‘But?’

‘But what?’

‘Don’t forget I’m a real detective, too. I can see you’re no hermit. There is someone, isn’t there?’

Kaja laughed. Normally she would have left it at that. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was because she liked Aslak Krongli. Maybe it was because she didn’t have anyone to talk to about that sort of thing, not since Even died, and Aslak was a stranger, a long way from Oslo, someone who didn’t talk to her circle of acquaintances.

‘I’m in love,’ she heard herself say. ‘With a police officer.’ She put the glass of water to her mouth to hide a flurry of confusion. The strange thing was that it hadn’t struck her as true until she heard the words said aloud.

Aslak raised his glass to hers. ‘Skal to the lucky guy. And the lucky girl, I hope.’

Kaja shook her head. ‘There’s nothing to skal about. Not yet. Maybe ever. My God, listen to me…’

‘We don’t have anything else to do, do we? Tell me more.’

‘It’s complicated. He’s complicated. And I don’t know if he wants me. In fact, that bit is fairly straightforward.’

‘Let me guess. He’s got someone, and he can’t let go.’

Kaja sighed. ‘Perhaps. I honestly don’t know. Aslak, thank you for all your help, but I-’

‘-have to go to bed now.’ The police officer rose. ‘I hope it all goes sour with your friend, you want to escape from your broken heart and the city and that you could envisage giving this a chance.’ He passed her an A4 piece of paper with a Hol Police Station letterhead.

Kaja read it and laughed out loud. ‘A post in the sticks?’

‘Roy Stille is retiring in the autumn and good officers are hard to find,’ Aslak said. ‘It’s our advertisement for the post. We put it out last week. Our office is in Geilo city centre. Time off every alternate weekend and free dentistry.’

As Kaja went to bed she could hear the distant rumbles. Thunder and snow rarely came as a joint package.

She rang Harry and got his voicemail. Left a little ghost story about the local guide Odd Utmo with the rotten teeth and brace, and about his son who had to be even uglier since he had been haunting the district for eighteen years. She laughed. Realised she was drunk. Said goodnight.

She dreamed about avalanches.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Harry and Joe had left Goma at seven, crossed the border to Rwanda without any problems and Harry was standing in an office on the first floor of the terminal building at Kigali Airport. Two uniformed officers were giving him the once-over. Not in an unfriendly way, but to check that he really was who he claimed to be: a Norwegian policeman. Harry put his ID card back in his jacket pocket and felt the smooth paper of the coffee-brown envelope he had there. The problem was that there were two of them. How do you bribe two public servants at once? Ask them to share the contents of the envelope and politely request them not to snitch on one another?

One officer, the same one who had inspected Harry’s passport two days before, pulled his beret back on his head. ‘So you want a copy of whose landing card? Could you repeat the date and the name?’

‘Adele Vetlesen. We know she arrived at this airport on the 25th of November. And I’ll pay a finder’s fee.’

The two officers exchanged glances, and one left the room on the other’s cue. The remaining officer walked over to the window and surveyed the runway, the little DH8 that had landed and which in fifty-five minutes would be transporting Harry on the first phase of his journey home.

‘Finder’s fee,’ the officer repeated quietly. ‘I assume you know it is illegal to try to bribe a public servant, Mr Hole. But you probably thought: Shiit, this is Africa.’

It struck Harry that the man’s skin was so black it seemed like gloss paint.

He felt his shirt sticking to his back. The same shirt. Perhaps they sold shirts at Nairobi airport. If he got that far.

‘That’s right,’ Harry said.

The officer laughed and turned. ‘Tough guy, eh! Are you a hard man, Hole? I saw you were a policeman when you arrived.’

‘Oh?’

‘You examined me with the same circumspection that I examined you.’

Harry shrugged.

The door opened. The other officer was back accompanied by a woman dressed like a secretary with clickety-clack heels and glasses on the tip of her nose.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in impeccable English, clocking Harry. ‘I’ve checked the date. There was no Adele Vetlesen on that flight.’

‘Mm. Could there be a mistake?’

‘Unlikely. Landing cards are filed by date. The flight you’re talking about is a thirty-seven-seater DH8 from Entebbe. It didn’t take long to check.’

‘Mm. If that’s the case, may I ask you to check something else for me?’

‘You may ask of course. What is it?’

‘Could you see if any other foreign women arrived on that flight?’

‘And why should I do that?’

‘Because Adele Vetlesen was booked onto that flight. So either she used a false passport here-’

‘I doubt that very much,’ the passport officer said. ‘We check all the passport photos very carefully before they are scanned by a machine that matches the passport number against the international ICAO register.’

‘-or someone else was travelling in Adele Vetlesen’s name and then used their own, genuine passport to pass through here. Which is more than possible, as passport numbers are not checked before passengers board the aircraft.’