Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Hagen shook his head dejectedly. ‘So close…’

Harry sat on the desk. ‘There is another dilemma we have to resolve. The overnight guests at Havass cabin that night.’

‘What about them?’

‘We cannot exclude the possibility that the page torn out of the guest book is a hit list. They have to be warned.’

‘How? We don’t know who they are.’

‘Through the media. Even if it means we would be letting the killer know we’ve picked up his trail.’

Hagen slowly shook his head. ‘Hit list. And you’ve only reached this conclusion now?’

‘I know, boss.’ Harry met Hagen’s eyes. ‘If I’d gone to the media with a warning as soon as we stumbled on the Havass cabin, it might have saved Elias Skog’s life.’

The room went quiet.

‘We can’t go to the media,’ Hagen said.

‘Why not?’

‘If someone responds to the media alert, perhaps we can find out who else was in the cabin and what really happened,’ Kaja said.

‘We can’t go to the media,’ Hagen said, getting to his feet. ‘We’ve been investigating a missing persons case and uncovered links with a murder case, which is in the Kripos hands. We have to pass the information on and let them take it further. I’ll ring Bellman.’

‘Wait!’ Harry said. ‘Should he take all the credit for what we’ve done?’

‘I’m not sure there will be any credit to share, will there?’ Hagen said, heading for the door. ‘And you can start moving out now.’

‘Isn’t that a trifle hasty?’ Kaja said.

The other two looked at her.

‘I mean, we’ve still got a missing person here. Shouldn’t we try to locate her before we tidy up?’

‘And how were you going to go about that?’ Hagen asked.

‘As Harry said before. A search.’

‘You don’t even know where you should bloody search.’

‘Harry knows.’

They looked at the man who had just grabbed the jug from the coffee machine with one hand and was holding his cup under the mud-brown stream with the other.

‘Do you?’ Hagen said at length.

‘Yes, I do,’ Harry said.

‘Where?’

‘You’ll get into hot water,’ Harry said.

‘Shut up, and out with it,’ Hagen said, without noticing the contradiction. Because he was thinking, here I am, doing it again. What was it about this tall, fair-haired policeman who always managed to drag others along when he took headlong plunges?

Olav Hole looked up at Harry and the woman beside him.

She had curtsied when she introduced herself, and Harry had noticed that his father had liked that; he was always complaining that women had stopped curtsying.

‘So you’re Harry’s colleague,’ Olav said. ‘Does he behave himself ?’

‘We’re off to organise an operation,’ Harry said. ‘Just dropped by to see how you were.’

His father smiled wanly, shrugged and beckoned Harry to come closer. Harry leaned forward, listened. And flinched.

‘You’ll be alright,’ Harry said in a sudden hoarse voice and stood up. ‘I’ll be back this evening, OK?’

In the corridor Harry stopped Altman and motioned for Kaja to go on ahead.

‘Listen, I was wondering if you could do me a big favour,’ he said when Kaja was out of range. ‘My father’s just told me that he’s in pain. He would never admit that to you because he’s afraid you’ll give him more painkillers, and, well, he has a pathological fear of becoming dependent on… drugs. There’s a bit of family history here, you see.’

‘Thee,’ the nurse lisped and there was a moment of confusion until Harry realised that Altman had repeated ‘see’. ‘The problem is that I’m being shifted between wards at the moment.’

‘I’m asking this as a personal favour.’

Altman screwed up one eye behind his glasses, staring thoughtfully at a point between himself and Harry. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thank you.’

Kaja drove while Harry was on the phone to the chief of operations at Briskeby Fire Station.

‘Your father seems like a nice man,’ Kaja said as Harry rang off.

Harry took that in. ‘Mum made him good,’ he said. ‘When she was alive he was good. She brought out the best in him.’

‘Sounds like something you’ve been through yourself,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Someone made you good.’

Harry looked out of the window. Nodded.

‘Rakel?’

‘Rakel and Oleg,’ Harry said.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to…’

‘It’s alright.’

‘It’s just that when I came to Crime Squad everyone was talking about the Snowman case. About him trying to kill them. And you. But it was already over before the case began, wasn’t it?’

‘In a way,’ Harry said.

‘Have you had any contact with them?’

Harry shook his head. ‘We had to try to put it behind us. Help Oleg to forget. When they’re that young they still can.’

‘Not always,’ Kaja said with a sardonic smile.

Harry glanced at her. ‘And who made you good?’

‘Even,’ she answered without any hesitation.

‘No great romantic passions?’

She shook her head. ‘No XLs. Just a few smalls. And one medium.’

‘Got your cap set at someone?’

She chuckled. ‘Cap set at someone?’

Harry smiled. ‘My vocabulary is somewhat old-fashioned in that area.’

She hesitated. ‘I suppose I’m a bit hung up on a guy.’

‘And the prospects are?’

‘Poor.’

‘Let me guess,’ Harry said, winding down the window and lighting a cigarette. ‘He’s married and says he’ll leave his wife and kids for you, but never does?’

She laughed. ‘Let me guess. You’re the type who thinks he’s so damned good at reading other people’s minds because he only remembers the times he got it right?’

‘He said you’ve just got to give him some time?’

‘Wrong again,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t say anything.’

Harry nodded. He was about to ask more questions when it struck him: he didn’t want to know.

The mist drifted across the shiny, black surface of Lake Lyseren. Along the banks the trees stood with bowed shoulders like sombre, silent witnesses. The tranquillity was broken by shouted commands, radio communication and splashes as divers toppled backwards off rubber dinghies. They had started on the shore closest to the ropery. The heads of the search-and-recovery teams had sent their divers out in a fan formation, and now they were standing on land, crossing off the squares on the defined search grid they had covered, and signalling with a pull on the lifelines when they wanted the divers to stop or come back. The professional divers, such as Jarle Andreassen, also had wires in the lines which went up to full-face masks, allowing them to stay in verbal contact.

It was only six months since Jarle had taken his rescue course, and his pulse was still up during these dives. And a high pulse meant higher oxygen consumption. The more experienced men at Briskeby Fire Station called him ‘The Float’ as he had to rise to the surface and exchange oxygen cylinders so often.

Jarle knew that there was still good daylight at the top, but down here it was as black as night. He tried to swim at the regulation one and a half metres above the lakebed, yet he still stirred up mud, which reflected the light from his torch and partially blinded him. Even though he knew there were other divers a few metres away on either side, he felt alone. Alone and frozen to the marrow. And there were probably still hours of diving ahead of them. He knew he had less air left than the others and cursed to himself. Being the first fire station diver to change cylinders was fine by him, but he feared he would have to surface before the voluntary club divers as well. He refocused in front of him and stopped breathing. Not as a conscious action to reduce consumption. But because in the middle of his torch beam, inside the swaying forest of stalks that grew in the muddy bed closer to land, he could see a form floating free. A form that did not belong down here, that would be unable to live here. An alien feature. That was what made it so fascinating and at the same time so frightening. Or perhaps it was the light from his torch shining on the dark eyes that made it look as if it were alive.