Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Krongli rubbed his chin.

‘Alibi?’ Harry asked airily.

‘I was at home, in bed, alone. Did Elias Skog say who the woman was?’

‘No. Nor the man, as I said.’

‘It wasn’t me. And you’re living dangerously, Hole.’

‘Shall I take that as a threat or a compliment?’

Krongli didn’t answer. But there was a gleam in his eyes, yellow and cold.

Harry stubbed out his cigarette and got up. ‘By the way, your ex didn’t show me anything. We were in the staffroom. Something tells me she’s afraid of being alone in the same room as a man. So you achieved something, didn’t you, Krongli.’

‘Don’t forget to look over your shoulder, Hole.’

Harry turned. The croupier appeared completely unruffled by the scene and had already set up the horses for another race.

‘Wan’ a bet?’ he asked in pidgin Norwegian with a smile.

Harry shook his head. ‘Sorry, got nothing to bet with.’

‘All the more to win,’ the croupier said.

Harry allowed that to sink in and concluded that either it was a linguistic error or his logic didn’t carry that far. Or it was just another terrible Oriental proverb.

Mikael Bellman waited.

This was the best. The seconds waiting for her to open up. Wondering with excitement whether – and yet at the same time sure – she would again exceed his expectations. For every time he saw her he realised that he had forgotten how beautiful she was. Every time the door opened, it was as if he needed a moment to assimilate all her beauty. To let the confirmation sink in. Confirmation that from the selection of men who wanted her – in practice, any heterosexual man with good eyesight – she had chosen him. Confirmation that he was the leader of the pack, the alpha male, the male with the first claim to mate with the females. Yes, it could be articulated in such banal and vulgar terms. Being an alpha male was not something you aspired to, you were born to it. Not necessarily the easiest or the most comfortable life for a man, but if you were called, you could not resist.

The door opened.

She was wearing the white high-necked jumper and had put her hair up. She looked tired, her eyes had less sparkle than usual. And still she had the elegance, the class, of which even his wife could only dream. She said ‘Hi’, told him she was sitting on the veranda, turned her back on him and walked through the house. He followed, collecting a beer from the fridge, and sat down in one of the ridiculously large, heavy chairs on the veranda.

‘Why do you sit outside?’ he sniffed. ‘You’ll catch pneumonia.’

‘Or lung cancer,’ she said, hoisting the half-smoked cigarette from the edge of the ashtray and picking up the book she was reading. He skimmed the cover. Ham on Rye. Charles… he squinted… Bukowski? As in the Swedish auction rooms?

‘I’ve got good news,’ he said. ‘We’ve not only averted a minor catastrophe, we’ve turned the whole Leike incident to our advantage. The Ministry of Justice phoned today.’ Bellman put his feet on the table and studied the label on the beer bottle. ‘They wanted to thank me for intervening with such resolution and ensuring Leike was released. They were very worried about what Galtung and his pack of lawyers might have got up to if Kripos hadn’t acted so quickly. And they wanted a personal assurance that I would have my hands on the wheel and no one outside Kripos would have the opportunity to foul things up.’

He put the bottle to his mouth and drank. Banged it down hard on the table. ‘What do you think, Bukowski?’

She lowered her book and met his eyes.

‘You should show a little interest,’ he said. ‘This concerns you as well, you know. What do you think about the case, my love? Come on. You’re a murder investigator.’

‘Mikael…’

‘Tony Leike is a violent criminal, and we allowed ourselves to be duped by that. Because we know you can’t rehabilitate violent criminals. The ability and the desire to kill are not granted to all, it’s innate or acquired. But when the killer is in you, it’s damned difficult to get it out again. Perhaps the killer in this case knows we know that? Knows that if he served us up Tony Leike, we would go into a frenzy and all cheer in unison “Hey, the case is cracked, it’s the guy with the violent streak!” And that was why he broke into Tony Leike’s apartment and rang Elias Skog. To stop us searching for any of the others who were in Havass.’

‘The call from Leike’s house was before anyone outside the police knew that we had found the link with the Havass cabin.’

‘So what? He must have reckoned that it was only a matter of time before we stumbled on it. Damn, we should have found it long before!’ Bellman grabbed the bottle again.

‘So who is the killer?’

‘The eighth guest in the cabin,’ Mikael Bellman said. ‘The boyfriend Adele Vetlesen took along, but whom no one knows.’

‘No one?’

‘I’ve had more than thirty officers on the job. We’ve combed Adele’s flat. Nothing in writing. No diaries, no cards, no letters, barely any emails or texts. Those male acquaintances that we have identified have been questioned and eliminated. Also the female ones. And none of them thinks it strange that she changed partners as frequently as panties and did it without telling anyone. The only thing we have found out is that Adele was supposed to have said to a girlfriend that this cabin escort had a couple of what she termed “turn-ons” and “turn-offs”. The turn-on was that he had asked her to go to a nocturnal rendezvous at an empty factory dressed as a nurse.’

‘If that was the turn-on, I dread to think what the turn-off was.’

‘The turn-off was apparently that when he spoke he reminded Adele of her flatmate. The girlfriend didn’t have a clue what Adele meant by that.’

‘The flatmate isn’t a mate in the biological sense,’ Kaja yawned. ‘Geir Bruun is gay. If this eighth guest tried to shift the murders on to Tony Leike he must have known Leike had a criminal record.’

‘The assault conviction is information that’s open to the public. Also the location, i.e. in Ytre Enebakk municipality. Leike was on the way to becoming a murderer while living with his grandfather by Lake Lyseren. If you wanted to direct police suspicions towards Leike, where would you dump Adele Vetlesen’s body? In a place where the police could find a link to him and a conviction on his record, of course. That was why he chose Lake Lyseren.’ Mikael Bellman paused. ‘Tell me, am I boring you?’

‘No.’

‘You look so bored.’

‘I… I have a lot to think about.’

‘When did you start smoking? So, I have a plan for how to find the eighth guest.’

Kaja stared at him.

Bellman sighed. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how, darling?’

‘How?’

‘By using the same strategy as he does.’

‘Which is?’

‘Focusing on an innocent person.’

‘Isn’t that the strategy you always use?’

Mikael Bellman looked up sharply. Something was beginning to dawn on him. Something about being an alpha male.

He explained the plan to her. Told her how he would entice the man out.

Afterwards, he was shaking from cold and anger. He didn’t know what made him angrier. The fact that she didn’t respond with either a negative or a positive comment. Or that she sat there smoking, to all outward signs completely untouched by the case. Didn’t she understand that his career, his moves, in these very critical days would be decisive for her future as well? If she couldn’t count on being the next fru Bellman, she could at least rise through the ranks under his auspices, provided that she was loyal and continued to deliver. Or perhaps his anger was a result of the question she had asked. It had been about him. The other one. The old, doddery alpha male.