Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Harry faced Bellman.

‘But the police is all I have. It’s my tribe. And my job is to clear up murders. Whether it is for Kripos or Crime Squad. Can you grasp something like that, Bellman?’

Mikael Bellman squeezed his lower lip between thumb and first finger.

Harry motioned to the wall. ‘What grade was the climb, Bellman? Seven plus?’

‘Eight minimum. On sight.’

‘That’s tough. And I guess you think this is even tougher. But that’s how it has to be.’

Bellman cleared his throat. ‘Fine. Fine, Harry.’ He pulled the strings of his rucksack tight again. ‘Will you help us?’

Harry put his cigarettes back in his pocket and lowered his head. ‘Of course.’

‘I’ll have to check with your boss to see if it’s alright first.’

‘Save yourself the effort,’ Harry said, getting up. ‘I’ve already informed him I’m working with you lot from now on. See you at two.’

Iska Peller peered out of the window of the two-storey brick building, at the row of identical houses on the other side of the street. It could have been any street in any town in England, but it was the tiny district of Bristol in Sydney, Australia. A cool southerly had picked up. The afternoon heat would release its grip as soon as the sun went down.

She heard a dog bark and the heavy traffic on the motorway two blocks away.

The man and woman in the car opposite had just been relieved; now there were two men. They drank slowly from their paper cups with lids. In their own good time, because there is no reason in the world to hurry when you have an eight-hour shift ahead of you and nothing at all is going to happen. Ratchet down a gear, slow the metabolism, do what the Aborigines do: go into that torpid, dormant state which is their diapause and where they can be for hours on end, days on end if need be. She tried to visualise how these slow coffee drinkers could be of any help if anything really happened.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to repress the tremble in her voice caused by suppressed fury. ‘I would have liked to help you find who killed Charlotte, but what you’re suggesting is utterly out of the question.’ Then her anger gained the upper hand after all. ‘I can’t believe you’re even asking! I’m enough of a decoy here. Ten wild horses couldn’t drag me back to Norway. You’re the police, you get paid to catch that monster, why can’t you be the bait?’

She hung up and threw down the phone. It hit the cushion on the armchair and one of her cats jumped up and darted into the kitchen. She hid her face in her hands and let the tears flow again. Dear Charlotte. Her dear, dear, beloved Charlotte.

She had never been afraid of the dark before, now she thought of nothing else; soon the sun would go down, night would come, it was relentless, returning again and again.

The phone played the opening bars of an Antony and the Johnsons song, and the display lit up on the cushion. She walked over and eyed it. Felt the hairs on her neck rising. The caller’s number started with 47. From Norway again.

She put the phone to her ear.

‘Yeah?’

‘Me again.’

She sighed with relief. Just the policeman.

‘I was wondering, if you don’t want to come here in person, whether we might at least have the use of your name?’

Kaja studied the man held in the red-haired woman’s embrace, her head bowed over his bared neck.

‘What can you see?’ Mikael asked. His voice echoed around the walls of the museum.

‘She’s kissing him,’ Kaja said, stepping back from the painting. ‘Or comforting him.’

‘She’s biting him and sucking his blood,’ Mikael said.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘It’s one of the reasons Munch called this The Vampire. Everything ready?’

‘Yes, I’m taking the train to Ustaoset soon.’

‘Why did you want to meet here now?’

Kaja took a deep breath. ‘I wanted to tell you that we can’t go on meeting.’

Mikael Bellman rocked on his heels. ‘Love and Pain.’

‘What?’

‘That’s what Munch originally called this painting. Did Harry go over the details of our plan with you?’

‘Yes. Did you hear what I said?’

‘Thank you, Solness, my hearing is excellent. Unless my memory is at fault, you’ve said that a couple of times before. I suggest you give it some thought.’

‘I’ve finished giving it some thought, Mikael.’

He stroked the knot of his tie. ‘Have you slept with him?’

She gave a start. ‘Who?’

Bellman chuckled.

Kaja didn’t turn round; she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the woman’s face as his steps receded into the distance.

The light seeped through the grey steel blinds, and Harry warmed his hands around a white coffee cup with ‘Kripos’ inscribed in blue letters. The conference room was identical to the one in which he had spent so many hours of his life at Crime Squad. Light, expensive and yet spartan in that cool modern way that is not intentionally minimalist, just somewhat soulless. A room that demands efficiency so that you can get the hell out of it.

The eight people there constituted what Bellman declared the inner core of the investigative unit. Harry knew only two of them: Bjorn Holm and a robust, down-to-earth but not very imaginative female detective known as the Pelican who had once worked at Crime Squad. Bellman had introduced Harry to everyone, including?rdal, a man in horn-rimmed glasses and a brown suit of the ready-made variety that led one’s thoughts to the German Democratic Republic. He sat at the far end of the table cleaning his nails with a Swiss army knife. Harry conjectured a background in the military police. They had given their reports. Which all supported Harry’s contention: that the case was in a rut. He noted the defensive attitude, particularly in the report on the search for Tony Leike. The officer responsible went through which passenger lists had been checked with which companies, to no avail, and which authorities in which telephone company had told them that none of their base stations had picked up signals from Leike’s phone. He informed them that no hotels in town had anyone on their books under the name of Leike, but naturally the Captain (even Harry knew the selfappointed and overenthusiastic police informant-cum-receptionist at Hotel Bristol) rang to say he had seen a person answering Tony Leike’s description. The officer gave a report that went into an impressive level of detail, but failed to notice that what emerged was a defence of the result. Zilch. Nada.

Bellman sat at the head of the table with crossed legs and trouser creases that were still as sharp as a knife. He thanked the officers for their reports and made a more formal introduction of Harry by reading quickly from a kind of CV: graduation from Police College, FBI course on serial killers in Chicago, the clown murder case in Sydney, promotion to Inspector and of course the Snowman investigation.

‘So Harry is a part of this team with effect from today,’ Bellman said. ‘He reports to me.’

‘And is subject to only your orders as well?’ the Pelican boomed. Harry recalled that what she was doing now was precisely what had given her the nickname, the way she pushed her chin forward, the long, beak-like nose and the protracted, thin neck as she peered over her glasses. Sceptical and voracious at the same time, considering whether she wanted you on the menu or not.

‘He is not subject to anyone’s orders,’ Bellman said. ‘He has a free role in the team. We may consider Inspector Hole a consultant. Isn’t that right, Harry?’

‘Why not?’ Harry said. ‘An overpaid, overrated guy who thinks he knows something you don’t.’

Cautious titters around the table. Harry exchanged glances with Bjorn Holm, who sent him a nod of encouragement.