Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Harry turned to Jussi Kolkka. The Finn’s face was white.

‘You’re bought, but you’re hardly paid, Jussi. Slaves like you don’t gain respect, not from Massa Bellman and not from me. Christ, you don’t even have any self-respect, man.’

Kolkka’s fork fell to his plate with an almost deafening clatter. He got up, slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out a gun. He strode towards Harry and leaned over him. Harry didn’t budge, just calmly looked up.

‘So how are you going to find your respect again, Jussi? By shooting me?’

The Finn’s pupils were quivering with rage.

‘Or by working yourself to hell?’ Harry looked out at the snowy expanse again.

Heard Kolkka’s heavy breathing. Waited. Heard him turn. Heard him move away. Heard him sit down by the west-facing window.

The radio crackled. Harry grabbed the microphone.

‘Yes?’

‘Soon be dark.’ It was Bellman’s voice. ‘He’s not coming.’

‘Still keep a lookout.’

‘What for? It’s clouded over and without moonlight we can’t see a-’

‘If we can’t see, neither can he,’ Harry said. ‘So keep a lookout for a head torch.’

The man had switched off the head torch. He didn’t need any light, he knew where the ski trail he was following led. To the Tourist Association cabin. And his eyes would get used to the dark, he would have large, light-sensitive pupils before he arrived. There it was, the log wall with black windows. As though no one were at home. The new snow creaked as the man kicked off and slid down the last few metres. He stopped and listened to the silence for a couple of seconds before soundlessly unclipping his skis. He took out the large, heavy Sami knife with the intimidating boat-shaped blade and the smooth, varnished yellow wooden hilt. It was as good at cutting down branches for a fire as carving up a reindeer. Or slitting throats.

The man opened the door as quietly as he could and entered the hall. Stood listening at the sitting-room door. Silence. Too silent? He pressed the handle and threw open the door while standing back against the wall next to the doorway. Then – to make the target as elusive and small as possible – he crouched down and rushed into the darkness with the knife to the fore.

He glimpsed the figure of the dead man sitting on the floor with his head hanging and arms still embracing the stove.

He returned the knife to its sheath and switched on the light by the sofa. It hadn’t struck him until now that the sofa was identical to the one at the Havass cabin. The Tourist Association must have got a discount on a job lot. But the sofa cover was old, the cabin had been closed for several years, and it was in much too dangerous an area: there had been accidents with people plunging down cliff faces while trying to find the cabin.

Next to the wood burner, the dead man’s head rose slowly.

‘Sorry to burst in on you like this.’ He checked that the chains holding the dead man’s hands shackled around the stove were as they should be.

Then he began to unpack his rucksack. He had pulled his hat down and had been in and out of the shop in Ustaoset in a flash. Biscuits. Bread. Papers. Which had more about the press conference. And this witness at the Havass cabin.

‘Iska Peller,’ he said aloud. ‘Australian. She’s at the Havass cabin. What do you think? Could she have seen anything?’

The other man’s vocal cords could hardly move enough air for them to make a sound. ‘Police. Police at cabin.’

‘I know. It’s in the papers. One detective.’

‘They’re there. The police have rented the cabin.’

‘Oh?’ He looked at the other man. Had the police set a trap? And was this bastard in front of him trying to help him, to save him from falling into it? The very idea angered him. But this woman must have seen something anyway, otherwise they wouldn’t have brought her all this way from Australia. He grabbed the poker.

‘Fuck, you stink. Have you shat your pants?’

The dead man’s head slumped onto his chest. The dead man had obviously moved in here. There were a few personal possessions in the drawers. A letter. Some tools. Some old family photographs. Passport. As if the dead man were planning an escape, thinking he could recover somewhere else. Other than down there, down to the flames where he would be tortured for his sins. Even though he had begun to think that the dead man might not have been behind all the devilry after all. There are limits to how much pain a man can stand before he talks.

He checked the phone again. No coverage, shit!

And what a stench. The storehouse. He would have to hang him out to dry there. That was what you did with smoked meat.

Kaja had gone to her bedroom, and he hoped she would catch some shut-eye before it was her watch.

Kolkka poured the percolated coffee into his own and then Harry’s cup.

‘Thanks,’ Harry said, staring into the darkness.

‘Wooden skis,’ Kolkka said, standing by the fireplace and inspecting Harry’s skis.

‘My father’s,’ Harry said. He had found the ski equipment in the cellar at Oppsal. The poles were new and made of some metal alloy that seemed to weigh less than air. Harry had for a moment wondered whether the hollow pole might have been filled with helium. But the skis were the same old broad mountain ones.

‘When I was small we went to my grandfather’s cabin in Lesja every Easter. There was this peak my dad always wanted to climb. So he told my sister and me that there was a kiosk at the top where they sold Pepsi, which was my sister’s favourite drink. So if we could manage the last slope, then we…’

Kolkka nodded and ran a hand over the back of the white skis. Harry took a swig of the fresh coffee.

‘Sis always managed to forget from Easter to Easter that it was the same old bluff. And I always wished I could have done the same. But I was lumbered with remembering everything that Dad instilled in me. The mountain code, how to use nature as a compass and how to survive avalanches. Norwegian kings and queens, the Chinese dynasties and American presidents.’

‘They’re good skis,’ Kolkka said.

‘Bit too short.’

Kolkka sat by the window at the other end of the room. ‘Yes, you think it will never happen. Your father’s skis being too short for you.’

Harry waited. Waited. Then it came.

‘I thought she was so wonderful,’ Kolkka said. ‘And I thought she liked me. Strange. I only touched her breasts. She didn’t put up any resistance. I suppose she must have been scared.’

Harry succeeded in curbing his urge to leave the room.

‘You’re right,’ Kolkka said. ‘You’re loyal to those who raise you from the rubbish heap. Even though you can see they’re using you. What else can you do? You have to choose sides.’

When Harry realised the conversational tap had been turned off, he got up and went to the kitchen. He went through all the cupboards in a vain attempt to find what he knew was not here, a kind of desperate diversion from the shouting inside his head. ‘A drink, just one.’

He had been given a chance. One. The ghost had undone his chains, lifted him up, sworn because of the stench of shit and helped him into the bathroom, where he had dropped him on the shower floor and turned on the water. The ghost had stood there for a moment watching him while trying to make a mobile phone call, cursed the lack of coverage and then gone back into the sitting room where he heard him trying again.

He wanted to cry. He had moved up here, hidden himself away so that no one would be able to find him. Installed himself in the mothballed Tourist Association cabin, taken with him what he needed. Thought he was safe among the precipices. Safe from the ghost. He didn’t cry. For as the water seeped through his clothes, soaking the remains of the red flannel shirt stuck to his back, it dawned on him that this was his chance. His mobile phone was in the pocket of his trousers, folded on the chair beside the sink.