Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Since this establishment was within walking distance of the two remaining newspaper offices in Akersgata – Verdens Gang and Dagbladet – Stopp Pressen was almost considered an extended canteen for these two, but for the moment there were only two people visible inside. The barman behind the counter and a man sitting at the table furthest back, beneath a shelf of classic books published by Gyldendal and an old radio, which were obviously meant to give the place a certain cachet.

The man beneath the shelf was Bent Nordbo. He had John Gielgud’s superior appearance, John Major’s panoramic glasses and Larry King’s braces. And he was reading a genuine newspaper’s newspaper. Roger had heard that Nordbo read only the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, China Daily, Suddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais and Le Monde, although he did read them every day. He might take it into his head to flick through Pravda and the Slovenian Dnevnik, but he insisted that ‘East European languages are so heavy on the eye’.

Gjendem stopped in front of his table with a cough. Bent Nordbo finished reading the last lines of an article about the Mexican immigrants’ revitalisation of former condemned areas of the Bronx, glanced down at the page to make sure there was nothing else of interest. Then he removed his enormous glasses, snatched the handkerchief from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and looked up at the nervous, and still breathless, man standing by his table.

‘Roger Gjendem, I presume.’

‘Yes.’

Nordbo folded the newspaper. Gjendem had also been told that when the man opened it again you could take it that the conversation was over. Nordbo tilted his head and started the not inconsiderable task of cleaning his glasses.

‘You’ve worked on criminal cases for many years and you know many of the people at Kripos and Crime Squad, don’t you?’

‘Er… yes.’

‘Mikael Bellman. What do you know about him?’

Harry scrunched up his eyes at the sun flooding into his room. He had just woken up and spent the first seconds shaking off dreams and reconstructing reality.

They had heard his shots.

And uncovered the ski pole at the first thrust of the spade.

Afterwards they had told him that what had frightened them most was being shot at while they were digging down to the chimney.

His head ached as if he had been off the booze for a week. Harry swung his legs out of bed and looked around the room he had been given at the Ustaoset mountain hotel.

Kaja and Kolkka had been taken by helicopter to Oslo and Rikshospital. Harry had refused to join them. Only after he had lied and said he’d had loads of air the whole time and was absolutely fine did they let him stay.

Harry put his head under the tap in the bathroom and drank. ‘Water’s never that bad and is sometimes quite nice.’ Who used to say that? Rakel when she wanted Oleg to drink up at the table. He switched on his mobile phone, which had been off since he left for Havass. There was coverage here in Ustaoset, the display said. It also showed there was a message waiting. Harry played it, but there was only a second of coughing and laughing before the connection was broken. Harry checked the caller’s number. A mobile number, could be anyone’s. There was something vaguely familiar about it, but it definitely wasn’t from Rikshospital. Whoever it was would probably ring again if it was important.

In the breakfast room Mikael Bellman sat in solitary majesty with a cup of coffee in front of him. Papers folded and read. Harry didn’t need to look at them to know it was more of the same. More about the Case, more about the police’s helplessness, more pressure. But today’s edition would hardly have been quick enough off the mark to include the death of Jussi Kolkka.

‘Kaja’s fine,’ Bellman said.

‘Mm. Where are the others?’

‘They caught the morning train to Oslo.’

‘But you didn’t?’

‘Thought I would wait for you. What do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘About the avalanche. Just something that can happen?’

‘No idea.’

‘No? Did you hear the boom before it came?’

‘Might have been the snowdrift on top falling and hitting the side of the mountain. Which in turn triggered the avalanche.’

‘Do you think it sounded like that?’

‘I don’t know what it’s supposed to sound like. Noises do definitely trigger avalanches though.’

Bellman shook his head. ‘Even experienced mountain folk believe that myth about sound waves triggering them. I climbed the Alps with an avalanche expert and he told me that people there still believe that the avalanches during the Second World War were caused by cannonfire. The truth is that for a shell to start an avalanche there has to be a direct hit.’

‘Mm. So?’

‘Do you know what this is?’ Bellman held up a bit of shiny metal between his thumb and first finger.

‘No,’ Harry said, signalling to the waiter clearing away the breakfast buffet that he wanted a cup of coffee.

Bellman hummed the verse of Wergeland’s ‘Pixies and Dwarfs’ about building in the mountains and blowing the rock to pieces.

‘Pass.’

‘You disappoint me, Harry. Well, OK, I may have a head start on you. I grew up in Manglerud in the seventies in an expanding satellite town. They dug plots around us on all sides. The soundtrack of my childhood was dynamite charges going off. After the builders had left I went around finding bits of red plastic cable and tiny fragments of paper off the dynamite sticks. Kaja told me that they have a special way of fishing up here. Sticks of dynamite are more common than moonshine. Don’t say the thought didn’t cross your mind.’

‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘That’s a bit of a blasting cap. When and where did you find it?’

‘After you were transported out last night. A couple of the guys and I had a little recce around where the avalanche started.’

‘Any tracks?’ Harry took the coffee from the waiter and thanked him.

‘No. It’s so exposed up there that the wind had swept away any ski tracks there might have been. But Kaja said she thought she had heard a snowmobile.’

‘Barely. And there was quite a time between her hearing it and the avalanche. He might have parked the snowmobile well before he got there so that we wouldn’t hear it.’

‘I had the same idea.’

‘And what now?’ Harry took a tentative sip.

‘Look for snowmobile tracks.’

‘The local officer…’

‘No one knows where he is. But I’ve got us a snowmobile, map, climbing rope, ice axe, provisions. So don’t get too comfortable with that coffee, there’s snow forecast for this afternoon.’

To reach the top of the avalanche zone, the Danish hotel manager had explained that they would have to drive in a wide arc west of the Havass cabin, but not too far north-west, where they would come into the area known as Kjeften. It had been given this name, ‘jaws’, on account of the fang-shaped rocks scattered about. Sudden crevices and precipices were carved into the plateau, making it an extremely dangerous place to roam in poor weather if you weren’t familiar with the surroundings.

It was around twelve o’clock when Harry and Bellman looked down the mountainside, where they could make out the excavation of the chimney at the bottom of the valley.

Clouds had already moved in from the west. Harry squinted to the north-west. Shadows and contours were erased without the sun.

‘It must have come from there,’ Harry said. ‘Otherwise we would have heard it whatever.’

‘Kjeften,’ Bellman said.

Two hours later, after crossing the snowscape from south to north in crab-like manner without finding any snowmobile tracks, they had a break. Sat next to each other on the seat, drinking from the Thermos Bellman had brought with them. A light covering of snow fell.