Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

Kim Erik Lokker was the youngest forensics officer at Krimteknisk. Accordingly, he was often given jobs of a less forensic nature. Such as driving to Drammen. Bjorn Holm had mentioned that Bruun was a homosexual of the flirtier kind, but that Kim Erik only had to hand over the clothes and then leave.

When the satnav woman in the car declared ‘You have arrived at your destination’, he found himself outside an old block of flats. He parked and wandered through open doors up to the second floor, to the door marked with the names GEIR BRUUN/ADELE VETLESEN on a sheet of paper stuck down with two bits of tape.

Kim Erik pressed the doorbell once, twice, and at last heard the sounds of someone stomping through the hall.

The door swung open. The man was wearing no more than a towel around his waist. He was unusually pale, and his smooth crown was wet and shiny with sweat.

‘Geir Bruun? H-hope I’m not interrupting,’ said Kim Erik Lokker, holding the plastic bag with outstretched arm.

‘Not at all, I’m only screwing,’ he said in the affected voice Bjorn Holm had imitated. ‘What is this?’

‘The clothes we borrowed. We’ve had to keep the ski pants until further notice, I’m afraid.’

‘Really?’

Kim Erik heard the door behind Geir Bruun open. And an extremely feminine voice chirp: ‘What is it, darling?’

‘Just someone delivering something.’

A figure nestled up behind Geir Bruun. She hadn’t even bothered with a towel, and Kim Erik was able to establish that the tiny creature was one hundred per cent woman.

‘Hello there,’ she twittered over Geir Bruun’s shoulder. ‘If there’s nothing else, I’d like him back.’ She raised a small, graceful foot and kicked. The glass in the door was shaking and rattling long after the door had slammed shut.

Harry had stopped the snowmobile and was staring into the drifting snow.

Something had been there.

Bellman had put his arms around Harry’s waist and his head behind his back to shelter from the wind.

Harry waited. Stared.

There it was again.

A cabin. Notched logs. And a storehouse.

Then it was gone again, erased by the snow, as though it had never existed. But Harry had the direction.

So why didn’t he just accelerate and head towards it, save their skins, why did he hesitate? He didn’t know. But there was something about the cabin, something he had sensed in the few seconds it became visible. Something about the black windows, the feeling that he was looking at a building that was infinitely abandoned and yet inhabited. Something that was not right. And which made him press the accelerator gently so as not to be heard above the wind.

Harry put a log in the wood burner.

Bellman sat by the table, his teeth chattering. The white stains had taken on a bluish sheen. They had hammered on the door and shouted in the howling wind for a while before smashing a window to an empty bedroom. A bedroom with an unmade bed and a smell that caused Harry to wonder whether someone had slept there very recently. He almost placed a hand on the bed to see if it was still warm. And even though the sitting room would have felt warm anyway – they were so cold – Harry put a hand inside the wood burner to feel if there might be any warm embers under the black ash. But there were not.

Bellman moved closer to the stove. ‘Did you see anything apart from the snowmobile down in the ravine?’

They were the first words he had uttered since running after Harry, begging not to be left behind and throwing himself on the back of the snowmobile.

‘An arm,’ Harry said.

‘Whose arm?’

‘How should I know?’

Harry stood up and went to the bathroom. Checked the toiletries. The few there were. Soap and a razor. No toothbrush. One person, one man. Who either didn’t clean his teeth or had gone away on a trip. The floor was damp, even along the skirting boards, as if someone had hosed it down. Something caught his attention. He crouched down. Half hidden by the skirting board there was something dark. Pebble? Harry picked it up, studied it. It wasn’t lava anyway. He put it in his pocket.

In the kitchen drawers he found coffee and bread. He pressed the bread. Relatively fresh. In the fridge there were two jars of jam, some butter and two beers. Harry was so hungry he imagined he could smell roast pork. He rummaged through the cupboards. Nothing. Shit, did the guy live off bread and jam? He found a packet of biscuits on a pile of plates. Same type of plates they had at the Havass cabin. Same furniture, too. Could this be a Tourist Association cabin? Harry stopped. He wasn’t just imagining it, he could smell roast – correction: burnt pork.

He went back into the sitting room.

‘Can you smell it?’

‘What?’

‘The smell,’ Harry said, squatting down by the wood burner. Beside the door, on an embossed stag, there were three unidentifiable black bits burned to the cast iron and they were smoking.

‘Did you find any food?’ Bellman asked.

‘Depends what you mean by food,’ Harry said pensively.

‘There’s a storehouse on the other side of the yard. Maybe…’

‘Instead of “maybe” perhaps you should go and check.’

Bellman nodded, got up and went out.

Harry walked over to the desk to see if there was anything he could use to scrape off the burned bits. He pulled out the top drawer. Empty. Harry pulled out the others, all empty. Apart from a sheet of paper in the bottom one. He picked it up. It wasn’t paper but a photograph, face down. The first thing that struck Harry was that it was strange to have a family portrait in a Tourist Association cabin. The photo had been taken in the summer, in front of a farmhouse. A woman and a man sitting on a step with a boy between them. The woman in a blue dress and headscarf, no make-up, a tired smile. The man, with a pinched mouth, stern expression and the serious, closed face you find on embarrassed men who look as though they’re hiding a dark secret. But it was the boy in the middle who caught Harry’s attention. He resembled the mother; he had her open smile and gentle eyes. But he looked like someone else, too. Those large, white teeth…

Harry went back to the wood burner, he was suddenly cold again. The stench of smoking pork… He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing deeply and calmly through his nose a couple of times, but felt the nausea coming nonetheless.

At that moment Bellman stomped in with a broad smile on his face. ‘Hope you like venison.’

Harry woke wondering what had roused him. Was it a sound? Or the absence of sound? For he realised the room was utterly still; the wind had stopped blowing outside. He threw off the blanket and stood up from the sofa.

Walked over to the window and peered outside. It was as if someone had waved a magic wand over the countryside. What, six hours previously, had been hard, merciless wilderness was now gentle, maternal, almost beautiful in the bewitching moonlight. Harry realised he was looking for prints in the snow. He had heard a sound. It could have been anything. A bird. An animal. He listened and heard light snoring from behind one bedroom door. So it wasn’t Bellman who had got up. His gaze followed the footprints leading from the cabin to the storehouse. Or from the storehouse to the cabin? Or both, there were many. Could they be Bellman’s from six hours ago? When had it stopped snowing?

Harry pulled on his boots, went out and looked towards the toilet. No tracks there. He turned his back on the storehouse and pissed against the cabin wall. Why did men do that, why did they have to piss on something? The remnants of a territory-marking instinct? Or… Harry became aware that it wasn’t what he was pissing on, it was what he had his back to that was important. The storehouse. He suspected he was being observed from there. He buttoned up, turned and looked at it. Then he moved towards it. Grabbed the spade as he passed the snowmobile. The plan had been to walk straight in, but instead he stood in front of the plain stone steps to the low door. Listened. Nothing. What the hell was he doing? There was no one here. He went up the steps, tried to raise his hand and grasp the handle, but it wouldn’t move. What the hell was going on? His heart was beating so hard in his chest that it hurt, as if it wanted to burst out. He was sweating and his body refused to obey orders. And it slowly dawned on Harry that this was exactly how he had heard it described. A panic attack. It was the anger that saved him. He kicked open the door with immense force and crashed into the dark. The door swung shut. There was a strong smell of fat, smoked meat and dried blood. Something moved in the stripe of moonlight and a pair of eyes flashed. Harry swung the spade. And he hit something. Heard the dead sound of meat, felt it give. The door behind him fell open again and the moonlight streamed in. Harry stared at the dead deer hanging in front of him. At the other animal carcasses. He dropped the spade and sank to his knees. Then it came, all at once. The wall cracking, the snow consuming him alive, panicking that he couldn’t breathe, the long gasp of pure white fear as he fell towards the black rocks. So lonely. For they had all gone. His father was in a coma, in transit. And Rakel and Oleg were silhouettes against the light at an airport, also in transit. Harry wanted to go back. Back to the dripping room. The solid, damp walls. The sweaty mattress and the sweet smoke that transported him to where they were. Transit. Harry bowed his head and felt hot tears streaming down his face.