Хеннинг Манкелль - The Eye of the Leopard

A scraping sound comes from the terrace. The roof, he thinks. They’re trying to climb up to the top floor by going on to the roof of the terrace. Again he runs upstairs. Two guest room windows face the roof of the terrace, both with steel gratings. Two rooms that are almost never used. Cautiously he pushes open the door to the first room, gropes his way over to the window, and runs his fingers over the thin iron bars that are anchored in cement. He leaves the room and pushes open the next door. The scraping noise from the terrace roof is coming closer. He fumbles through the dark and stretches out his hand to feel the steel grating. His fingertips touch the windowpane. The steel grating is gone. Someone has taken it off.

Luka, he thinks. Luka knows that I almost never go into these rooms. I’m going to kill him. I’ll shoot him and throw him to the crocodiles. Wound him and let the crocs eat him alive. He retreats to the door, stretches out one hand for a chair that he knows is there, and sits down.

There are six shells in the shotgun; the pistol’s clip holds eight. That will have to be enough, he thinks desperately. I’ll never be able to reload with my hands shaking like this. The thought of Luka makes him suddenly calmer; the threat out in the dark has taken on a face. He feels a strange need growing inside. A need to point the gun at Luka and pull the trigger. The scraping on the terrace roof stops. Someone starts to shove a tool into the windowsill to prise open the window, probably one of his own tools. Now I’ll shoot, he thinks. Now I’ll blast both barrels through the window. His head and torso must be just behind the glass.

He stands up in the dark, takes a few steps forward, and raises the gun. His hands are shaking, so much that the barrels of the shotgun are dancing back and forth.

Hold your breath when you pull the trigger, he remembers. Now I’m going to kill a man. Even though I’m defending myself I’m doing it in cold blood. He lifts the gun, aware that he has tears in his eyes, holds his breath and fires, first one barrel, then the other.

The explosions thunder in his ears, splintered glass strikes him in the face. He takes a step back from the recoil and manages to reach the light switch with his shoulder. Instead of turning it off, he roars into the night and rushes up to the window he blasted away. Someone has turned on his car’s headlights. He glimpses two black shadows in front of the car, and he thinks one of them is Luka. Quickly he aims and fires towards the two shadows. One of the shadows stumbles and the other disappears. He forgets that he still has two shells left in the shotgun, drops it to the floor, and takes his pistol out of his pocket. He fires four shots at the shadow who stumbled before he realises that it too is gone.

The terrace roof is covered in blood. He bends down for the shotgun, turns off the light, and shuts the door. Then he sits down on the floor in the hallway and starts to reload. His hands are shaking, his heart is thudding in his chest, and he is concentrating with all his might on feeding new ammunition into his guns. What he wants most of all is to be able to sleep.

He sits in the hallway and waits for dawn. In the first morning light he moves aside the cabinet and opens the kitchen door to the outside. The headlights of the car are out, the battery dead. Luka isn’t there. Slowly he walks towards the terrace, still holding the shotgun in one hand.

The body is hanging by one foot from a rain gutter with its head in some of the cactuses that Judith Fillington once planted. A bloody leopard skin is draped around the shoulders of the dead African. With the handle of a rake Olofson pokes at the foot, loosening it so the body falls down. Even though almost the whole face has been shot off, he sees at once that it is Peter Motombwane. Flies are already buzzing in the blood. From the terrace he fetches a tablecloth and flings it over the body. By the car there is a pool of blood. A trail of blood leads away into the dense bush. There it suddenly stops.

When he turns around he sees Luka standing below the terrace. Immediately he raises the gun and walks towards him.

‘You’re still alive,’ he says. ‘But you won’t be much longer. This time I won’t miss.’

‘What has happened, Bwana?’ asks Luka.

‘You’re asking me?’

‘Yes, Bwana .’

‘When did you take off the window grating?’

‘What grating, Bwana ?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No I don’t, Bwana .’

‘Put your hands on your head and walk ahead of me!’

Luka does as he says and Olofson orders him upstairs. He shows him the gaping hole where the window has been shot away.

‘You almost pulled it off,’ says Olofson. ‘But only almost. You knew that I never go in this room. You broke off the steel grating when I was away. I wouldn’t have heard when you all sneaked inside. Then you could have crept down the stairs in the dark.’

‘The grating is gone, Bwana . Someone has taken it off.’

‘Not someone, Luka. You took it off.’

Luka looks him in the eyes and shakes his head.

‘You were here last night,’ Olofson says. ‘I saw you and I took a shot at you. Peter Motombwane is dead. But who was the third man?’

‘I was sleeping, Bwana ,’ Luka says. ‘I woke up to shots from an uta . Many shots. Then I lay awake. Not until I was sure that Bwana Olofson had come out did I come here.’

Olofson raises the shotgun and takes off the safety.

‘I’m going to shoot you,’ he says. ‘I’ll shoot you if you don’t tell me who the third man was. I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me what happened.’

‘I was sleeping, Bwana ,’ Luka replies. ‘I don’t know anything. I see that Peter Motombwane is dead and that he has a leopard skin around his shoulders. I don’t know who took off the grating.’

He’s telling the truth, Olofson thinks suddenly. I’m sure that I saw him last night. No one else would have had the opportunity to take off the grating, no one else knew that I seldom go into that room. And yet I believe he’s telling the truth.

They go back downstairs. The dogs, Olofson thinks. I forgot about the dogs. Just behind the water reservoir he finds them. Six bodies stretched out on the ground. Bits of meat are hanging out of their mouths. A powerful poison, he thinks. One bite and it was over. Peter Motombwane knew what he was doing.

He looks at Luka, who is staring at the dogs in disbelief. Of course there must be a plausible explanation, he tells himself. Peter Motombwane knows my house. Sometimes he waited for me alone. The dogs too. The dogs knew him. It could be as Luka says, that he was sleeping and woke up when I fired the gun. I could have been mistaken. I imagined that Luka would be there, so I convinced myself that I saw him.

‘Don’t touch anything,’ he says. ‘Don’t go in the house, wait outside until I come back.’

‘Yes, Bwana ,’ says Luka.

They push the car to get it started, the diesel engine catches, and Olofson drives to his mud hut. The black workers stand motionless, watching him. How many belong to the leopards? he wonders. How many thought I was dead?

The telephone in the office is working. He calls the police in Kitwe.

‘Tell everybody that I’m alive,’ he says to the black clerks. ‘Tell them all that I killed the leopards. One of them might be only wounded. Tell them that I’ll pay a year’s wages to anyone who finds the wounded leopard.’

He goes back to his house. A swarm of flies hovers over Peter Motombwane lying under the tablecloth. As he waits for the police he tries to think. Motombwane came to kill me, he tells himself. In the same way that one night he went to Ruth and Werner Masterton. His only mistake was that he came too early. He underestimated my fear, he thought that I had begun to sleep at night again.