The Leopard

19
The White Bride

Despite the slow speed, Bjorn Holm’s Volvo Amazon was rolling and pitching on the narrow road that snaked between Ostfold’s meadows and fields.

Harry was asleep on the back seat.

‘So no sex offenders around Lake Lyseren,’ Bjorn said.

‘None that have been caught,’ Kaja corrected. ‘Didn’t you see the survey in VG? One in twenty say they have committed what might be termed sexual abuse.’

‘Do people really answer that sort of questionnaire honestly? If I’d pushed a girl too far I think my brain would’ve goddam rationalised it away afterwards.’

‘Is that what you did?’

‘Me?’ Bjorn swung out and overtook a tractor. ‘Nope. I’m one of the nineteen. Ytre Enebakk. Christ, what’s the name of that comic who hails from these parts? The bumpkin with the cracked glasses and moped. What’s his face from Ytre Enebakk. Hilarious parody.’

Kaja shrugged. Bjorn looked into the mirror, but found himself looking down Harry’s open mouth.

The County Officer for Ytre Enebakk was standing by the treatment plant on the Voyentangen peninisula waiting for them as arranged. They parked, he introduced himself as Skai – the Norwegian name for the synthetic leather that Bjorn Holm seemed to hold in such high regard – and they accompanied him to a jetty where a dozen boats bobbed up and down in the calm waters.

‘Early to have boats in the lake, isn’t it?’ Kaja said.

‘There hasn’t been any ice this year, won’t be either,’ the officer said. ‘First time since I was born.’

They stepped into a broad, flat-bottomed boat, Bjorn with greater caution than the others.

‘It’s green here,’ Kaja said as the officer pushed off from the jetty with a pole.

‘Yes,’ he said, peering down into the water and pulling the cord to start the engine. ‘The ropery is over there, on the deep side. There’s a path, but the terrain is so steep that it’s best to go by boat.’ He flicked the handle on the side of the engine forwards. A bird of indeterminate species took off from a tree inside the bare forest and shrieked a warning.

‘I hate the sea,’ Bjorn said to Harry, who could just hear his colleague above the hacking sound of the two-stroke outboard motor. They slipped through the grey afternoon light in a channel between the two-metrehigh rushes. Crept past a pile of twigs that Harry assumed must have been a beaver’s nest and out through an avenue of mangrove-like trees.

‘This is a lake,’ Harry said. ‘Not the sea.’

‘Same shit,’ Bjorn said, shifting closer to the middle of the seat. ‘Give me inland, cow muck and rocky mountains.’

The channel widened and there it lay in front of them: Lake Lyseren. They chugged past islands and islets from which winter-abandoned cabins with black windows seemed to be staring at them through wary eyes.

‘Basic cabins,’ the officer said. ‘Here you’re free from the stress down on the gold coast where you have to compete with your neighbour for the biggest boat or the most attractive cabin extension.’ He spat into the water.

‘What’s the name of that TV comic from Ytre Enebakk?’ Bjorn shouted over the drone of the motor. ‘Cracked glasses and moped.’

The officer sent Holm a blank look and shook his head slowly.

‘The ropery,’ he said.

In front of the bow, right down by the lake, Harry saw an old wooden building, oblong in shape, standing alone at the foot of a steep slope, dense forest on both sides. Beside the building, steel rails ran down the mountainside and disappeared into the black water. The red paint was peeling off the walls with gaping spaces for windows and doors. Harry squinted. In the fading light it looked as if there was a person in white standing at a window staring at them.

‘Jeez, the ultimate haunted house,’ Bjorn laughed.

‘That’s what they say,’ said County Officer Skai, cutting the engine.

In the sudden silence they could hear the echo of Bjorn’s laughter from the other side and a lone sheep bell reaching them from far across the lake.

Kaja took the rope, jumped onto the shore and, being of a nautical bent herself, tied a half-hitch around a rotten green pole protruding between the water lilies.

The others got out of the boat, onto the huge rocks serving as a wharf. Then they entered through the doorway and found themselves in a deserted narrow, rectangular room smelling of tar and urine. It hadn’t been so easy to discern from the outside because the extremities of the building merged into the dense forest, but while the room was barely two metres across it must have been more than sixty metres from end to end.

‘They stood at opposite ends of the building and twined the rope,’ Kaja explained before Harry could ask.

In one corner lay three empty bottles and signs of attempts to light a fire. On the facing wall, a net hung in front of a couple of loose boards.

‘No one wanted to take over after Simonsen,’ Skai said, looking around. ‘It’s been empty ever since.’

‘What are the rails at the side of the building for?’ Harry asked.

‘Two things. To raise and lower the boat he used to collect timber. And to hold the sticks under water while they soaked. He tied the sticks to the iron carriage, which must be up in the boathouse. Then he cranked the carriage down under the water and wound it back up after a few weeks when the wood was ready. Practical fellow, Simonsen.’

They all gave a start at the sudden noise from the forest outside.

‘Sheep,’ the officer said. ‘Or deer.’

They followed him up a narrow wooden staircase to the first floor. An enormously long table stood in the centre of the room. The margins of the room were enshrouded in darkness. The wind blew in through the windows – with borders of jagged glass set in the frames – making a low whistling sound, and it caused the woman’s bridal veil to flap. She stood looking out over the lake. Beneath the head and torso was the skeleton: a black iron stand on wheels.

‘Simonsen used her as a scarecrow,’ Skai said, nodding towards the shop dummy.

‘Pretty creepy,’ Kaja said, taking up a position beside Skai and shivering inside her coat.

He cast a sideways glance, plus a crooked smile. ‘The kids round here were terrified of her. The adults said that at full moon she walked around the district chasing the man who had jilted her on her wedding day. And you could hear the rusty wheels as she approached. I grew up right behind here, in Haga, you see.’

‘Did you?’ asked Kaja, and Harry smothered a grin.

‘Yes,’ said Skai. ‘By the way, this was the only woman known to be in Simonsen’s life. He was a bit of a recluse. But he could certainly make rope.’

Behind them Bjorn Holm took down a coil of rope hanging from a nail.

‘Did I say you could touch anything?’ the officer said without turning.

Bjorn hurriedly put back the rope.

‘OK, boss,’ Harry said, sending Skai a closed smile. ‘Can we touch anything?’

The officer weighed Harry up. ‘You still haven’t told me what kind of case this is.’

‘It’s confidential,’ Harry said. ‘Sorry. Fraud Squad. You know.’

‘That right? If you’re the Harry Hole I think you are, you used to work on murders.’

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘now it’s insider trading, tax evasion and fraud. One moves upwards in life.’

Officer Skai pinched an eye shut. A bird shrieked.

‘Of course, you’re right, Skai,’ Kaja said with a sigh. ‘But I’m the person who has to deal with the red tape for the search warrant from the police solicitor. As you know, we’re understaffed and it would save me a lot of time if we could just…’ She smiled with her tiny, pointed teeth and gestured towards the coil of rope.

Skai looked at her. Rocked to and fro on his rubber heels a couple of times. Then he nodded.

‘I’ll wait in the boat,’ he said.

Bjorn set to work immediately. He placed the coil on the long table, opened the little rucksack he had with him, switched on a torch attached to a cord with a fish hook on the end and secured it into position between two boards in the ceiling. He took out his laptop and a portable microscope shaped like a hammer, plugged the microscope into the USB port on the laptop, checked it was transmitting pictures to the screen and clicked on an image he had transferred to the laptop before they departed.

Harry stood beside the bride and gazed down at the lake. In the boat he could see the glow of a cigarette. He eyed the rails that went down into the water. The deep end. Harry had never liked swimming in fresh water, especially after the time he and Oystein had skipped school, gone to Lake Hauktjern in Ostmarka and jumped off the Devil’s Tip, which people said was twelve metres high. And Harry – seconds before he hit the water – had seen a viper gliding through the depths beneath him. Then he was enveloped by the freezing cold, bottle-green water and in his panic he swallowed half the lake and was sure he would never see daylight or breathe air again.

Harry smelt the fragrance that told him Kaja was standing behind him.

‘Bingo,’ he heard Bjorn Holm whisper.

Harry turned. ‘Same type of rope?’

‘No doubt about it,’ Bjorn said, holding the microscope against the rope end and pressing a key for high-resolution images. ‘Linden and elm. Same thickness and length of fibre. But the bingo is reserved for the recently sliced rope end.’

‘What?’

Bjorn Holm pointed to the screen. ‘The photo on the left is the one I brought with me. It shows the rope from Frogner Lido, magnified twenty-five times. And on this rope I have a perfect…’

Harry closed his eyes so as to relish to the full the word he knew was coming.

‘… match.’

He kept his eyes closed. The rope Marit Olsen was hung with had not only been made here, it had been cut from the rope they had before them. And it was a recent cut. Not so long ago he had been standing where they were standing. Harry sniffed the air.

An all-embracing darkness had fallen. Harry could hardly make out anything white in the window as they left.

Kaja sat at the front of the boat with him. She had to lean close so that he could hear her over the drone of the motor.

‘The person who collected the rope must have known his way around this area. And there can’t be many links in the chain between that person and the killer…’

‘I don’t think there are any links at all,’ Harry said. ‘The cut was recent. And there are not many reasons for rope to change hands.’

‘Local knowledge, lives nearby or has a cabin here,’ Kaja mused aloud. ‘Or he grew up here.’

‘But why come all the way to a disused ropery to get a few metres of rope?’ Harry asked. ‘How much does a long rope cost in a shop? A couple of hundred kroner?’

‘Perhaps he happened to be in the vicinity and knew the rope was there.’

‘OK, but in the vicinity would mean he must have been staying in one of the nearby cabins. For everyone else it’s a fair old boat trip. Are you making…?’

‘Yes, I’m making a list of the closest neighbours. By the way, I tracked down the volcano expert you asked for. A nerd up at the Geological Institute. Felix Rost. He seems to do a bit of volcano-spotting. Travelling all over the world to look at volcanoes and eruptions and that sort of thing.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘Just his sister, who lives with him. She asked me to email or text. He doesn’t communicate in any other way, she said. Anyway, he was out playing chess. I sent him the stones and the information.’

They advanced at a snail’s pace through the shallow channel to the pontoon. Bjorn held up the torch as a lantern to light their way through the hazy mist drifting across the water. The officer cut the motor.

‘Look!’ whispered Kaja, leaning even closer to Harry. He could smell her scent as he followed her index finger. From the rushes behind the jetty emerged a large, lone, white swan through the veil of mist into the torchlight.

‘Isn’t it just… beautiful,’ she whispered, entranced, then laughed and fleetingly squeezed his hand.

Skai accompanied them to the treatment plant. Then they got into the Volvo Amazon and were about to set off when Bjorn feverishly wound down the window and shouted to the officer: ‘FRITJOF!’

Skai stopped and turned slowly. The light from a street lamp fell onto his heavy, expressionless face.

‘The funny guy on TV,’ Bjorn shouted. ‘Fritjof from Ytre Enebakk.’

‘Fritjof?’ Skai said and spat. ‘Never heard of him.’

As the Amazon turned onto the E-road by the incinerator in Gronmo twenty-five minutes later, Harry had made a decision.

‘We must leak this information to Kripos,’ he said.

‘What?!’ Bjorn and Kaja said in unison.

‘I’ll talk to Beate, then she’ll pass the message on so that it looks like her people at Krimteknisk have discovered the business with the rope and not us.’

‘Why?’ Kaja asked.

‘If the killer lives in the Lyseren area, there’ll have to be a door-to-door search. We don’t have the means or the manpower for that.’

Bjorn Holm smacked the steering wheel.

‘I know,’ Harry said. ‘But the most important thing is that he’s caught, not who catches him.’

They drove on in silence with the false ring of the words hanging in the air.