The Leopard

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The Special AtSchroder’s was bubble and squeak served with fried eggs and raw onions.

‘Nice,’ said Kaja.

‘The cook must be sober today,’ Harry agreed. Then he pointed. ‘Look.’

Kaja turned and looked up at the TV Harry was indicating.

‘Well, hello!’ she said.

Mikael Bellman’s face filled the screen, and Harry signalled to Rita that they wanted the volume up. Harry studied the movements of Bellman’s mouth. The soft, quasi-feminine features. The gleam in the intense brown eyes beneath the elegantly formed eyebrows. The white patches, like sleet on his skin, didn’t disfigure him, quite the contrary, they made him more interesting to look at, like an exotic animal. If his number were not ex-directory, as was the case with most detectives, his phone would be full of lusting and love-lorn texters afterwards. Then the sound came on.

‘… at Havass cabin on the night of the 7th of November. So we are appealing to those of you who were there to come forward to the police as quickly as possible.’

Then the newsreader returned and there was a new item.

Harry pushed his plate away and waved for coffee. ‘Let me hear your thoughts about this killer now that we’ve found Adele. Give me a profile.’

‘Why?’ Kaja asked, sipping water from her glass. ‘From tomorrow we’ll be working on other cases.’

‘Just for fun.’

‘Does profiling of serial killers come under your definition of fun?’

Harry sucked on a toothpick. ‘I know there’s a good answer to that, but I can’t think of it.’

‘You’re sick.’

‘So who is he?’

‘It’s still a he, first off. And still a serial killer. I don’t necessarily think Adele was number one.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it was so flawless that he must have kept a clear head. The first time you kill you’re not so clear-headed. Besides, he hid her so well that we definitely were not intended to find her. That suggests he may be behind many of the present missing persons statistics.’

‘Good. More.’

‘Erm…’

‘Come on. You just said that he made a good job of hiding Adele Vetlesen. The first of the murder victims we know anything about. How do the other murders develop?’

‘He becomes bolder, more self-assured. He stops hiding them. Charlotte is found behind a car in the forest and Borgny in a cellar beneath a city centre office block.’

‘And Marit Olsen?’

Kaja mulled this over. ‘It’s too overblown. He’s lost control, his grip is going.’

‘Or…’ Harry said, ‘… he’s gone up to the next level. He wants to show everyone how clever he is, so he starts exhibiting his victims. The murder of Marit Olsen in Frogner Lido is a huge scream for attention, but there are few indications of failing control in the execution. The rope he used was at worst careless, but otherwise he left no clues. Disagree?’

She deliberated and shook her head.

‘Then there’s Elias Skog,’ Harry said. ‘Anything different there?’

‘He tortures the victim with a slow death,’ Kaja said. ‘The sadist in him reveals itself.’

‘A Leopold’s apple is also an instrument of torture,’ Harry said. ‘But I agree with you that this is the first time we’ve seen sadism. At the same time, it’s a conscious choice; he reveals himself, he doesn’t let others do it. He is still directing the show, he’s in charge.’

The coffee pot and cups were dumped down in front of them.

‘But…’ Kaja said.

‘Yes?’

‘Doesn’t it jar a bit that a sadistic killer would leave the crime scene before he can witness the victim’s sufferings and final death? According to the landlady, she could hear banging noises from the bathroom after the guest had gone. He ran off… funny, eh?’

‘Good point. So what have we got? A fake sadist. And why does he fake it?’

‘Because he knows we’ll try to profile him, the way we’re doing now,’ Kaja said eagerly. ‘And then we’ll go looking for him in the wrong places.’

‘Mm. Maybe. A sophisticated killer, if so.’

‘What do you think, oh, venerable wise one?’

Harry poured the coffee. ‘If this is really a serial killer, I think the murders are well spread out.’

Kaja leaned across the table, and her pointed teeth glistened as she whispered: ‘You think it might not be a serial killer?’

‘Well, there’s a signature missing. Usually, there are special aspects of the murder that trigger a serial killer, and thus certain things that recur throughout. Here we have no indications that the killer did anything sexual during the killing. And there’s no similarity in the methods used, apart from Borgny and Charlotte both being murdered with a Leopold’s apple. The crime scenes are quite different, and so are the victims. Both sexes, different ages, different backgrounds, different physiques.’

‘But they have not been selected at random; they spent the same night in the same cabin.’

‘Precisely. And that’s why I’m not absolutely convinced we’re up against a classic serial killer. Or, rather, not one with a classic motive to kill. For serial killers, the killing itself is generally enough of a motive. If, for example, the victims are prostitutes. It doesn’t really matter whether they are sinners, just that they are easy prey. I know of only one serial killer who had criteria for the selection of individual victims.’

‘The Snowman.’

‘I don’t think a serial killer chooses his victims from a random page of a cabin guest book. And if anything happened at Havass to give the killer a motive, we’re not talking about classic serial murders. Besides, the move to show himself was too quick for the usual serial killer.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He sent a woman to Rwanda and the Congo to cover up a murder and at the same time to buy the murder weapon for the next. Afterwards he killed her. In other words, he went to extremes to hide one murder, yet for the next one, a few weeks later, he did absolutely nothing. And for the next murder again, he’s like a matador shoving his bollocks in our faces with a flourish of his cloak. This is a personality change at fast-forward speed. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Do you think there could be several killers? Each with a different method?’

Harry shook his head. ‘There is one similarity. The killer doesn’t leave any clues. If serial killers are rare, one that kills without leaving any clues is a white whale. There is only one of them in this case.’

‘Right, so what are we talking here?’ Kaja threw up her arms. ‘A serial killer with multiple-personality disorder?’

‘A white whale with wings,’ Harry said. ‘No, I don’t know. And anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’re only doing this for fun. It’s a Kripos case now.’ He drained his coffee. ‘I’m going to take a taxi to the hospital.’

‘I can drive you.’

‘Thank you but no. Go home and prepare for new and interesting cases.’

Kaja heaved a weary sigh. ‘The business with Bjorn…’

‘Must not be mentioned to a soul,’ Harry completed. ‘Have a good sleep.’

Altman was leaving Harry’s father’s room at Rikshospital when he arrived.

‘He’s asleep,’ the nurse said. ‘I gave him ten milligrams of morphine. You can sit here, no problem, but he’s unlikely to stir for several hours.’

‘Thank you,’ Harry said.

‘That’s OK. I had a mother who… well, who had to put up with more pain than was necessary.’

‘Mm. Do you smoke, Altman?’

Harry saw from the guilt-ridden reaction that Altman did, and invited him to join him outside. The two men smoked while Altman, first name Sigurd, explained that it had been because of his mother that he had specialised in anaesthesia.

‘So when you gave my father an injection just now…’

‘Let’s say it was a favour from one son to another,’ Altman smiled. ‘But I cleared it with the doctor, naturally. I would like to keep my job.’

‘Wise,’ Harry said. ‘Wish I were as wise.’

They finished their cigarettes, and Altman was about to go when Harry asked: ‘Since you’re an anaesthetics expert, could you tell me how a person might get hold of ketanome?’

‘Oh dear,’ Altman said. ‘I probably shouldn’t answer that.’

‘It’s OK,’ Harry said with a wry smile. ‘It’s about the murder case I’m working on.’

‘Aha. Well, unless you work with anaesthetics, ketanome is very hard to get hold of in Norway. It works like a bullet, almost literally – the patient is knocked flat. But the side effects – ulcers – are nasty. In addition, the risk of a cardiac arrest with an overdose is high. It’s been used for suicide. But not any more. Ketanome was banned in the EU and Norway some years ago.’

‘I know that, but where would you go to get ketanome?’

‘Well, ex-Soviet states. Or Africa.’

‘The Congo, for example?’

‘Definitely. The producer sells it at dumping prices since the European ban, so it ends up in poor countries. It’s always like that.’

Harry sat by his father’s bedside watching his frail pyjama-clad chest rise and fall. After an hour he got up and left.

Harry decided he would postpone making a call until he had unlocked the house, put on ‘Don’t Get Around Much Any More’ – one of his father’s Duke Ellington records – and taken out the brown clump. He saw that Gunnar Hagen had left a message, but he had no intention of listening to it as he knew roughly what it was about. Bellman would have been nagging him again: from now on they were not allowed to touch the murder case however compelling their excuses. And Harry was to report for normal duties if he still wanted a job with the police. Well, perhaps not the last part. It was time to head off on his travels. And the travels should start here, now, tonight. He took out the lighter with one hand while the other brought up the two texts he had received. The first was from Oystein. He suggested ‘a gentlemen’s night out’ in the not too distant future, with an invitation to Tresko, who was probably the most well-to-do of the three. The second was a number Harry didn’t recognise. Harry opened the message. I see from the Aftenposten website that you’re in charge of the case. I can help. Elias Skog talked before he was glued to the bath. C.

Harry dropped the lighter, which hit the glass table with a loud bang, and he felt his heart race. During murder cases they always got loads of people ringing in with tip-offs, advice and hypotheses. People who were willing to swear they had seen, heard or been told all sorts, and couldn’t the police spare them a moment to listen? Often it was the same old voices again and again, but there were always some new, mixed-up windbags. Harry was quite certain that this was not one of them. The press had written a lot about the case; readers possessed a considerable amount of information. The general public had not been told that Elias Skog had been glued to the bath, however. Or been given Harry’s ex-directory mobile number.