The Leopard

44
The Anchor

Kaja stood in the doorway looking at him.Mikael Bellman. To outsiders: a competent, ambitious POB, a happily married father of three and soon-to-be head of the new Kripos leviathan that would lead all murder investigations in Norway. To her, Kaja Solness: a man she had fallen in love with from the moment they’d met, who had seduced her with all the arts at his disposal, plus a few others. She had been easy game, but that wasn’t his fault, it was hers. By and large. What was it Harry had said? ‘He’s married and says he’ll leave his wife and kids for you, but never does?’

He had hit the nail on the head. Of course. That’s how banal we are. We believe because we want to believe. In gods, because that dulls the fear of death. In love, because it enhances the notion of life. In what married men say, because that is what married men say.

She knew what Mikael would say. And then he said it.

‘I have to be off. She’ll start wondering.’

‘I know,’ Kaja sighed and, as usual, did not ask the questions that always popped up when he said that: Why not stop her wondering? Why not do what you’ve said for so long? And now a new question emerged: Why am I no longer sure I want him to do this?

Harry clung to the banisters on his way up to the Haematology Department at Rikshospital. He was soaked in sweat, frozen, and his teeth were chattering like a two-stroke engine. And he was drunk. Drunk on Jim Beam, drunk and full of devilry, full of himself, full of shit. He staggered along the corridor; he could already make out the door to his father’s room at the end.

A nurse’s head poked out from a duty room, looked at him and was gone again. Harry had fifty metres to go to the door when the nurse, plus a skinhead male nurse, skidded into the corridor and cut him off.

‘We don’t keep medicines on this ward,’ the skinhead said.

‘What you are saying is not only a gross lie,’ Harry said, trying to control his balance and the chattering of his teeth, ‘but a gross insult. I’m not a junkie, but a son here to visit his father. So please, move out of my way.’

‘I apologise,’ said the female nurse who seemed quite reassured by Harry’s immaculate pronunciation. ‘But you smell like a brewery, and we cannot allow-’

‘A brewery is beer,’ Harry said. ‘Jim Beam is bourbon. Which would require you to say I smell like a distillery, froken. It’s…’

‘Nevertheless,’ the male nurse said, grabbing Harry by the elbow. And let it go just as quickly when his own hand was twisted round. The nurse groaned and grimaced with pain before Harry released him. Harry rose to his full height and eyeballed him.

‘Ring the police, Gerd,’ the nurse said softly without letting Harry out of his sight.

‘If you don’t mind, I’ll deal with this,’ said a voice with a suggestion of a lisp. It was Sigurd Altman. He was walking with a file under his arm and a friendly smile on his face. ‘Have you got time to come with me to where we keep drugs, Harry?’

Harry swayed back and forth twice. Focused on the small, thin man with the round glasses. Then he nodded.

‘This way,’ said Altman, who had already continued walking.

Altman’s office was, strictly speaking, a storeroom. There were no windows, there was no noticeable ventilation, but there was a desk and computer, a camp bed, which he explained was for night shifts, so that he could sleep or be roused whenever needed. And a lockable cabinet Harry assumed contained a range of chemical uppers and downers.

‘Altman,’ Harry said, sitting on the edge of the bed, smacking his lips loudly as though they were coated with glue. ‘Unusual name. Only know one person called that.’

‘Robert,’ said Sigurd, sitting on the only chair in the room. ‘I didn’t like who I was in the little village where I grew up. As soon as I got away I applied to change my surname from a much too common -sen. I justified my application by saying, as was the truth, that Robert Altman was my favourite director. And the case officer must have had a hangover that day because it was passed. We can all do with being reborn once in a while.’

‘The Player,’ Harry said.

‘Gosford Park,’ Altman said.

‘Short Cuts.’

‘Ah, a masterpiece.’

‘Good, but overrated. Too many themes. The direction and editing make the plot unnecessarily complicated.’

‘Life is complicated. People are complicated. Watch it again, Harry.’

‘Mm.’

‘How’s it going? Any progress on the Marit Olsen case?’

‘Progress,’ Harry said. ‘The guy who did it was arrested today.’

‘Jeez, well, I can understand you celebrating.’ Altman pressed his chin to his chest and peered over his glasses. ‘I have to confess I’m hoping I can tell my grandchildren that it was my information about ketanome that cracked the case.’

‘By all means, but it was a phone call to one of the victims that gave him away.’

‘Poor things.’

‘Poor who?’

‘Poor all of them, I assume. So why the haste to see your father right now, tonight?’

Harry put his hand in front of his mouth and produced a noiseless belch.

‘There is a reason,’Altman said. ‘However drunk you are, there’s always a reason. On the other hand, that reason is none of my business, so perhaps I should keep my mou-’

‘Have you ever been asked to carry out euthanasia?’

Altman shrugged. ‘A few times, yes. As an anaesthetic nurse, I’m an obvious choice. Why?’

‘My father asked me.’

Altman nodded slowly. ‘It’s a heavy burden to place on someone. Is that why you came here now? To get it over with?’

Harry’s gaze had already wandered around the room to see if there was anything alcoholic to drink. Now it did another round. ‘I came to ask for forgiveness. For not being able to do it for him.’

‘You hardly need forgiveness for that. Taking a life is not something you can demand of anyone, let alone of your own son.’

Harry rested his head in his hands. It felt hard and heavy, like a bowling ball.

‘I’ve done it once before,’ he said.

Altman’s voice sounded more surprised than actually shocked. ‘Carried out euthanasia?’

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘Refused to carry it out. To my worst enemy. He has an incurable, fatal and very painful disease. He is slowly being suffocated by his own shrinking skin.’

‘Scleroderma,’ Altman said.

‘When I arrested him, he tried to make me shoot him. We were alone at the top of a tower, just him and me. He had killed an unknown number of people and hurt me and people I love. Permanent damage. My gun was pointing at him. Just us. Self-defence. I didn’t risk a thing by shooting him.’

‘But you preferred him to suffer,’ Altman said. ‘Death was too easy for him.’

‘Yes.’

‘And now you feel you’re doing the same with your father, you’re making him suffer rather than allowing him release.’

Harry rubbed his neck. ‘It’s not because I hold with the principles of the sanctity of life or any of that bullshit. It’s weakness, pure and simple. It’s cowardice. Christ, you haven’t got anything to drink here, have you, Altman?’

Sigurd Altman shook his head. Harry wasn’t sure if it was in answer to his last question or the other things he had said. Perhaps both.

‘You can’t just disregard your own feelings like that, Harry. You, like everyone else, are trying to leapfrog the fact that we are governed by notions of what’s right and wrong. Your intellect may not have all the arguments for these notions, but nonetheless they are rooted deep, deep inside you. Right and wrong. Perhaps it’s things you were told by your parents when you were a child, a fairy tale with a moral your grandmother read, or something unfair you experienced at school and you spent time thinking through. The sum of all these half-forgotten things.’ Altman leaned forward. ‘Anchored deep within is in fact a pretty apposite expression. Because it tells you that you may not be able to see the anchor in the depths, but you damn well can’t move from the spot, that’s what you float around and that’s where your home is. Try and accept that, Harry. Accept the anchor.’

Harry stared down at his folded hands. ‘The pain he has…’

‘Physical pain is not the worst thing a human has to deal with,’ Altman said. ‘Believe me, I see it every day. Not death, either. Nor even fear of death.’

‘What is the worst then?’

‘Humiliation. To be deprived of honour and dignity. To be disrobed, to be cast out by the flock. That’s the worst punishment, it’s akin to burying a person alive. And the only consolation is that the person will perish fairly quickly.’

‘Mm.’ Harry kept eye contact with Altman. ‘You don’t have anything in that cupboard to lighten the atmosphere, do you?’