The Leopard

62
Transit

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.