The Leopard

69
Looped Writing

The woman who opened the door of the terraced house in Hovseter was as broad-shouldered as a wrestler and as tall as Harry. She gazed at him and waited patiently, as if in the habit of giving people the necessary seconds to state their business.

‘Yes?’

Harry recognised Frida Larsen’s voice from the telephone. Which had made him visualise a slender, petite woman.

‘Harry Hole,’ he said. ‘I found your address through the phone number. Is Felix in?’

‘Out playing chess,’ she intoned flatly; a standard response, it seemed. ‘Email him.’

‘I would like to talk to him.’

‘What about?’ She filled the doorway in a manner that prevented prying. And not only through the size of her.

‘We found a fragment of lava down at the police station. I was wondering if it was from the same volcano as the previous sample we sent him.’

Harry stood two steps below her, holding the little stone. But she didn’t budge from the threshold.

‘Impossible to see,’ she said. ‘Email Felix.’ She made a move to close the door.

‘I suppose lava is lava, is it?’ Harry said.

She hesitated. Harry waited. He knew from experience that experts can never resist correcting laymen.

‘Each volcano has its own unique lava composition,’ she said. ‘But it also varies from eruption to eruption. You have to analyse the stone. The iron ore content can tell you a lot.’ Her face was expressionless, her eyes uninterested.

‘What I would really like,’ Harry said, ‘is to enquire about these people who travel round the world studying volcanoes. There can’t be that many of them, so I was wondering if Felix had an overview of the Norwegian contingent.’

‘There are more of us than you imagine,’ she said.

‘So you’re one of them?’

She shrugged.

‘What’s the last volcano you two were on?’

‘Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania. And we weren’t on it, but nearby. It was erupting. Magmatic natrocarbonites. The lava that emerges is black, but it reacts with air and after a few hours it’s completely white. Like snow.’

Her voice and face were suddenly alive.

‘Why doesn’t he want to speak?’ Harry asked. ‘Is your brother mute?’

Her face went rigid again. The voice was flat and dead. ‘Email.’

The door was slammed so hard Harry got dust in his eyes.

Kaja parked in Maridalsveien, jumped over the crash barrier and trod carefully down the steep slope to the wood where the Kadok factory was situated. She switched on her torch and tramped through the shrubs, brushed away bare branches that wanted to thrust themselves into her face. The growth was dense, shadows leapt around like silent wolves and even when she stopped, listened and watched, shadows of trees fell upon trees, so that you didn’t know what was what, like in a labyrinth of mirrors. But she wasn’t frightened. It was an oddity that she who was so frightened of closed doors was not frightened of the dark. She listened to the roar of the river. Had she heard anything? A sound that ought not to be there? She went on. Ducked under a wind-blown tree trunk and stopped again. But the other sounds stopped the second she stopped. Kaja took a deep breath and finished her line of thought: as if someone who didn’t want to be seen was following her.

She turned and shone the light behind her. Was no longer so sure about not being scared of the dark. Some branches swayed in the light, but they must be the ones she had disturbed, mustn’t they?

She faced forward again.

And screamed when her torch lit up a deathly pale face with enlarged eyes. She dropped the torch and backed away, but the figure followed her with a grunting noise reminiscent of laughter. In the dark she could make out the figure bending down, standing up, then the next moment the blinding light from her torch was shining in her face.

She held her breath.

The grunted laughter stopped.

‘Here,’ rasped a man’s voice and the light jumped.

‘Here?’

‘Your torch,’ the voice said.

Kaja took it and shone the torch to the side of him. So that she could see him without blinding him. He had blond hair and a prognathous jaw.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Truls Berntsen. I work with Mikael.’

She had heard of Truls Berntsen, of course. The shadow. Beavis – wasn’t that what Mikael called him?’

‘I’m-’

‘Kaja Solness.’

‘Right, how do you…?’ She swallowed, reformulated the question. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you,’ he answered with a single-toned rasp.

‘Right. And what am I doing here?’

He laughed his grunt-laugh. But didn’t reply. Stood right in front of her with his arms hanging down and away from his sides. One eyelid twitched as if an insect were trapped beneath it.

Kaja sighed. ‘If you’re doing the same as me, you’re here to keep an eye on the factory,’ she said. ‘In case he might reappear.’

‘Yes, in case he might reappear,’ said the Beavis type without taking his eyes off her.

‘It’s not so unlikely, is it?’ she said. ‘He may not know it’s burned down.’

‘My father worked there,’ Beavis said. ‘He used to say he made PSG, coughed PSG and became PSG.’

‘Are there a lot of Kripos people in the area? Did Mikael give you orders to come here?’

‘You don’t meet him any more, do you? You meet Harry Hole.’

Kaja felt a chill in her stomach. How on earth did this man know that? Had Mikael really told people about them?

‘You weren’t at Havass,’ she said to change the topic.

‘Wasn’t I?’ Grunted laughter. ‘I suppose I was free. Time off. Jussi was there.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘He was there.’

A gust of wind swept in, and she twisted her head to prevent a branch scratching her face. Had he been following her or had he been here before she arrived?

When she turned to ask him, he wasn’t there. She shone her torch between the trees. He was gone.

It was two in the morning when she parked in the street, went through the gate and up the steps to the yellow house. She pressed the button over the painted ceramic tile bearing the words ‘fam. Hole’ in ornate looped writing.

After ringing for the third time she heard a low cough and turned to see Harry returning a service revolver to the lining of his trousers. He must have crept around the corner of the house without making any noise.

‘What’s up?’ she asked, terrified.

‘Just being extra careful. You should have phoned and said you were coming.’

‘Sh-shouldn’t I have come?’

Harry went up the steps past her and unlocked the door. She followed him in, put her arms around him from behind, clung to his back and kicked the door shut with her heel. He freed himself, turned, was about to say something, but she stopped him with a kiss. A greedy kiss that demanded reciprocity. She put her cold hands up his shirt, felt from the glowing hot skin that he had come straight from bed, removed the revolver from his trousers and banged it down on the hall table.

‘I want you,’ she whispered, bit his ear and pushed her hand down his trousers. His dick was warm and soft.

‘Kaja…’

‘Can I have you?’

She thought she could discern a slight hesitation, a certain reluctance. She wrapped her other hand around his neck, looked into his eyes. ‘Please…’

He smiled. Then his muscles relaxed. And he kissed her. Cautiously. More cautiously than she wanted. She groaned with frustration, undid his trouser buttons. Held his dick firmly without moving her hand, felt it grow.

‘Fuck you,’ he sighed and lifted her. Carried her up the stairs. Kicked open the bedroom door and laid her on the bed. On his mother’s side. She tilted back her head, closed her eyes, felt her clothes being removed, quickly, efficiently. Felt the heat radiating from his skin the moment he lowered himself onto her and forced her legs apart. Yes, she thought. Fuck me.

She lay with her cheek and ear against his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

‘What were you thinking,’ she whispered, ‘when you were lying there knowing you were going to die?’

‘That I was going to live,’ Harry said.

‘Just that?’

‘Just that.’

‘Not that you were going to… meet those you loved?’

‘No.’

‘I did. It was strange. I was so frightened that something special was going to pieces. And then the horror passed and instead I was filled with peace. I just slept. And then you came. And woke me up. Rescued me.’

Harry passed her his cigarette and she took a drag, then sniggered.

‘You’re a hero, Harry. The type they give medals. Who would have thought that of you, eh?’

Harry shook his head. ‘Believe me, sweetheart, I was thinking only of myself. I didn’t spare you a thought until I reached the fireplace.’

‘Maybe not, but when you got there you still had very little air. By digging me out you knew we would use up the air twice as quickly.’

‘What can I say? I’m a generous guy.’

She slapped his chest with a laugh. ‘A hero!’

Harry inhaled hard. ‘Or perhaps it was survival instinct outmanoeuvring conscience.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The person I found first was so strong he almost managed to keep the pole. So I guessed it had to be Kolkka and that he was alive. I knew it was a question of seconds and minutes, but instead of digging him out I prodded the snow to find you. You were quite still. I thought you were dead.’

‘So?’

‘So maybe I was thinking deep down that if I dug out the dead one first the one who was alive might die in the meantime. In that way I could have all the air to myself. It’s hard to know what governs your actions.’

She went quiet. Outside, the snarl of a motorbike rose and fell. A motorbike in March. And today she had seen a migratory bird. Everything was out of balance.

‘Do you always brood so much?’ she asked.

‘No. Maybe. I don’t know.’

She wriggled closer to him. ‘What are you brooding about now?’

‘How he can know what he knows.’

She sighed. ‘Our killer?’

‘And why he’s playing with me. Why he sends me a bit of Tony Leike. How he thinks.’

‘And how are you going to find out?’

He stubbed out the cigarette on the bedside table. Took a deep breath and released it in a long hiss. ‘That’s the point. I can only think of one way. I have to talk to him.’

‘Him? Prince Charming?’

‘Someone like him.’

The dream came on the threshold of sleep. He was staring up at a nail. It was sticking out of a man’s head. But there was something familiar about the face tonight. A familiar portrait, one he had seen so many times. Seen recently. The foreign object in Harry’s mouth exploded and he twitched. He was asleep.