The Leopard

27
Kind, Light-Fingered and Tight-Fisted

‘I was in the vicinity,’ Harry said. ‘But I suppose you’re on your way out.’

‘Not at all,’ smiled Kaja, who was standing in the doorway with a thick puffa jacket on. ‘I was sitting on the veranda. Come in. Take the slippers over there.’

Harry removed his shoes and followed her through the living room. They each sat down on an enormous wooden chair on the covered veranda. It was quiet and deserted in Lyder Sagens gate, only one parked car. But on the first floor of the house over the road Harry could see the outline of a man in an illuminated window.

‘That’s Greger,’ Kaja said. ‘He’s eighty now. He’s sat like that and followed everything that’s happened on the street since the war, I think. I like to believe he looks after me.’

‘Yes, we need that,’ Harry said, taking out a pack of cigarettes. ‘To believe someone is looking after us.’

‘Have you got a Greger as well?’

‘No,’ Harry said.

‘Can I have one?’

‘A cigarette?’

She laughed. ‘I smoke occasionally. It makes me… calmer, I think.’

‘Mm. Thought about what you’re going to do? After these forty-eight hours, I mean.’

She shook her head. ‘Back to Crime Squad. Feet on the table. Wait for a murder that is trivial enough for Kripos not to whisk it away from under our noses.’

Harry tapped out two cigarettes, put them between his lips, lit both and passed her one.

‘Now, Voyager,’ she said. ‘Hen… Hen… What was the name of the man who did that?’

‘Henreid,’ Harry said. ‘Paul Henreid.’

‘And the woman whose cigarette he lit?’

‘Bette Davis.’

‘Killer film. Would you like to borrow a thicker jacket?’

‘No, thanks. Why are you sitting on the veranda by the way? It’s not exactly a tropical night.’

She held up a book. ‘My brain is sharper in cold air.’

Harry read the front cover. ‘Materialistic Monism. Hm. Long-forgotten fragments from philosophy studies spring to mind.’

‘Right. Materialism holds that everything is matter and energy. Everything that happens is a part of a larger calculation, a chain reaction, consequences of something that has already happened.’

‘And free will is illusory?’

‘Yep. Our actions are determined by our brain’s chemical composition, which is determined by who chose to have children with whom, who in turn are determined by their brain chemistry. And so on. Everything can be taken back to the big bang, for example, and even further back. Including the fact that this book came to be written, and what you’re thinking right now.’

‘I remember that bit,’ Harry nodded and blew smoke into the winter night. ‘Made me think of the meteorologist who said that if only he had all the relevant variables he could forecast all future weather.’

‘And we could prevent murders before they took place.’

‘And predict that cigarette-cadging policewomen would sit on cold verandas with expensive philosophy books.’

She laughed. ‘I didn’t buy the book myself, I found it on the shelf here.’ She pouted and sucked at the cigarette, and got smoke in her eyes. ‘I never buy books, I only borrow them. Or steal them.’

‘I don’t exactly see you as a thief.’

‘No one does, that’s why I’m never caught,’ she said, resting the cigarette on the ashtray.

Harry coughed. ‘And why do you pilfer?’

‘I only steal from people I know and who can afford it. Not because I’m greedy, but because I’m a bit tight. When I was studying, I nicked loo rolls from the university toilet. By the way, have you thought of the title of the Fante book that was so good?’

‘No.’

‘Text me when you remember it.’

Harry chuckled. ‘Sorry, I don’t text.’

‘Why not?’

Harry shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I don’t like the concept. Like Aborigines who don’t want their photo taken because they think they’ll lose a bit of their souls, maybe.’

‘I know!’ she said with enthusiasm. ‘You don’t want to leave traces. Tracks. Irrefutable evidence of who you are. You want to know that you are going to disappear, utterly and totally.’

‘You’ve hit the nail on the head,’ Harry said drily, and inhaled. ‘Do you want to go back in?’ He nodded towards her hands which she had put between her thighs and the chair.

‘No, it’s just my hands that are cold,’ she smiled. ‘Warm heart though. What about you?’

Harry gazed across the garden fence, onto the road. At the car standing there. ‘What about me?’

‘Are you like me? Kind, light-fingered and tight-fisted?’

‘No, I’m evil, honest and tight-fisted. What about your husband?’

It came out harder than Harry had intended, as though he wanted to put her in her place because she… because she what? Because she was sitting here and was beautiful and liked the same things as he did and lent him slippers belonging to a man she pretended didn’t exist.

‘What about him?’ she asked with a tiny smile.

‘Well, he’s got big feet,’ Harry heard himself say, feeling an urgent desire to bang his head on the table.

She laughed out loud. The laughter trilled into the dark Fagerborg silence that lay over the houses, gardens and garages. The garages. Everyone had a garage. There was only one car parked in the street. Of course there could be a thousand reasons for it being there.

‘I don’t have a husband,’ she said.

‘So…’

‘So it’s a pair of my brother’s slippers you’re wearing on your feet.’

‘And the shoes on the steps…?’

‘… are also my brother’s, and are there because I suspect that men’s size forty-six and a half shoes have a deterrent effect on evil men with sinister plans.’

She sent Harry a meaningful look. He chose to believe the ambiguity was not intended.

‘So your brother lives here?’

She shook her head. ‘He died. Ten years ago. It’s Daddy’s house. In the last years, when Even was studying at Blindern, he and Daddy lived here.’

‘And Daddy?’

‘He died soon after Even. And as I was already living here, I took over the house.’

Kaja drew her legs up onto the chair and rested her head on her knees. Harry gazed at the slim neck, the hollow where her pinned-up hair was taut and a few loose strands fell back onto her skin.

‘Do you often think about them?’ Harry asked.

She raised her head from her knees.

‘Mostly about Even,’ she said. ‘Daddy moved out when we were small, and Mummy lived in her own bubble, so Even became sort of both parents in one for me. He looked after me, encouraged me, brought me up, he was my role model. He could do no wrong in my eyes. When you’ve been as close to someone as Even and I were to each other, that closeness never wears off. Never.’

Harry nodded.

With a tentative cough, Kaja said: ‘How’s your father?’

Harry studied the cigarette glow.

‘Don’t you think it’s odd?’ he said. ‘Hagen giving us forty-eight hours. We could have cleared the office in two with ease.’

‘I suppose. Now you say so.’

‘Maybe he thought we could spend our final two days doing something useful.’

Kaja looked at him.

‘Not investigating the present murder case, of course. We’ll have to leave that to Kripos. But the Missing Persons Unit needs help, I hear.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Adele Vetlesen is a young woman who, to my knowedge, is not connected with any murder case.’

‘You think we should…?’

‘I think we should meet for work at seven tomorrow morning,’ Harry said. ‘And see if we can do something useful.’

Kaja Solness sucked on the cigarette again. Harry stubbed his out.

‘Time to go,’ he said. ‘Your teeth are chattering.’

On his way out he tried to see if there was anyone in the parked car, but it was impossible without going closer. And he chose not to go any closer.

In Oppsal the house was waiting for him. Big, empty and full of echoes.

He went to bed in the boy’s room and closed his eyes.

And dreamed the dream he so often had. He is standing by a marina in Sydney, a chain is hauled up, a poisonous jellyfish rises to the surface, it is not a jellyfish but red hair floating around a white face. Then came the second dream. The new one. It had first appeared in Hong Kong, just before Christmas. He is on his back staring up at a nail protruding from the wall, a face is impaled on it, a face, a sensitive-looking face with a neatly trimmed moustache. In the dream Harry has something in his mouth, something that feels as if it would blow his head to pieces. What was it, what was it? It was a promise. Harry twitched. Three times. Then he fell asleep.