The Leopard

6
Homecoming

A Volvo Amazon, the last to roll out of the Volvo factory in 1970, had stopped in front of the pedestrian crossing by the arrivals terminal at Gardemoen Airport in Oslo.

A crocodile of nursery children paraded past the car in chafing rain gear. Some of them glanced with curiosity at the strange old car with rally stripes along the bonnet, and at the two men behind the windscreen wipers swishing away the morning rain.

The man in the passenger seat, Politioverbetjent, shortened to POB, Gunnar Hagen, knew that the sight of children walking in hand in hand ought to make him smile and think of solidarity, consideration for others and a society where everyone looked after everyone else. But Hagen’s first association was a search party hunting for a person they expected to find dead. That was what working as the head of Crime Squad did to you. Or, as some wit had written in English on Harry Hole’s office door: I see dead people.

‘What the heck’s a nursery class doing at an airport?’ asked the man in the driver’s seat. His name was Bjorn Holm, and the Amazon was his dearest possession. The mere smell of the noisy but uncannily efficient heater, the sweat-ingrained imitation leather and the dusty rear shelf gave him inner peace. Especially if it was accompanied by the engine at the right revs, that is about eighty kilometres an hour on the flat, and Hank Williams on the cassette player. Bjorn Holm from Krimteknisk, the Forensics Unit in Bryn, was a hillbilly from Skreia with snakeskin cowboy boots, a moon face and bulging eyes which lent him a constantly surprised expression. This face had caused more than one leader of an investigation to misjudge Bjorn Holm. The truth was that he was the greatest crime-scene talent since the glory days of Weber. Holm was wearing a soft suede jacket with fringes and a knitted Rastafarian hat from under which grew the most vigorous, intensely red sideburns Hagen had seen this side of the North Sea and they as good as covered his cheeks.

Holm swung the Amazon into the short-term car park where it stopped with a gasp, and the two men got out. Hagen turned up his coat collar, which of course did nothing to prevent the rain from bombarding his shiny pate. It was, by the way, wreathed by black hair so thick and so fertile that some suspected Gunnar Hagen of having perfectly normal hairgrowth but an eccentric hairdresser.

‘Tell me, is that jacket really waterproof?’ Hagen asked as they strode towards the entrance.

‘Nope,’ said Holm.

Kaja Solness had called them while they were in the car and informed them that the Scandinavian Airlines plane had landed ten minutes early. And that she had lost Harry Hole.

After entering through the swing doors, Gunnar Hagen looked around, saw Kaja sitting on her suitcase by the taxi counter, signalled with a brief nod and headed for the door to the customs hall. He and Holm slipped in as it opened for passengers leaving. A guard made to stop them, but nodded, indeed almost bowed, when Hagen held up his ID card and barked a curt ‘Police’.

Hagen turned right and walked straight past the customs officials and their dogs, past the metal counters that reminded him of the trolleys at the Pathology Institute, and into the cubicle behind.

There he came to such a sudden halt that Holm walked into him from behind. A familiar voice wheezed between clenched teeth. ‘Hi, boss. Regretfully, I’m unable to stand to attention right now.’

Bjorn Holm peered over the unit leader’s shoulder.

It was a sight that would haunt him for years.

Bent over the back of a chair was the man who was a living legend not just at Oslo Police HQ but in every police station across Norway, for good or ill. A man with whom Holm himself had worked closely. But not as closely as the male customs official standing behind the legend with a latex-clad hand partially obscured by the legend’s pale white buttocks.

‘He’s mine,’ Hagen said to the official, waving his ID card. ‘Let him go.’

The official stared at Hagen and seemed reluctant to release him, but when an older officer with gold stripes on his epaulettes came in and nodded briefly with closed eyes, the customs official twisted his hand round one last time and removed it. The victim gave a loud groan.

‘Get your pants on, Harry,’ Hagen said and turned away.

Harry pulled up his trousers and said to the official peeling off the latex glove, ‘Was it good for you, too?’

Kaja Solness rose from the suitcase when her three colleagues came back through the door. Bjorn Holm went to drive the car round while Gunnar Hagen went to get something to drink from the kiosk.

‘Are you often checked?’ Kaja asked.

‘Every time,’ Harry said.

‘Don’t think I’ve ever been stopped at customs.’

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because there are a thousand small telltale signs they look for, and you have none of them. Whereas I have at least half.’

‘Do you think customs officers are so prejudiced?’

‘Well, have you ever smuggled anything?’

‘No.’ She laughed. ‘OK then, I have. But if they’re so good, they should have seen that you’re also a policeman. And let you through.’

‘They did see.’

‘Come on. That only happens in films.’

‘They saw alright. They saw a fallen policeman.’

‘Oh yes?’ said Kaja.

Harry rummaged for his pack of cigarettes. ‘Let your eyes drift over to the taxi counter. There’s a man with narrow eyes, a bit slanted. See him?’

She nodded.

‘He’s tugged at his belt twice since we came out. As if there was something heavy hanging from it. A pair of handcuffs or a truncheon. An automatic reaction if you’ve been in patrol cars or in the custody block for a few years.’

‘I’ve worked in patrol cars, and I’ve never -’

‘He’s working for Narc now and keeps an eye open for people who look a bit too relieved after passing through customs. Or go straight to the toilet because they can’t stand having the goods up their rectum any longer. Or suitcases that change hands between a naive, helpful passenger and the smuggler who got the idiot to carry the luggage containing all the dope through customs.’

She tilted her head and squinted at Harry with a little smile playing on her lips. ‘Or he might be a normal guy whose pants keep slipping down, and he’s waiting for his mother. And you’re mistaken.’

‘Certainly,’ said Harry, looking at his watch and the clock on the wall. ‘I’m always making mistakes. Is that really the time?’

The Volvo Amazon glided onto the motorway as the street lights came on.

In the front seats Holm and Solness were deep in conversation as Townes van Zandt sang in controlled sobs on the cassette player. On the back seat, Gunnar Hagen was stroking the smooth pig-leather briefcase he was holding on his lap.

‘I wish I could say you looked good,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Jet lag, boss,’ Harry said, who was lying more than sitting.

‘What happened to your jaw?’

‘It’s a long, boring story.’

‘Anyway, welcome back. Sorry about the circumstances.’

‘I thought I had handed in my resignation.’

‘You’ve done that before.’

‘So how many times do you want it?’

Gunnar Hagen looked at his former inspector and lowered his eyebrows and voice even further. ‘As I said, I’m sorry about the circumstances. And I appreciate that the last case took a lot out of you. That you and your loved ones were involved in a way which… well, could make anyone wish for a different life. But this is your job, Harry, this is what you’re good at.’

Harry sniffed as though he had already contracted the typical homecoming cold.

‘Two murders, Harry. We’re not even sure how they’ve been carried out, only that they’re identical. But thanks to recent dearly bought experiences, we know what we’re facing.’ The POB paused.

‘Doesn’t hurt to say the words, boss.’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’

Harry looked out at the snow-free, rolling, brown countryside. ‘People have cried wolf a number of times, but events have shown that a serial killer is a rare beast.’

‘I know,’ Hagen nodded. ‘The Snowman is the only one we’ve seen in this country during my period of office. But we’re pretty certain this time. The victims have nothing to do with each other, and the sedative found in their blood is identical.’

‘That’s something. Good luck.’

‘Harry…’

‘Find someone qualified for the job, boss.’

‘You’re qualified.’

‘I’ve gone to pieces.’

Hagen took a deep breath. ‘Then we’ll put you together again.’

‘Beyond repair,’ Harry said.

‘You’re the only person in this country with the skills and the experience to deal with a serial killer.’

‘Fly in an American.’

‘You know very well things don’t work like that.’

‘Then I’m sorry.’

‘Are you? Two people dead so far, Harry. Young women…’

Harry waved a dismissive hand when Hagen opened his briefcase and pulled out a brown file.

‘I mean it, boss. Thank you for buying my passport and all that, but I’ve finished with photos and reports full of blood and gore.’

Hagen sent Harry a wounded expression, but still kept the file on his lap.

‘Peruse this, that’s all I’m asking. And don’t tell anyone we’re working on this case.’

‘Oh? Why’s that?’

‘It’s complicated. Just don’t mention it to anyone, OK?’

The conversation at the front of the car had died, and Harry focused on the back of Kaja’s head. As Bjorn Holm’s Amazon had been made long before anyone used the term ‘whiplash’, there was no headrest, and Harry could see her slim neck, since her hair had been pinned up, see the white down on her skin, and he mused on how vulnerable she was, how quickly things changed, how much could be destroyed in a matter of seconds. That was what life was: a process of destruction, a disintegration from what at the outset was perfect. The only suspense involved was whether we would be destroyed in one sudden act or slowly. It was a sad thought. Yet he clung to it. Until they were through Ibsen Tunnel, a grey, anonymous component of the capital’s traffic machinery that could have been in any city in the world. Nevertheless it was at that particular moment that he felt it. A huge, unalloyed pleasure at being here. In Oslo. Home. The feeling was so overwhelming that for a few seconds he was oblivious to why he had returned.

Harry gazed at Sofies gate 5 as the Amazon sailed out of view behind him. There was more graffiti on the front of the building than when he had left, but the blue paint beneath was the same.

So, he had refused to take the case. He had a father lying in the hospital. That was the only reason he was here. What he didn’t tell them was that if he’d had the choice of knowing about his father’s illness or not, he would have chosen not to know. Because he hadn’t returned out of love. He had returned out of shame.

Harry peered up at the two black windows on the second floor that were his.

Then he opened the door and walked into the backyard. The rubbish container was standing where it always did. Harry pushed open the lid. He had promised Hagen he would take a look at the case file. Mostly so that his boss would not lose face – after all, the passport had cost Crime Squad quite a few kroner. Harry dropped the file onto the burst plastic bags leaking coffee grounds, nappies, rotten fruit and potato peelings. He inhaled and wondered at how surprisingly international the smell of rubbish was.

Nothing had been touched in his two-room flat, yet something was different. A powder-grey hue, as though someone had just left but their frosty breath was still there. He went into the bedroom, put down his bag and fished out the unopened carton of cigarettes. Everything was the same there, grey as the skin of a two-day-old corpse. He fell back onto the bed. Closed his eyes. Greeted the familiar sounds. Such as the drip from the hole in the gutter onto the lead flashing around the window frame. It wasn’t the slow, comforting drip-drip from the ceiling in Hong Kong, but a feverish drumming, somewhere in the transition between dripping and running water, like a reminder that time was passing, the seconds were racing, the end of a number line was approaching. It had made him think of La Linea, the Italian cartoon figure who after four minutes always ended up falling off the edge of the cartoonist’s line into oblivion.

Harry knew that there was a half-full bottle of Jim Beam in the cupboard under the sink. Knew that he could start where he had left off in this flat. Shit, he had been wrecked even before he got into the taxi to the airport that day several months ago. No wonder he had not managed to drag himself to Manila.

He could go straight into the kitchen now and pour the contents down the sink.

Harry groaned.

Wondering who she resembled was so much nonsense. He knew who she resembled. She resembled Rakel. They all resembled Rakel.