The Leopard

80
The Rhythm

The rain beat down on the boards of the Jetty. Harry walked up behind the man standing at the edge, facing the other way.

‘Morning, Skai.’

‘Morning, Hole,’ the officer said without turning. The tip of the fishing rod was bent towards the line that disappeared in the reeds on the opposite bank.

‘Caught something?’

‘Nope,’ Skai said. ‘Snarled up on the bloody reeds.’

‘Sorry to hear that. Read the papers today?’

‘They don’t arrive before late morning in the sticks.’

Harry knew that was not true, but nodded anyway.

‘But I suppose they’ve written that I’m a village idiot,’ Skai said. ‘They had to get townsfolk in from Kripos to sort out the muddle.’

‘As I said: I’m sorry.’

Skai shrugged. ‘I’ve got no complaints. You gave it to me straight, I knew what I was doing. And it was a bit of fun, too. Not much happens out here, you know.’

‘Mm. They don’t write much about you, they’re mostly interested in Tony Leike being the killer, after all. Bellman is much-quoted.’

‘He is that.’

‘Soon they’ll work out who Tony’s father is as well.’

Skai turned and looked at Harry.

‘I should have thought of it before, and especially after we talked about the changing of names.’

‘Now I don’t follow you, Hole.’

‘You were even the person who told me, Skai. Tony lived with his grandfather at the Leike farm. Mother’s father. Tony had taken his mother’s name.’

‘Nothing unusual in that.’

‘Maybe not. But in this case there was a good reason for it. Tony was hiding at his grandfather’s. His mother sent him there.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘A colleague,’ Harry said, and for a second he seemed to have the night’s scent of her in his nostrils again. ‘She told me something the Ustaoset officer had told her. About the Utmo family. About a father and a son who hated each other so intensely that it threatened to culminate in murder.’

‘Murder?’

‘I’ve checked Odd Utmo’s record. He was, like his son, known for his rages. As a young man he went to prison for eight years for committing a murder out of jealousy. After that, he moved into the wastelands. He married Karen Leike, and they had a son. The son reached his teens and was already good-looking, tall and a charmer. Two men and a woman in almost total isolation. A man who had a conviction for killing in a jealous rage. It looks like Karen tried to prevent a tragedy unfolding by sending her son away in secret and leaving one of his shoes in an area where there had just been a big avalanche.’

‘News to me, Hole.’

Harry nodded slowly. ‘I’m afraid she managed only to postpone the tragedy. Her body has just been found at the bottom of a precipice with a bullet through the head. A few metres away her husband and murderer was crushed beneath a snowmobile. He’d been tortured, had most of the skin on his back and arms burned off and his teeth ripped out. Guess who did it?’

‘Oh, my God…’

Harry put a cigarette between his lips.

‘How did you trace the link?’ Skai asked.

‘The similarity, the genes.’ He lit the cigarette. ‘Father and son. You can try to run, but it will always be there, like a curse. I think Odd Utmo realised the Havass murders meant he would be hunted, too, and that it was the ghost of his own deceased son who was after him. So he fled from the farm up to this Tourist Association cabin safely hidden between precipices. He took a family photo with him, the family he had himself destroyed. Imagine, a frightened, maybe remorseful killer alone with his thoughts.’

‘He had already been given his punishment.’

‘I found the photo. Tony was lucky, he took after his mother in looks. It was hard to see anything of the adult Tony in the photograph of the boy. But he already had the big white teeth. While his father hid his. That’s where they were different.’

‘I thought you said it was the similarity that gave them away?’

Harry nodded. ‘They had the same disease.’

‘They were killers.’

Harry shook his head. ‘Disease, as in physical ailment, Skai. I meant they both had arthritis. The family relationship was confirmed this morning. The DNA analysis of the flesh on the wood burner and Tony Leike’s hair prove they are father and son.’

Skai nodded.

‘Well,’ Harry said. ‘I came by to thank you for your help and to bemoan the outcome. Bjorn Holm sends his regards to your wife and says she makes the best meatballs and mashed swede he’s ever tasted.’

Flicker of a smile from Skai. ‘Most people think that. Even Tony liked them.’

‘Oh?’

Skai shrugged and pulled a knife from the sheath on his belt.

‘I told you Mia was stuck on the boy, didn’t I? It was soon after he had knifed Ole. She brought him home for lunch one day when she knew I wouldn’t be there. The wife said nothing when they showed up, though there was a humdinger when I got to hear about it, of course. But you know what girls are like at that age and in love. I tried to explain that Tony was violent, fool that I was. I should have known the worse I made her boyfriend out to be, the more determined she would become to hang on to him. Then it’s two together against the rest of the world, kind of. Well, you’ve seen it yourself with women who start writing letters to convicted murderers.’

Harry nodded.

‘Mia would have left home, followed him to the end of the world, there was no moderation in anything,’ Skai said, cutting the fishing line and reeling in.

Harry followed the retreat of the slack line. ‘Mm. End of the world.’

‘Yep.’

‘I see.’

Skai stopped winding and looked at Harry. ‘No,’ he said with conviction.

‘No what?’

‘No to what you’re thinking.’

‘Which is?’

‘That Mia and Tony met again later. He broke up with her; since then they have never met. Her life has continued without him. She has nothing to do with this case, got it? You have my word. She is putting her life together again, so please don’t…’

Harry nodded and took the cigarette, which had been extinguished by the rain, from his mouth.

‘I’m not on the case any more,’ he said. ‘But your word would have been good enough, anyway.’

As Harry drove from the car park he looked in the mirror and watched Skai packing up his fishing gear.

Rikshospital. He was in the rhythm now. Time was not chopped up by events; it flowed in an even stream. He had thought of asking for a mattress. That would be a bit like Chungking Mansion.