The Leopard hh-8 Read online

  ‘Really? So he’s going to meet a psychologist with serial killings as a speciality, is he?’

  ‘I knew I should have said no,’ Bjorn whispered, still staring at the door. ‘He’s clean out of his mind.’

  ‘Who’s out of his mind?’

  ‘We’re working in a prison,’ Bjorn said. ‘We’re risking our jobs if the boss finds out what we’re up to, and the colleague in Bergen. ..’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She is seriously out of her mind.’

  ‘You mean she’s…?’

  ‘Sectioned out of her mind.’

  18

  The Patient

  For every step the tall policeman took, Kjersti Rodsmoen had to take two. Even so, she was left behind as they walked along the corridor of Sandviken Hospital. The rain was pouring down outside the high, narrow windows facing the fjord where the trees were so green you would have thought spring had arrived before winter.

  The day before, Kjersti Rodsmoen had recognised the policeman’s voice at once. As though she had been waiting for him to ring. And to make the very request he did: to talk to the Patient. The Patient had come to be called the Patient to give her maximum anonymity after the strain of her most recent murder case as a detective had sent her right back to square one: the psychiatric ward. In fact, she had recovered with remarkable speed, had moved back home, but the press – which was still hysterically pursuing the Snowman case long after it had been cleared up – had not left her in peace. And one evening, a few months ago, the Patient had called Rodsmoen and asked if she could return.

  ‘So she’s in serviceable shape?’ the police officer asked. ‘On medication?’

  ‘Yes to the first,’ Kjersti Rodsmoen said. ‘The second is confidential.’ The truth was the Patient was so well that neither medicine nor hospitalisation was required any longer. Nevertheless Rodsmoen had wondered whether she should let him visit her; he had been on the Snowman case and could cause old issues to emerge. Kjersti Rodsmoen had, in her time as a psychologist, come to believe more and more in repression, in shutting things off, in oblivion. It was an unfashionable view within the profession. On the other hand, meeting a person who had been on that particular case might be a good test of how robust the Patient had become.

  ‘You’ve got half an hour,’ Rodsmoen said before opening the door to the common room. ‘And don’t forget that the mind is tender.’

  The last time Harry had seen Katrine Bratt she had been unrecognisable. The attractive young woman with the dark hair and the glowing skin and eyes had gone, to be replaced by someone who reminded him of a dried flower: lifeless, frail, delicate, wan. He had had a feeling he might crush her hand if he squeezed too hard.

  So it was a relief to see her now. She looked older, or perhaps she was just tired. But the gleam in her eyes returned as she smiled and got up.

  ‘Harry H,’ she said, giving him a hug. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Fair to middling,’ Harry said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Dreadful,’ she said. ‘But a lot better.’

  She laughed, and Harry knew she was back. Or that enough of her was back.

  ‘What happened to your jaw? Does it hurt?’

  ‘Only when I speak and eat,’ Harry said. ‘And when I’m awake.’

  ‘Sounds familiar. You’re uglier than I remember, but I’m glad to see you anyway.’

  ‘Same to you.’

  ‘You mean same to me, except for the ugly bit?’

  Harry smiled. ‘Naturally.’ He looked around. The other patients in the room were sitting and staring out of the window, at their laps or straight at the wall. But no one seemed interested in him or Katrine.

  Harry told her what had happened since the last time they’d seen each other. About Rakel and Oleg, who had moved to an unnamed destination abroad. About Hong Kong. About his father’s illness. About the case he had taken on. She even laughed when he said she mustn’t tell anyone.

  ‘What about you?’ Harry asked.

  ‘They want me out of here really; they think I’m well and I’m taking up someone else’s place. But I like it here. The room service stinks, but it’s safe. I’ve got TV and can come and go as I want. In a month or two I’ll move back home maybe, who knows.’

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘No one. The madness is intermittent. What do you want?’

  ‘What do you want me to want?’

  She gave him a long, hard look before answering. ‘Apart from wanting you to have a burning desire to fuck me, I want you to have some use for me.’

  ‘And that’s exactly what I have.’

  ‘A desire to fuck me?’

  ‘Some use for you.’

  ‘Shit. Well, OK. What’s it about?’

  ‘Have you got a computer with Internet access here?’

  ‘We have a communal computer in the Hobbies Room, but it isn’t connected to the Net. They wouldn’t risk that. The only thing it’s used for is playing solitaire. But I’ve got my own computer in my room.’

  ‘Use the communal one.’ Harry put his hand in his pocket and tossed a dongle across the table. ‘This is a mobile office as they called it in the shop. You just plug it into-’

  ‘-one of the USB ports,’ Katrine said, taking the device and pocketing it. ‘Who pays the subscription?’

  ‘I do. That is, Hagen does.’

  ‘Yippee, there’s gonna be some surfing tonight. Any hot new porno sites I should know about?’

  ‘Probably.’ Harry pushed a file across the table. ‘Here are the reports. Three murders, three names. I want you to do the same as you did on the Snowman case. Find connections we’ve missed. Do you know about the case?’

  ‘Yes,’ Katrine Bratt said without looking at the file. ‘They were women. That’s the connection.’

  ‘You read newspapers…’

  ‘Barely. Why do you believe they’re any more than random victims?’

  ‘I don’t believe anything, I’m looking.’

  ‘But you don’t know what you’re looking for?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But you’re sure Marit Olsen’s killer is the same person who killed the other two? The method was completely different, I understand.’

  Harry smiled. Amused by Katrine’s attempt to hide the fact that she had scrutinised every detail in the papers. ‘No, Katrine, I’m not sure. But I can hear you’ve drawn the same conclusion as I have.’

  ‘Course. We were soulmates, remember?’

  She laughed, and at a stroke she was Katrine again, and not the skeleton of the brilliant, eccentric detective he had only just got to know before everything crumbled. Harry felt, to his surprise, a lump in his throat. Sodding jet lag.

  ‘Can you help me, do you think?’

  ‘To find something Kripos have spent two months not finding? With an outdated computer in the Hobbies Room of a mental institution? I don’t even know why you’re asking me. There are folk at Police HQ who are a lot more computer-savvy than me.’

  ‘I know, but I have something they don’t. And cannot give them.’

  ‘The password to the underground.’

  She fixed him with an uncomprehending stare. Harry checked no one was within earshot.

  ‘When I was working for the Security Service, POT, on the Redbreast case, I gained access to the search engine they were using to trace terrorists. They use secret back doors on the Net like MILNET, the American military Internet, made before they released the Net for commercial purposes through ARPANET in the eighties. ARPANET became, as you know, the Internet, but the back doors are still there. The search engines use Trojan Horses that update the passwords, codes and upgrades at the first entry point. Plane ticket bookings, hotel reservations, road tolls, Internet banking, these engines can see the lot.’

  ‘I’d heard rumours of the search engines, but I honestly thought they were non-existent,’ Katrine said.

  ‘They do exist. They were set up in 1984. The Orwellian nightmare come true. And best of all,
my password is still valid. I checked it.’

  ‘So what do you need me for? You can do this yourself, can’t you.’

  ‘Only POT is allowed to use the system, and only in emergency situations. Like Google, your searches can be traced back to the user. If it’s discovered that I or anyone else at Police HQ have been using the search engines, we risk a prison sentence. But if the search were traced and led back to a communal computer in a psychiatric hospital. ..’

  Katrine Bratt laughed. Her other laugh, the evil witch variety. ‘I’m beginning to see. Katrine Bratt, the brilliant detective, is not my strongest qualification here, but…’ She threw up her hands. ‘Katrine Bratt the patient is. Because she, being of unsound mind, cannot be prosecuted.’

  ‘Correct,’ Harry smiled. ‘And you’re one of the few people I can trust to keep your mouth shut. And if you’re not a genius, you’re definitely smarter than the average detective.’

  ‘Three smashed nicotine-stained fingers up your tiny little arsehole.’

  ‘No one can find out what we’re up to. But I promise you we’re the Blues Brothers here.’

  ‘On a mission from God?’ she quoted.

  ‘I’ve written the password on the back of the SIM card inside the dongle.’

  ‘What makes you think I know how to use the search engines?’

  ‘It’s like googling. Even I worked that out when I was at POT.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘After all, the engines were created for the police.’

  She released a deep sigh.

  ‘Thank you,’ Harry said.

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘When can you have something for me, do you reckon?’

  ‘Fuck you!’ She banged the table with her hand. Harry noticed a nurse glance in their direction. Harry held Katrine’s wild stare. Waited.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think I should be sitting in the Hobbies Room using illegal search engines in broad daylight, if I can put it like that.’

  Harry got up. ‘OK, I’ll contact you in three days.’

  ‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To tell me what’s in it for me?’

  ‘Well,’ Harry said, buttoning up his coat, ‘now I know what you want.’

  ‘What I want…’ The surprise on her face gave way to amazement as the meaning dawned on her, and she shouted after Harry, who was already on his way to the door: ‘You cheeky bastard! And presumptuous with it!’

  Harry got into the taxi, said ‘Airport’, removed his mobile phone and saw three missed calls from one of the only two numbers he had in his contacts. Good, that meant they had something.

  He called back.

  ‘Lake Lyseren,’ Kaja said. ‘Rope-making business there. Closed down fifteen years ago. The County Officer responsible for Ytre Enebakk can show us the place this afternoon. He had a couple of persistant criminals in the area, but small beer: break-ins and car theft. Plus one who had done time for beating up his wife. He’s sent us a list of men, though, and I’m going to run a check with Criminal Records right now.’

  ‘Good. Pick me up from Gardemoen on the way to Lyseren.’

  ‘It’s not on the way.’

  ‘You’re right. Pick me up anyway.’

  19

  The White Bride

  Despite the slow speed, Bjorn Holm’s Volvo Amazon was rolling and pitching on the narrow road that snaked between Ostfold’s meadows and fields.

  Harry was asleep on the back seat.

  ‘So no sex offenders around Lake Lyseren,’ Bjorn said.

  ‘None that have been caught,’ Kaja corrected. ‘Didn’t you see the survey in VG? One in twenty say they have committed what might be termed sexual abuse.’

  ‘Do people really answer that sort of questionnaire honestly? If I’d pushed a girl too far I think my brain would’ve goddam rationalised it away afterwards.’

  ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘Me?’ Bjorn swung out and overtook a tractor. ‘Nope. I’m one of the nineteen. Ytre Enebakk. Christ, what’s the name of that comic who hails from these parts? The bumpkin with the cracked glasses and moped. What’s his face from Ytre Enebakk. Hilarious parody.’

  Kaja shrugged. Bjorn looked into the mirror, but found himself looking down Harry’s open mouth.

  The County Officer for Ytre Enebakk was standing by the treatment plant on the Voyentangen peninisula waiting for them as arranged. They parked, he introduced himself as Skai – the Norwegian name for the synthetic leather that Bjorn Holm seemed to hold in such high regard – and they accompanied him to a jetty where a dozen boats bobbed up and down in the calm waters.

  ‘Early to have boats in the lake, isn’t it?’ Kaja said.

  ‘There hasn’t been any ice this year, won’t be either,’ the officer said. ‘First time since I was born.’

  They stepped into a broad, flat-bottomed boat, Bjorn with greater caution than the others.

  ‘It’s green here,’ Kaja said as the officer pushed off from the jetty with a pole.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, peering down into the water and pulling the cord to start the engine. ‘The ropery is over there, on the deep side. There’s a path, but the terrain is so steep that it’s best to go by boat.’ He flicked the handle on the side of the engine forwards. A bird of indeterminate species took off from a tree inside the bare forest and shrieked a warning.

  ‘I hate the sea,’ Bjorn said to Harry, who could just hear his colleague above the hacking sound of the two-stroke outboard motor. They slipped through the grey afternoon light in a channel between the two-metrehigh rushes. Crept past a pile of twigs that Harry assumed must have been a beaver’s nest and out through an avenue of mangrove-like trees.

  ‘This is a lake,’ Harry said. ‘Not the sea.’

  ‘Same shit,’ Bjorn said, shifting closer to the middle of the seat. ‘Give me inland, cow muck and rocky mountains.’

  The channel widened and there it lay in front of them: Lake Lyseren. They chugged past islands and islets from which winter-abandoned cabins with black windows seemed to be staring at them through wary eyes.

  ‘Basic cabins,’ the officer said. ‘Here you’re free from the stress down on the gold coast where you have to compete with your neighbour for the biggest boat or the most attractive cabin extension.’ He spat into the water.

  ‘What’s the name of that TV comic from Ytre Enebakk?’ Bjorn shouted over the drone of the motor. ‘Cracked glasses and moped.’

  The officer sent Holm a blank look and shook his head slowly.

  ‘The ropery,’ he said.

  In front of the bow, right down by the lake, Harry saw an old wooden building, oblong in shape, standing alone at the foot of a steep slope, dense forest on both sides. Beside the building, steel rails ran down the mountainside and disappeared into the black water. The red paint was peeling off the walls with gaping spaces for windows and doors. Harry squinted. In the fading light it looked as if there was a person in white standing at a window staring at them.

  ‘Jeez, the ultimate haunted house,’ Bjorn laughed.

  ‘That’s what they say,’ said County Officer Skai, cutting the engine.

  In the sudden silence they could hear the echo of Bjorn’s laughter from the other side and a lone sheep bell reaching them from far across the lake.

  Kaja took the rope, jumped onto the shore and, being of a nautical bent herself, tied a half-hitch around a rotten green pole protruding between the water lilies.

  The others got out of the boat, onto the huge rocks serving as a wharf. Then they entered through the doorway and found themselves in a deserted narrow, rectangular room smelling of tar and urine. It hadn’t been so easy to discern from the outside because the extremities of the building merged into the dense forest, but while the room was barely two metres across it must have been more than sixty metres from end to end.

  ‘They stood at opposite ends of the building and twined the rope,’ Kaja explained before
Harry could ask.

  In one corner lay three empty bottles and signs of attempts to light a fire. On the facing wall, a net hung in front of a couple of loose boards.

  ‘No one wanted to take over after Simonsen,’ Skai said, looking around. ‘It’s been empty ever since.’

  ‘What are the rails at the side of the building for?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Two things. To raise and lower the boat he used to collect timber. And to hold the sticks under water while they soaked. He tied the sticks to the iron carriage, which must be up in the boathouse. Then he cranked the carriage down under the water and wound it back up after a few weeks when the wood was ready. Practical fellow, Simonsen.’

  They all gave a start at the sudden noise from the forest outside.

  ‘Sheep,’ the officer said. ‘Or deer.’

  They followed him up a narrow wooden staircase to the first floor. An enormously long table stood in the centre of the room. The margins of the room were enshrouded in darkness. The wind blew in through the windows – with borders of jagged glass set in the frames – making a low whistling sound, and it caused the woman’s bridal veil to flap. She stood looking out over the lake. Beneath the head and torso was the skeleton: a black iron stand on wheels.

  ‘Simonsen used her as a scarecrow,’ Skai said, nodding towards the shop dummy.

  ‘Pretty creepy,’ Kaja said, taking up a position beside Skai and shivering inside her coat.

  He cast a sideways glance, plus a crooked smile. ‘The kids round here were terrified of her. The adults said that at full moon she walked around the district chasing the man who had jilted her on her wedding day. And you could hear the rusty wheels as she approached. I grew up right behind here, in Haga, you see.’

  ‘Did you?’ asked Kaja, and Harry smothered a grin.

  ‘Yes,’ said Skai. ‘By the way, this was the only woman known to be in Simonsen’s life. He was a bit of a recluse. But he could certainly make rope.’

  Behind them Bjorn Holm took down a coil of rope hanging from a nail.

  ‘Did I say you could touch anything?’ the officer said without turning.