The Leopard(181)
Harry told Jens that they no longer needed his services, and that he should go back to the helicopter and wait there with the pilot.
The snow was not so deep by the front door.
‘Someone’s been digging here not that long ago,’ Harry said.
The door was fitted with a plate and a simple padlock which ceded to Bjørn’s crowbar without much protest.
Before opening the door, they removed their mittens, put on latex gloves and blue plastic bags over their ski boots. Then they entered.
‘Wow,’ Bjørn said under his breath.
The whole cabin consisted of one single room of around five by three metres and was reminiscent of an old-fashioned captain’s berth with porthole-like windows and compact, space-saving solutions. The floor, walls and ceiling were clad with coarse, untreated boards that had been given a couple of coats of white paint to exploit the little light that was let in. The short wall to the right was taken up by a plain worktop with a sink and a cupboard underneath. Plus a divan obviously doubling up as a bed. In the middle of the room there was a table with a single spindleback chair spattered with paint. In front of one window stood a well-used writing desk with initials and snatches of songs carved into the wood. To the left, on the long wall where the rear rock was revealed, there was a black wood burner. To make maximum use of the heat, the flue was diverted around the rock to the right, then rose vertically. The wood basket was filled with birch and newspapers to get the fire started. On the walls hung maps of the local area, but there was also one of Africa.
Bjørn looked out of the window above the desk.
‘And that’s what I call a decent view. Jeez, you can see half of Norway from here.’
‘Let’s get cracking,’ Harry said. ‘The pilot’s given us two hours. There’s cloud coming in from the coast.’
As usual Mikael Bellman had got up at six and jogged himself into consciousness on the treadmill in the cellar. He had been dreaming about Kaja again. She had been riding pillion on a motorbike with her arms around a man who was all helmet and visor. She had smiled so happily, showing her pointed teeth, and waved as they rode away. But hadn’t they stolen the bike? Wasn’t it his? He didn’t know for sure as her hair, which was fluttering in the wind, was so long it covered the number plate.
After running, Mikael had taken a shower and gone upstairs for breakfast.
He had steeled himself before opening the morning paper that Ulla – also as usual – had placed next to his plate.
Lacking a photograph of Sigurd Altman, alias Prince Charming, they had printed one of County Officer Skai. He was standing outside the police station with his arms crossed, wearing a green cap with a long peak, like a bloody bear-hunter. The headline: PRINCE CHARMING ARRESTED? And beside it, above the photograph of a smashed yellow snowmobile: ANOTHER BODY FOUND IN USTAOSET.
Bellman had scanned the text for the word Kripos or – worst of all – his name. Nothing on the front page. Good.
He had opened the pages referred to, and there it was, photo and all:
The head of Kripos, Mikael Bellman, has said in a brief comment that he does not wish to make a statement until Prince Charming has been questioned. Nor has he anything in particular to say about the arrest of the suspect by Ytre Enebakk police.
‘In general, I can say that all police work is teamwork. In Kripos we do not attach too much importance to individuals who receive the hero’s garlands.’
He shouldn’t have said the last bit. It was lies, would be perceived as lies and stank from some distance of a bad loser.
But it didn’t matter. For if what Johan Krohn, the defence counsel, had told him on the phone was true, Bellman had a golden opportunity to fix everything. Well, more than that. To receive the garlands himself. He acknowledged that the price Krohn would demand was high, but also that it wouldn’t be him who had to pay. But the sodding bear-hunter. And Harry Hole and Crime Squad.
A prison warder held the door to the visitors’ room open and Mikael Bellman let Johan Krohn go first. Krohn had insisted that as this was a conversation, not a formal interview, it should take place, as far as was possible, on neutral ground. Since it was inconceivable that Prince Charming would be allowed out of Oslo District Prison, where he was in custody, Krohn and Bellman agreed on a visitors’ room, one of the ones used for private meetings between inmates and family. No cameras, no microphones, just an ordinary windowless room where half-hearted attempts had been made to jolly the place up with a crocheted cloth on the table and a Norwegian tapestry, a bell-pull, on the wall. Sweethearts and spouses were granted permission to meet here, and the springs on the semen-stained sofa were so worn that Bellman was able to observe Krohn sink into the material as he took a seat.