The Leopard(184)

Sigurd looked at Bellman and repeated: ‘That was all.’

Bellman nodded, and Sigurd Altman continued. ‘Tony arrived early. He parked, got out and did a recce. Then he disappeared into the shadows under the trees by the river. I hid behind the steering wheel. Adele came. I rolled down the window to catch what happened. She stood there waiting, looking around, checking her watch. I saw Tony right behind her, so close it was unbelievable she couldn’t hear him. I saw him pull out a large Sami knife and close his arm around her neck. She wriggled and kicked as he carried her to his car. When the door fell open I saw that he had plastic over the seats. I didn’t hear what Tony said to her, but I picked up my camera and zoomed in. Saw him pressing a pen into her hand, obviously dictating what she was to write on a postcard.’

‘The postcard from Kigali,’ Bellman said. ‘He had planned everything in advance. She was going to disappear.’

‘I took pictures, not thinking about anything else. Until I saw him suddenly raise his hand and drive the knife into her neck. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. Blood spurted out spraying the windscreen.’

The two men were unaware that Krohn was gasping for air.

‘He waited a while, leaving the knife in her neck, as though he wanted to drain her of blood first. Then he lifted her up, carried her to the rear of his car and dumped her in the boot. As he was about to get back in the car, he stopped and seemed to sniff the air. He was standing under the light of a street lamp, and that was when I saw it: the same widened eyes, the same grin on his lips that he’d had when he pinned me down outside the dance hall and forced the knife in my mouth. Long after Tony had driven off with Adele, I was still in my car, numb with horror, unable to move. I knew I couldn’t send a letter telling all to Anders Galtung now. Or to anyone else. Because I had just become an accessory to murder.’

Sigurd took a tiny, restrained sip of water from the glass in front of him and glanced at Johan Krohn, who nodded in return.

Bellman cleared his throat. ‘Technically speaking, you were not an accessory to murder. The worst charge would have been blackmail or deception. You could have stopped there. It would have been very unpleasant for you, but you could have gone to the police. You even had photographs proving your story.’

‘Nevertheless, I would have been charged and found guilty. They would have maintained that I, better than anyone else, knew Tony reacted with violence when put under pressure and that I had started the whole business, it was premeditated.’

‘Hadn’t you considered that this might happen?’ Bellman asked, ignoring the admonitory glare from Krohn.

Sigurd Altman smiled. ‘Isn’t it odd how often our own deliberations are the hardest to interpret? Or remember? I honestly don’t recall what I anticipated would happen.’

Because you don’t want to, Bellman thought, nodding and mmm-ing as if in gratitude to Altman for giving him new insights into the human soul.

‘I deliberated for several days,’ Altman said. ‘Then I went back to the Håvass cabin and tore out the page in the guest book with all the names and addresses. Then I wrote another letter to Tony. In which I said that I knew what he had done, and I knew why. I had seen him screw Adele at the cabin in Håvass. And I wanted money. Signed it Borgny Stem-Myhre. Five days later I read in the papers that she had been killed in a cellar. It should have stopped there. The police should have investigated the case and found Tony. That’s what they should have done. Arrested him.’

Sigurd Altman had raised his voice and Bellman could have sworn he saw tears welling up in the eyes behind the round glasses.

‘But you didn’t even have a lead, you were completely befogged. So I had to keep feeding him with more victims, threatening him with new names from the Håvass list. I cut out pictures of the victims from the papers and hung them on the wall of the cutting room in the Kadok factory with copies of letters I had sent in the victims’ names. As soon as Tony killed one person, another letter arrived insisting they had sent the previous ones and now they knew he had two, three and four lives on his conscience. And that the price for their silence had risen accordingly.’ Altman leaned forward; his voice sounded anguished. ‘I did it to give you a chance to catch him. A killer makes mistakes, doesn’t he. The more murders there are, the greater the chance he will be arrested.’

‘And the better he becomes at what he’s doing,’ Bellman said. ‘Remember that Tony Leike was no novice at violence. You aren’t a mercenary in Africa for as long as he was without having blood on your hands. As you yourself have.’