The Leopard(190)

Mikael Bellman had daily press conferences. In a TV talk show he demonstrated his pedagogic skills and flashed his winsome smile explaining how the case had been cracked. His version of the story, that went without saying. And made it seem like an oversight that the killer had not been arrested; the important thing first off was that Tony ‘Prince Charming’ Leike had been unmasked, rendered ineffective, sidelined.

The dark descended a few minutes later every evening. Everyone was waiting for spring or frost, one of the two, but neither came.

The cones of light swept across the ceiling.

Harry lay on his side, staring at the smoke from his cigarette curling up towards the ceiling in intricate and ever-unpredictable patterns.

‘You’re so quiet,’ Kaja said, snuggling up to his back.

‘I’ll be here until the funeral,’ he said. ‘Then I’m off.’

He took another drag. She didn’t answer. Then, to his surprise, he felt something warm and wet on his shoulder blade. He put the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray and turned to her. ‘Are you crying?’

‘Trying not to,’ she laughed with a sniffle. ‘I don’t know what’s got into me.’

‘Do you want a cigarette?’

She shook her head and dried the tears. ‘Mikael rang today, wanting to meet.’

‘Mm.’

She laid her head against his chest. ‘Don’t you want to know what I answered?’

‘Only if you want to tell me.’

‘I said no. Then he said I would regret that. He said you would drag me down. That it wasn’t the first time you had done that to someone.’

‘Well, he’s right.’

She lifted her head. ‘But that doesn’t matter, don’t you understand? I want to be wherever you are.’ Tears began to roll again. ‘And if it’s down, I want to be there, too.’

‘But there’ll be nothing,’ Harry said. ‘Not even me. I’ll have gone. You saw me in Chungking. It would be like right after the avalanche. The same cabin, but alone and abandoned.’

‘But you found me and got me out. I can do the same for you.’

‘What about if I don’t want to get out? You haven’t got any more dying fathers to entice me with.’

‘But you love me, Harry. I know you love me. That’s a good enough reason, isn’t it? I’m a good enough reason.’

Harry caressed her hair, her cheeks, caught her tears with his fingers, carried them to his mouth and kissed them.

‘Yes,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘You are reason enough.’

She took his hand, kissed it where he had kissed it.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t say it. Don’t say that’s why you’re going. So that you don’t drag me down. I’ll follow you to the end of the world, you see?’

He pulled her into him. And at once felt something slacken, like a muscle that had been held in quivering tension for a long time without his realising. He let go, gave up, let himself fall. And the pain that had been there melted away, became something warm following the bloodstream around his body, softening it, giving it peace. The feeling of free fall was so liberating that he felt his throat thicken. And knew part of him had wanted it, this, also up there in the snowy mist above the scree.

‘To the end of the world,’ she whispered, already breathing faster.

The cones of light swept across the ceiling, again and again.





82


Red


HARRY WAS SITTING BY HIS FATHER’S BEDSIDE. IT WAS STILL dark when a nurse came in with a cup of coffee, asked him whether he had had any breakfast and dropped a glossy mag in his lap.

‘You have to think about something else, you know,’ she said, angling her head and giving the impression she was about to stroke his cheek.

Harry dutifully flicked through the magazine while she tended to his father. But he couldn’t distract himself in the celebrity press, either. Photographs of Lene Galtung leaving premieres, gala lunches in her new Porsche. MISSING TONY was the headline, and the assertion was underpinned by comments not from Lene herself, but from celebrity friends. There were pictures outside the gates of a house in London, but no one had seen Lene there, either. At least no one had recognised her. There was a grainy photograph taken from a distance of a red-haired woman in front of Crédit Suisse in Zurich, which the magazine claimed was Lene Galtung, because they were able to quote Lene’s hairstylist who Harry assumed had been paid a sizeable sum to say: ‘She asked me to curl her hair and dye it brick red.’ Tony was referred to as a ‘suspect’ in what was portrayed as an average society scandal rather than one of the country’s worst ever murder cases.