The Leopard(201)

‘Are you?’

Tony chuckled and squeezed her hand. ‘Do you intend to stand in my way, Lene?’

She shook her head. All she wanted was to be there for someone. For him. As though in a trance she took the pen he passed her. Guided it down to the paper. Her tears fell on her signature causing the ink to blotch. He seized the document.

‘That’ll do nicely,’ he said, blowing on it and motioning towards the coffee table. ‘Let’s see you wearing it then.’

‘What do you mean, Tony? It’s not a ring.’

‘I mean I want you to open wide, Lene.’

Harry blinked. A single lit bulb hung from the ceiling. He was supine on a mattress. He was naked. It was the same dream, except that he wasn’t dreaming. Above him a nail stuck out of the wall, and on the nail was impaled the head of Edvard Munch. A Norwegian banknote. He yawned so hard it seemed his shattered jaw would tear, and yet the pressure continued, almost exploding his head. He wasn’t dreaming. The ketanome had worn off and the pain allowed no further dreams. How long had he been lying here? How long till the pain drove him mad? He carefully twisted his head and scanned the room. He was still in Van Boorst’s house and he was alone. He wasn’t shackled, he could stand up if he wanted.

His gaze followed the wire attached to the handle of the front door and running through the room to the wall behind him. He carefully twisted his head the other way. The wire ran through the U bolt in the wall right behind his head. And from there to his mouth. Leopold’s apple. He was tethered firmly in position. The door opened outwards so that the first person to pull would release the needles that would pierce his head from inside. And if he moved too much that would also release the needles.

Harry put his thumb and first finger either side of his mouth. Felt the circular ridges. Tried in vain to get a finger underneath one of them. He had a coughing fit and everything went black as he struggled to breathe. He realised the ridges had caused the flesh around his pharynx to swell and he risked suffocation. The wire to the door handle. The severed finger. Was this chance or did Tony Leike know about the Snowman? And was he intending to outdo him?

Harry kicked the wall and tensed his vocal cords, but the metal ball stifled the scream. He gave up. Leaned against the wall, braced himself for the pain and forced his mouth shut. He had read somewhere that the human bite is not much weaker than that of the white shark. Yet the jaw muscles only just managed to press the ridges down before the mouth was forced back open. There seemed to be a pulse, a living iron heart in his mouth. He touched the wire hanging from the apple. His every instinct shrieked for him to pull it, to pull the apple out. But he had seen a demonstration of what would happen, he had seen photos of crime scenes. If he had not seen . . .

And at that second Harry knew. Knew not only how he himself would die but also how the others had died. And why it had been done like that. He experienced an absurd desire to laugh. It was so devilishly simple. So devilishly simple that only a devil could have devised it.

Tony Leike’s alibi. He hadn’t had an accomplice. That is to say, the victims themselves had been his accomplices. When Borgny and Charlotte had come to after being drugged they hadn’t a clue what it was they had in their mouths. Borgny had been locked in a cellar. Charlotte had been outside, but the wire from her mouth had led to the boot of the wrecked car in front of her, and however much she struggled, scraped and pulled at the boot lid it was, and remained, locked. Neither of them had a chance in hell of escaping from where they were, and when the pain was too great they had taken the predictable route. They had pulled the wire. Had they anticipated what would happen? Had the pain made them give way to hope, the hope that pulling the wire would retract the circular ridges in the mysterious object? And while the girls had slowly but surely gone through the agonies of doubt and conjecture before the inevitable act, Tony Leike was many kilometres away at a dinner or a lecture, secure in the knowledge that the girls would perform the final part of the job themselves. Giving him the best possible alibi for the time of the death. In the strictest sense, he hadn’t even murdered them.

Harry twisted his head to see what radius of movement he had without tightening the steel wire.

He had to do something. Anything. He groaned, thought the wire seemed to tighten; he stopped breathing, stared at the door. Waited for it to open, for . . .

Nothing happened.

He tried to remember Van Boorst’s demo of the apple, how long the ridges remained out if there was no resistance. If only he could open his mouth even wider, if only his jaws . . .

Harry closed his eyes. It struck him how strangely normal and obvious the idea seemed, how little resistance he felt. Quite the opposite, he felt relief. Relief at inflicting even more pain on himself, if necessary risking his own life in an attempt to survive. It was logical, simple, the black void of doubt repressed by a bright, clear, insane idea. Harry turned round on his stomach with his head against the U bolt so that there was some slack in the wire. Then he cautiously got up onto his knees. Touched his jaw. Found the point. The point where everything centred: the pain, the jaw joint, the knot, the jumble of nerves and muscles that only just held his jaw together after the incident in Hong Kong. He wouldn’t be able to hit himself hard enough, there had to be body weight behind it. His first finger tested the nail. It protruded about four centimetres from the wall. A standard nail with a large, broad head. It would smash through everything that came in its path if there was enough force. Harry took aim, rested his jaw against the nail in rehearsal, stood up to calculate at what angle he would have to fall. How deep the nail would have to penetrate. And how deep it must not penetrate. Neck, nerves, paralysis. Did calculations. Not coldly and calmly. But he calculated anyway. Forced himself. The nail head was not like the top of a T, it sloped down towards the shank so that it would not necessarily tear everything with it on its way out. Finally, he tried to identify anything he hadn’t considered. Until he realised this was his brain trying to delay events.