The Leopard(208)

‘You don’t know anything about the fire demon, I suppose.’

‘No, but I know these ones,’ Harry said, holding up one of the cartridges from its own compartment in the Märklin case. ‘And I would back them against Ba-Toye.’

The feeble yellow interior light made the gold-coloured cartridge casing gleam. The lead bullet inside had a diameter of sixteen millimetres. The world’s largest calibre. When he had been working on the report after the Redbreast investigation, a ballistics expert had told him the calibre of a Märklin was way beyond all sensible limits. Even for shooting elephants. It was better suited to felling trees.

Harry clicked the telescopic sights into place. ‘Put your foot down, Saul.’

He laid the barrel over the top of the empty passenger seat and tested the trigger while keeping his eye some distance from the sights because of the bumpy ride. The sights needed adjusting, calibrating, fine-tuning. But there would be no chance to do that.

They had arrived. Kaja looked out of the car window. The scattered lights beneath them, that was Goma. Further away, she saw the illuminated oil rig on Lake Kivu. The moon glittered in the greenish-black water. The last part of the road was no more than a dirt track winding round the top, and the car headlamps swept across the bare black moonscape. When they had reached the highest plateau, a flat disc of rock with a diameter of around a hundred metres, the driver had headed for the far end, through clouds of drifting white smoke tinted red beside the Nyiragongo crater.

The driver switched off the ignition.

‘May I ask you something?’ Tony said. ‘Something I have given a lot of thought to over the last few weeks. How does it feel to know you’re going to die? I don’t mean how it feels to be afraid because you’re in danger. I’ve experienced that several times myself. But to be absolutely certain that, here and now, your life will cease to exist. Are you capable … of communicating that?’ Tony leaned forward a fraction to catch her eye. ‘Just take your time to find the right words.’

Kaja held his gaze. She had expected to panic. But it just didn’t come. Emotionally, she was like the stone in the terrain around them.

‘I don’t feel anything,’ she said.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The others were so frightened that they couldn’t even answer, could only babble. Charlotte Lolles was transfixed, as if in shock. Elias Skog couldn’t keep his language clean. My father cried. Is it mere chaos or is there some reflection? Do you feel sorrow? Remorse? Or relief that you don’t have to put up a fight any more? Look at Lene, for example. She’s given up and is going to her death like the meek lamb she is. How is it with you, Kaja? How much do you long to relinquish control?’

Kaja could see there was genuine curiosity in his eyes.

‘Let me ask you instead how much you longed to gain control, Tony,’ she said, scouring her mouth for moisture. ‘When you killed one person after the other, under the guidance of an invisible person who turned out to be a boy whose tongue you had cut off. Can you tell me that?’

Tony looked into the middle distance and slowly shook his head, as if answering another question.

‘I had no idea until reading on the Net that good old Skai had arrested someone from my village. Ole, no less. Who would have thought he had the guts?’

‘The hatred, don’t you mean?’

Tony took a pistol from his pocket. Checked his watch.

‘Harry’s late.’

‘He’ll come.’

Tony laughed. ‘But unfortunately for you minus a pulse. I liked Harry, by the way. Really. Fun to play with. I called him from Ustaoset – he had given me his number. Heard the voicemail say he would have no network coverage for a couple of days. That made me laugh. He was at the cabin in Håvass, of course, the old sly boots.’ Tony rested the pistol in one palm while stroking the black steel with the other. ‘I could see it in him when we met at the police station. That he was like me.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘Oh yes, he is. A driven man. A junkie. A man who does what he must to have what he wants, who walks over dead bodies if need be. Isn’t that right?’

Kaja didn’t answer.

Tony checked his watch again. ‘I reckon we’ll have to start without him.’

He’ll come, Kaja thought. I’ll have to play for time.

‘So you did a runner, did you?’ she said. ‘With your father’s passport and teeth?’

Tony looked at her.

She knew that he knew what she was doing. And also that he liked it. Telling her. How he had tricked them. They all did.

‘Do you know what, Kaja? I wish my father were here to see me now. Here, on the top of my mountain. To see me and understand me. Before I killed him. The way that Lene understands that she must die. The way I hope you understand too, Kaja.’