The Leopard(34)

He tore the plastic wrapping from the carton. Took out the bottom pack. You could hardly see that the seal on the pack had been broken. It was a fact that women like Kaja were never checked at customs. He opened the pack and pulled out the tinfoil. Unfolded it and looked at the brown ball. Inhaled the sweet smell.

Then he set about his preparations.

Harry had seen all possible ways of smoking opium, everything from the complicated, ritual procedures of opium dens, which were nothing less than Chinese tea ceremonies, through all sorts of pipe arrangements to the simplest: lighting the ball, placing a straw over it and inhaling for all you were worth as the goods literally went up in smoke. Whatever method you chose, the principle was the same: to get the substances – morphine, thebaine, codeine and a whole bouquet of other chemical friends – into your bloodstream. Harry’s method was straightforward. He taped a steel spoon to the end of the table, placed a tiny particle of the lump, no bigger than the head of a matchstick, in the spoon and heated it with a lighter. When the opium began to burn he held an ordinary glass over it to collect the smoke. Then he put a drinking straw, one with a flexible joint, in the glass and inhaled. Harry noted that his fingers worked without a hint of a tremble. In Hong Kong he had regularly kept a check on his dependency level; seen in that light, he was the most disciplined drug abuser he knew. He could predetermine his dose of alcohol and stop there, however plastered he was. In Hong Kong he had cut out opium for a week or two and only taken a couple of analgesic tablets, which would not have prevented withdrawal symptoms from materialising anyway, but which perhaps had a psychological effect since he knew they contained a tiny amount of morphine. He was not hooked. On drugs in general he was, but on opium in particular: no. Though it is a sliding scale of course. Because while he was taping the spoon into position he could already feel the dogs calming down. For they knew now, knew they would soon be fed.

And could be at peace. Until the next time.

The burning hot lighter was already scorching Harry’s fingers. On the table were the straws from McDonald’s.

A minute later he had taken the first drag.

The effect was immediate. The pains, even those he didn’t know he had, vanished. The associations, the images, appeared. He would be able to sleep tonight.

Bjørn Holm couldn’t sleep.

He had tried reading Escott’s Hank Williams: The Biography, about the country legend’s short life and long death, listening to a bootleg Lucinda Williams CD of a concert in Austin and counting Texas longhorns, but to no avail.

A dilemma. That’s exactly what it was. A problem without a proper solution. Forensics Officer Holm hated that type of problem.

He huddled up on the slightly too short sofa bed that had been among the goods he’d brought from Skreia, along with his vinyl collection of Elvis, the Sex Pistols, Jason & the Scorchers, three hand-sewn suits from Nashville, an American Bible and a dining-room suite that had survived three generations of Holms. But he couldn’t concentrate.

The dilemma was that he had made an interesting discovery while examining the rope with which Marit Olsen had been hung – or to be more precise, beheaded. It wasn’t a clue that would necessarily produce anything, but nonetheless the dilemma remained the same: would it be right to pass the information on to Kripos or to Harry? Bjørn Holm had identified the tiny shells on the rope during the time he was still working for Kripos. When he was talking to a freshwater biologist at the Biological Institute, Oslo University. But then Beate Lønn had transferred him to Harry’s unit before the report had been written and, sitting down at the computer tomorrow to write it, he would in fact be reporting to Harry.

OK, technically perhaps it wasn’t a dilemma, the information belonged to Kripos. Giving it to anyone else would be regarded as a dereliction of duty. And what did he owe Harry Hole actually? He had never given him anything but aggro. He was quirky and inconsiderate at work. Positively dangerous when on the booze. But on the level when sober. You could rely on him turning up and there would be no messing and no ‘you owe me’. An irksome enemy, but a good friend. A good man. A bloody good man. A bit like Hank, in fact.

Bjørn Holm groaned and rolled over to face the wall.

Stine woke with a start.

In the dark she heard a grinding sound. She rolled onto her side. The ceiling was dimly lit; the light came from the floor beside the bed. What was the time? Three o’clock in the morning? She stretched and grabbed her mobile phone.

‘Yes?’ she said with a voice that made her seem more sleepy than she was.

‘After the delta I was sick of snakes and mozzies, and me and the motorbike headed north along the Burmese coast to Arakan.’