The Leopard(41)

‘I hate the sea,’ Bjørn said to Harry, who could just hear his colleague above the hacking sound of the two-stroke outboard motor. They slipped through the grey afternoon light in a channel between the two-metrehigh rushes. Crept past a pile of twigs that Harry assumed must have been a beaver’s nest and out through an avenue of mangrove-like trees.

‘This is a lake,’ Harry said. ‘Not the sea.’

‘Same shit,’ Bjørn said, shifting closer to the middle of the seat. ‘Give me inland, cow muck and rocky mountains.’

The channel widened and there it lay in front of them: Lake Lyseren. They chugged past islands and islets from which winter-abandoned cabins with black windows seemed to be staring at them through wary eyes.

‘Basic cabins,’ the officer said. ‘Here you’re free from the stress down on the gold coast where you have to compete with your neighbour for the biggest boat or the most attractive cabin extension.’ He spat into the water.

‘What’s the name of that TV comic from Ytre Enebakk?’ Bjørn shouted over the drone of the motor. ‘Cracked glasses and moped.’

The officer sent Holm a blank look and shook his head slowly.

‘The ropery,’ he said.

In front of the bow, right down by the lake, Harry saw an old wooden building, oblong in shape, standing alone at the foot of a steep slope, dense forest on both sides. Beside the building, steel rails ran down the mountainside and disappeared into the black water. The red paint was peeling off the walls with gaping spaces for windows and doors. Harry squinted. In the fading light it looked as if there was a person in white standing at a window staring at them.

‘Jeez, the ultimate haunted house,’ Bjørn laughed.

‘That’s what they say,’ said County Officer Skai, cutting the engine.

In the sudden silence they could hear the echo of Bjørn’s laughter from the other side and a lone sheep bell reaching them from far across the lake.

Kaja took the rope, jumped onto the shore and, being of a nautical bent herself, tied a half-hitch around a rotten green pole protruding between the water lilies.

The others got out of the boat, onto the huge rocks serving as a wharf. Then they entered through the doorway and found themselves in a deserted narrow, rectangular room smelling of tar and urine. It hadn’t been so easy to discern from the outside because the extremities of the building merged into the dense forest, but while the room was barely two metres across it must have been more than sixty metres from end to end.

‘They stood at opposite ends of the building and twined the rope,’ Kaja explained before Harry could ask.

In one corner lay three empty bottles and signs of attempts to light a fire. On the facing wall, a net hung in front of a couple of loose boards.

‘No one wanted to take over after Simonsen,’ Skai said, looking around. ‘It’s been empty ever since.’

‘What are the rails at the side of the building for?’ Harry asked.

‘Two things. To raise and lower the boat he used to collect timber. And to hold the sticks under water while they soaked. He tied the sticks to the iron carriage, which must be up in the boathouse. Then he cranked the carriage down under the water and wound it back up after a few weeks when the wood was ready. Practical fellow, Simonsen.’

They all gave a start at the sudden noise from the forest outside.

‘Sheep,’ the officer said. ‘Or deer.’

They followed him up a narrow wooden staircase to the first floor. An enormously long table stood in the centre of the room. The margins of the room were enshrouded in darkness. The wind blew in through the windows – with borders of jagged glass set in the frames – making a low whistling sound, and it caused the woman’s bridal veil to flap. She stood looking out over the lake. Beneath the head and torso was the skeleton: a black iron stand on wheels.

‘Simonsen used her as a scarecrow,’ Skai said, nodding towards the shop dummy.

‘Pretty creepy,’ Kaja said, taking up a position beside Skai and shivering inside her coat.

He cast a sideways glance, plus a crooked smile. ‘The kids round here were terrified of her. The adults said that at full moon she walked around the district chasing the man who had jilted her on her wedding day. And you could hear the rusty wheels as she approached. I grew up right behind here, in Haga, you see.’

‘Did you?’ asked Kaja, and Harry smothered a grin.

‘Yes,’ said Skai. ‘By the way, this was the only woman known to be in Simonsen’s life. He was a bit of a recluse. But he could certainly make rope.’

Behind them Bjørn Holm took down a coil of rope hanging from a nail.