The Leopard(71)

‘That’s right,’ Harry said.

The officer laughed and turned. ‘Tough guy, eh! Are you a hard man, Hole? I saw you were a policeman when you arrived.’

‘Oh?’

‘You examined me with the same circumspection that I examined you.’

Harry shrugged.

The door opened. The other officer was back accompanied by a woman dressed like a secretary with clickety-clack heels and glasses on the tip of her nose.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in impeccable English, clocking Harry. ‘I’ve checked the date. There was no Adele Vetlesen on that flight.’

‘Mm. Could there be a mistake?’

‘Unlikely. Landing cards are filed by date. The flight you’re talking about is a thirty-seven-seater DH8 from Entebbe. It didn’t take long to check.’

‘Mm. If that’s the case, may I ask you to check something else for me?’

‘You may ask of course. What is it?’

‘Could you see if any other foreign women arrived on that flight?’

‘And why should I do that?’

‘Because Adele Vetlesen was booked onto that flight. So either she used a false passport here—’

‘I doubt that very much,’ the passport officer said. ‘We check all the passport photos very carefully before they are scanned by a machine that matches the passport number against the international ICAO register.’

‘—or someone else was travelling in Adele Vetlesen’s name and then used their own, genuine passport to pass through here. Which is more than possible, as passport numbers are not checked before passengers board the aircraft.’

‘True,’ the chief passport official said, pulling at his beret. ‘Airline staff only make sure the name and photo match more or less. For that purpose you can have a false passport made for fifty dollars anywhere in the world. It’s only when you get off the plane at your final destination and have to go through checks that your passport number is matched and false passports are revealed. But the question is the same: why should we help you, Mr Hole? Are you on an official mission here and have you got the papers to support that?’

‘My official mission was in the Congo,’ Harry lied. ‘But I found nothing there. Adele Vetlesen is missing, and we fear she may have been murdered by a serial killer who has already murdered at least three other women, among them a government MP. Her name is Marit Olsen – you can verify that on the Net. I’m conscious that the procedure now is for me to return home and go through formal channels, as a result of which we will lose several days and give the killer a further head start. And time to kill again.’

Harry saw that his words had made some impression on them. The woman and the chief official conferred, and the woman marched off again.

They waited in silence.

Harry looked at his watch. He hadn’t checked in on the flight yet.

Six minutes had passed when they heard the click-clack heels coming closer.

‘Eva Rosenberg, Juliana Verni, Veronica Raul Gueno and Claire Hobbes.’ She spat out the names, straightened her glasses and put four landing cards on the table in front of Harry before the door slammed behind her. ‘Not many European women come here,’ she said.

Harry’s eyes ran down the cards. All of them had given Kigali hotels as their address, but not the Gorilla Hotel. He looked at their home addresses. Eva Rosenberg had given an address in Stockholm.

‘Thank you,’ Harry said, noting down the names, addresses and passport numbers on the back of a taxi receipt he found in his jacket pocket.

‘I regret that we can’t be of any more assistance,’ the woman said, pushing her glasses up again.

‘Not at all,’ Harry said. ‘You’ve been a great help. Really.’

‘And now, Mr Policeman,’ said the tall, thin officer, with a smile that lit up his black-as-night face.

‘Yes?’ Harry said in anticipation, ready to take out the coffee-brown envelope.

‘Now it’s time we got you checked in on the flight to Nairobi.’

‘Mm,’ Harry said, looking at his watch. ‘I may have to catch the next one.’

‘Next one?’

‘I have to go back to the Gorilla Hotel.’

Kaja was sitting in the Norwegian railway’s so-called ‘comfort coach’ which – apart from free newspapers, two cups of free coffee and a socket for your laptop – meant that you sat like sardines in a can instead of in the almost empty economy areas. So when her phone rang and she saw it was Harry, that was where she hurried.

‘Where are you?’ Harry asked.

‘On the train. Passing Kongsberg right this minute. And you?’