76
Redefinition
‘What did you say?’ Harry exclaimed, pressing the phone harder to his ear as if the mistake were there.
‘I said the body under the snowmobile is not Tony Leike,’ Krongli said.
‘Who then?’
‘Odd Utmo. A local recluse and local guide. He always wears the same red flannel shirt. And it’s his snowmobile. But it was the teeth that decided it. One single rotten stump of a tooth. God knows what happened to the rest of his teeth and the orthodontic brace.’
Utmo. Orthodontic brace. Harry remembered Kaja telling him about the guide who had driven her to Havass.
‘His fingers though,’ Harry said. ‘Aren’t they distorted?’
‘Sure. Utmo had terrible problems with arthritis, poor fella. It was Bellman who asked me to inform you directly. Wasn’t quite what you hoped for, eh, Hole?’
Harry pushed the chair from the desk. ‘At least not quite what I was expecting. Could it have been an accident, Krongli?’
But he knew the answer before it came. There had been moonlight the whole evening and night; even without headlamps the ravine would have been impossible to miss. Especially for a local guide. Especially when he was driving so slowly that he landed only three metres from a perpendicular drop of over seventy metres.
‘Forget it, Krongli. Tell me about the burns.’
The other end went silent for a bit before the answer came.
‘Arms and back. The skin on the arms was cracked and you can see the red flesh beneath. Parts of the back are charred. And a motif has been scorched in between the shoulder blades…’
Harry closed his eyes. Saw the pattern on the wood burner in the cabin. The smoking fragments of flesh.
‘… looks like a stag. Anything else, Hole? We have to start moving-’
‘No, that’s it, Krongli. Thanks.’
Harry rang off. Sat for a while deliberating. Not Tony Leike. Of course that changed the details, but not the bigger picture. Utmo was probably a victim of Altman’s avenging crusade, someone who had found himself in the way of something or other. They had Tony Leike’s finger, but where was the rest of his body? A thought struck Harry. If he was dead. In theory, Tony could be locked up somewhere. A place only Sigurd Altman knew.
Harry tapped in Skai’s number.
‘He refuses to say a single word to anyone,’ Skai said, masticating something or other. ‘Apart from his solicitor.’
‘Who is?’
‘Johan Krohn. Do you know him? Looks like a boy and-’
‘I know Johan Krohn very well.’
Harry rang Krohn’s office, was transferred and Krohn sounded half welcoming and half dismissive, the way a professional defence counsel should when a prosecuting authority calls. He listened to Harry. Then he answered.
‘I’m afraid not. Unless you have concrete evidence that can establish beyond doubt that my client is keeping someone locked up or otherwise exposing someone to danger by not revealing their whereabouts, I cannot allow you to speak to Altman at this juncture, Hole. These are serious allegations you’re making against him, and I don’t need to tell you that it is my job to protect his interests as far as I am able.’
‘Agreed,’ Harry said. ‘You didn’t need to tell me.’
They rang off.
Harry looked out of the window onto the city centre. The chair was good, no doubt about that. But his eyes found the familiar glass building in Gronland.
Then he dialled another number.
Katrine Bratt was as happy as a lark, and twittered like one, too.
‘I’m going to be discharged in a couple of days,’ she said.
‘I thought you were there of your own free will.’
‘Yes I am, but I have to be formally discharged. I’m looking forward to it. They’ve offered me a desk job at the station when my sick leave runs out.’
‘Good.’
‘Anything special you want?’
Harry explained.
‘So you’ll have to find Tony Leike without Altman’s help?’
‘Yup.’
‘Any ideas where I can start?’
‘Just one. Right after Tony went missing we checked he hadn’t stayed anywhere around Ustaoset. Thing is, I’ve checked recent years a bit more closely, and he’s almost never registered at accommodation anywhere in Ustaoset, a couple of Tourist Association cabins, that’s all. And that’s weird because he’s been up there a lot.’
‘Perhaps he was freeloading at the cabins, not registering or paying.’
‘He’s not the type,’ Harry said. ‘I wonder if Tony has a cabin or suchlike up there no one knows anything about.’
‘OK. Anything else?’
‘No. Yes – see what you can find out about Odd Utmo’s activities over the last few days.’
‘Are you still single, Harry?’
‘What sort of a bloody question’s that?’
‘You sound less single.’
‘Do I?’
‘You do. But it suits you.’
‘Does it?’
‘Since you ask, no.’
Aslak Krongli straightened his stiff back and looked up the scree.
It was one of the men in the search party who had called, and he was shouting again now, obviously excited. ‘Over here!’
Aslak uttered a low curse. The crime scene officers had finished, and the snowmobile and Odd Utmo had been hoisted to the top. It was complicated and time-consuming work as the only possible access to the scree was by rope, and even that was hard enough.
In the lunch break one man had told them something a maid at the hotel had whispered into his ear in confidence: there were bloodstains on the sheets in the room occupied by Rasmus Olsen, the husband of the dead woman MP, when he checked out. At first, she had thought it was menstrual blood, but then she had heard that Rasmus Olsen had been on his own and his wife had been at the Havass cabin.
Krongli had answered that he must have had a local girl in his room or met his wife the morning she arrived in Ustaoset and they had made up in bed. The man had mumbled it was not certain it was menstrual blood.
‘Over here!’
What a lot of hassle. Aslak Krongli wanted to go home. Dinner, coffee, sleep. Put this whole shitty case behind him. The money he had owed in Oslo was paid, and he would never go there again. Never go back down into the quagmire. It was a promise he would keep this time.
They had used a dog to be sure they found all the bits of Utmo in the snow, and it was the dog that had leapt
