The Eye Of The Leopard by Henning Mankell

lies there before jumping down to the ground.
    He looks at the bridge and knows he has conquered it. Not
as some external enemy, but as an enemy within himself. He
wipes off his face, flexes his fingers to get the feeling back, and
sees Sture come walking across the bridge with his jacket in his
hand.
    'You forgot to piss,' says Sture.
    Did he? No, he didn't! Now he knows where the sudden
warmth came from up on the cold steel span. It was his body
giving way. He points at the dark patch on his trousers.
    'I didn't forget,' he says. 'Look here! Or do you want to smell it?'
    Then comes his revenge.
    'It's your turn now,' he says, sitting down on his jacket.
    But Sture has already prepared his escape. When he realised
that Hans would make it down from the bridge span without
falling into the river, he searched feverishly for a way to get out
of it.
    'I will,' he replies. 'But not now. I didn't say when.'
    'When will you do it?' asks Hans.
    'I'll let you know.'
    They head home in the spring evening. Hans has forgotten
all about the flowers. There are plenty of flowers, but only one
bridge span ...
    The silence grows between them. Hans wants to say something,
but Sture is lost in his own thoughts and impossible to
reach. They part quickly outside the courthouse gate ...
    The last day of school comes with a light, hovering fog that
rapidly thins and vanishes in the sunrise. The schoolrooms
smell newly scrubbed, and Headmaster Gottfried has been
sitting in his room since five in the morning preparing his
commencement address for the pupils he will now be sending
out into the world. He is cautious with the vermouth this
morning, so filled is he with melancholy and reflection. The
last day of the school year is a reminder of his own mortality
in the midst of all the effervescent anticipation that his pupils
feel ...
    At seven-thirty he walks out on the steps. He sincerely hopes
he won't see a pupil arrive without a relative. Nothing makes him
so upset as to see a child arrive alone on the last day of school.
    At eight o'clock the school bell rings and the classrooms are
brimming with expectant silence. Headmaster Gottfried walks
down the corridor to visit all the classes. Schoolmaster Törnkvist
appears before him and announces that a pupil is missing from
the commencement class. Sture von Croona, the son of the district
judge. Headmaster Gottfried looks at his watch and decides to
ring the district judge.
    But not until it's time to march over to the church does he
hurry into his office and ring the district court. His hands are
sweaty and no matter how he tries to tell himself that there will
be an explanation, he feels very uneasy ...
    Sture left in plenty of time that morning. Unfortunately his
mother couldn't go with him because she was struck by a bad
migraine. Of course Sture went to school, says the judge over the
telephone.
    Headmaster Gottfried hurries to the church. The last children
are already on their way into the vestibule with their parents
and he stumbles and practically runs as he tries to understand
what could have happened to Sture von Croona.
    But it isn't until he is holding in his hand the prize book that
is intended for Sture that he seriously begins to fear that something
might have happened.
    At the same moment he sees the doors to the vestibule
cautiously being opened. Sture, he thinks, until he sees that
the father is standing there, District Judge von Croona.
    Headmaster Gottfried speaks about a deserved rest, the
mustering of strength and preparation for the coming year of
study; he calls on them to consider all of life's shifting situations,
and then there is no more. In a few minutes the church is empty.
    The district judge looks at him, but Headmaster Gottfried
can only shake his head. Sture did not show up for graduation.
    'Sture doesn't just disappear,' says the district judge. 'I'll contact
the police.'
    Headmaster Gottfried nods hesitantly and feels the torment
increasing.
    'Perhaps he still