The Leopard

  ‘By which I mean no,’ the voice said.

  A door slammed.

  ‘Hello? Hello? Are you there?’

  She fumbled her way forward and found a door. Opened it before terror managed to gain a foothold and she was in another darkened stairwell. She glimpsed light further up and climbed three steps at a time. The light was coming through the glass of a swing door, and she pushed it open. Entered a plain, bare corridor in which attempts to patch the peeling plaster had been given up, and damp steamed off the walls like bad breath. Leaning against the wall were two men with cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths, and a sweet stench drifted towards her. They appraised her through sluggish eyes. Too sluggish to move, she hoped. The smaller of the two was black, of African origin, she assumed. The big one was white and had a pyramid-shaped scar on his forehead, like a warning triangle. She had read in The Police magazine that Hong Kong had almost thirty thousand officers on the street and was reckoned to be the world’s safest metropolis. But then that was on the street.

  ‘Looking for hashish, lady?’

  She shook her head, tried to flash a confident smile, tried to act as she had advised young girls to do when she had been going around schools: to look like someone who knew where she was going, not like someone who had lost the flock. Like prey.

  They returned her smile. The only other doorway in the corridor had been bricked up. They took their hands out of their pockets, the cigarettes from their mouths.

  ‘Looking for fun then?’

  ‘Wrong door, that’s all,’ she said, turning to go back out. A hand closed around her wrist. Her terror tasted like tinfoil in her mouth. In theory, she knew how to get out of this. Had practised it on a rubber mat in an illuminated gym with an instructor and colleagues gathered around her.

  ‘Right door, lady. Right door. Fun is this way.’ The breath in her face stank of fish, onions and marijuana. In the gym there had only been one adversary.

  ‘No, thanks,’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady.

  The black man sidled up, grabbed her other wrist and said in a voice that slipped in and out of falsetto: ‘We’ll show you the way.’

  ‘Only there’s not much to see, is there.’

  All three turned towards the swing door.

  She knew it said one ninety-two in his passport, but standing there in the doorway that had been built to Hong Kong measurements he looked at least two ten. And twice as wide as only an hour ago. His arms hung down by his sides, slightly away from his body, but he didn’t move, didn’t stare, didn’t snarl, just looked calmly at the white man and repeated: ‘Is there, jau-ye?’

  She felt the white man’s fingers tense and relax around her wrist, noticed the black man shift weight from foot to foot.

  ‘Ng-goy,’ said the man in the doorway.

  She felt their hands hesitantly let go.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, lightly taking her arm.

  She felt the heat in her flushed cheeks as they walked out. Heat produced by tension and shame. Shame at how relieved she was, how tardily her brain had functioned in the situation, how willing she had been to let him sort out two harmless drug dealers who only wanted to ruffle her a little.

  He accompanied her up two floors and in through the swing door where he positioned her in front of a lift, pressed the arrow for down, stood beside her and focused his gaze on the luminous figure 11 above the lift door. ‘Guest workers,’ he said. ‘They’re alone and bored.’

  ‘I know,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘Press G for ground floor, turn right and go straight ahead until you’re in Nathan Road.’

  ‘Please listen to me. You are the only person in Crime Squad with the appropriate expertise to catch serial killers. After all, it was you who caught the Snowman.’

  ‘True,’ he said. She registered a movement in his eyes, and he ran a finger along his jaw under his right ear. ‘And then I resigned.’

  ‘Resigned? Went on leave, you mean.’

  ‘Resigned. As in finished.’

  It was only now that she noticed the unnatural protrusion of his right jawbone.

  ‘Gunnar Hagen says that when you left Oslo he agreed to give you leave until further notice.’

  The man smiled, and Kaja saw how it changed his face completely. ‘That’s because Hagen can’t get it into his head . . .’ He paused, and the smile vanished. His eyes were directed towards the light above the lift that now read ‘5’. ‘Nonetheless, I don’t work for the police any longer.’

  ‘We need you . . .’ She inhaled. Knew that she was skating on thin ice, but that she had to act before she lost sight of him again. ‘And you need us.’

  His eyes shifted back to her. ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘You owe the Triad money. You buy dope off the street in a baby’s bottle. You live . . .’ She grimaced. ‘… here. And you don’t have a passport.’

  ‘I’m enjoying myself here. What do I need a passport for?’

  The lift pinged, the door creaked open, and hot, stinking air rose off the bodies inside.

  ‘I’m not going!’ Kaja said, louder than she had anticipated, and noticed the faces looking at her with a mixture of impatience and obvious curiosity.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ he said, placing a hand in the middle of her back and pushing her gently but firmly inside. She was immediately surrounded by human bodies closing in on her and making it impossible for her to move or even turn. She twisted her head in time to see the doors gliding to.

  ‘Harry!’ she shouted.

  But he had already gone.

  4

  Sex Pistols

  THE OLD HOSTEL OWNER PLACED A THOUGHTFUL FINGER ON his forehead under the turban and looked at her long and hard. Then he picked up the telephone and dialled a number. He said a few words in Arabic and rang off. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Maybe, maybe not.’

  Kaja smiled and nodded.

  They sat observing each other from either side of the narrow table that served as a reception desk.

  Then the phone rang. He picked it up, listened and put it down without a word.

  ‘One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,’ he said.

  ‘One hundred and fifty?’ she repeated in utter disbelief.

  ‘Hong Kong dollars, lady.’

  Kaja did some mental arithmetic. That would be about one hundred and thirty thousand Norwegian kroner. Roughly double what she had been authorised to pay.

  It was past midnight, and almost forty hours since she had slept, when she found him. She had trawled H-Block for three hours. Had sketched out a map of the interior as she moved through hostels, cafes, snack bars, massage clubs and prayer rooms until she arrived at the cheapest rooms and dormitories where the imported labour force from Africa and Pakistan stayed, those who had no rooms, just cubicles without doors, without TVs, without air conditioning and without a private life. The black night porter who admitted Kaja looked at the photo for a long time and at the hundred-dollar bill she was holding for even longer before he took it and pointed to one of the cubicles.

  Harry Hole, she thought. Gotcha.

  He was lying supine on a mattress, breathing almost without sound. He had a deep frown on his forehead, and the prominent jawbone under his right ear was even more defined now that he was asleep. From the other cubicles she heard men coughing and snoring. Water dripped from the ceiling, hitting the brick floor with deep, disgruntled sighs. The opening to the cubicle let in a cold, blue stripe of light from the neon tubes in reception. She saw a clothes cupboard in front of the window, a chair and a plastic bottle of water beside the mattress. There was a bitter-sweet smell, like burned rubber. Smoke rose from a cigarette end in an ashtray beside the baby’s bottle on the floor. She sat down on the chair and discovered that he was holding something in his hand. A greasy, yellowish-brown clump. Kaja had seen enough hash the year she worked in a patrol car to know this was not hash.

  It was almost two o’clock when he awoke.

/>   She heard a tiny change in the rhythm of his breathing, and then the whites of his eyes shone in the dark.

  ‘Rakel?’ He whispered it. And went back to sleep.

  Half an hour later he opened his eyes wide, gave a start, cast around and made a grab for something under the mattress.

  ‘It’s me,’ Kaja whispered. ‘Kaja Solness.’

  The body at her feet stopped in mid-movement. Then it collapsed and fell back on the mattress.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he groaned, his voice still thick with sleep.

  ‘Fetching you,’ she said.

  He chuckled, his eyes closed. ‘Fetching me? Still?’

  She took out an envelope, leaned forward and held it up in front of him. He opened one eye.

  ‘Plane ticket,’ she said. ‘To Oslo.’

  The eye closed again. ‘Thanks, but I’m staying here.’

  ‘If I can find you, it’s only a matter of time before they do, too.’

  He didn’t answer. She waited while listening to his breathing and the water that dripped and sighed. Then he opened his eyes again, rubbed under his right ear and hoisted himself up onto his elbows.

  ‘Got a smoke?’

  She shook her head. He threw off the sheet, stood up and went over to the cupboard. He was surprisingly pale considering he had been living in a subtropical climate, and so lean that his ribs showed, even on his back. His build suggested that at one time he had been athletic, but now the wasted muscles appeared as sharp shadows under the white skin. He opened the cupboard. She was amazed to see that his clothes lay folded in neat piles. He put on a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, the ones he had been wearing the day before, and with some difficulty tugged a creased packet of cigarettes out from his pocket.

  He slipped into a pair of flip-flops and edged past her with a click of his lighter.

  ‘Come on,’ he said softly as he passed. ‘Supper.’

  It was nearly three in the morning. Grey iron shutters had been pulled down over shops and restaurants in Chungking. Apart from at Li Yuan’s.

  ‘So how did you wind up in Hong Kong?’ Kaja asked, looking at Harry, who, in an inelegant but effective way, was shovelling shiny glass noodles into his mouth from the white soup bowl.

  ‘I flew. Are you cold?’

  Kaja automatically removed her hands from under her thighs. ‘But why here?’

  ‘I was on my way to Manila. Hong Kong was only supposed to be a stopover.’

  ‘The Philippines. What were you going to do there?’

  ‘Throw myself into a volcano.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Well, which ones can you name?’

  ‘None. I’ve just read that there are loads of them. Aren’t some of them in … er, Luzon?’

  ‘Not bad. There are eighteen volcanoes in all, and three of them are in Luzon. I wanted to go up Mount Mayon. Two and a half thousand metres. A stratovolcano.’

  ‘Volcano with steep sides formed by layer upon layer of lava after an eruption.’

  Harry stopped chewing and looked at her. ‘Any eruptions in modern times?’

  ‘Loads. Thirty?’

  ‘Records say forty-seven since 1616. Last one in 2002. Can be held to account for at least three thousand murders.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The pressure built up.’

  ‘I mean to you.’

  ‘I’m talking about me.’ She fancied she saw a hint of a smile. ‘I exploded and started drinking on the plane. I was ordered off in Hong Kong.’

  ‘There are several flights to Manila.’

  ‘I realised that apart from volcanoes Manila has nothing that Hong Kong doesn’t have.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as distance from Norway.’

  Kaja nodded. She had read the reports on the Snowman case.

  ‘And most importantly,’ he said, pointing with a chopstick, ‘Hong Kong’s got Li Yuan’s glass noodles. Try them. That’s reason enough to apply for citizenship.’

  ‘That and opium?’

  It was not her style to be so direct, but she knew she would have to swallow her natural shyness. This was her one shot at achieving what she had come to do.

  He shrugged and concentrated on the noodles.

  ‘Do you smoke opium regularly?’

  ‘Irregularly.’

  ‘And why do you do that?’

  He answered with food in his mouth. ‘So that I don’t drink. I’m an alkie. There, for example, is another advantage of Hong Kong compared with Manila. Lower sentences for dope. And cleaner prisons.’

  ‘I knew about your alcoholism, but are you a drug addict?’

  ‘Define drug addict.’

  ‘Do you have to take drugs?’

  ‘No, but I want to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To numb the senses. This sounds like a job interview for a job I don’t want, Solness. Have you ever smoked opium?’

  Kaja shook her head. She had tried marijuana a few times backpacking around South America but had not been particularly fond of it.

  ‘But the Chinese have. Two hundred years ago the British imported opium from India to improve the trade balance. They turned half of China into junkies just like that.’ He flicked the fingers of his free hand. ‘And when, sensibly enough, the Chinese authorities banned opium, the British went to war for their right to drug China into submission. Imagine Colombia bombing New York because the Americans confiscated a bit of cocaine on the border.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘I see it as my duty, as a European, to smoke some of the shit we have imported into this country.’

  Kaja could hear herself laughing. She really needed to get some sleep.

  ‘I was tailing you when you did the deal,’ she said. ‘I saw how you do it. There was money in the bottle when you put it down. And opium afterwards. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Mm,’ Harry said with a mouth full of noodles. ‘Have you worked at the Narc Unit?’

  She shook her head. ‘Why the baby’s bottle?’

  Harry stretched his arms above his head. The soup bowl in front of him was empty. ‘Opium stinks something awful. If you’ve got a ball of it in your pocket or in foil, the narco dogs can sniff you out even in a huge crowd. There is no money back on baby’s bottles, so no chance of some kid or some drunk nicking it during a handover. That has happened.’

  Kaja nodded slowly. He had started to relax, it was just a question of persisting. Anyone who hasn’t spoken their mother tongue for a while gets chatty when they meet a compatriot. It’s natural. Keep going.

  ‘You like horses?’

  He was chewing on a toothpick. ‘Not really. They’re so bloody moody.’

  ‘But you like betting on them?’

  ‘I like it, but compulsive gambling is not one of my vices.’

  He smiled, and again it struck her how his smile transformed him, made him human, accessible, boyish. And she was reminded of the glimpse of open sky she had caught over Melden Row.

  ‘Gambling is a poor winning strategy long term. But if you have nothing left to lose, it’s the only strategy. I bet everything I had, plus a fair bit I didn’t have, on one single race.’

  ‘You put everything you had on one horse?’

  ‘Two. A quinella. You pick out the two horses to come first and second, regardless which of the two is the winner.’

  ‘And you borrowed money from the Triad?’

  For the first time she saw astonishment in Harry’s eyes.

  ‘What makes a serious Chinese gangster cartel lend money to an opium-smoking foreigner who has nothing to lose?’

  ‘Well,’ Harry said, producing a cigarette, ‘as a foreigner you have access to the VIP box at Happy Valley racecourse for the first three weeks after your passport has been stamped.’ He lit his cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling fan, which was turning so slowly that the flies were taking rides on it. ‘There are dress codes, so I had a suit made. The first two weeks
were enough to give me a taste for it. I met Herman Kluit, a South African who earned himself a fortune in minerals in Africa. He taught me how to lose quite a lot of money in style. I simply loved the concept. The evening before race day in the third week Kluit invited me to dinner, at which he entertained the guests by exhibiting his collection of African torture instruments from Goma. And that was where I got insider info from Kluit’s chauffeur. The favourite for one of the races was injured, but this titbit was being kept secret because it was going to run anyway. The point was that it was such a clear favourite that a minus pool came into question, that is, it would be impossible to earn any money by betting on it. However, there was money to be earned by hedging your bets with several of the others. For example, with quinellas. But, of course, that would require quite a bit of capital if you were going to earn anything. I was given a loan by Kluit on the basis of my honest face. And a made-to-measure suit.’ Harry studied the glow of his cigarette and seemed to be smiling at the thought.

  ‘And?’ Kaja asked.

  ‘And the favourite won by six lengths.’ Harry shrugged. ‘When I explained to Kluit that I didn’t own a bean he seemed genuinely sorry and explained politely that, as a businessman, he was obliged to stick to his business principles. He assured me that these did not include the use of Congolese torture weapons, but quite simply selling debts to the Triad with a discount. Which, he conceded, was not a lot better. But in my case he would wait thirty-six hours before he sold so that I could get out of Hong Kong.’

  ‘But you didn’t go?’

  ‘Sometimes I’m a bit slow on the uptake.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  Harry opened his hands. ‘This. Chungking.’

  ‘Future plans?’

  Harry shrugged and went to stub out his cigarette. And Kaja was reminded of the record cover Even had shown her with the picture of Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols. And the music playing in the background, ‘No fu-ture, no fu-ture.’

  He stubbed out his cigarette. ‘You’ve heard what you need, Kaja Solness.’