Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

For a moment or two she weighed up the options: closing her eyes or springing into action. Then she pulled herself together and got to her feet. Took off her clothes and went into the shower. Afterwards she stood in front of the mirror and confirmed without a hint of self-satisfaction that the Hong Kong Chinese man was right: she was beautiful. This was not her opinion, it was as close to being a fact as beauty can be. The face with the high cheekbones, the pronounced raven-black but finely formed eyebrows above the almost childlike wide eyes with green irises that shone with the intensity of a mature young woman. The honey-brown hair, the full lips that seemed to be kissing each other in her somewhat broad mouth. The long, slim neck, the equally slim body with the small breasts that were no more than mounds, swells on a sea of perfect, though winter-pale, skin. The gentle curve of her hips. The long legs that persuaded two Oslo modelling agencies to make the trip to her school in Hokksund, only to have to accept her refusal with a rueful shake of the head. And what had pleased her most was when one of them said as he left: ‘OK, but remember, my dear: you are not a perfect beauty. Your teeth are small and pointed. You shouldn’t smile so much.’

After that she had smiled with a lighter heart.

Kaja put on a pair of khaki trousers, a thin waterproof jacket and floated weightlessly and soundlessly down to reception.

‘Chungking Mansion?’ the receptionist asked, unable to refrain from cocking an eyebrow, and pointed. ‘Kimberley Road, up to Nathan Road, then left.’

All hostels and hotels in Interpol member countries are legally obliged to register foreign guests, but when Kaja had rung the Norwegian ambassador’s secretary to check where the man she was looking for had last registered, the secretary had explained that Chungking Mansion was neither a hotel nor a mansion, in the sense of a wealthy residence. It was a collection of shops, takeaways, restaurants and probably more than a hundred classified and non-classified hostels with everything from two to twenty rooms spread over four large tower blocks. The rooms for rent could be characterised as everything from simple, clean and cosy to ratholes and one-star prison cells. And most important of all: at Chungking Mansion a man with modest demands of life could sleep, eat, live, work and propagate without ever leaving the anthill.

Kaja found the entrance to Chungking in Nathan Road, a busy shopping street with branded goods, polished shopfronts and tall display windows. She went in. To the cooking fumes from fast-food outlets, hammering from cobblers, radio broadcasts of Muslim prayer meetings and tired looks in used clothes shops. She flashed a quick smile at a bewildered backpacker with a Lonely Planet guidebook in his hand and frozen white legs sticking out of over-optimistic camouflage shorts.

A uniformed guard looked at the note Kaja showed him, said ‘Lift C’ and pointed down a corridor.

The queue in front of the lift was so long that she didn’t get in until the third attempt, when they were squeezed up tight in a creaky, juddering iron chest that made Kaja think of the gypsies who buried their dead vertically.

The hostel was owned by a turban-clad Muslim who immediately, and with great enthusiasm, showed her a tiny box of a room where by some miracle they had found space for a wall-mounted TV at the foot of the bed and a gurgling A/C unit above the bedhead. The owner’s enthusiasm waned when she interrupted his sales spiel to produce a photo of a man with his name spelt as it would have been in his passport, and asked where he was now.

On seeing the reaction, she hastened to inform him that she was his wife. The embassy secretary had explained to her that waving an official ID card around in Chungking would be, quote, counterproductive. And when Kaja added, for safety’s sake, that she and the man in the photo had five children together, the hostel owner’s attitude underwent a dramatic change. A young Western heathen who had already brought so many children into the world earned his respect. He expelled a heavy sigh, shook his head and said in mournful, staccato English, ‘Sad, sad, lady. They come and take his passport.’

‘Who did?’

‘Who? The Triad, lady. It’s always the Triad.’

Naturally enough, she was aware of the organisation, but she had some vague notion that the Chinese mafia primarily belonged to the world of cartoons and kung fu films.

‘Sit yourself down, lady.’ He quickly found a chair, onto which she slumped. ‘They were after him, he was out, so they took his passport.’

‘Passport? Why?’

He hesitated.

‘Please, I have to know.’

‘Your husband bet on horses, I am sorry to say.’

‘Horses?’

‘Happy Valley. Racecourse. It is an abomination.’

‘Does he owe money? To the Triad?’

He nodded and shook his head several times to confirm and regret, alternately, this fact of life.

‘And they took his passport?’

‘He will have to pay back the debt if he wants to leave Hong Kong.’

‘He can only get a new passport from the Norwegian embassy.’

The turban waggled from side to side. ‘Ah, you can get a false passport here in Chungking for eighty American dollars. But this is not the problem. The problem is Hong Kong is an island, lady. How did you get here?’

‘Plane.’

‘And how will you leave?’

‘Plane.’

‘One airport. Tickets. All names on computer. Many control points. Many at airport who get money from the Triad to recognise faces. Understand?’

She nodded slowly. ‘It’s difficult to escape.’

The hostel owner shook his head with a guffaw. ‘No, lady. It’s impossible to escape. But you can hide in Hong Kong. Seven million people. Easy to go underground.’

Lack of sleep was catching up on Kaja, and she closed her eyes. The owner must have misunderstood because he laid a consoling hand on her shoulder and mumbled, ‘There, there.’

He wavered, then leaned forward and whispered, ‘I think he still here, lady.’

‘Yes, I know he is.’

‘No, I mean here in Chungking. I see him.’

She raised her head.

‘Twice,’ he said. ‘At Li Yuan’s. He eat there. Cheap rice. Don’t tell anyone I said. Your husband is good man. But trouble.’ He rolled his eyes so that they almost disappeared into his turban. ‘Lots of trouble.’

Li Yuan’s comprised a counter, four plastic tables and a Chinese man who sent her an encouraging smile when after six hours, two portions of fried rice, three coffees and two litres of water she awoke with a jolt, lifted her head from the greasy table and looked at him.

‘Tired?’ he laughed, revealing an incomplete set of front teeth.

Kaja yawned, ordered her fourth cup of coffee and continued to wait. Two Chinese men came and sat at the counter without speaking or ordering. They didn’t even spare her a glance, for which she was glad. Her body was so stiff from sitting on the plane that pain shot through her whatever sedentary position she adopted. She rolled her head from side to side to try to stimulate circulation. Then backwards. Her neck cracked. She stared at the bluish-white neon tubes in the ceiling before lowering her head. And stared straight into a pale, hunted face. He had stopped in front of the closed steel shutters in the corridor and scanned Li Yuan’s tiny establishment. His gaze rested on the two Chinese men by the counter. Then he hurried on.

Kaja got to her feet, but one leg had gone to sleep and gave way under her weight. She grabbed her bag and limped after the man as fast as she could.

‘Come back soon,’ she heard Li Yuan shout after her.

He had looked so thin. In the photographs he had been a broad, tall figure, and on the TV talk show he had made the chair he was sitting on look like it had been manufactured for pygmies. But she had not the slightest doubt it was him: the dented, shaven skull, the prominent nose, the eyes with the spider’s web of blood vessels and the alcoholic’s washedout, pale blue irises. The determined chin with the surprisingly gentle, almost beautiful mouth.