Jo Nesbo - The Leopard

She looked at him. There was something severe, ascetic, about him, yet this was contradicted by the amusement dancing in his eyes, saying that you didn’t need to take everything so seriously. Or to be more exact: that he didn’t give a flying fuck.

‘Wait.’ Kaja opened her bag and took out a small, red booklet, passed it to him and observed the reaction. Saw incredulity spread across his face as he flicked through it.

‘Shit, looks just like my passport.’

‘It is.’

‘I doubt Crime Squad had the budget for this.’

‘Your debts have sunk in value,’ she lied. ‘I got a discount.’

‘I hope for your sake you did because I have no intention of returning to Oslo.’

Kaja subjected him to a long stare. Dreading it. There was no way out now. She was being forced to play her final card, the one Gunnar Hagen had said she should leave to last if the old bastard proved obdurate.

‘There is one more thing,’ Kaja said, bracing herself.

One of Harry’s eyebrows shot into the air; perhaps he detected something in her intonation.

‘It’s about your father, Harry.’ She could hear that she had instinctively used his first name. Convinced herself it was meant sincerely, not just for effect.

‘My father?’ He said this as if it came as something of a surprise that he had one.

‘Yes. We contacted him to find out if he knew where you were living. The long and short of it is he’s ill.’

She looked down at the table.

Heard him exhale. The drowsiness was back in his voice. ‘Seriously ill?’

‘Yes. And I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this.’

She still did not dare to raise her gaze. Ashamed. Waited. Listened to the machine-gun sounds of Cantonese on the TV behind Li Yuan’s counter. Swallowed and waited. She would have to sleep soon.

‘When does the plane go?’

‘At eight,’ she said. ‘I’ll pick you up in three hours outside here.’

‘I’ll get there under my own steam. There are a couple of things I have to fix first.’

He held out his palm. She questioned him with her eyes.

‘For that I need the passport. And then you should eat. Get a bit of meat on your bones.’

She wavered. Then she handed him the passport and the ticket.

‘I trust you,’ she said.

He sent her a blank look.

Then he was gone.

The clock above gate C4 in Chek Lap Kok Airport showed a quarter to eight, and Kaja had given up. Of course he wasn’t coming. It was a natural reflex for animals and humans to hide when hurt. And Harry Hole was definitely hurt. Reports on the Snowman case had described in detail the murders of all the women. But Gunnar Hagen had added what had not been included. How Harry Hole’s ex-partner, Rakel, and her son, Oleg, had ended up in the clutches of the deranged killer. How she and her son had fled the country as soon as the case was over. And how Harry had handed in his resignation and slung his hook. He had been more hurt than she had realised.

Kaja had already handed in her boarding card, was on her way up to the boarding bridge and beginning to consider the formulation of her report on the failed mission when she saw him jogging through the slanted sunbeams that penetrated the terminal building. He was carrying a plain holdall over his shoulder, a tax-free bag and was puffing away furiously at a cigarette. He stopped at the gate. But instead of giving the waiting personnel his boarding card he put down his bag and sent Kaja a despairing look.

She went back to the gate.

‘Problems?’ she asked.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Can’t come.’

‘Why not?’

He pointed to the tax-free bag. ‘Just remembered that in Norway the allowance per person is one carton of cigarettes. I’ve got two. So unless…’ He didn’t bat an eyelid.

She rolled her eyes heavenwards, trying not to look relieved. ‘Give it here.’

‘Thank you very much,’ he said, opening the bag, which she happened to notice did not contain any bottles, and passing her an opened carton of Camel with one pack already gone.

She walked in front of him to the plane so that he would not be able to see her smiles.

Kaja stayed awake long enough to catch take-off, Hong Kong disappearing beneath them and Harry’s eyes watching the trolley as it approached fitfully with its joyful clink of bottles. And him closing his eyes and answering the stewardess with a barely audible ‘No, thank you.’

She wondered whether Gunnar Hagen was right, whether the man beside her was really what they needed.

Then she was gone, unconscious, dreaming that she was standing in front of a closed door. She heard a lone, frozen bird-call from the forest and it sounded so strange because the sun was shining high in the sky. She opened the door…

She woke with her head lolling on his shoulder and dried saliva at the corners of her mouth. The captain’s voice announced that they were approaching the runway at London Heathrow.

Marit Olsen liked to ski in the mountains. But she hated jogging. She hated her wheezing gasps after only a hundred metres, the tremor-like vibrations in the ground as she planted her foot, the slightly bemused looks from walkers and the images that appeared when she saw herself through their eyes: the quivering chins, the flab that bounced around in the stretched tracksuit and the helpless, open-mouthed, fish-out-of-water expression she herself had seen on very overweight people training. That was one of the reasons she scheduled her three runs per week in Frogner Park for ten o’clock at night: the place was as good as deserted. The people who were there saw as little as possible of her as she puffed her way through the pitch dark between the few lamps illuminating the paths which criss-crossed Oslo’s largest park. And of those few who saw her there were fewer who recognised the Socialist MP for Finnmark. Forget ‘recognised’. There were few people who had ever seen Marit Olsen. When she spoke – usually on behalf of her home region – she did not attract the attention that others, her more photogenic colleagues, did. In addition, she had not said or done anything wrong in the course of the two sessions she had been sitting as a Stortinget representative. At least that was how she explained it to herself. The Finnmark Dagblad editor’s explanation, that she was a political lightweight, was no more than malicious wordplay on her physical appearance. The editor had not, however, ruled out the possibility that one day she might be seen in a Socialist government, as she fulfilled the most telling requirements: she was not educated, not male and not from Oslo.

Well, he might have been right that her strengths did not lie in large, complicated castles in the air. But she had a common touch, she was folksy enough to know the opinions of ordinary men and women, and she could be their voice here among all the self-centred, self-satisfied voters in the capital. For Marit Olsen shot from the hip. That was her real qualification, that was what had taken her to where she was, after all. With her verbal intelligence and wit – which southerners liked to call ‘northern Norwegian’ and ‘gritty’ – she was a sure winner in the few debates in which she had been allowed to participate. It was just a question of time before they would have to take note of her. So long as she could get rid of these kilos. Surveys proved that people had less confidence in overweight public figures; they were subconsciously perceived to be lacking in self-control.

She came to an incline, clenched her teeth and slowed her pace, went into what seemed very much like a walk, if she was honest. Power-walk. Yes, that’s what it was. The march towards power. Her weight was decreasing, her eligibility for office increasing.