‘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.
