The Leopard(5)
‘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.
She stumbled into Nathan Road. In the gleam of the neon light she caught sight of a leather jacket towering above the crowd. He didn’t appear to be walking fast, yet she had to quicken her pace to keep up. From the busy shopping parade he turned off and she let the distance between them increase as they came into narrower, less populated streets. She registered a sign saying ‘Melden Row’. It was tempting to go and introduce herself, get it all over with. But she had decided to stick to the plan: to find out where he lived. It had stopped raining, and all of a sudden a scrap of cloud was drawn aside and the sky behind was high and velvet black, with glittering, pinhole stars.
After walking for twenty minutes he came to a sudden halt at a corner, and Kaja was afraid she had been rumbled. However, he didn’t turn round, just took something from his jacket pocket. She stared in amazement. A baby’s bottle?
He disappeared round the corner.
Kaja followed and came into a large, open square packed with people, most of them young. At the far end of the square, above wide glass doors, shone a sign written in English and Chinese. Kaja recognised the titles of some of the new films she would never see. Her eyes found his leather jacket, and she saw him put the bottle down on the low plinth of a bronze sculpture representing a gallows with an empty noose. He continued past two fully occupied benches and took a seat on the third where he picked up a newspaper. After about twenty seconds he got up again, walked back to the sculpture, grabbed the bottle as he passed, put it into his pocket and returned the same way he had come.