The Leopard by Jo Nesbø Read Free Book Online Page B

resembled. She resembled Rakel. They all resembled Rakel.

7
    Gallows
    ‘B UT I’ M SCARED , R ASMUS,’ SAID M ARIT O LSEN . ‘T HAT’S WHAT I am!’
    ‘I know,’ said Rasmus Olsen, in that muted, congenial voice that had accompanied and comforted his wife for more than twenty-five years through political decisions, driving tests, bouts of fury and the odd panic attack. ‘It’s just natural,’ he said, putting his arm round her. ‘You work hard, you have a lot on your mind. Your brain doesn’t have any spare capacity to shut out that kind of thought.’
    ‘That kind of thought?’ she said, turning to face him on the sofa. She had lost interest in the DVD they were watching – Love Actually – a long time before. ‘That kind of thought, that kind of rubbish, is that what you mean?’
    ‘The important thing is not what I think,’ he said, his fingertips poised to touch. ‘The important—’
    ‘—thing is what you think,’ she mimicked. ‘For Christ’s sake, Rasmus, you’ve gotta stop watching that Dr Phil show.’
    He released a silky smooth chuckle. ‘I’m just saying that you, as a member of Stortinget, can obviously ask for a bodyguard to accompany you if you feel threatened. But is that what you want?’
    ‘Mmm,’ she purred as his fingers began to massage the exact spot where she knew he knew she loved it. ‘What do you mean by what you want ?’
    ‘Give it some thought. What do you imagine is going to happen?’
    Marit Olsen gave it some thought. Closed her eyes and felt his fingers massaging calm and harmony into her body. She had met Rasmus when she had been working at the Norwegian Employment Service in Alta, in Finnmark. She had been elected as an official for NTL, a union for state employees, and they had sent her south on a training course to the Sørmarka conference centre. There a thin man with vivid blue eyes beneath a fastreceding hairline had approached her the first evening. He had talked in a way that was reminiscent of redemption-happy Christians at the youth club in Alta. Except that he was talking politics. He worked in the secretariat for the Socialist Party, helping MPs with practical office jobs, travel, the press and even, on the odd occasion, writing a speech for them.
    Rasmus had bought her a beer, asked if she wanted to dance and after four increasingly slow evergreen numbers with increasingly close physical contact had asked if she wanted to join him. Not in his room, but in the party.
    After returning home she had started going to party meetings in Alta, and in the evenings she and Rasmus had long telephone conversations about what they had done and thought that day. Of course, Marit had never said it aloud: that sometimes she thought the best time they had spent together was when they were two thousand kilometres apart. Then the Appointments Committee had rung, put her on a list and, hey presto, she was elected to Alta Town Council. Two years later she was the vice chairperson of Alta Socialist Party, the year after she was sitting on the County Council, and then there was another telephone call, and this time it was the Appointments Committee for Stortinget.
    And now she had a tiny office in Stortinget, a partner who helped her with her speeches, and prospects of climbing the ladder so long as everything went to plan. And she avoided blunders.
    ‘They’ll detail a policeman to keep an eye on me,’ she said. ‘And the press will want to know why a woman MP no one has ever heard of should be walking around with a bloody bodyguard at the taxpayer’s expense. And when they find out why – she suspected someone had been following her in the park – they will write that with that kind of reasoning every woman in Oslo will be asking for state-subsidised police protection. I don’t want any protection. Drop it.’
    Rasmus laughed silently and used his fingers to massage his approval.
    * * *
    The wind howled through the leafless trees in Frogner Park. A duck with