Death In Oslo

II

The paintings were certainly not beautiful. He did not care for one in particular. It made him feel seasick. When he leant in close to the canvas, he saw that the wavy yellow and orange strokes had cracked into an infinite web of tiny fine lines, like camel dung in the baking sun. He was tempted to stroke his fingers over the grotesque, screaming mouth, but he didn’t. The painting had already been damaged in transport. The railings to the right of the agonised figure now had a sad fringe of threads that curved out into the room.

Getting someone to repair the large tear was out of the question, as it would require an expert. And the very reason that these paintings were now hanging in one of Abdallah al-Rahman’s more modest palaces on the outskirts of Riyadh was that he always avoided experts, whenever possible. He believed in honest handicraft. He had never seen the point in using a motor saw when a simple knife would do. The paintings had been stolen from a poorly secured museum in the Norwegian capital. He had no idea who had stolen them or who had handled them on their journey to this windowless gym. He didn’t need to know who these petty criminals were; they would no doubt end up in prison in their respective countries without being able to say anything of any real consequence as to the whereabouts of the paintings.

Abdallah al-Rahman preferred the female figure, though there was something repulsive about her too. Even after more than sixteen years in the West, ten of which he had spent in prestigious schools in England and the US, he was still disgusted by the woman’s bare breasts and the vulgar way in which she offered herself up, indifferent and licentious at the same time.

He turned away. All he had on was a pair of wide white shorts. He stepped back up on to the treadmill, barefoot, and picked up the remote control. The belt accelerated. Sound was coming from the speakers on either side of the colossal plasma TV screen on the opposite wall:

‘… protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’

He simply could not understand it. When Helen Lardahl Bentley had been a senator, he had been impressed by the woman’s courage. Having achieved the third highest grades in her year at the prestigious Vassar College, the short-sighted, plump Helen Lardahl had then fast-tracked to a PhD at Harvard. By the time she was forty, she was well married and had been made a partner in the sixth largest law firm in the US, which in itself demonstrated extraordinary competence and a healthy dose of cynicism and intelligence. She was also slim, blonde and without glasses, which was smart too.

But to stand as presidential candidate was downright arrogant.

And now she had been elected, blessed and sworn in.

Abdallah al-Rahman smiled as he increased the speed of the treadmill with one push of a button. The hard skin on the bottom of his feet burned on the rubber belt. He increased the speed again, right up to his pain threshold.

‘It’s just incredible,’ he groaned in perfect American, secure in the knowledge that no one in the whole world would hear him through the metre-thick walls and the triple-insulated door. ‘She actually thinks she’s got away with it!’