The strangest part about it was that it didn’t feel like a defeat, but a relief. Yes, I felt nothing less than invigorated.
‘Nevertheless, the client requires concrete information,’ I said. ‘Would you mind if we went on?’
Clas Greve closed his eyes, placed the tips of his fingers against each other and shook his head.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Then I would like you to tell me about your life.’
I made notes as Clas Greve told his story. He had grown up as the youngest of three. In Rotterdam. It was a rough seaport, but his family were among the privileged, his father had a top job with Philips. Clas and his two sisters had learned Norwegian during the long summers with their grandparents in a chalet in Son, on the Oslo fjord. He had had a strained relationship with his father, who considered the youngest child spoilt and lacking in discipline.
‘He was right,’ Greve smiled. ‘I was used to achieving good results at school and on the sports track without doing any work. By the time I was around sixteen everything bored me, and I began to visit “shady areas”. They’re not hard to find in Rotterdam. I had no friends there and didn’t make any new ones, either. But I did have money. So, systematically, I began to try out everything that was forbidden: alcohol, hash, prostitution, minor break-ins and bit by bit harder drugs. At home my father believed I had taken up boxing and that was why I returned with a bloated face, a runny nose and bloodshot eyes. I was spending more and more time in these places where people let me stay and above all left me in peace. I don’t know if I cared for this new life of mine. Those around me saw me as a weirdo, a lonely sixteen-year-old they couldn’t make out. And it was precisely this reaction that I liked. Gradually my lifestyle began to show in my school results, but I didn’t care. Eventually my father woke up. And perhaps I thought I finally had what I had always wanted: his attention. He spoke to me in calm, serious tones; I yelled back. Sometimes I could see he was on the point of losing control. I loved it. He sent me to my grandparents in Oslo where I did my last two years of school. How did you get on with your father, Roger?’
I jotted down three words with ‘self’. Self-assured. Self-deprecating. And Self-aware.
‘We didn’t speak much,’ I said. ‘We were quite different.’
‘Were? So he’s dead?’
‘My parents died in a road accident.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Diplomatic corps. The British Embassy. He met my mother in Oslo.’
Greve tilted his head and studied me. ‘Do you miss him?’
‘No. Is your father alive?’
‘Doubt it.’
‘Doubt it?’
Clas Greve took a deep breath and pressed his palms together. ‘He went missing when I was eighteen. He didn’t come home for dinner. At work they said he had left at six as usual. My mother rang the police. They immediately went into action as this was a time when left-wing terrorist groups were kidnapping rich business people in Europe. There hadn’t been any accidents on the motorway; no one by the name of Bernhard Greve had been taken to hospital. He wasn’t on any passenger lists and the car had not been registered anywhere. He was never found.’
‘What do you believe happened?’
‘I don’t believe anything. He may have driven to Germany, stayed at a motel under a false name, unable to shoot himself. So instead he could have pushed on in the middle of the night, come across a black lake in some forest and driven in. Or maybe he was kidnapped in the car park outside Philips, two men with pistols on the back seat. Put up a fight, got a bullet through his head. The car with Dad in was then driven to a breaker’s yard the same night, crushed into a metal pancake and cut up into tiny bits. Or perhaps he’s sitting somewhere with umbrella-adorned cocktail in one hand and call girl in the other.’
I tried to detect a reaction in Greve’s face, in his voice. Nothing. Either he had considered the thought too often, or else he was just a stony-hearted bastard. I didn’t know which I preferred.
‘You’re eighteen years old and living in Oslo,’ I said. ‘Your father’s gone missing. You’re a young man with problems. What do you do?’
‘I finished school with top grades and applied to join the Dutch Royal Marines.’
‘Commandos. The macho elite stuff, eh?’
‘Definitely.’
‘The sort where one in a hundred get in.’
‘That kind of thing. I was selected to take part in the preliminary tests where they spend a month systematically trying to break you down. And afterwards – if you survive – four years building you up.’
‘Sounds like something I’ve seen in films.’
‘Believe me, Roger, you won’t have seen this in a film.’
I looked at him. I believed him.
‘Later I joined the counter-terrorism unit BBE in Dorn. I was there for eight years. Got to see the whole world. Suriname, the Dutch West Indies, Indonesia, Afghanistan. Winter exercises in Harstad and Voss. I was taken prisoner and tortured during an anti-drugs campaign in Suriname.’
‘Sounds exotic. But you kept your mouth shut?’
Clas Greve smiled. ‘Shut? I chatted away like an old fishwife. Cocaine barons don’t play at interrogation.’
I leaned forward. ‘Really? What did they do?’
Greve observed me thoughtfully with a raised eyebrow before answering. ‘I don’t think you really want to know, Roger.’
I was a little disappointed, but nodded and sat back.
‘So your comrades were picked off or something like that?’
‘No. When they attacked the positions I had given away, of course everything had been moved on. I spent two months in a cellar living on rotten fruit and water infested with mosquito eggs. When the BBE carried me out I weighed forty-five kilos.’
I looked at him. Tried to imagine how they had tortured him. How he had taken it. And what the forty-five-kilo variant of Clas Greve had looked like. Different, of course. But not that much, not really.
‘Hardly surprising you stopped,’ I said.
‘That wasn’t why. The eight years in the BBE were the best in my life, Roger. First of all, it is in fact the stuff you’ve seen in films. The comradeship and the loyalty. But in addition there was what I learned, what came to be my craft.’
‘Which is?’
‘Finding people. In the BBE there was something called TRACK. A unit which specialised in tracking down people in all possible situations and places in the world. They were the ones who found me in the cellar. So I applied to the unit, was accepted, and there I learned everything. From ancient Indian tracking skills to interrogation methods and the most modern electronic tracking devices in existence. That was how I got to know HOTE. They had made a transmitter the size of a shirt button. The idea was to attach it to someone and then follow all his movements via a receiver, the kind you saw in spy films way back in the sixties, but which no one had actually managed to operate satisfactorily. Even HOTE’s shirt button turned out to be useless; it couldn’t take body sweat, temperatures below minus ten, and the signals only penetrated the thinnest of house walls. But the HOTE boss liked me. He had no sons of his own …’
‘And you had no father.’
Greve sent me an indulgent smile.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘After eight years in the military I started Engineering Studies in The Hague, paid for by HOTE. During my first year at HOTE we had made a tracking device which would function under extreme conditions. After five years I was number two in the command chain. After eight I took over as boss, and the rest you know.’
I leaned back in my chair and sipped my coffee. We were already there. We had a winner. I had even written it. Hired. Perhaps that was why I hesitated to go on, perhaps there was something inside me that said enough was enough. Or perhaps it was something else.
‘You look as if you would like to know more,’ Greve said.
I replied with an evasion. ‘You haven’t talked about your marriage.’
&nb
sp; ‘I’ve talked about the important things,’ said Greve. ‘Would you like to hear about my marriage?’
I shook my head. And decided to wind things up. But then fate intervened. In the form of Clas Greve himself.
‘Nice picture you’ve got,’ he said, turning to the wall behind him. ‘Is that an Opie?’
‘Sara Gets Undressed,’ I said. ‘A present from Diana. Do you collect art?’
‘I’ve made a small start.’
Something inside me still said no, but it was too late; I had already asked: ‘What’s the best thing you’ve got?’
‘An oil painting. I found it in a hidden room behind the kitchen. No one in the family knew my grandmother had it.’
‘Interesting,’ I said, feeling my heart give a curious jump. Must have been from the tension earlier in the day. ‘What’s the painting?’
He studied me for a long time. A tiny smile stole onto his mouth. He formed his lips to answer, and I had a strange premonition. A premonition that made my stomach recoil like a boxer’s abdominal muscles do when they see a blow coming. But his lips changed shape. And all the premonitions in the world could not have prepared me for his reply.
‘The Calydonian Boar Hunt.’
‘The …’ In two seconds my mouth had gone as dry as dust. ‘The Boar Hunt?’
‘Do you know anything about it?’
‘If you mean the picture by … by …’
‘Peter Paul Rubens,’ Greve completed.
I concentrated on one thing only. Keeping the mask. But something was flashing in front of me, like a scoreboard in the London fog in Loftus Road: QPR had just lobbed the ball into the top corner. Life had been turned upside down. We were on our way to Wembley.
PART TWO
Closing In
6
RUBENS
‘PETER PAUL RUBENS.’
For a moment it was as if all movement, all sound in the room had been frozen. The Calydonian Boar Hunt by Peter Paul Rubens. The sensible assumption would of course be that this was a reproduction, a famous, fantastically good forgery that in itself might be worth a million or two. However, there was something in his voice, something about the stress, something about this person, Clas Greve, that left me in no doubt. It was the original, the bloody hunting motif of Greek mythology, the fantasy animal pierced by Meleager’s spear, the painting that had been lost since the Germans plundered the gallery in Rubens’s home town of Antwerp in 1941 and which until the end of the war people had believed and hoped was in some Berlin bunker. I am no great art connoisseur, but for natural reasons I sometimes had occasion to go onto the Net and check the lists of missing and sought-after art. And this painting had headed the top ten for the last sixty years, eventually more as a curiosity since it was thought that it had been burned up together with half of the German capital. My tongue endeavoured to gather moisture from my palate.
‘You just found a painting by Peter Paul Rubens in a hidden room behind the kitchen in your deceased grandmother’s apartment?’
Greve nodded with a grin. ‘This sort of thing can happen, I have heard. Now, it’s not his best or his best-known painting, but it must be worth something.’
I nodded without speaking. Fifty million? A hundred? At least. Another of Rubens’s rediscovered paintings, The Massacre of the Innocents, had gone for fifty million at an auction just a few years ago. Pounds sterling. Over half a billion kroner. I needed water.
‘By the way, it wasn’t a complete bolt out of the blue that she had hidden art,’ Greve said. ‘You see, my grandmother was very beautiful when she was young, and like almost all of Oslo high society she fraternised with the top German officers during the Occupation. Especially with one of them, a colonel who was interested in art, and who she often told me about when I lived here. She said he’d given her some paintings to hide for him until the war was over. Unfortunately he was executed by members of the Resistance in the last days of the hostilities, people who, ironically enough, had drunk his champagne when times had been better for the Germans. In fact, I didn’t believe most of my grandmother’s stories. Right up until the Polish builders found this door behind the shelving in the maid’s room inside the kitchen.’
‘Fantastic,’ I whispered involuntarily.
‘Isn’t it? I haven’t checked if it is the original yet, but …’
But it is, I thought. German colonels didn’t collect reproductions.
‘Your builders didn’t see the picture?’ I asked.
‘Yes, they did. But I doubt they knew what it was.’
‘Don’t say that. Is there an alarm in the flat?’
‘I hear what you’re saying. And the answer is yes. All the flats in the block use the same security company. And none of the builders has a key since they only work between eight and four in accordance with the house rules. And when they’re there, I’m generally with them.’
‘I think you should continue to do that. Do you know which company the block uses?’
‘Trio something or other. In fact, I was thinking of asking your wife if she knows anyone who can help me to determine whether it’s an original Rubens or not. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to about this. I hope you won’t mention it to anyone.’
‘Of course not. I’ll ask her and ring you back.’
‘Thank you, I’d appreciate that. For the time being, I only know that if it is genuine, it’s not one of his best-known pictures.’
I flashed a fleeting smile. ‘Such a shame. But back to the job. I like to strike while the iron is hot. Which day could you meet Pathfinder?’
‘Any day you wish.’
‘Good.’ My mind whirled as I looked down at my diary. Builders there from eight to four. ‘It suits Pathfinder best if they can come into Oslo after working hours. Horten’s a good hour’s drive away, so if we find a day this week at about six, would that be alright?’ I said it as lightly as I could, but my off-key tone grated.
‘Fine,’ said Greve, who didn’t seem to have picked up anything. ‘As long as it’s not tomorrow, that is,’ he added, getting to his feet.
‘That would be too short notice for them, anyway,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring the number you gave me.’
I escorted him out to reception. ‘Could you order a taxi, please, Da?’ I tried to read from Oda’s or Ida’s face whether she was comfortable with the abbreviation but was interrupted by Greve.
‘Thank you. I have my own car here. Regards to your wife, and I’ll wait to hear from you.’
He proffered his hand, and I shook it with a broad smile. ‘I’ll try to ring you tonight, because you’re busy tomorrow, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
I don’t know why I didn’t stop there. The rhythm of the conversation, the sense that an exchange was over told me that it was here I should say the closing ‘Goodbye’. Perhaps it was a gut feeling, a premonition; perhaps a terror that had already implanted itself in me, which made me extra careful.
‘Yeah, decoration is a pretty all-engrossing activity,’ I said.
‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘I’m catching the early-morning plane to Rotterdam tomorrow. To get the dog. He’s been stuck in quarantine. I won’t be back until late evening.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, releasing his hand so that he wouldn’t notice how I had stiffened. ‘What breed of dog is it?’
‘Niether terrier. Tracker dog. But as aggressive as a fighting dog. Good to have in the house when you have pictures like this up on the walls, don’t you think?’
‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘Indeed it is.’
A dog. I hated dogs.
‘I see,’ I heard Ove Kjikerud say at the other end of the line. ‘Clas Greve, Oscars gate 25. I’ve got the key here. Handover at Sushi&Coffee in an hour. The alarm is deactivated at seventeen hundred hours tomorrow. I’ll have to find a pretext for working in the afternoon. Why such short notice by the way?’
‘Because after tomorrow there’ll be a dog in the flat.’
‘OK. But why n
ot during working hours, as usual?’
The young man in the Corneliani suit and geek-chic glasses came along the pavement towards the public telephone box. I turned my back on him to avoid a greeting and pressed my mouth closer to the receiver.
‘I want to be one hundred per cent sure that there are no builders there. So you ring Gothenburg this minute and ask them to get hold of a decent Rubens Reproduction. There are lots, but say that we must have a good one. And they must have it ready for you when you come with the Munch print tonight. It’s short notice, but it’s important that I have it for tomorrow, do you understand?’
‘OK, OK.’
‘And then you tell Gothenburg that you’ll be back with the original tomorrow night. Do you remember the name of the picture?’
‘Yes, The Catalonian Boar Hunt. Rubens.’
‘Close enough. You’re absolutely sure we can rely on this fence?’
‘Jesus, Roger. For the hundredth time, yes!’
‘I’m just asking!’
‘Listen to me now. The guy knows that if he pulls a fast one at any time, he’ll be out of the game for life. No one punishes thieving harder than thieves.’
‘Great.’
‘Just one thing: I’ll have to put off the second Gothenburg trip by a day.’
That was no problem, we had done it before; the Rubens would be safe inside the ceiling, but I could feel the hairs on my neck rising anyway.
‘Why’s that?’
‘I’ve got a visitor tomorrow evening. A dame.’
‘You’ll have to postpone it.’
‘Sorry, can’t.’
‘Can’t?’
‘It’s Natasha.’
I could hardly believe my ears. ‘The Russian harlot?’
‘Don’t call her that.’
‘Isn’t that what she is?’
‘I don’t call your wife a Barbie doll, do I?’
‘Are you comparing my wife with a tart?’
‘I said I didn’t call your wife a Barbie doll.’
‘All the better for you. Diana is a hundred per cent natural.’