Headhunters

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘OK, I’m impressed. But I won’t be going tomorrow night all the same. I’ve been on Natasha’s waiting list for three weeks, and I want to film the session. Get it on tape.’

  ‘Film it? You’re taking the piss.’

  ‘I have to have something to look at before the next time. God knows when that’ll be.’

  I laughed out loud. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You’re in love with a whore, Ove! No real man can love a whore.’

  ‘What do you know about that?’

  I groaned. ‘And what are you going to say to your beloved when you pull out a bloody camera?’

  ‘She’ll know nothing about it.’

  ‘Hidden camera in the wardrobe?’

  ‘Wardrobe? My house has total surveillance, man.’

  Nothing Ove Kjikerud told me about himself could surprise me any longer. He had told me that when he wasn’t working, he mostly watched TV in his little place high up in Tonsenhagen, on the edge of a forest. And he liked to shoot at the screen if there was something he really didn’t care for. He had boasted about his Austrian Glock pistols, or ‘dames’ as he called them, because they didn’t have a hammer that stood up before ejaculation. Ove used blank cartridges to shoot at the TV, but once he had forgotten he had loaded a round of live ammunition and had shot a brand-new Pioneer plasma screen costing thirty thousand to smithereens. When he wasn’t shooting at the TV he took potshots through the window at an owl’s nesting box he himself had rigged up on a tree trunk behind the house. And one evening, sitting in front of the TV, he had heard something crashing through the trees, so he opened the window, took aim with a Remington rifle and fired. The bullet had hit the animal in the middle of the forehead, and Ove had had to empty the freezer, which was stuffed with Grandiosa pizzas. For the next six months it had been elk steaks, elk burgers, elk stew, elk meatballs and elk chops until he could stand it no longer and had emptied the freezer again and restocked it with Grandiosa. I found all these stories totally credible. But this one …

  ‘Total surveillance?’

  ‘There are certain fringe benefits to working at Tripolis, aren’t there?’

  ‘And you can activate the cameras without her noticing?’

  ‘Yep. I fetch her, we go into the flat, and if I don’t enter the password within fifteen seconds the cameras begin to work at Tripolis.’

  ‘And the alarm begins to howl in your flat?’

  ‘Nope. Silent alarm.’

  Of course I was aware of the concept. The alarm just went off at Tripolis. The idea was not to frighten off the burglars while Tripolis rang the police, who were on the spot within fifteen minutes. The aim was to catch the thieves red-handed before they disappeared with the loot or, if this didn’t work, they could identify them on the video recordings.

  ‘I’ve told the boys on duty not to turn up, right. They can just sit back and enjoy the sight on the monitors.’

  ‘Do you mean to say the boys will be watching you and the Russ— Natasha?’

  ‘Have to share the delights, don’t I? But I have made sure the camera doesn’t show the bed, that’s a private area. But I’ll get her to undress at the foot of the bed, in the chair beside the TV, right. She’ll follow my stage directions, that’s the beauty of it. Get her to sit there touching herself. Perfect camera angle. I’ve done a bit of work on the lights. So that I can wank off-camera, right.’

  Far too much information. I coughed. ‘Then you come and get the Munch tonight. And the Rubens the night after tomorrow, OK?’

  ‘OK. Everything alright with you, Roger? You sound stressed.’

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, running the back of my hand across my forehead. ‘Everything’s absolutely fine.’

  I put down the phone and went on my way. The sky was clouding over, but I hardly noticed. Because everything was OK, wasn’t it? I was going to be a multi-millionaire. To buy my freedom, freedom from everything. The world and everything in it – including Diana – would be mine. The rumbles in the distance sounded like hearty laughter. Then the first raindrops fell, and the soles of my shoes clattered cheerfully over the cobblestones as I ran.

  7

  PREGNANT

  IT WAS SIX o’clock, it had stopped raining and in the west gold streamed into the Oslo fjord. I put the Volvo in the garage, switched off the ignition and waited. After the door had closed behind me, I put on the internal light, opened the black portfolio and took out the day’s catch. The Brooch. Eva Mudocci.

  I ran my eyes over her face. Munch must have been in love with her, he couldn’t have drawn her like that otherwise. Drawn her as Lotte, caught the silent pain, the quiet ferocity. I swore under my breath, inhaled hard and hissed through my teeth. Then I pulled back the ceiling upholstery above my head. It was my own invention, designed for concealing pictures that had to be transported across national borders. I had just loosened the ceiling liner – the head liner as they say in car-speak – where it was attached to the top of the windscreen. Then I had stuck two strips of Velcro on the inside, and after a bit of careful cutting around the front ceiling light I had the perfect hidey-hole. The problem with moving large pictures, especially old, dry oil paintings is that they have to lie flat and must not be rolled up, because then there is a risk that the paint will crack and the picture will be ruined. In other words, transportation requires room and the cargo is somewhat conspicuous. But with a roof surface of approximately four square metres there was room for even the big pictures, and they were hidden from prying customs officers and their dogs, who luckily did not sniff around for paint or varnish.

  I slid Eva Mudocci inside, fastened the lining with the Velcro, got out of the car and went up to the house.

  Diana had stuck a note on the fridge saying that she was out with her friend Cathrine and would be home at about midnight. That was almost six hours away. I opened a San Miguel, sat down on the chair by the window and started to wait for her. Fetched another bottle and thought about something I remembered from the Johan Falkberget book Diana had read to me the time I had mumps: ‘We all drink according to how thirsty we are.’

  I had been lying in bed with a temperature and aching cheeks and ears and looked like a sweaty pufferfish while the doctor checked the thermometer and said ‘it wasn’t too bad’. And it hadn’t felt too bad, either. It was only after pressure from Diana that he had mentioned ugly words like meningitis and orchitis, which he had even more reluctantly translated as an inflammation of the tissues round the brain and inflammation of the testicles, but straight away he had added that they were ‘highly unlikely in this case’.

  Diana read to me and laid cold compresses on my forehead. The book was The Fourth Night Watch, and since I had nothing else to occupy my inflammation-threatened brain with, I listened carefully. There were two particular things that caught my attention. First there was Sigismund the priest who excuses a drunk with those words ‘We all drink according to how thirsty we are’. Maybe because I found comfort in such a view of humanity: If that’s your nature, then it’s fine.

  The second was a quotation from what are known informally as ‘Pontoppidan’s Explanations’ in which he declares that a person is capable of killing another person’s soul, infecting it, dragging it down into sin in such a way that redemption is precluded. I found less comfort in that. And the thought that I might be defiling angel wings meant that I never let Diana in on all the things I was doing to acquire extra income.

  She took care of me for four days and nights, and it was a source of both pleasure and annoyance. For I knew I would not have done the same for her, at least not if she had only had lousy mumps. So when I finally asked her why she had done it, I was genuinely curious. Her response was simple and straightforward.

  ‘Because I love you.’

  ‘It’s just mumps.’

  ‘Perhaps I won’t get a chance to show it later.
You’re so healthy.’

  It sounded like an accusation.

  And, sure enough, the day afterwards I got out of bed, went for a job interview with a recruitment agency called Alfa and told them they would have to be idiots not to employ me. And I know how I was able to say that to them with such unshakeable self-assurance. Because there is nothing that makes a man grow beyond his own stature than a woman telling him she loves him. And however much she might have lied to him, there will always be a part of him that is grateful to her for this, and that will harbour some love for her.

  I took one of Diana’s art books, read about Rubens and the little there was about The Calydonian Boar Hunt and studied the picture with great care. Then I put down the book and tried to think through the following day’s operation in Oscars gate step by step.

  An apartment in a block meant of course a risk of bumping into neighbours on the stairs. Potential witnesses who could catch a glimpse of me. Just for a few seconds, though. They wouldn’t be suspicious then, wouldn’t make a note of my face as I would be wearing overalls and would let myself into an apartment that was being redecorated. So what was I frightened of?

  I knew what I was frightened of.

  He had read me like an open book during the interview. But how many of the pages? Could he have suspected something? No. He had recognised a method of interrogation he had used himself in the military, that was all.

  I grabbed my mobile phone and called Greve’s number to tell him that Diana was out and the name of a possible expert to check the picture’s authenticity would have to wait until he was back from Rotterdam. Greve’s answerphone voice said in English: ‘Please leave a message,’ and so I did. The bottle was empty. I considered a whisky, but dismissed the idea, didn’t want to wake up with a hangover tomorrow. A last beer, great.

  The call was about to go through when I realised what I had done. I lowered my phone and hurriedly pressed the red button. I had dialled Lotte’s number, the one under the discreet L in the address book, an L which had made me tremble the few times it had appeared on the display as an incoming call. Our rule had been that I was to ring. I went into the address book, found L and pressed ‘Delete’.

  ‘Do you really want to delete?’ the phone replied.

  I scrutinised the alternatives. The cowardly, faithless ‘no’ and the mendacious ‘yes’.

  I pressed ‘yes’. Knowing that her number was printed in my brain in a way that defied deletion. What that meant I neither knew nor wanted to know. But it would fade. Fade and disappear. It had to.

  Diana returned home at five minutes to midnight.

  ‘What have you been doing today, darling?’ she asked, making for the chair, squatting on the arm and giving me a hug.

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘I interviewed Clas Greve.’

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘He’s perfect, except that he’s a foreigner. Pathfinder said they wanted a Norwegian as head; they’ve even said publicly they set great store by being Norwegian down to the last detail. So it will have to be a persuasion job.’

  ‘But you’re the world’s greatest at that.’ She kissed me on the forehead. ‘I’ve heard people talking about your record.’

  ‘Which record?’

  ‘The man who always has his candidate appointed, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, that one,’ I said, acting surprised.

  ‘You’ll manage this time, too.’

  ‘How was it with Cathrine?’

  Diana ran her hand through my thick hair. ‘Fantastic. As usual. Or, even more fantastic than usual.’

  ‘She’s going to die of happiness one day.’

  Diana pressed her face into my hair and spoke into it. ‘She’s just found out she’s pregnant.’

  ‘So it won’t be that fantastic for a while.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she mumbled. ‘Have you been drinking?’

  ‘A tiny bit. Shall we raise a glass to Cathrine?’

  ‘I’m heading for bed. I’m exhausted from all this happiness chat. Are you coming?’

  Lying curled up behind her in the bed, enclosing her and feeling her spine against my chest and stomach, I suddenly realised something I knew I must have thought ever since the interview with Greve. That now I could make her pregnant. That I was finally on terra firma, on safe ground; a child could not supplant me now. With the Rubens I would at last be the lion, the master Diana talked about. The irreplaceable provider. It wasn’t that Diana had had any doubts before, but I had doubted. Doubted whether I could be the guardian of the nest that Diana deserved. And that a child of all things could cure her blessed blindness. But now she could go ahead and see, see all of me. More of me, at any rate.

  The sharp, cold air from the open window was giving my skin goose Pimples on top of the duvet and I could feel an erection coming.

  But her breathing was already deep and even.

  I let go of her. She rolled onto her back, secure and defenceless like an infant.

  I slipped out of bed.

  The mizuko altar did not seem to have been touched since yesterday. It was rare for a day to pass without her making some kind of visible change: replacing the water, putting in a new candle, new flowers.

  I went up to the living room, poured myself a whisky. The parquet floor by the window was cold. The whisky was a thirty-year-old Macallan, a present from a satisfied client. They were listed on the stock exchange now. I looked down at the garage, which was bathed in moonlight. Ove was probably on his way. He would let himself into the garage and get into the car with the spare keys he held. Remove the Eva Mudocci, put her in the portfolio and return to his car which was parked at a reassuringly safe distance, far enough away not to be connected with our house. He would drive to the art dealer in Gothenburg, deliver the picture and be back by the early morning. But the Eva Mudocci was no longer interesting now, an irritating filler job that just had to be dispatched. On Ove’s return from Gothenburg he would hopefully have a usable reproduction of Rubens’s Boar Hunt, which he would put under the ceiling of the Volvo before we or the neighbours were up.

  In the past Ove had used my car to go to Gothenburg. I had never spoken to the dealer, and I hoped he didn’t know that anyone else apart from Ove was involved. That was how I wanted it, as few contacts as possible, as few people as possible who could point a finger at me. Criminals are caught sooner or later and so it was important to have the maximum distance between them and me. That was why I made a point of never being seen in conversation with Kjikerud publicly, and that was why I used a payphone when I called him. I didn’t want any of my phone numbers to be on Kjikerud’s calls log when he was arrested. The sharing out of money and the more strategic planning were done in an out-of-the-way cabin in the Elverum area. Ove rented the cabin from a hermit farmer and we always arrived in separate cars.

  I had been on my way to this cabin when it had struck me just how risky it was to let Ove use my car to drive the pictures to Gothenburg. I had passed a speed trap, and there I had seen his almost thirty-year-old Mercedes, a stylish black 280SE, parked next to a police car. And I realised that Kjikerud was obviously one of those notorious drivers who are incapable of keeping to speed limits. I had drummed it into him that he should always remove the AutoPASS unit from the windscreen when he drove my Volvo to Gothenburg as any use was logged, and I was not interested in explaining to the police why I had driven up and down the E6 in the middle of the night several times a year. But when I passed Ove’s Mercedes in the speed trap on the way to Elverum I realised that was the greatest risk we ran: that the police would stop fast drivers and old acquaintances of theirs like Ove Kjikerud on his way to Gothenburg and wonder what on earth he could be doing with a car belonging to the Respectable, hmm, headhunter Roger Brown. And from thereon in it would be bad news all the way. Because Kjikerud versus Inbau, Reid and Buckley had only one outcome.

  I thought I could make out something moving in the dark by the garage.

  Tomorrow was D-Day. Dream Day. Domesd
ay. Demob Day. If everything went to plan this would be the last coup. I wanted to be finished, free, the one who got away with it.

  The town sparkled full of promise beneath us.

  Lotte answered on the fifth ring. ‘Roger?’ Careful, gentle. As if she had been the one to wake me and not vice versa.

  I hung up.

  And drained the glass in one swig.

  8

  G11SUS4

  I AWOKE WITH a splitting headache.

  I supported myself on my elbows and saw Diana’s delicate, panty-clad backside sticking up in the air as she rummaged through her handbag and the pockets of the clothes she had been wearing the previous day.

  ‘Looking for something?’ I asked.

  ‘Good morning, darling,’ she said, but I could hear that it was not. And I agreed.

  I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom. Saw myself in the mirror and knew the rest of the day could only get better. Had to get better. Would get better. I turned on the shower and stood under the ice-cold jets listening to Diana cursing under her breath in the bedroom.

  ‘And it’s gonna be …’ I howled in pure defiance: ‘PERFECT!’

  ‘I’m off,’ Diana called. ‘I love you.’

  And I love you,’ I shouted, but didn’t know if she managed to catch it before the door slammed behind her.

  At ten o’clock I was sitting in my office trying to concentrate. My head felt like a transparent, pulsating tadpole. I had registered that Ferdinand had had his mouth open for several minutes and had formed it into what I assumed were words of varying interest. And even though his mouth was still open, he had stopped moving it and instead was staring at me with what I interpreted as an expectant look.

  ‘Repeat the question,’ I said.

  ‘I said it’s great I’m doing the second interview with Greve and the client, but you have to tell me a bit about Pathfinder first. I haven’t been told anything, and I’m going to look a complete fool!’ At this point his voice rose into the obligatory hysterical falsetto.