About the Book
Peter Lime is trained to hunt down his prey and catch them on film. But now he is the one being hunted. Whose prey has he become? And what is it that he has that these people will kill to get? Lime is a Danish paparazzo, living in Madrid. For more than 20 years he has stalked and captured the rich and famous on film, making vast sums of money from exposing their secrets – the more salacious the image, the bigger the fee. But lately he’s been thinking of giving it up.
Then he goes on a routine assignment, snapping a Spanish minister out sailing with his mistress, and suddenly his world is turned upside down. When a fire destroys his home, but not all of his photographs, Lime sets out to discover a motive and finds himself drawn into the complex and terrifying web of international terrorism.
Leif Davidsen
LIME’S PHOTOGRAPH
TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH BY
Gaye Kynoch
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
About the Author
Part One: Paparazzo
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part Two: Time Heals No Wounds
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Three: Oblivion or Remembrance
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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Epub ISBN 9781446483404
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Published by Vintage 2002
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Copyright © Leif Davidsen 1998 English translation © Gaye Kynoch 2001
Leif Davidsen has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in Great Britain in 2001 by The Harvill Press
Vintage
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The publishers acknowledge the financial support of the Danish Literary Foundation towards the publication of this edition
The publishers gratefully acknowledge the use of the following quotations: Tom Kristensen, from Fribytterdrøme, Hagerup Forlag, 1920. Sten Kaalø, from Med hud og hår. 24 digte. Sigvaldis Forlag, Denmark, 1969.
Steen Steensen Blicher, from The Diary of a Parish Clerk and Other Stories, The Athlone Press, London, 1996, translated by Paula Hostrup-Jessen.
Markus Wolf, from Man Without a Face, Jonathan Cape, London, 1997. Carsten Jensen, from Jet har hørt et stjerneskud, Rosinante Forlag, Copenhagen, 1997.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1 860 46988 4
To Ulla, for love and for everything.
About the Author
Leif Davidsen was born in 1950. He spent 25 years at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation as a radio and TV correspondent, specialising in Russian, East and Central European affairs, and has been a correspondent in both Spain and Moscow. He published his first novel in 1984 and has written full-time since 1999. His novels are bestsellers in several European countries.
PART ONE
PAPARAZZO
The term “paparazzo” was coined by the Italian film director Federico Fellini, who used the word as a description of a “gossip” photographer in the film La Dolce Vita in 1960. A paparazzo is a photographer who, like any hired assassin, lies in wait to capture the rich and famous in his viewfinder. Among paparazzi, the English term for a good and well-executed shot of a celebrity is the same word as hired assassins use about a contract – a “hit”. A good hit can earn the lucky and ingenious photographer many thousands of dollars. Occasionally, several million.
1
There is no way of knowing when everything could shatter and your life be turned upside down – one minute secure and familiar and the next minute a nightmare in which you’re running on the spot in slow motion, trying to wake up to reality. But the nightmare is reality. You feel safe by the time you’ve got halfway through your life, grateful that you managed to find love even though it came late, that you brought a child into the world to carry on the family name. Maybe that’s an old-fashioned attitude, but continuity mattered to me as I approached 50 and had to acknowledge that I was now nearer to my death than my birth.
It began with my mobile phone beeping. I knew I shouldn’t answer it, but I couldn’t stop myself. You never know what lies in store. Good news, bad news, business, bills, bogus calls, death, maybe something significant. You don’t know what you might be missing, and even though I was getting older, I wasn’t too old to take on the assignments and opportunities that presented themselves. But with age had come disgust and conscience. I’m writing the words in Danish and there they are on my laptop’s white screen and I’m surprised how easily they flow, considering that I’ve been speaking and in particular writing in English and Spanish for so many years. But it seems wrong to use a foreign language here, now that I’m trying to write more than just a brief article, a picture caption, a memo or a love letter.
I was on my stomach, the sun beating down on me. I was lying awkwardly on the weathered, rocky ground where, in spite of the distance down to the beach, little black grains of sand had been blown up by the wind and had found shelter in every cranny. I lay like a sniper in Bosnia, breathing calmly and slowly, conscious of the sun through my thin, pale t-shirt and blue jeans and on my neck below the rim of my white sunhat. Brown, parched mountains rose behind me. If you followed them further inland, you’d see how they increase in size, becoming high and inaccessible, but out here at the coast they were gentler, yet still burnished harsh and arid by the sun and the wind which blows off the Mediterranean in the winter, colder and more fiercely than you might think.
Down below me the little bay was deserted. It was one of the many small coves which over thousands of years the sea had cut into the Costa Brava. The French-Spanish border was a few kilometres to the north, to the south the tourist hell
began, where over a couple of decades human greed had succeeded in destroying an area in which generation after generation had lived their lives without spoiling or altering their surroundings. The Spanish Mediterranean coastline has undergone a more radical transformation in a few years than in the previous two millennia. But up here near the border, the landscape was still relatively unchanged. The sea lay azure and glittering under the bright, golden sun, like a computer-enhanced postcard. I could see yachts tacking across the sea breeze and a couple of expensive speedboats dragging white streaks through the water, but there was no sign of life in the bay below me. I felt like an explorer seeing it for the first time. It was one of many coves that could only be reached from the sea. The rocky coastline rose sharply, and an experienced mountaineer might be able to breach the overhang of the cliffs, but ordinary tourists would be wise to keep away. The cove was what the holiday brochures promised: a private, beautiful and unspoilt spot on the bustling, efficiently run tourist coast.
I was lying at an angle, so I had a clear sightline both out to sea and down onto the cove’s sandy beach, which was protected from prying eyes by the rugged cliffs. If you didn’t know to look, you would never discover that there was a beautiful little cove beneath the overhang. Two jagged rocks a few metres out even hid the grey, powdery sand from the sea. Unless someone who knew what they were looking for took the trouble to use binoculars, the cove was hidden. It was a perfect place to be alone. Or for two to be alone.
The lovebirds had chosen a good spot. I was thinking in Danish, as I often did when I was waiting for a hit, concentrating my thoughts on the few hundredths of a second that separated me from success or failure, letting my mind wander and wind through the labyrinth of memory, thinking about my two loved ones; or recalling films and books and love affairs in an attempt to let time become nothingness. Become nada, a non-existent state, so that boredom didn’t turn into impatience, leaving me unready when the moment, the moment of truth, arrived.
I kept an eye on the speedboats. One of them was streaking along the coastline, dragging a ruler-straight trail in its wake, but the other one changed course, slowed down and sailed into the little bay. It was a six-metre, gleaming white motorboat, with an elegant, svelte line. A young woman was lying on the foredeck, wearing black Ray-Bans and nothing else. They suited her. The man, naked from the waist up, was standing at the wheel, steering the boat in while he kept an eye on the echo sounder. There could be treacherous reefs and rocks this close to the coast, but either the white motorboat didn’t draw a great deal of water, or he knew his way in between the two rocks. It was the latter, according to my informant.
I made my living from the public’s insatiable craving to see the famous and rich disgracing themselves. Although I had 20 years’ experience of our modern greed and lust for power, it still surprised me that so many high-ranking men were willing to sacrifice career, marriage and status for the sake of sex. They were so sure of their invulnerability that they took huge risks; just for the chance to prove that they were still men. Didn’t they know that for every secret there was also someone willing to sell that very secret?
I had ended up here on the Costa Brava as the result of a tip several weeks earlier. It was always like that. The numerous informants and contacts that I had paid, nurtured, dined, praised, encouraged, buttered-up, massaged the egos of, were like an extensive intelligence network that kept me supplied with information about the affairs of the famous. A network that identified the target for me and gave me the essential raw material. Then it was up to me to work out the logistics, do a recce of the area and set up the hit. It had taken me the previous fortnight to get ready to strike this target who was now nearing the shore, blissfully unaware. My information had been extremely specific, right down to the name of the boat. When a new government takes charge after the old one has enjoyed the sweetness of power for many years, it ought to look over its shoulder more carefully. Especially if the new government is one founded on God, King and Country and hoists the moral banner so high that it has lost touch with dry land.
“Don’t cast the first stone, my friend,” I said under my breath in the Danish that still felt like my own language, even though for years I had spoken it regularly only to myself and then mostly in my own head. English was for business, Spanish for love and Danish for those innermost, secret thoughts which demand a profound understanding of the underlying nuance of each word; where it’s not what is said that counts, but the way in which it is said and thought.
The man manoeuvred the boat steadily towards the beach. I heard the sound of the motor cutting out and the boat slowly drifted the last few metres before the man threw an anchor overboard and let the boat swing round against the tide. I lifted my new camera, a marvel of computerised technology. I knew I had made the right choice in selecting a 400-mm telephoto lens. I could see them clearly in the viewfinder. She must have been in her 20s, with a smooth, brown body, her black pubic hair clearly visible in the sunlight. She was neither too thin nor too fat, but shapely. She reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place her. There were immaculate female bodies like hers from St Tropez to Marbella. They attracted rich, middle-aged, powerful men as rotting meat attracts flies. With their seemingly flawless, perpetually young beauty they allowed men to forget their own decay. These young women had so little experience of that particular torment that they thought decay would never strike them.
I pressed my damp but steady forefinger on the release button, let the motor run and took a quick series, before zooming out a little so I got a clear shot of the young woman with the man’s face in sharp focus behind her. He was in his late 40s, with dark, Latin looks, a clean-shaven face and thick black hair. He had strong arms and shoulders, but the beginnings of a paunch under his dark body hair indicated that he was no longer in tip-top condition. He was very tanned and through the viewfinder I could see his even, white teeth as he smiled down at the woman.
He said something and threw a pair of rubber sandals over to her, and the woman smiled and said something back as she put them on. Then she picked up a mask and snorkel and slipped naked into the water. There were lots of sea urchins on the submerged rocks, but the couple seemed to know about them and quite rightly had respect for the long prickly spines. I let the film run to the end and got a couple of shots of the woman’s naked behind as it broke through the surface, before her legs stretched out straight and she disappeared under the water again as gracefully as a dolphin. She snorkelled in wide circles round the bobbing boat.
The man detached a rubber dinghy from the deck, lowered it into the water and rowed towards the beach. He was wearing red trunks and his legs were muscular yet elegant. Hadn’t he once been a competitive swimmer? He paddled into the shallows and dragged the dinghy onto firm ground. He spread out a blanket on the sand and put a picnic hamper on it with a slender bottle sticking out of it. The woman swam to the beach and flung her snorkel and mask to the man, who caught them. She called to him and he threw himself into the water, breaking the surface with hardly any spray, and crawled with long steady strokes out to where the water was deep. The woman followed him. I changed the film and let the motor shoot frame after frame of the couple in the water. I had a momentary stab of conscience, or was it envy? They played like children and were beautiful as the drops flew off their bodies and sparkled in the sunlight with every colour of the rainbow. But there was no point thinking about that. Now it was a question of concentrating on the moment. Purely practical things like aperture, shutter, focus, definition. The woman pulled off his swimming trunks and let them float away like a red jellyfish. He lifted her right out of the water and kissed her breasts. The motor in the reflex camera whizzed like a flicking whip and instead of changing the film I changed the camera and took another batch. Sweat broke through the fabric of my t-shirt. I could feel a big wet patch spreading down my back. They were playing like puppies. He swam between her legs and lifted her half out of the water and let her fall over backwards, the
spray encircling their bodies like a halo. Then she swam over to him and put her arms round his neck and wound her legs round his loins. It was a wonderful picture, full of love and eroticism and yet not revealing the actual act. Not being able to see the penetration made it more arousing. I also shot a couple of films as they finished their lovemaking on the blanket on the beach, although those pictures probably wouldn’t find a buyer. It was no longer erotic, but pornographic, and I wasn’t a pornographer.
Afterwards, the couple lay happily in the sun, as people do when they think they’re safe in their nakedness. When they think they’re alone in the Garden of Eden, forgetting to think about the serpent in the form of a 50-centimetre-long, sophisticated, high-tech, Japanese telephoto lens, which catches the moment and freezes it for all eternity and for everyone to behold.
The man rubbed her with suntan oil and I had enough experience to know that the best picture, the picture that would swell my bank account by as much as $200,000 over the next couple of years, was the least sexual, but at the same time the most erotic. It was when the Minister took his lover’s feet in his hands and massaged them slowly and sensually. Maybe a sea urchin spine had found its way into the delicate skin of her small, shapely feet after all. She sat leaning back on her outstretched arms and gazed at a point behind his head. Her face was calm and satisfied and she smiled gently as he put her big toe in his mouth and then, as lovingly as a child with a sweet, sucked each one of her shapely toes.
“Bingo,” I said, and was about to crawl away so as to give the couple at least a little time alone together before their happiness and lives were smashed for ever, when my mobile phone rang in the bag beside me. They couldn’t possibly hear the weak beeping down on the beach. They were too far away and the gentle murmur of the sea would have smothered the sound even if the wind had carried it down towards them. But powerful men have become powerful men because of a sixth sense, a gut feeling for danger, for political minefields. It’s as if they know in advance, maybe feel that something is niggling at their aura, nudging their self-confidence. He lifted his head at the very moment my mobile rang and squinted towards me, as if he fleetingly sensed danger lurking. Just as animals drinking at a water hole on the savannah know that a leopard is approaching even though they can’t see, hear or smell their predator. We made the same movement. I thrust my hand into the bag and fished out my phone, while he pulled a mobile from the hamper and keyed in a number, looking up towards my hiding place. I crawled back from the cliff edge and flicked open my phone. I ought to have anticipated it. Of course he would have a bodyguard or two nearby. He might be reckless, but he was still vigilant and far from stupid.
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