by Headhunters
‘Technologically speaking, HOTE and Pathfinder would have made the perfect married couple,’ Greve said.
‘Just so,’ the chairman said pointedly. ‘With Pathfinder as the housewife, receiving a few miserable titbits from the monthly pay packet.’
Greve chuckled. ‘Quite right. Besides, HOTE’s technology would be easier for Pathfinder to acquire than the other way round. That’s why I believe there is only one viable route for Pathfinder. And that is to undertake the journey on its own.’
I saw the Pathfinder representatives exchange glances.
‘Anyway, you have an impressive CV, Greve,’ the chairman said. ‘But what we set great store by at Pathfinder is that our CEO should be a stayer … what do you call it in your recruitment-speak?’
‘A farmer,’ Ferdinand sprang to the rescue.
‘A farmer, yes. A good image. In other words, someone who cultivates what is already there, who builds things up, brick by brick. Who is tough and patient. And you have a record which is erm … spectacular and dramatic, but it doesn’t tell us if you have the stamina and doggedness that is necessary for the director we are seeking.’
Clas Greve had listened to the chairman with a serious expression and now he was nodding.
‘First of all, I would like to say that I share your view of the type of director Pathfinder should be looking for. Secondly, I wouldn’t have shown any interest in this challenge if I had not been that type.’
‘You are that type?’ the second representative from Pathfinder asked carefully, a diplomatic type I had already pigeonholed as a public relations boss before he introduced himself. I had nominated a number of them.
Clas Greve smiled. A hearty smile that not only softened the flinty face, but changed it totally. I had seen this trick of his a few times now, which was intended to show the boyish rascal he could also be. It had the same effect as the physical contact that Inbau, Reid and Buckley recommended, the intimate touch, the vote of confidence, the one that says I am laying myself bare here.
‘Let me tell you a story,’ Greve said, still smiling. ‘It’s about a matter I find hard to admit. Namely, that I am a dreadful loser. I’m the sort of person who finds it difficult to lose at heads or tails.’
Chuckles round the room.
‘But I hope it will tell you something about my stamina and staying power,’ he continued. ‘In the BBE I was once chasing a, sad to say, pretty insignificant drug smuggler in Suriname …’
I could see the two Pathfinder men unconsciously leaning forward a tad. Ferdinand took care of the coffee refills while sending me a confident smile.
And Clas Greve’s mouth moved. Crept forward. Devoured greedily where it had no right to be. Had she screamed? Of course she had. Diana simply couldn’t hold back, such easy meat for his lusts. The first time we had made love I had been reminded of the Bernini sculpture in the Cornaro Chapel: The Ecstasy of S. Teresa di Avila. Partly because of Diana’s half-open mouth, the suffering, almost pain-filled facial expression, the tensed vein and the concentrated furrow in her forehead. And partly because Diana screamed, and I have always thought that Bernini’s Carmelite saint is screaming as the angel pulls the arrow from her chest, ready to thrust it in again. That is what it looks like to me at any rate, in-out-in, an image of divine penetration, fucking at its most sublime, but fucking nevertheless. But not even a saint could scream like Diana. Diana’s scream was a pained enjoyment, an arrow-point in the eardrum that sent shivers throughout your body. It was a lament and an enduring moan, a tone that merely rose and fell, like a model aeroplane. So piercing that after the first act of love I had woken up with a ringing in my ears, and after three weeks of lovemaking I thought I could detect the first symptoms of tinnitus; a continual torrent of water falling, or at least a brook, accompanied by a whistling sound that came and went.
I had happened to express concern about my hearing, as a joke of course, but Diana had not seen the funny side. On the contrary, she had been horrified and on the point of tears. And when we made love the next time, I had felt her soft hands around my ears, which I first perceived as a slightly unusual caress. But when they cupped around my ears forming two warm protective domes, I realised what an act of love this was. The effect was limited, from an auditory point of view – the scream still bored into the cerebral cortex – but all the greater emotionally. I am not a man given to tears, but as I came I began to sob like a baby. Probably because I knew that no one, no one else would ever love me as much as this woman.
So watching Greve now, in the certainty that she had screamed in his embrace too, I tried not to think of the question this threw up. But, just like Diana, I couldn’t hold myself back: Had she covered his ears, too?
‘The track led mostly through thick jungle and swampland,’ Greve said. ‘Eight-hour marches. Nevertheless, we were always a bit behind, always just too late. The others gave up, one by one. Fever, dysentery, snake bites or sheer, utter exhaustion. And the guy was, of course, of minor significance. The jungle devours your reasoning. I was the youngest, yet in the end I was the one who was given the command. And the machete.’
Diana and Greve. When I had parked the Volvo in the garage, after driving home from Greve’s apartment, I had for a second considered rolling down the window, letting the motor run and breathing in carbon dioxide, monoxide, or whatever the fuck it is you breathe in; anyway, it is supposed to be a pleasant death.
‘After following his trail for sixty-three days over three hundred and twenty kilometres of the worst terrain you can imagine, the hunting pack was reduced to me and a young stripling from Groningen who was too stupid to go mad. I contacted HQ and had a Niether terrier flown in. Do you know the breed? No? It is the best hunting dog in the world. And infinitely loyal, it attacks everything you point to, whatever the size. A friend for life. Literally. The helicopter dropped the dog, a whelp of just over a year old, in the middle of the jungle in the vast Sipaliwini district, that’s where they drop cocaine, too. The drop zone turned out to be ten kilometres from where we were hiding, though. It would be a miracle if it survived for twenty-four hours in the jungle, let alone tracked us down. It took the dog just under two hours to find us.’
Greve leaned back in his chair. He was in total control now.
‘I called it Sidewinder. After the heat-seeking missile, you know? I loved that dog. That’s why I have a Niether terrier today. I went to collect it from Holland yesterday; in fact, it is Sidewinder’s grandchild.’
Diana had been sitting in the living room watching the news when I came home after burgling Greve. There was a press conference with Inspector Brede Sperre behind a forest of microphones. He was talking about a murder. A murder that had been solved. A murder he alone had solved by the sound of it. Sperre’s voice had a masculine jar to it, like a radio with interference, specks of outage, a typewriter with a worn letter you could just make out on paper. ‘The perpe-rator will appear before court to-orrow. Any other questions?’ Every trace of east Oslo was gone from his language now, but according to Google he had played basketball for Ammerud for eight years. He had left Police College as the second highest performer in his year’s intake. In a personal interview for a women’s magazine he had refused to say whether he had a significant other, for professional reasons. Any partner would be subject to undesirable attention from the media and the criminal elements he was chasing, he said. But nothing in the pin-up photos for the same magazine – half-unbuttoned shirt, half-closed eyes, trace of a half-smile – signalled a partner.
I had stood behind Diana’s chair.
‘He’s started in Kripos now,’ she said. ‘Murder and all that.’
I knew that of course, I googled Brede Sperre every week to find out what he was doing, whether he had made an announcement to the press about a clampdown on art thieves. On top of that, I made my own enquiries about Sperre whenever an occasion presented itself. Oslo is not a big town. I knew things.
‘A shame for you,’ I said, relieved. ‘No
more visits to the gallery from him.’
She had laughed and looked up at me, and I had looked down at her, smiled, and our faces were upside down in relation to each other. And for an instant I thought that the business with Greve had not happened, it had just been something I had painted in slightly too vivid colors, the way people do sometimes, trying to imagine the worst thing that can happen, if for no other reason than to feel what it is like, to see if it would be tolerable. And as if to confirm that it was just a dream, I had said I had changed my mind, she was right, we really ought to book the trip to Tokyo in December. But she had looked at me in surprise and said that she couldn’t close the gallery right before Christmas, that was the peak period, wasn’t it? And no one went to Tokyo in December, it was freezing cold. What about spring then? I said. I could book tickets. And she had said that was a little too much long-range planning, wasn’t it, couldn’t we just wait and see? Fine, I had answered and said I was going to bed, I was really tired.
And when I was downstairs, I had gone into the nursery, over to the mizuko jizo figure and knelt down. The altar was still untouched. Too much long-range planning. Wait and see. Then I had taken the little red box out of my pocket, run my fingertips over the smooth surface and placed it beside the little stone Buddha that kept an eye on our water child.
‘Two days later we found the drug smuggler in a small village. He was being kept hidden by a very young foreign girl who, it later transpired, was his girlfriend. They usually find themselves such innocent-looking girls and then use them as couriers. Until the girl is caught by customs and gets life. Sixty-five days had passed since the hunt had started.’ Clas Greve drew a deep breath. ‘For my part, another sixty-five would have been fine.’
In the end it was the public relations manager who broke the ensuing silence. ‘And you arrested the man?’
‘Not only him. He and his girlfriend gave us enough information to arrest twenty-three of his colleagues at a later point.’
‘How …’ the chairman started. ‘How do you arrest someone like that?’
‘In this case it wasn’t so dramatic,’ Greve said with his hands behind his head. ‘Equality has come to Suriname. When we stormed the house he had laid down his weapons on the kitchen table and was helping his girlfriend with a mincer.’
The chairman burst into laughter and glanced across at the public relations manager who obediently chimed in with a jerky, though more tentative, laugh. The chorus became a three-part harmony as Ferdinand added to the merriment with his bright squeal. I studied the four shiny faces while thinking about how dearly I wished I had a hand grenade at this very moment.
After Ferdinand had rounded off the interview, I made it my job to escort Clas Greve out while the other three took a break before summing up.
I accompanied Greve to the lift doors and pressed the button.
‘Convincing performance,’ I said, folding my hands in front of my suit trousers and peering up at the floor indicator. ‘You’re a big hit with your seduction skills.’
‘Seduction … not sure about that. I assume you don’t perceive it as dishonourable to sell yourself, Roger.’
‘Not at all. I would’ve done exactly the same if I’d been you.’
‘Thank you. When will you be writing the report?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Good.’
The lift doors opened, we stepped in and stood waiting.
‘I was just wondering,’ I said. ‘The person you were pursuing …’
‘Yes?’
‘It wasn’t by any chance the same person who had tortured you in the cellar?’
Greve smiled. ‘How did you know?’
‘Pure guesswork.’ The lift doors slid into place. ‘And you confined yourself to arresting him?’
Greve raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you find that difficult to believe?’
I shrugged. The lift began to move.
‘The plan was to kill him,’ Greve said.
‘Did you have so much to avenge?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how do you answer to murder charges in the Dutch army?’
‘You make sure you aren’t caught. Curacit.’
‘Poison? As in poison-tipped arrows?’
‘That’s what headhunters use in our part of the world.’
I assumed the ambiguity was deliberate.
‘A solution of Curacit in a rubber ball the size of a grape with a barely detectable sharp needle. You hide it in the target’s mattress. When he goes to bed the needle pricks the skin and the weight forces the poison in the rubber ball into his body.’
‘But he was at home,’ I said. ‘And had a witness in this girl.’
‘Precisely.’
‘So how did you get him to snitch on his pals?’
‘I offered him a deal. I got my colleague to hold him down while I fed his hand into the mincer and said we would grind it into pieces and let him watch our dog eat the minced flesh. Then he talked.’
I nodded, visualising the scene. The lift doors opened and we walked to the front entrance. I held the door open for him. ‘And what about after he talked?’
‘What about it?’ Greve squinted up at the sky.
‘Did you keep your part of the deal?’
‘I …’ Greve said, fishing out a pair of Maui Jim titanium sunglasses from his breast pocket and putting them on, ‘always keep my part of the deal.’
‘A measly arrest then? Was it worth two months of chasing and risking your own life?’
Greve laughed softly. ‘You don’t understand, Roger. Giving up a chase is never an option for types like me. I’m like my dog, a result of genes and training. Risk doesn’t exist. Once fired up, I’m a heat-seeking missile that cannot be stopped, that basically seeks its own destruction. Put your first-year psychology course to the test on that.’ He placed a hand on my arm, gave a thin smile and whispered: ‘But keep the diagnosis to yourself.’
I stood holding the door. ‘And the girl? How did you get her to talk?’
‘She was fourteen years old.’
‘And?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
Greve released a deep sigh. ‘I don’t know how you’ve got such an impression of me, Roger. I don’t interrogate underage girls. I took her with me to Paramaribo, bought a ticket with my soldier’s wage and put her on the first plane home to her parents before the Surinamese police got their hooks into her.’
My eyes followed him as he strode over to a silver-grey Lexus GS 430 in the car park.
The autumn weather was stunningly beautiful. It had rained on my wedding day.
10
HEART CONDITION
I PRESSED LOTTE MADSEN’S doorbell for the third time. In fact, her name was not on the bell, but I had rung at enough doors in Eilert Sundts gate to know that it was hers.
Darkness and the temperature had fallen early and fast. I was shivering in my shoes. She had hesitated for a long time when I rang her from work after lunch to ask whether I could visit her at around eight. And when, at length, she had, with a monosyllable, granted me an audience, I knew she must have broken a vow she had made to herself: not to have anything more to do with this man who had left her so emphatically.
The lock buzzed and I tore at the door as if frightened it was the only chance I would get. I went upstairs; I didn’t want to risk ending up in the lift with some nosy neighbour who had time on their hands to gawp, take note and draw conclusions.
Lotte had opened the door a crack and I glimpsed her pale face.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
‘Here I am again.’
She didn’t answer. She usually didn’t.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
Lotte Madsen shrugged. She looked just the way she had the first time I saw her: a timid whelp, small and scruffy with fearful, brown puppy eyes. Greasy hair hung lifelessly down on both sides of her face, her posture was stooped, and shapeless,
colorless clothes gave the impression that she was a woman who spent more time concealing rather than drawing attention to her body. Which she had no reason to do; Lotte was slim, shapely and had smooth, perfect skin. But she radiated the kind of submissiveness I imagine you find in those women who are always being beaten up, always being left, never getting the deal they deserve. That may have been what aroused something that I had hitherto never guessed I possessed: a protective instinct. As well as the less platonic feelings that were the springboard for our short-term relationship. Or affair. Affair. Relationship is present tense, affair past.
The first time I saw Lotte Madsen was at one of Diana’s private views in the summer. Lotte had stood at the other end of the room, fixed her gaze on me and reacted a little too late. Catching women in the act like this is always flattering, but when I saw that her gaze was not going to return to me, I ambled over to the picture she was studying and introduced myself. Mostly out of curiosity, of course, since I have always been – considering my nature – sensationally faithful to Diana. Malicious tongues might claim that my fidelity was based more on risk analysis than love. That I knew Diana played in a higher league than I did, attraction-wise, and that consequently I was not in a position to take such risks unless I was willing to play in lower divisions for the rest of my days.
Maybe. But Lotte Madsen was in my division.
She looked like a freaky artist, and I automatically assumed that was what she was, or possibly the lover of one. There was no other way of explaining how a pair of limp, brown cord jeans and a boring, tight grey sweater could have gained admission to the private view. But it turned out she was a buyer. Not with her own money, naturally, but for a company in Denmark needing to fit out its new rooms in Odense. She was a freelance translator from Norwegian and Spanish: brochures, articles, user manuals, films and the odd specialist book. The firm was one of her more regular customers. She spoke softly and with a tentative little smile as if she didn’t understand why anyone would waste their time talking to her. I was immediately taken with Lotte. Yes, I think taken is the right word. She was sweet. And small. One fifty-nine. I didn’t need to ask, I have a good eye for heights. By the time I left that evening, I had her phone number to send her photographs of other pictures by the exhibiting artist. At that point I probably thought my intentions were honest.
