Jo Nesbo

by Headhunters

  ‘It was the thoroughness that tempted you here,’ I said. ‘To the final interview. Because do you know what? You’re the man I’ve been seeking for this job. A job for which I not only think but know you are perfect. And that means the job is perfect for you. Believe me, herr Greve.’

  Greve didn’t answer, just stared down at himself. The blood had made the black roll-neck even blacker. So I went on.

  ‘You are hereby appointed as the scapegoat, herr Greve. As the man who killed Ove Kjikerud, the body lying next to me.’ I patted Ove on the stomach.

  Greve groaned again and raised his head. ‘What the fuck are you babbling on about?’ His voice sounded desperate and at the same time groggy, sleepy. ‘Ring for an ambulance before you murder someone else, Brown. Think about it, you’re an amateur, you’ll never get away from the police. Ring now, and I’ll save you, too.’

  I looked down at Ove. He seemed peaceful where he lay. ‘But it’s not me who will kill you, Greve. It’s Kjikerud here, don’t you understand?’

  ‘No. Christ, ring for a bloody ambulance now. Can’t you see I’m bleeding to death here!’

  ‘Sorry, it’s too late.’

  ‘Too late? Are you going to let me die?’

  Something different had crept into his voice. Could it have been tears?

  ‘Please, Brown. Not here, not like this! I implore you, I beg you.’

  It was tears indeed. They streamed down his cheeks. Not that strange perhaps, if what he had said about being shot in the stomach was correct. I could see blood dripping from the inside of his trouser legs onto the polished Prada shoes. He had begged. Had not been able to maintain dignity in death. I have heard it said that no one can, that those who appear to manage it are just emotionless from shock. The most humiliating part for Greve was of course that there were so many witnesses to his breakdown. And there would be more.

  Fifteen seconds after I had let myself into Kjikerud’s house and entered the sitting room without tapping in ‘Natasha’ on the alarm, the CCTV cameras would have begun to record as the alarm went off at Tripolis. I formed a mental image of how they would have flocked around the monitor, how they would have stared at the silent film in disbelief, with Greve as the only visible actor, seen him open his mouth but would have been unable to hear what he said. They would have seen him shoot and take a hit, and cursed Ove for not having had a camera that showed the person in bed.

  I looked at my watch. Four minutes had passed since the alarm had gone off, and, I presumed, three minutes since they had phoned the police. They, in turn, had rung Delta, the armed unit that was used on stake-outs. And whom it took some time to assemble. Tonsenhagen was also quite some distance from the centre. Assumptions of course, but the first police cars would hardly be here in less than, at best, a quarter of an hour. On the other hand, there was no reason to let this drag on. Greve had fired two of the seventeen shots in the magazine.

  ‘All right, Clas,’ I said, opening the window behind the headboard. ‘You can have a last chance. Pick up your gun. If you can shoot me, I suppose you can ring for an ambulance yourself.’

  He stared at me with empty eyes. An icy cold wind swept into the room. Winter had arrived, no question.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘What have you got to lose?’

  The logic of this seemed to penetrate his shock-addled brain. And with a swift movement, much swifter than I had believed possible with the injuries he had, he threw himself sideways to the floor and grabbed the gun. The bullets from the machine gun, plumbum, the soft, heavy, toxic metal, gouged up splinters from the parquet floor between his legs. But before the spray of bullets reached him again, before it swept across his chest, pierced his heart and punctured both lungs, causing him to wheeze his last, he managed to fire one shot. A single shot. The sound quivered between the walls. Then it was quiet again. Deathly quiet. Only the wind sang its low song. The silent film had become a freeze-frame, frozen in the cold temperature that seeped into the room.

  It was over.

  PART FIVE

  Last Interview One Month Later

  23

  NEWS TONIGHT

  THE THEME SONG OF the news program News Tonight was a simple guitar riff reminiscent of a bossa nova, swaying hips and colorful drinks, not hard facts, politics and depressing social problems. Or, like this evening, crime. The tune was brief in order to signal that News Tonight was a program without unnecessary frills, it dealt with the nitty-gritty and went straight to the point.

  That was presumably why it started with the jib camera in Studio 3 that showed the evening’s guests from above, then swept down to finish with a head shot of the anchor, Odd G. Dybwad. As the music stopped, he looked up from his papers and removed his reading glasses. That had probably been the producer’s idea; he or she might have thought it gave the impression that the news item they were going to discuss was hot off the press, so much so that Dybwad had only just managed to read it himself.

  Dybwad had short, thick hair which was greying at the temples and one of those fortyish faces. He had looked forty when he was thirty and forty now that he was fifty. Dybwad had majored in social sciences, was analytical, verbally bright and by predilection tabloid through and through. It was probably not this attribute that had been decisive in the station manager’s decision to give him his own talk show, but rather the job Dybwad had been doing as a news anchorman for half a human lifetime. By and large the task had been to read aloud prepared texts with the right intonation and facial expression, dressed in the right suit with the right tie, but in Dybwad’s case the intonation, the expression and the tie had been so right that it had given him more credibility than any other living person in Norway. And it was credibility that was needed to carry a program like News Tonight. Strangely enough, publicly stating several times that he loved his ratings and that at editorial meetings it was he, and not the station manager, who pushed for the most commercial news items just seemed to reinforce Dybwad’s impregnability. He wanted to have slants with the potential to create heat and stir emotions, not doubts, nor a variety of views and debate. That was best managed by newspaper feature articles. His stock response was: ‘Why leave discussions about the royal family, homosexual foster parents and welfare abuse to frivolous media operators when we can have them on News Tonight?’

  News Tonight was an unqualified success and Odd G. Dybwad a star. So much of a star that after an extremely painful and extremely public divorce he had been able to marry one of the channel’s young female stars.

  ‘This evening we have two items,’ he said with a voice that was already trembling a fraction with suppressed emotion as he stared with piercing eyes from the TV screen. ‘First we will be giving an overview of one of the most dramatic murder cases in Norway’s history. After a month of intense investigation the police now believe they have unravelled all the threads of the so-called Greve case. In all, it involves eight murders. A man who was strangled on his farm outside Elverum. Four policemen whose car was rammed by a stolen juggernaut. A woman who was shot in her Oslo home. All of this before the two main protagonists in this drama gunned each other down in a house in Tonsenhagen here in Oslo. The last episode in this drama was caught on film because the house was fitted with CCTV, and copies of the video have already leaked out and have been circulating on the Internet over the last few weeks.’

  Dybwad bumped up the dose of pathos.

  ‘And, as if that were not enough, at the centre of this bizarre case is a world-famous painting. Peter Paul Rubens’s The Calydonian Boar Hunt had been missing, feared lost, ever since the last world war. Until it was found four weeks ago in a …’ Here Dybwad became so excited that he started to stammer. ‘… in – in an outside toilet here in Norway!’

  After this introduction Dybwad had to touch down before taking off again.

  ‘We are joined by someone who can help us get to the heart of the Greve case. Brede Sperre …’

  Dybwad paused for a moment as this was the cue for the produ
cer in the control room to switch to camera 2. The producer chose a side shot of the only guest in the studio, a tall, good-looking, blond man. An expensive suit for a civil servant, an open-necked shirt, mother-of-pearl buttons, probably put together by the ELLE stylist he was secretly – or almost secretly – shagging. None of the female viewers would be switching channels for the time being.

  ‘You led the Kripos investigation into this murder case. You have almost fifteen years’ experience in the police force. Have you ever encountered anything like this before?’

  ‘All cases are different,’ Brede Sperre said, with effortless self-assurance. You didn’t need to be a fortune teller to know that his mobile phone would be crammed with texts after the broadcast. A woman wondering if he was single and fancied a coffee with an interesting person; a single mother, living just outside Oslo, with her own car and loads of free time next week. A young man who liked older, resolute men. Some skipped the preliminaries and just sent a photo. One they were pleased with, nice smile, straight from the hairdresser, nice clothes, suitably low neckline. Or without a face. Or clothes.

  ‘But, of course, eight murders is not your usual bread-and-butter case,’ Sperre said in his stilted voice. And added, hearing that an understatement was a trifle on the nonchalant side: ‘Not here and not in countries which it would be na-ural to compare ourselves with.’

  ‘Brede Sperre,’ said Dybwad, who was always careful to repeat the guest’s name a couple of times, so that it stuck in viewers’ minds, ‘this is a case which has aroused international interest. Aside from the murder of eight people, this heightened attention is primarily down to the fact that a world-famous old master has played a key role, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly a painting familiar to art connoisseurs.’

  ‘Now I think we can say without fear of contradiction that it is world-famous!’ Dybwad exclaimed, trying to catch Sperre’s eye, perhaps to remind him about what they had discussed before the show, that they were a team, two people who should work together to tell a fantastic story. Devaluing the fame of the painting had the effect of making the story less fantastic.

  ‘Nevertheless Rubens’s painting must have been of central importance when Kripos, with no survivors or other witnesses to rely on, had to fit all the pieces of this puzzle together. Isn’t that right, Inspector Sperre?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘You will be presenting the final case report tomorrow, but I understand you can already tell our viewers what actually happened in the Greve case, the whole course of events from start to finish.’

  Brede Sperre nodded. But instead of starting to speak he raised the glass of water on the desk in front of him and took a small sip. Dybwad, to the right of the picture, was beaming. The two of them might have arranged this little spot of theatricality in advance, this pause that made viewers perch on the very edge of their sofas, all eyes and ears. Or perhaps Sperre had taken over the stage management. The policeman put down his glass and took a deep breath.

  ‘Before I joined Kripos, I was, as you know, in the Robberies Unit and had inve-tigated the many art thefts that have occurred in Oslo over the last two years. The similarities suggested that there was a gang behind them. At a very early stage we had been focusing on the security company Tripolis as most of the residences that were burgled had alarms from there. And now we know that one of the people behind the thefts worked for Tripolis. Ove Kjikerud had access to property owners’ keys at Tripolis and thus could also switch off alarms. In addition, Kjikerud had clearly found a way to delete reports of break-ins from the system’s databases. We assume Kjikerud himself carried out most of the bur-laries. But he needed a person who had some insight into the art world, who spoke to other art enthusiasts in Oslo and could gain an overview of which pictures were hanging where.’

  ‘And this is where Clas Greve came in?’

  ‘Yes. He himself had a fine collection of art in his apartment in Oscars gate and hung out with art connoisseurs, particularly at Galleri E, where he was often observed. There he spoke to people who themselves had valuable paintings or could tell him who had. This was i-formation that Greve in turn passed on to Kjikerud.’

  ‘What did Kjikerud do with the paintings after stealing them?’

  ‘Through an anonymous tip-off, we have managed to trace a fence, a receiver of stolen goods, in Gothenburg, an old friend of the police who has already confessed to having been in contact with Kjikerud. In interviews this person has told our Swedish colleagues that the last time he heard anything from Kjikerud was when he called and said that the Rubens picture was on its way. The fence said he found it difficult to believe that this was true. And neither the painting nor Kjikerud turned up in Gothenburg …’

  ‘No, it didn’t,’ Dybwad rumbled with tragic gravity. ‘Because what happened?’

  Sperre smirked before continuing, as though finding the anchor’s melodrama rather amusing. ‘It seems that Kjikerud and Greve decided not to deal with the fence in Gothenburg. They may have decided to sell the painting themselves. Remember that the receiver rakes in fifty per cent of the sale price, and on this occasion the sums they were talking about were quite different from the proceeds from other pictures. As the former CEO of a Dutch technology company which had dealings with Russia and several ex-Eastern bloc countries, Greve had a pile of con-acts, not necessarily all on the right side of the law. And this was Greve and Kjikerud’s chance to be financially secure for the rest of their lives.’

  ‘But on the face of it Greve seemed like a person who had enough money, didn’t he?’

  ‘The technology company which he part-owned was going through a rough patch, and he had just lost his post there. Apparently he had a lifestyle which necessitated income. We know he had recently applied for a job with a Norwegian company in Horten.’

  ‘So Kjikerud didn’t turn up for the meeting with the fence because he and Greve wanted to sell the painting themselves. What happened then?’

  ‘Until they found a buyer they had to hide the painting somewhere secure. So they went to a cabin Kjikerud had rented from Sindre Aa for several years.’

  ‘Outside Elverum.’

  ‘Yes. The neighbours say that the cabin wasn’t used much, from time to time there were two men around the place, but no one had ever exchanged words with them. It seemed almost as though they were in hiding.’

  ‘And you believe this was Greve and Kjikerud?’

  ‘They were incredibly professional and extremely paricular in their dealings with others. And they didn’t want to leave any traces that might connect the two of them. We don’t have any witnesses who ever saw them together, and no phone records to show they had spoken.’

  ‘But then an unforeseen event took place?’

  ‘Yes. Precisely what, we don’t know. They had gone to the cabin to hide the painting. Not unnaturally when the sums are so huge there is a tendency for suspicions to sneak in about the partner you trusted before … Perhaps they started arguing. And they must have been high: we found traces of drugs in both their blood samples.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘A mixture of Ketalar and Dormicum. Strong stuff and very unusual among addicts in Oslo, so our guess is that Greve must have brought this with him from Amsterdam. The combination may have made them careless and in the end they totally lost control. Which ended up with them taking the life of Sindre Aa. Afterwards—’

  ‘One moment,’ Dybwad interrupted. ‘Could you explain to viewers exactly what happened in connection with this first murder?’

  Sperre raised an eyebrow, as if to express a certain displeasure with the anchor’s undisguised bloodthirstiness. Then he gave in.

  ‘No, we can only guess. Kjikerud and Greve may have taken the party down to Sindre Aa and boasted about the famous painting they had stolen. And Aa rea-ted by threatening to or actually trying to contact the police. Whereupon Clas Greve garrotted him.’

  ‘And a garrotte is?’

  ‘A thin piec
e of wire or nylon which is tightened around the victim’s neck, blocking the flow of oxygen to the brain.’

  ‘And he dies?’

  ‘Er … yes.’

  A button in the control room was pressed and on the live monitor – the screen showing what was being transmitted to the thousands of TV viewers – Odd G. Dybwad was nodding slowly while staring at Sperre with a studied mixture of horror and earnestness. He let it sink in. One, two, three seconds. Three TV years. The producer was presumably sweating now. And then Dybwad broke the silence. ‘How do you know it was Greve who carried out the killing?’

  ‘Forensic evidence. We later found the garrotte on Greve’s body, in the jacket pocket. Sindre Aa’s blood and traces of Greve’s skin were found on it.’

  ‘And so you know that both Greve and Kjikerud were in Aa’s sitting room at the time of the murder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know that? More forensic evidence?’

  Sperre squirmed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What evidence?’

  Brede Sperre coughed and shot a look at Dybwad. They might have had discussions about this point. Sperre may have asked him to skip the detail, but Dybwad had insisted it was important to fill out the story.

  Sperre braced himself. ‘We found some evidence in the vicinity of Sindre Aa’s body. Traces of excrement.’

  ‘Excrement?’ Dybwad interrupted. ‘Human?’

  ‘Yes. We sent it to the lab for DNA analysis. Most matches the DNA profile of Ove Kjikerud. But there was also some from Clas Greve.’

  Dybwad opened his palms. ‘What on earth was going on here, Inspector Sperre?’

  ‘It is difficult to form a detailed picture, of course, but it looks as if Greve and Kjikerud …’ Another pause to brace himself. ‘… smeared their own excrement over themselves. Some people do that, don’t they?’

  ‘In other words, we’re talking about some very sick individuals here?’

  ‘They’d been taking drugs, as I mentioned before. But, yes, it is undoubtedly … er, deviant behaviour.’