by Headhunters
‘Yes, they’re ready,’ Ferdinand said, tripping down the corridor after me. ‘By the way, there was a policeman here. Tall, blond and quite, erm … good-looking.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He wanted to know what Clas Greve had said about himself in the interviews he had attended here.’
‘He’s been dead a long time,’ I said. ‘Are they still investigating the case?’
‘Not the murder case. It’s about the Rubens picture. They can’t work out who he stole it from. No one’s come forward. Now they’re trying to trace who he’s been in contact with.’
‘Didn’t you read the paper today? Now they’ve started to doubt whether it’s an original Rubens again. Perhaps he didn’t steal it; he might have inherited it.’
‘Bizarre.’
‘What did you say to the policeman?’
‘I gave him our interview report, of course. That didn’t seem to interest him much. He said he would contact us again, if there was anything.’
‘And you’re hoping he will, I suppose?’
Ferdinand gave his squeal of a laugh.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you take care of that, Ferdy. I trust you.’
I could see how he rose and sank, how the responsibility made him grow and the nickname made him shrink. Balance is everything.
Then we were at the end of the corridor. I paused in front of the door and checked the knot of my tie. They were sitting inside, ready for the final interview. The rubber-stamping. For the candidate had already been selected, was already appointed, it was just the client who wasn’t aware of it yet, who thought they still had some say in the matter.
‘Then send the candidate in exactly two minutes from now,’ I said. ‘One hundred and twenty seconds.’
Ferdinand nodded and studied his watch.
‘Just one tiny little thing,’ he said. ‘Her name’s Ida.’
I opened the door and stepped inside.
There was scraping of chairs as they stood up.
‘I apologise for the delay, gentlemen,’ I said, shaking the three hands held out to me. ‘But someone took my parking spot.’
‘Isn’t that wearing?’ the chairman of Pathfinder said, turning to his public relations manager who nodded in vigorous agreement. The shop steward representing the employees was there too, a guy in a red V-necked sweater with a cheap white shirt underneath, undoubtedly an engineer of the saddest variety.
‘The candidate has a board meeting at twelve, so perhaps we ought to get cracking?’ I said, taking a seat at the end of the table. The other end had already been prepared for the man they would, in one and a half hours’ time, happily agree would have to be Pathfinder’s new CEO. The lights had been set up in such a way that he would appear at his most favourable, the chair was of the same kind as ours, but its legs were a bit longer, and I had laid out the leather briefcase I had bought for him, bearing his initials, and a gold Montblanc pen.
‘Indeed,’ the company chairman said. ‘By the way, I have a confession to make. As you know, we very much liked Clas Greve after the interview he gave.’
‘Yes,’ said the public relations manager. ‘We thought you had found the perfect candidate.’
‘He was a foreigner, I know,’ said the chairman, his neck coiling like a snake’s, ‘but the man spoke Norwegian like a native. And we said, while you were escorting him out, that in the final analysis the Dutch have always had a better understanding of the export market than we do here.’
‘And that we might be able to learn from someone with a more international management style,’ the public relations manager added.
‘So when you came back and said you were not sure he was the right man after all, well, we were very surprised, Roger.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, we were quite simply of the opinion that your powers of judgement were wanting. I haven’t said this before, but we were considering withdrawing your commission and contacting Greve direct.’
‘So did you do that?’ I asked with a wry smile.
‘What we’re wondering,’ the public relations manager said, exchanging glances with the chairman and flashing a smile, ‘is how you could spot there was something amiss.’
‘How did you know instinctively what we were utterly blind to?’ asked the chairman, with a loud clearing of the throat. ‘How can anyone be such a good judge of character?’
I nodded slowly. Pushed my papers five centimetres up the table. And slumped into the high-backed chair. It rocked – not too much, only a little. I looked out of the window. At the light. At the darkness that was on its way. A hundred seconds. The room was quite silent now.
‘It’s my job,’ I said.
From the corner of my eye I saw the three of them exchange meaningful nods. And added: ‘Besides, I had already begun to consider a candidate who was even better.’
The three turned towards me. And I was ready. I imagine that is how it feels to be the conductor during the seconds before the concert starts, feeling the eyes of everyone in the symphony orchestra glued to your baton, hearing the expectant audience behind you settle in.
‘That’s why I’ve brought you here today,’ I said. ‘The man you will meet is the new shooting star, not just in the Norwegian but in the international management sky. In the last round I reckoned it would be quite unrealistic to wrench him away from the job he had. He is, after all, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost of the company.’
My gaze shifted from face to face.
‘But without promising too much now, I think I can go so far as to say that I may have unsettled him. And if we should get him …’ I rolled my eyes to suggest a wet dream, utopia, but nevertheless … And the chairman and the public relations manager had predictably and inevitably drawn closer. Even the shop steward who had been sitting with his arms crossed had placed them on the table and leaned forward.
‘Who? Who?’ whispered the public relations manager.
One hundred and twenty.
The door opened. And there he stood, a man of thirty-nine in a suit from Kamikaze in Bogstadveien where Alfa gets a fifteen per cent discount. Ferdinand had dabbed some skin-colored talcum powder on his right hand before sending him in because, as we know, he suffered from sweaty palms. But the candidate knew what he had to do, for I had instructed him, set the scene down to the last detail. He had dyed his hair an almost imperceptible grey at the temples and had once owned a lithograph by Edvard Munch entitled The Brooch.
‘May I introduce Jeremias Lander?’ I said.
I’m a headhunter. It’s not particularly difficult. But I am king of the heap.
AN EXCERPT FROM
The Snowman
by Jo Nesbø
Available from Alfred A. Knopf
NOVEMBER 2, 2004—DAY 1
PEBBLE-EYES
HARRY HOLE GAVE A start and opened his eyes wide. It was freezing cold, and from the dark came the sound of the voice that had awoken him. It announced that the American people would decide today whether their president for the next four years would again be George Walker Bush. November. Harry was thinking they were definitely heading for dark times. He threw off the duvet and placed his feet on the floor. The linoleum was so cold it stung. He left the news blaring from the clock radio and went into the bathroom. Regarded himself in the mirror. November there, too: drawn, grayish pale and overcast. As usual, his eyes were bloodshot, and the pores on his nose large black craters. The bags under his eyes, with their light-blue alcohol-washed irises, would disappear after his face had been ministered to with hot water, a towel and breakfast. He assumed they would, that is. Harry was not sure exactly how his face would fare during the day now that he had turned forty. Whether the wrinkles would be ironed out and peace would fall over the hunted expression he woke with after nights of being ridden by nightmares. Which was most nights. For he avoided mirrors after he left his small, spartan apartment on Sofies Gate and transformed into Inspector Hole of the Crime Squad at the Oslo Police HQ. The
n he stared into others’ faces to find their pain, their Achilles’ heels, their nightmares, motives and reasons for self-deception, listening to their fatiguing lies and trying to find a meaning in what he did: imprisoning people who were already imprisoned inside themselves. Prisons of hatred and self-contempt he recognized all too well. He ran a hand over the shorn bristles of blond hair that grew precisely seventy-five inches above the frozen soles of his feet. His collarbone stood out under his skin like a clothes hanger. He had trained a lot since the last case. In a frenzy, some maintained. As well as cycling he had started to lift weights in the fitness room in the bowels of the Police HQ. He liked the burning pain, and the repressed thoughts. Nevertheless, he just became leaner. The fat disappeared and his muscles were layered between skin and bone. And while before he had been broad-shouldered and what Rakel called a natural athlete, now he had begun to resemble the photograph he had once seen of a skinned polar bear: a muscular but shockingly gaunt predator. Quite simply, he was fading away. Not that it actually mattered. Harry sighed. November. It was going to get even darker.
He went into the kitchen, drank a glass of water to relieve his headache and peered through the window in surprise. The roof of the building on the other side of Sofies Gate was white and the bright reflected light made his eyes smart. The first snow had come in the night. He thought of the letter. He did occasionally get such letters, but this one had been special. It had mentioned Toowoomba.
On the radio a nature program had started and an enthusiastic voice was waxing lyrical about seals. “Every summer Berhaus seals collect in the Bering Strait to mate. Since the males are in the majority, the competition for females is so fierce that those males that have managed to procure themselves a female will stick with her during the whole of the breeding period. The male will take care of his partner until the young have been born and can cope by themselves. Not out of love for the female, but out of love for his own genes and hereditary material. Darwinist theory would say that it is natural selection that makes the Berhaus seal monogamous, not morality.”
I wonder, thought Harry.
The voice on the radio was almost turning falsetto with excitement. “But before the seals leave the Bering Strait to search for food in the open sea, the male will try to kill the female. Why? Because a female Berhaus seal will never mate twice with the same male! For her this is about spreading the biological risk of hereditary material, just like on the stock market. For her it makes biological sense to be promiscuous, and the male knows this. By taking her life he wants to stop the young of other seals competing with his own progeny for the same food.”
“We’re entering Darwinian waters here, so why don’t humans think like the seal?” another voice said.
“But we do, don’t we! Our society is not as monogamous as it appears, and never has been. A Swedish study showed recently that between fifteen and twenty percent of all children born have a different father from the one they—and for that matter the postulated fathers—think. Twenty percent! That’s every fifth child! Living a lie. And ensuring biological diversity.”
Harry fiddled with the radio dial to find some tolerable music. He stopped at an aging Johnny Cash’s version of “Desperado.”
There was a firm knock on the door.
Harry went into the bedroom, put on his jeans, returned to the hall and opened up.
“Harry Hole?” The man outside was wearing blue overalls and looking at Harry through thick lenses. His eyes were as clear as a child’s.
Harry nodded.
“Have you got fungus?” The man asked the question with a straight face. A long wisp of hair traversed his forehead and was stuck there. Under his arm he was holding a plastic clipboard with a densely printed sheet.
Harry waited for him to explain further, but nothing was forthcoming. Just this clear, open expression.
“That,” Harry said, “strictly speaking, is a private matter.”
The man gave the suggestion of a smile in response to a joke he was heartily sick of hearing. “Fungus in your apartment. Mold.”
“I have no reason to believe that I do,” said Harry.
“That’s the thing about mold. It seldom gives anyone any reason to believe that it’s there.” The man sucked at his teeth and rocked on his heels.
“But?” Harry said at length.
“But it is.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Your neighbor’s got it.”
“Uh-huh? And you think it may have spread?”
“Mold doesn’t spread. Dry rot does.”
“So then …?”
“There’s a construction fault with the ventilation along the walls in this building. It allows dry rot to flourish. May I take a peep at your kitchen?”
Harry stepped to the side. The man powered into the kitchen, where at once he pressed an orange hair-dryer-like apparatus against the wall. It squeaked twice.
“Damp detector,” the man said, studying something that was obviously an indicator. “Just as I thought. Sure you haven’t seen or smelled anything suspicious?”
Harry didn’t have a clear perception of what that might be.
“A coating like on stale bread,” the man said. “Moldy smell.”
Harry shook his head.
“Have you had sore eyes?” the man asked. “Felt tired? Had headaches?”
Harry shrugged. “Of course. For as long as I can remember.”
“Do you mean for as long as you’ve lived here?”
“Maybe. Listen …”
But the man wasn’t listening; he’d taken a knife from his belt. Harry stood back and watched the hand holding the knife being raised and thrust with great force. There was a sound like a groan as the knife went through the plasterboard behind the wallpaper. The man pulled out the knife, thrust it in again and bent back a powdery piece of plaster, leaving a large gap in the wall. Then he whipped out a small penlight and shone it into the cavity. A deep frown developed behind his oversize glasses. Then he stuck his nose deep into the cavity and sniffed.
“Right,” he said. “Hello there, boys.”
“Hello there who?” Harry asked, edging closer.
“Aspergillus,” said the man. “A genus of mold. We have three or four hundred types to choose among and it’s difficult to say which one this is because the growth on these hard surfaces is so thin it’s invisible. But there’s no mistaking the smell.”
“That means trouble, right?” Harry asked, trying to remember how much he had left in his bank account after he and his father had sponsored a trip to Spain for Sis, his little sister, who had what she referred to as “a touch of Down syndrome.”
“It’s not like real dry rot. The building won’t collapse,” the man said. “But you might.”
“Me?”
“If you’re prone to it. Some people get ill from breathing the same air as the mold. They’re ailing for years, and of course they get accused of being hypochondriacs since no one can find anything and the other residents are fine. And then the pest eats up the wallpaper and the plasterboard.”
“Mm. What do you suggest?”
“That I eradicate the infection, of course.”
“And my personal finances while you’re at it?”
“Covered by the building’s insurance, so it won’t cost you a krone. All I need is access to the apartment for the next few days.”
Harry found the spare set of keys in the kitchen drawer and passed them to him.
“It’ll just be me,” the man said. “I should mention that in passing. Lots of strange things going on out there.”
“Are there?” Harry smiled sadly, staring out of the window.
“Eh?”
“Nothing,” Harry said. “There’s nothing to steal here anyway. I’ll be off now.”
The low morning sun sparkled off all the glass on the Oslo Police HQ, standing there as it had for the last thirty years, on the summit of the ridge by the main street, Grønlandsleiret. Although
this had not been exactly intentional, the HQ was near the high-crime areas in east Oslo, and the prison, located on the site of the old brewery, was its closest neighbor. The police station was surrounded by a brown withering lawn and maple and linden trees that had been covered with a thin layer of gray-white snow during the night, making the park look like a deceased’s shrouded chattels.
Harry walked up the black strip of pavement to the main entrance and entered the central hall, where Kari Christensen’s porcelain wall decoration with running water whispered its eternal secrets. He nodded to the security guard in reception and went up to the Crime Squad on the sixth floor. Although it had been almost six months since he had been given his new office in the red zone, he still often mistakenly went to the cramped, windowless one he had shared with Officer Jack Halvorsen. Now Magnus Skarre was in there. And Jack Halvorsen had been interred in the ground of Vestre Aker cemetery. At first the parents had wanted their son to be buried in their hometown, Steinkjer, as Jack and Beate Lønn, the head of Krimteknisk, the Forensics Unit, had not been married; they hadn’t even been living together. But when they found out that Beate was pregnant and Jack’s baby would be born in the summer, Jack’s parents agreed that Jack’s grave should be in Oslo.
Harry entered his new office. Which he knew would be known as that forever, the way the fifty-year-old home ground of the Barcelona football club was still called Camp Nou, Catalan for “New Stadium.”
He dropped into his chair, switched on the radio and nodded good morning to the photos perched on the bookcase and propped against the wall. One day in an uncertain future, if he remembered to buy picture hooks, they would hang on the wall. Ellen Gjelten and Jack Halvorsen and Bjarne Møller. There they stood in chronological order. The Dead Policemen’s Society.
On the radio Norwegian politicians and social scientists were giving their views on the American presidential election. Harry recognized the voice of Arve Støp, the owner of the successful magazine Liberal and famous for being one of the most knowledgeable, arrogant and entertaining pundits in the country. Harry turned up the volume until the voices bounced off the brick walls, and grabbed his Peerless handcuffs from the new desk. He practiced speed-cuffing the table leg, which was already splintered as a result of this new bad habit of his. He had picked it up in the FBI course in Chicago and perfected it during lonely evenings in a lousy apartment in Cabrini-Green, surrounded by arguing neighbors and in the company of Jim Beam. The aim was to bang the cuffs against the arrestee’s wrist in such a way that the springloaded arm closed around the wrist and the lock clicked on the other side. With the right amount of force and accuracy you could cuff yourself to an arrestee in one simple movement before he had a chance to react. Harry had never had any use for this on the job and only once for the other thing he had learned over there: how to catch a serial killer. The cuffs clicked around the table leg and the radio voices droned on.
