Headhunters (17 page)

‘Can you put me through to the new guy, please?’

‘New guy, sir?’

‘You know, head of technical division.’

‘Felsenbrink is hardly new, sir.’

‘To me he is. So, is Felsenbrink in?’

Four seconds later I was talking to a Dutchman who was not only at work but sounded both fresh and polite despite it being one minute after four.

‘I’m Roger Brown from Alfa Recruiting.’ True. ‘Mr Clas Greve has given us your name as a reference.’ False.

‘Right,’ said the man, not sounding in the least bit surprised. ‘Clas Greve is the best manager I’ve ever worked with.’

‘So you …’ I started.

‘Yes, sir, my most sincere recommendations. He’s the perfect man for Pathfinder. Or any other company for that matter.’

I hesitated. Then changed my mind. ‘Thank you, Mr Fenselbrink.’

‘Felsenbrink. Any time.’

I put the phone in my trouser pocket. I didn’t know
why
, but something told me that I had just committed a blunder.

Outside, the rain was relentless and for lack of anything better to do, I took out the Rubens painting and studied it in the light from the kitchen window. The furious face of the hunter, Meleager, as he speared the beast. And discovered who he had reminded me of when I first saw the picture: Clas Greve. A thought struck me. A coincidence, of course, but Diana had once told me that the name Diana was the Roman name of the goddess of hunters and childbirth, known as Artemis in Greek. And it was Artemis who had sent out Meleager, wasn’t it? I yawned and made up my own role in the painting until I realised I had been mixing things up. It was the other way round; Artemis had sent out the beast. I rubbed my eyes; I was still tired.

At that moment I noticed that something had happened, there was a change, but I had been so absorbed by the painting that it had slipped my attention. I looked out of the window. It was the sound. It had stopped raining.

I put the picture back in the portfolio and decided to find a hiding place. I had to leave the cabin to do some shopping and a few other things, and I definitely didn’t trust that snake in the grass, Sindre Aa.

I looked around and my gaze was drawn to outside the window, to the toilet. The ceiling consisted of loose boards. Walking across the yard, I could feel I should have put on a jacket.

The toilet was a shed with just the basic requirements: four walls with cracks between the upright boards to give natural ventilation, and a wooden box in which had been sawn a circular hole, covered with a square, roughly hewn lid. I removed three toilet roll tubes and a magazine featuring a photo of Rune Rudberg with pinhole pupils from the lid and clambered up onto it. Stretched up to
the
boards lying loose across the beams, wishing for the nine millionth time that I was a few centimetres taller. But in the end I managed to loosen a board, shove the portfolio up under the roof and replace the board. And while standing there, straddling the toilet, I froze as I stared out through a gap between the planks.

It was deafeningly quiet outside now, just occasional drips from weighed-down branches. Nevertheless, I hadn’t heard a sound, not a single twig breaking, not a squelchy footstep on the muddy path. Or as much as a whimper from the dog standing by his master at the edge of the forest. Had I been sitting in the cabin, I would not have seen them; from the window they would have been in a blind spot. The dog looked like a collection of muscles, jaws and teeth packed into the bodywork of a boxer, just smaller and more compact. Let me repeat: I hate dogs. Clas Greve was wearing a camouflage-patterned cape and a green army hat. He didn’t have a weapon in his hands; what he had under his cape I could only guess at. It struck me that this was the perfect place for Greve. Deserted, no witnesses, hiding a body would be child’s play.

Master and mastiff set off as one, as though obeying an inaudible command.

My heart pounded with terror, yet I could not help but stare with fascination at how fast and how completely soundless their progress from the edge of the wood was, up to and alongside the cabin wall and then – without any hesitation – in through the door, which they left wide open.

I knew I had only a few seconds before Greve discovered that the cabin was empty, before he found the jacket over the back of the chair telling him I was close by. And … shit! … saw the Glock, which was lying on the worktop beside the empty can of stew. My brain was
working
overtime and could only reach this one conclusion – that I had nothing: no weapon, no means of retreat, no plan, no time. If I ran for it, it would be ten seconds tops before I had twenty kilos of Niether terrier at my heels and nine millimetres of lead in my skull. In short, things were going down the pan. Then my brain suggested panicking. But instead it did something I would never have believed. It simply stopped and took a step back. Back to ‘going down the pan’.

An idea. A desperate and revolting idea in all ways. But nonetheless an idea which had one big thing going for it: it was the only one I had.

I grabbed one of the toilet roll tubes and put it in my mouth. Felt how tightly I could close my mouth around it. Then I lifted the toilet seat. The stench rose up to meet me. It was one and a half metres down to the tank with a viscous mixture of excrement, urine, toilet paper and rainwater running down the insides of the walls. It took at least two men to carry the tank to the pit in the forest and was a nightmare of a job. Literally. Ove and I had only been up to doing it once, and the three following nights I had dreamed about shit slopping around. And Aa had obviously shunned it too: the one-and-a-half-metre-deep tank was full to the brim. Which, as it happened, suited me fine. Not even a Niether terrier would be able to smell anything but muck.

I balanced the toilet lid on the top of my head, put my hands on either side of the hole and gingerly lowered myself.

It was an unreal feeling to sink into crap, to feel the light pressure of men’s shit against my body as I drilled my way down. The toilet seat stayed put as my head passed the edge of the hole. My sense of smell had perhaps already become overburdened, it had definitely gone on holiday, and I just registered an increased activity in my
tear
ducts. The top, the most fluid layer in the tank, was freezing cold, but lower down it was in fact quite warm, maybe because of the various chemical processes going on. Hadn’t I read something about methane gases developing in cesspits of this kind? And that you could die if you inhaled too much? Now I had firm ground under my feet and crouched. Tears were streaming down my cheeks and my nose was running. I leaned back, made sure that the tube was pointing straight upwards, closed my eyes and tried to relax so that I could control my retching reflexes. Then I carefully hunkered down. My ears were full of shit and silence. I forced myself to breathe through the cardboard tube. It worked. No need to go any deeper now. Of course it would have been a really symbolic way to die with my mouth and ears filled, drowning in Ove’s and my own faeces, but I felt no desire to die an ironic death. I wanted to live.

I seemed to hear the door opening from a long way away.

Here we go.

I felt the vibrations of heavy footsteps. Stamping. And then it went quiet. The padding of feet. The dog. The toilet lid was opened. I knew that right now Greve was staring down at me. Inside me. He was looking down the opening of a toilet roll tube that led directly to my innards. I breathed as quietly as I could. The cardboard of the tube had gone wet and soft; I knew it would soon wrinkle, leak and crumple.

I heard a bump. What was that?

The next sound was unmistakable. A sudden explosion that progressed into a hissing, lamenting bowel tone and eventually faded. It was rounded off with a groan of well-being.

Oh hell, I thought.

And sure enough. A few seconds later I heard the
splash
and felt a new weight on my upturned face. For a moment death appeared to be an acceptable alternative, but not for long. Actually it was a paradox: I had never had less to live for and yet I had never wished for life more.

A longer groan now, he was obviously applying pressure. He mustn’t land in the opening of the tube! I felt panic mounting, I didn’t seem to be getting enough air through the toilet roll. Another splash.

I was dizzy and my thigh muscles were already aching from maintaining a crouched position. I straightened up a tiny bit. My face broke the surface. I blinked and blinked. I was staring at Clas Greve’s hairy white backside. And against his skin was the outline of a substantial, well, more than substantial, indeed an impressive dick. And since not even fear of death can expel penis envy in a man, I thought of Diana. And there and then I knew that if Greve didn’t kill me first, I would kill him. Greve raised himself, light seeped in through the hole and I saw that there was something wrong, something was missing. I closed my eyes and dragged myself under again. The dizziness was almost overpowering. Was I dying of methane poisoning?

It was quiet for some time. Was it all over? I was in mid-inhalation when I realised that all of a sudden there was nothing there, that I was sucking at nothing. The air supply was blocked. Primary instincts took over and I was beginning to suffocate. I had to get up! My face broke the surface as I heard a thud. I blinked and blinked. Above, all was dark. Then I heard heavy footsteps, the door opening, padding feet and the door closing. I spat out the toilet roll tube and saw what had happened. There was something white lying across the opening: the toilet paper Greve had wiped himself with.

I hauled myself up out of the tank and peered through
the
gaps between the boards in time to see Greve sending the dog into the forest while he went back into the cabin. The dog was heading towards the top of the mountain. I watched until it was swallowed up by the forest. And at that moment – perhaps because for a minute I allowed relief, the hope of salvation to flicker into life – an involuntary sob escaped my throat. No, I thought. Don’t hope. Don’t feel. No emotional involvement. Analytical. Come on, Brown. Think. Prime numbers. Overview of the chessboard. OK. How did Greve find me? How the hell could he know? Diana had never even heard of this place. Who had he been talking to? No answer. Right. What were my options? I had to get away, and I had two advantages: night was beginning to fall, and, covered from top to toe in shit, my smell was camouflaged. But I had a headache and the dizziness was getting worse, and I couldn’t wait until it was pitch black.

I slid down the outside of the tank and my feet landed on the slope at the back of the outhouse. I squatted down and assessed the distance to the forest. From there I could make it to the barn and effect my escape by car. I had the car keys in my pocket, didn’t I? I rummaged. In my left-hand pocket I had a few banknotes, Ove’s credit card and my own and Ove’s house keys. Right hand. I heaved a sigh of relief as my fingers met the car keys under the mobile phone.

The mobile phone.

Of course.

Mobile phones are located by base stations. To an area, it is true, not a specific place, but if one of Telenor’s base stations had registered my phone out here, there wouldn’t have been many options; Sindre Aa’s house is the only one within the radius of a kilometre. Naturally that would mean Greve had a contact in Telenor’s
operations
department, but nothing surprised me any more. It had begun to dawn on me what had happened. And Felsenbrink, who had sounded as if he had been waiting for a call from me, had confirmed my suspicions. This was not about a love triangle with me, my wife and a randy Dutchman. If I was right, I was in more trouble than I could ever have imagined.

I CAUTIOUSLY POKED
my head around the side of the outhouse and looked towards the cabin. The windowpanes were black and gave nothing away. So he hadn’t switched on the light. OK. I couldn’t stay here. I waited until a breath of wind rustled through the trees, then I ran. Seven seconds later I had reached the edge of the forest and was hidden behind the trees. But the seven seconds had almost knocked me out, my lungs ached, my head throbbed, and I was as dizzy as the first and only time my father had taken me to an amusement park. It was my ninth birthday, this was the present, and Dad and I had been the only visitors apart from three half-drunk teenagers sharing a Coke bottle with clear liquid in it. In his furious, broken Norwegian Dad had haggled down the price of the sole attraction that was open: a hellish machine, the point of which apparently was to sling you round and round until you spewed up candyfloss and your parents consoled you by buying popcorn and fizzy drinks. I had refused to risk my life on the rickety machinery, but my father had insisted and fastened the belts that were supposed to protect me. And now, a quarter of a century later, I was back at the same filthy, surrealist amusement park where everything stank of urine and rubbish and I was frightened and gagging the whole time.

A stream gurgled beside me. I pulled out my mobile
phone
and dropped it in. Trace me now, you bloody urban Red Indian. Then, on the soft forest floor, I jogged in the direction of the farm. Night had fallen between the pine trees, but there was no other vegetation, so it was easy to find the way. After no more than a couple of minutes I saw the outside light on the farmhouse. I ran down a bit further, so that the barn was between me and the farmhouse before I left the forest. There was every reason to believe that Aa would demand an explanation if he saw me in this state, and a call to the local police station would be the next step.