Headhunters (6 page)

‘Do you like art, Clas?’ I asked, passing him one of the glasses Nick had brought.

‘Yes. And no. I like art that shows something. But most of what I see claims a beauty or a truth that isn’t there. It may have been in the artist’s mind, but the communicative talent is absent. If I don’t see beauty or truth, it isn’t there, simple as that. An artist who maintains that he has been misunderstood is almost always a bad artist who, I’m afraid to say, has been understood.’

‘We’re on the same wavelength there,’ I said, lifting my glass.

‘I forgive a lack of talent in most people, I suppose because I have been dealt so little myself,’ Greve said, barely moistening his thin lips with the champagne. ‘But
not
in artists. We, the untalented, make a living by the sweat of our brow and pay them to play on our behalf. Fair enough, that’s the way it is. But then they have to play bloody well.’

I had already seen enough and knew that test results and in-depth interviews would only confirm what I knew. This was the man. Even if ISCO or Mercuri Urval had been given two years, they would not have found such a perfect candidate as this one.

‘Do you know what, Clas? We’re going to have to have a chat. You see, Diana has insisted on it.’ I passed him my business card. There were no addresses, fax numbers or websites, just my name, my mobile phone number and Alfa in tiny letters in one corner.

‘As I said—’ Greve began, examining my card.

‘Listen,’ I interrupted. ‘No one who values their health refuses Diana. I don’t know what we will talk about, probably about art. Or the future. Or decorating a house. I happen to know a couple of Oslo’s best and most reasonably priced craftsmen. But talk we will. What about three o’clock tomorrow?’

Greve smiled at me for a while. Then he stroked his chin with a narrow hand. ‘I thought the original idea of a business card was that it should equip the receiver with enough information to pay a call?’

I rummaged for my Conklin pen, wrote down the office address on the back of the card and watched it disappear into Greve’s jacket pocket.

‘Look forward to talking to you, Roger, but now I have to get off home and psych myself up to remonstrate with the carpenters in Polish. Say goodbye to your charming wife.’ Greve made a stiff, almost military bow, turned on his heel and went to the door.

Diana sidled up to me as I watched him leave. ‘How did it go, darling?’

‘Fantastic specimen. Just look at how he walks. Feline. Perfect.’

‘Does that mean …?’

‘He even made out that he wasn’t interested in the job. My God, I want that head on my wall, stuffed and with bared teeth.’

She clapped her hands with glee like a little girl. ‘So I was of some help? I was really of some help?’

I stretched up and put my arms around her shoulders. The rooms were vulgarly, wonderfully packed. ‘You are hereby a certified headhunter, my little blossom. How are sales?’

‘We’re not selling this evening. Didn’t I say that?’

I hoped for a second that I had misheard. ‘It’s just … an exhibition?’

‘Atle didn’t want to let go of any of his pictures.’ She smiled as though in apology. ‘I understand him. I suppose you wouldn’t want to lose something that was so beautiful?’

I closed my eyes and swallowed. Thought those soft thoughts.

‘Do you think that was stupid, Roger?’ I heard Diana’s disconcerted voice say and myself answer: ‘Not at all.’

Then I felt her lips against my cheek. ‘You’re so kind, my love. And we can do the selling later anyway. This projects our image and makes us exclusive. You said yourself how important that is.’

I forced a smile. ‘Of course, darling. Exclusive is good.’

She brightened up. ‘And do you know what? I’ve ordered a DJ for the reception! The guy in Blå who plays seventies soul you always said was the best in town …’ She clapped her hands and my smile felt as though it was detaching itself from my face, falling and smashing on the floor. But in the reflection on her raised champagne glass it was still in place. John Lennon’s G11sus4 chord
rang
out again and she fumbled for her phone in her trouser pocket. I studied her as she twittered away to someone enquiring about whether they could come.

‘Of course you can, Mia! Not at all, bring the baby with you. You can change her in my office. Of course we want children’s screams, it’ll liven things up! But you have to let me hold her, do you promise?’

My God, how I loved the woman.

My eyes scanned over the gathering once again. And stopped at a small pale face. It could have been her. Lotte. The same melancholy eyes that I had seen right here for the first time. It wasn’t her. All that was finished. But the image of Lotte pursued me like a stray dog for the rest of the evening.

‘YOU’RE LATE,’ FERDINAND
said as I entered the office. ‘And hung-over.’

‘Feet off the table,’ I said, walking round the desk, switching on the computer and closing the blinds. The light was less invasive and I removed my sunglasses.

‘Does that mean that the private view was a success?’ Ferdinand nagged in that pitch that cuts straight to the brain’s pain centre.

‘There was dancing on the tables,’ I said, looking at my watch. Half past nine.

‘Why are the best parties always the ones you didn’t go to?’ Ferdinand sighed. ‘Anyone well known there?’

‘Anyone you know, you mean?’

‘Any celebs, you idiot.’ A flick through the air with a crack of the wrist. I had stopped getting annoyed at his insistence on looking like something off the stage.

‘Some,’ I said.

‘Ari Behn?’

‘No. You still have to meet Lander and the client here at twelve today, don’t you?’

‘Yes, indeed. Was Hank von Helvete there? Vendela Kirsebom?’

‘Come on, out, I have to work.’

Ferdinand put on an offended expression, but did as I said. When the door slammed behind him, I was already
googling
Clas Greve. A few minutes later I knew that he had been the boss and co-owner of HOTE for six years until it was bought out, that he had a marriage with a Belgian model behind him and that he was the Dutch military pentathlon champion in 1985. In fact, I was surprised that there was not more there. Fine, by five we would have been through a soft version of Inbau, Reid and Buckley, and then I would know everything I needed.

Before that I had a job to do. A tiny expropriation. I leaned back and closed my eyes. I loved the tension during the act, but I hated the waiting period. Even now my heart was beating faster than normal. The thought entered my mind that I wished it had been for something that made my heart beat even faster. Eighty thousand. It is less than it sounds. Worth less in my pockets than Ove Kjikerud’s share in his. Sometimes I envied him his simple life, a life on his own. That was the first thing I had checked when I interviewed him for the head of security job, that he didn’t have too many ears around him. How had I known that he was my man? Firstly, there was this conspicuous defensive-aggressive attitude of his. Next, he had parried my questions in a way that suggested he knew the interview technique. Hence, when checking his background, I was almost amazed not to find his name on the state offender registry. So I had rung a female contact we have on our unofficial payroll. She has a job that allows her access to SANSAK, the restoration of rights archive which lists all those who have been held on remand and released and whose names – despite the name of the archive – are never deleted. And she was able to tell me that I had not made a mistake after all: Ove Kjikerud had been interviewed by the police so many times that he knew the nine-step model inside out. However, Kjikerud had never been charged
with
anything, which told me that the man was no idiot, just very dyslexic.

Kjikerud was of relatively short stature and had, like me, thick, dark hair. I had persuaded him to have a haircut before starting as head of security, had explained to him that no one has confidence in a guy who looks like a roadie for a washed-up hard-rock band. But there was nothing I could do about his teeth, which were discoloured from chewing Swedish snus. Or his face, an oblong oar blade with a prognathous jaw that could on occasion make me feel that the snus-stained set of teeth was going to jump out in the air and snap, a bit like that wonderful creature in the
Alien
films. But that, of course, would have been too much to ask of a person with Kjikerud’s limited ambitions. He was lazy. But keen to get rich. And so the clash between Ove Kjikerud’s desires and personal attributes continued; he was a criminal and an arms collector with violent tendencies, but he actually wanted to live a life of peace and quiet. He wanted, nay, almost begged for friends, but people seemed to sense that something was not right with him, and kept their distance. And he was a devout, incurable romantic who now sought love with prostitutes. At present he was hopelessly in love with a hard-working Russian whore by the name of Natasha whom he refused to cheat on despite the fact that she – as far as I could establish – had absolutely no interest in him. Ove Kjikerud was an unattached floating mine, a person without an anchor, a will or any driving force, someone who let themselves drift on the current towards inevitable disaster. Someone who could only be saved by another person throwing a line around him and giving his life direction and meaning. A person like me. Someone who could appoint a sociable, diligent young man with a clean record as head of security. The rest would be simple.

I switched off the computer and left.

‘Back in an hour, Ida.’

Walking downstairs, I felt it had sounded wrong. It was definitely oda.

At twelve o’clock I drove into the car park in front of a Rimi supermarket that according to my satnav was precisely three hundred metres from Lander’s address. The GPS was a gift from Pathfinder, a sort of consolation prize in case we didn’t win the competition to appoint their boss, I assume. They had also given me a speedy introduction into what a GPS – or Global Positioning System – actually was and explained how a network of twenty-four satellites in orbit around the earth with the aid of radio signals and atomic clocks could locate you and your GPS sender wherever you were on the planet, down to a radius of three metres. If the signal was picked up by four satellites or more, it could even tell you the elevation, in other words whether you were sitting on the ground or were up in a tree. The whole system had – like the Internet – been developed by the US Defense Department to guide Tomahawk rockets, Pavlov bombs and other fallout-fruit one might want to drop on the right person. Pathfinder had also more than hinted that they had developed transmitters that had access to land-based GPS stations no one knew about, a network that functioned in all weathers, transmitters that could penetrate thick house walls. The chairman of Pathfinder had also told me that to get GPS to work you had to factor in that one second on earth is not one second for a satellite at top speed in space, that time is distorted, that one ages more slowly out there. Satellites actually proved Einstein’s theory of relativity.

My Volvo slipped into a line of cars all in the same price bracket and I turned off the ignition. No one would
remember
the car. I took the black portfolio and walked up the hill to Lander’s house. My jacket was in my car and I had put on a blue boiler suit without any markings or logos. The cap concealed my hair, and no one would be surprised by sunglasses as it was still one of those radiant autumn days with which Oslo is so blessed. Nevertheless I cast my eyes down on meeting one of the Filipina girls who push prams for the ruling classes in this suburb. But the short street where Lander lived was otherwise deserted. The sun flashed against the panoramic windows. I checked the Breitling Airwolf watch that Diana had given me for my thirty-fifth birthday. Six minutes past twelve. It was six minutes since the alarm in Jeremias Lander’s house had been deactivated. It had happened quietly on a computer in the security company’s operations room, via a technical back door that ensured that the outage would not be registered on the data log of shutdowns and power cuts. The day I employed the security chief of Tripolis had indeed been manna from heaven.

I went up to the front door and listened to the birds chirping and the setters barking in the distance. In the interview Lander had said he didn’t have a home help, a wife or grown-up children in the house during the day or any dogs. But you could never be one hundred per cent sure. I generally worked on a ninety-nine and a half per cent basis, and the uncertainty of the half a per cent was compensated for by the supply of adrenalin: I observed, listened and sensed better.

I took out the key I had been given by Ove at Sushi&Coffee, the spare key that all customers have to deposit with Tripolis in case of burglary, fire or a systems failure while they are away. It slid into the lock and turned with a well-lubricated click.

Then I was inside. The discreet alarm on the wall
slept
with extinguished plastic eyes. I put on the gloves and taped them to the sleeves of my overall so that no loose body hairs should fall onto the floor. Pulled the bathing cap from under my hat down over my ears. The important thing was not to leave any DNA evidence. Ove had once asked me if it wouldn’t be just as well to shave my head.

I had given up trying to explain to him that after Diana my hair was the last thing with which I was willing to part.