Headhunters

by Jo Nesbo

  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 colours, 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 d
ifficult 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, colourless 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.

  The next time we met was over a cappuccino at Sushi&Coffee. I had explained to her that I would rather show her printouts of the pictures than email them because screens – just like me – can lie.

  After quickly flicking through the pictures, I told her I was unhappy in my marriage, but I was sticking it out because I felt obliged to do so because of my wife’s boundless love for me. It’s the world’s oldest cliché in the married-man-picking-up-unmarried-woman or vice versa scenario, but I had an inkling she hadn’t heard it before. I hadn’t either for that matter, but I had definitely heard of it and presumed it worked.

  She had checked her watch and said she had to go, and I had asked if I could pop round one evening to show her another artist I considered a much better investment for her customer in Odense. She had hesitantly agreed.

  I had taken along some poor pictures from the gallery and a bottle of good red wine from the cellar. She had appeared resigned to her fate from the moment she had opened the door to me that warm summer evening.

  I had told her amusing stories about my blunders, the kind that seem to put you in a bad light, but actually show that you have enough self-confidence and success to be able to afford self-deprecation. She said she was an only child, had travelled round the world with her parents when she was young and that her father was the chief engineer for an international waterworks company. She didn’t belong to any particular country; Norway was as good as anywhere. That was it. For someone who spoke several different language
s she said very little. Translator, I had thought. She preferred other people’s stories to her own.

  She had asked me about my wife. Your wife, she said, even though she must have known Diana’s name as she had been invited to the private view. In that sense she certainly made it easier for me. And for herself.

  I had told her that my marriage had received a buffeting when ‘my wife’ became pregnant and I didn’t want to have the baby. And, according to her, had persuaded her to have an abortion.

  ‘Did you?’ Lotte had asked.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  I had seen something change in Lotte’s expression and asked what it was.

  ‘My parents persuaded me to have an abortion. Because I was a teenager and the child would not have a father. I still hate them for that. Them and myself.’

  I had gulped. Gulped and explained. ‘Our foetus had Down’s syndrome. Eighty-five per cent of all parents who go through this experience opt for abortion.’