Headhunters

1 CANDIDATE

THE CANDIDATE WAS terrified.

He was kitted out in Gunnar Øye attire: grey Ermenegildo Zegna suit, hand-sewn Borelli shirt and burgundy tie with sperm-cell pattern, I guessed Cerrutti 1881. However, I was certain about the shoes: hand-sewn Ferragamo. I once had a pair myself.

The papers in front of me revealed that the candidate came armed with excellent credentials from NHH – the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration, in Bergen – a spell in Stortinget for the Conservative Party and a four-year success story as the MD of a medium-sized manufacturing company.

Nevertheless, Jeremias Lander was terrified. His upper lip glistened with sweat.

He raised the glass of water my secretary had placed on the low table between us.

‘I’d like…’ I said with a smile. Not the open, unconditional smile that invites a complete stranger to come in from the cold, not the frivolous one. But the courteous, semi-warm smile that, according to the literature, signals the interviewer’s professionalism, objectivity and analytical approach. Indeed, it is this lack of emotional commitment that causes the candidate to trust his interviewer’s integrity. And as a result the candidate will in turn – according to the aforementioned literature – provide more sober, objective information, as he has been made to feel that any pretence would be seen through, any exaggeration exposed and ploys punished. I don’t put on this smile because of the literature, though. I don’t give a damn about the literature; it is chock-a-block with various degrees of authoritative bullshit, and the only thing I need is Inbau, Reid and Buckley’s nine-step interrogation model. No, I put on this smile because I really am professional, objective and analytical. I am a headhunter. It is not that difficult, but I am king of the heap.

‘I’d like,’ I repeated, ‘I’d like you to tell me a little about your life, outside of work, that is.’

‘Is there any?’ His laughter was a tone and a half higher than it should have been. On top of that, when you deliver a so-called ‘dry’ joke at a job interview it is unwise both to laugh at it yourself and to watch your interlocutor to see whether it has hit home.

‘I would certainly hope so,’ I said, and his laughter morphed into a clearing of the throat. ‘I believe the management of this enterprise attaches great importance to their new chief executive leading a balanced life. They’re seeking someone who will stay with them for a number of years, a long-distance-runner type who knows how to pace himself. Not someone who is burnt out after four years.’

Jeremias Lander nodded while swallowing another mouthful of water.

He was approximately fourteen centimetres taller than me and three years older. Thirty-eight then. A bit young for the job. And he knew; that was why he had dyed the hair around his temples an almost imperceptible grey. I had seen this before. I had seen everything before. I had seen applicants afflicted with sweaty palms arrive with chalk in their right-hand jacket pocket so as to give me the driest and whitest handshake imaginable. Lander’s throat issued an involuntary clucking sound. I noted down on the interview feedback sheet: Motivated. Solution-orientated.

‘I see you live in Oslo,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Skøyen.’

‘And married to…’ I flicked through his papers, assuming the irritated expression that makes candidates think I am expecting them to take the initiative.

‘Camilla. We’ve been married for ten years. Two children. School age.’

‘And how would you characterise your marriage?’ I asked without looking up. I gave him two drawn-out seconds and continued before he had collected himself enough to answer. ‘Do you think you will still be married in six years’ time after spending two-thirds of your waking life at work?’

I peered up. The confusion on his face was as expected. I had been inconsistent. Balanced life. Need for Commitment. That didn’t add up. Four seconds passed before he answered. Which is at least one too many. ‘I would certainly hope so,’ he said.

Secure, practised smile. But not practised enough. Not for me. He had used my own words against me, and I would have registered that as a plus if there had been some intentional irony. In this case, unfortunately, it had merely been the unconscious aping of words used by someone considered superior in status. Poor self-image, I jotted down. And he ‘hoped’, he didn’t know, didn’t give voice to anything visionary, was not a crystal-ball reader, didn’t show that he was up to speed with the minimum requirement of every manager: that they must appear to be clairvoyant. Not an improviser. Not a chaos-pilot.

‘Does she work?’

‘Yes. In a solicitor’s office in the city centre.’

‘Nine to four every day?’

‘Yes.’

‘And who stays at home if either of the children is ill?’

‘She does. But fortunately it’s very rare for Niclas and Anders to-’

‘So you don’t have a home help or anyone at home during the day?’

He hesitated in the way that candidates do when they are unsure which answer puts them in the best light. All the same, they lie disappointingly seldom. Jeremias Lander shook his head.

‘You look like you keep yourself fit, Lander.’

‘Yes, I train regularly.’

No hesitation this time. Everyone knows that businesses want top executives who won’t fall victim to a heart attack at the first hurdle.

‘Running and cross-country skiing perhaps?’

‘Right. The whole family loves the outdoor life. And we have a mountain cabin on Norefjell.’

‘Uh-huh. Dog, too?’

He shook his head.

‘No? Allergic to them?’

Energetic shaking of the head. I wrote: Lacks sense of humour?

Then I leaned back in the chair and steepled my fingertips. An exaggerated, arrogant gesture, of course. What can I say? That’s the way I am. ‘How much would you say your reputation was worth, Lander? And how have you insured it?’

He furrowed his already sweaty brow as he struggled to give the matter some thought. Two seconds later, resigned, he said: ‘What do you mean?’

I sighed as if it ought to be obvious. Cast my eyes around the room as if searching for a pedagogical allegory I had not used before. And, as always, found it on the wall.

‘Are you interested in art, Lander?’

‘A bit. My wife is, at any rate.’

‘Mine, too. Can you see the picture I have over there?’ I pointed to Sara Gets Undressed, painted in vinyl, over two metres in height, a woman in a green skirt with her arms crossed, about to pull a red sweater over her head. ‘A present from my wife. The artist’s name is Julian Opie and the picture’s worth a quarter of a million kroner. Do you possess any art in that price range?’

‘As a matter of fact I do.’

‘Congratulations. Can you see how much it’s worth?’

‘When you know, you can.’

‘Yes, when you know, you can. The picture hanging there consists of a few lines, the woman’s head is a circle, a zero without a face, and the colouring is plain and lacks texture. In addition, it was done on a computer and millions of copies can be printed out at the mere press of a key.’

‘Goodness me.’

‘The only – and I do mean the only – thing that makes this picture worth a quarter of a million is the artist’s reputation. The buzz that he is good, the market’s faith in the fact that he is a genius. It’s difficult to put your finger on what constitutes genius, impossible to know for sure. It’s like that with top directors, too, Lander.’

‘I understand. Reputation. It’s about the confidence the director exudes.’

I jot down: Not an idiot.

‘Exactly,’ I continued. ‘Everything is about reputation. Not just the director’s salary, but also the company’s value on the stock exchange. What is, in fact, the work of art you own and how much is it valued at?’

‘It’s a lithograph by Edvard Munch. The Brooch. I don’t know what it’s worth, but…’

With a flourish of my hand I impatiently urged him on.

‘The last time it was up for auction the price bid was about 350,000 kroner,’ he said.

‘And what have you done to insure this valuable item against theft?’

‘The house has a good alarm system,’ he said. ‘Tripolis. Everyone in the neighbourhood uses them.’

‘Tripolis systems are good, though expensive. I use them myself,’ I said. ‘About eight grand a year. How much have you invested to protect your personal reputation?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Twenty thousand? Ten thousand? Less?’

He shrugged.

‘Not a cent,’ I said. ‘You have a CV and a career here which are worth ten times the lithograph you mentioned. A year. Nevertheless, you have no one to guard it, no custodian. Because you think it’s unnecessary. You think your success with the company you head up speaks for itself. Right?’

Lander didn’t answer.

‘Well,’ I said, leaning forward and lowering my voice as though about to impart a secret, ‘that’s not the way it works. Success is like Opie’s pictures, a few lines plus a few zeros, no face. Pictures are nothing, reputation is everything. And that is what we can offer.’

‘Reputation?’

‘You’re sitting in front of me as one of six good applicants for a director’s job. I don’t think you’ll get it. Because you lack the reputation for this kind of post.’

His mouth dropped as if in protest. The protest never materialised. I thrust myself against the high back of the chair, which gave a screech.

‘My God, man, you applied for this job! What you should have done was to set up a straw man to tip us off and then pretend you knew nothing about it when we contacted you. A top man has to be headhunted, not arrive ready-killed and all carved up.’

I saw that had the desired effect. He was rattled. This was not the usual interview format, this was not Cuté, Disc or any of the other stupid, useless questionnaires hatched up by a motley collection of, to varying extents, tone-deaf psychologists and human resource experts who themselves had nothing to offer. I lowered my voice again.

‘I hope your wife won’t be too disappointed when you tell her the news this afternoon. That you missed out on the dream job. That, career-wise, you’ll be on standby once again this year. Just like last year…’

He jerked back in his chair. Bullseye. Naturally. For this was Roger Brown in action, the most radiant star in the recruitment sky right now.

‘Last… last year?’

‘Yes, isn’t that right? You applied for the top job at Denja’s. Mayonnaise and liver paste, is that you?’

‘I understood that sort of thing was confidential,’ Jeremias Lander said meekly.

‘So it is. But my job is to map out resources. And that’s what I do. Using all the methods at my disposal. It’s stupid to apply for jobs you won’t get, especially in your position, Lander.’

‘My position?’

‘Your qualifications, your track record, the tests and my personal impression all tell me you have what it takes. All you’re missing is reputation. And the fundamental pillar in constructing a reputation is exclusivity. Applying for jobs at random undermines exclusivity. You’re an executive who does not seek challenges but the challenge. The one job. And that’s what you will be offered. On a silver platter.’

‘Will I?’ he said with another attempt at the intrepid, wry smile. It no longer worked.

‘I would like you in our stable. You must not apply for any more jobs. If other recruitment agencies contact you with tempting offers you must not take them. Stick with us. Be exclusive. Let us build up your reputation. And look after it. Let us be for your reputation what Tripolis is for your house. Within two years you’ll be going home to your wife with news of a better job than the one we’re talking about now. And that’s a promise.’

Jeremias Lander stroked his carefully shaven chin with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Hmm. This interview has moved in a different direction from the one I had anticipated.’

The defeat had made him calmer. I leaned forward. Opened my arms. Held up my palms. Sought his eyes. Research has proved that seventy-eight per cent of first impressions at interviews are based on body language and a mere eight per cent on what you actually say. The rest is about clothes, odours from armpits and mouth, what you have hanging on the walls. My body language was fantastic. And right now it was expressing openness and trust. Finally, I invited him in from the cold.

‘Listen, Lander. The chairman of the board of directors and the finance director are coming here tomorrow to meet one of the candidates. I’d like them to meet you, too. Would twelve o’clock be convenient?’

‘Fine.’ He had answered without checking any form of calendar. I liked him better already.

‘I want you to listen to what they have to say and thereafter you can politely account for why you are no longer interested, explain that this is not the challenge you were seeking and wish them well.’

Jeremias Lander tilted his head. ‘Backing out like that, won’t it be seen as frivolous?’

‘It will be seen as ambitious,’ I said. ‘You will be regarded as someone who knows his own worth. A person whose services are exclusive. And that’s the starting point for the story we refer to as…’ I gave a flourish of the hand.

He smiled. ‘Reputation?’

‘Reputation. Do we have an agreement?’

‘Within two years?’

‘I’ll guarantee it.’

‘And how can you guarantee it?’

I noted: Quick to regain the offensive.

‘Because I’m going to recommend you for one of the posts I’m talking about.’

‘So? It’s not you who makes the decisions.’

I half closed my eyes. It was an expression my wife Diana said reminded her of a sluggish lion, a satiated lord and master. I liked that.

‘My recommendation is my client’s decision, Lander.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘In the same way that you will never again apply for a job you are not confident of getting, I have never made a recommendation a client has not followed.’

‘Really? Never?’

‘Not that anyone can remember. Unless I am one hundred per cent sure the client will go along with my recommendation, I don’t recommend anyone and prefer the job to go to one of the competitors. Even though I may have three brilliant candidates and am ninety per cent sure.’

‘Why’s that?’

I smiled. ‘The answer begins with R. My entire career is based on it.’

Lander laughed and shook his head. ‘They said you were tough, Brown. Now I know what they mean.’

I smiled again and rose to my feet. ‘And now I suggest you go home and tell your beautiful wife that you’re going to refuse this job because you’ve decided to aim higher. My guess is you can look forward to a pleasant evening.’

‘Why are you doing this for me, Brown?’

‘Because the commission your employer will pay us is a third of your first year’s gross salary. Did you know that Rembrandt used to go to auctions to raise the bidding for his own pictures? Why would I sell you for two million a year when, after a little reputation building, we can sell you for five? All we are asking is that you stick with us. Do we have a deal?’ I proffered my hand.

He grabbed it with gusto. ‘I have a feeling this has been a profitable conversation, Brown.’

‘Agreed,’ I said, reminding myself to give him a couple of tips on handshaking technique before he met the client.

Ferdinand slipped into my office as soon as Jeremias Lander had departed.

‘Argh,’ he said, cutting a grimace and wafting his hand. ‘Eau de camouflage.’

I nodded while opening the window to let in some fresh air. What Ferdinand meant was that the applicant had slapped on too much aftershave to hide the nervous sweats that pervade interview rooms in this branch of work.

‘But at least it was Clive Christian,’ I said. ‘Bought by his wife, like the suit, the shoes, the shirt and the tie. And it was her idea to dye his temples grey.’

‘How do you know?’ Ferdinand took a seat in the chair Lander had been sitting in, but jumped up again with an expression of revulsion as he felt the clammy body heat that still clung to the upholstery.

‘He went as white as a sheet when I pressed the wife button,’ I answered. ‘I mentioned how disappointed she would be when he told her the job wouldn’t be his.’

‘The wife button! Where do you get this stuff from, Roger?’ Ferdinand had settled into one of the other chairs, his feet on a pretty good copy of a Noguchi coffee table. He had taken an orange and was peeling it, releasing an almost invisible spray which covered his newly ironed shirt. Ferdinand was unbelievably slapdash for a homosexual. And unbelievably homosexual for a headhunter.

‘Inbau, Reid and Buckley,’ I said.

‘You’ve mentioned that method before,’ Ferdinand said. ‘But what exactly is it? Is it better than Cuté?’

I laughed. ‘It’s the FBI’s nine-step interrogation model. It’s a machine gun in the world of pea-shooters, an instrument that would blast a hole through a haystack, that doesn’t take prisoners, but gives quick, tangible results.’

‘And what results are they, Roger?’

I knew what Ferdinand was fishing for, and that was fine by me. He wanted to find out what gave me the edge, what made me the best and him – for the time being – less than the best. And I gave him what he sought. For those were the rules, knowledge was to be shared. And because he would never be better than me. He’d always turn up with shirts reeking of citrus, forever wondering whether someone had a model, a method or a secret that was better than his.

‘Submission,’ I answered. ‘Confession. Truth. It’s based on very simple principles.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as beginning by questioning the suspect about his family.’

‘Pah,’ Ferdinand said. ‘I do that as well. It makes them feel secure if they can talk about something familiar, something close to them. Plus it opens them up.’

‘Precisely. But it also allows you to probe their weak points. Their Achilles heel. Which you will be able to use later on in the interrogation.’

‘Hey, what terminology!’

‘Later on in the interrogation when you have to discuss what rankles, what happened, the murder he is suspected of having committed, what makes him feel lonely and abandoned by everyone and what makes him want to hide, you make sure you have a roll of kitchen towel on the table, positioned just out of the suspect’s reach.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the interrogation has come to its natural crescendo and the time has come for you to press the emotion button. You ask him what his children will think when they find out that their dad is a murderer. And then, when the tears well up in his eyes, you pass him the roll. You have to be the person who understands, who wants to help, in whom he can confide about all the bad things. About that silly, silly murder that just happened, as if of its own accord.’

‘Murder? What the hell are you on about? We recruit people, don’t we? We’re not trying to convict them of murder.’

‘I am,’ I said, taking my jacket from the office chair. ‘And that’s why I’m the best headhunter in Oslo. By the way, I’ve put you down for the interview with Lander and the client tomorrow at twelve.’

‘Me?’

I went out of the door and down the corridor with Ferdinand skipping after me as we passed the other twenty-five offices that constituted Alfa, a medium-sized recruitment company that had survived for fifteen years and brought in between fifteen and twenty million kroner per annum, which, after a far too modest bonus had been paid out to the best of us, was pocketed by the owner in Stockholm.

‘Piece of cake. All the details are in the file. OK?’

‘OK,’ said Ferdinand. ‘On one condition.’

‘Condition? I’m doing you a favour.’

‘The private view your wife is having at the gallery this evening…’

‘What about it?’

‘Can I go?’

‘Are you invited?’

‘That’s the point. Am I?’

‘Doubt it.’

Ferdinand came to an abrupt halt and was gone from my field of vision. I continued, knowing that he was standing there with his arms down by his sides, watching me and musing that once again he would not be able to raise a toast in champagne with Oslo’s jet-setters, queens of the night, celebrities and the wealthy, that he would not partake in the modicum of glamour that surrounded Diana’s private views, nor come into contact with potential candidates for a job, bed or other sinful intercourse. Poor fellow.

‘Roger?’ It was the girl behind the reception desk. ‘Two calls. One-’

‘Not now, Oda,’ I said without stopping. ‘I’ll be away for three-quarters of an hour. Don’t take any messages.’

‘But-’

‘They’ll ring back if it’s important.’

Nice-looking girl, but she still had a bit to learn, Oda did. Or was it Ida?

2 SERVICE INDUSTRY

THE TANGY SALINE taste of exhaust fumes in the autumn air evoked associations of sea, oil extraction and gross national product. Dazzling sunlight slanted on the glass of the office buildings, casting sharp, rectangular shadows over what had once been an industrial estate. Now it was a kind of urban quarter with overpriced shops, overpriced apartments and overpriced offices for overpriced consultants. I could see three fitness centres from where I stood, all of them fully booked from morning till evening. A young guy in a Corneliani suit and geek-chic glasses greeted me deferentially as we passed and I reciprocated with a gracious nod. I had no idea who he was, could only assume he would have to be from another recruitment agency. Edward W. Kelley perhaps? No one else but a headhunter would greet another headhunter with deference. Or to be precise: no one else greets me; they don’t know who I am. Firstly, I have a limited social circle when not with my wife, Diana. Secondly, I work for a company which – in common with Kelley’s – belongs to an elite, one which avoids the media spotlight, one which you believe you have never heard of until you qualify for one of the country’s top jobs, whereupon you receive a call from us and the name rings a bell: Alfa, where have you heard that before? Was it at a group management meeting in connection with the appointment of a new regional director? So you have heard of us after all. But you know nothing. For discretion is our greatest virtue. The only one we have. Of course, the majority of our work from beginning to end is lies, of the most contemptible kind, such as when you hear me rounding off the second interview with my standard mantra: ‘You’re the man I want 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.’

Well, OK, don’t believe me.

Yes, I reckoned it was Kelley. Or Amrop. With that suit he was definitely not from one of the large, uncool, un-exclusive agencies like Manpower or Adecco. Nor was he from one of the micro, cool ones like Hopeland, otherwise I would have known him. Although he could have been from one of the large, medium-cool ones like Mercuri Urval or Delphi, of course, or the small, uncool anonymous ones that recruit middle management and only on rare occasions are given the opportunity to compete with us, the big boys. And then lose and go back to scouting for shop managers and financial directors. And greet the likes of me with respect in the hope that one day we will remember them and offer them a job.

There is no official ranking list for headhunters, no status research as in the broker industry, nor are there award ceremonies for the gurus of the year, as in TV and advertising. But we know. We know who the king of the heap is, who the challengers are, who is heading for a fall. Triumphs take place in silence, funerals in deadly silence. But the guy who just greeted me knew I was Roger Brown, the headhunter who has never nominated a candidate for a job he did not get, who if necessary manipulates, forces, levers and rams the candidate in, who has clients who trust his judgement implicitly, who without a moment’s hesitation place their company’s fate in his – and only his – hands. To put it another way, it was not Oslo Port Authority who appointed their new traffic director last year, it was not Avis who appointed their Scandinavian director and it was quite definitely not the local authority who appointed the director of the power station in Sirdal. It was me.

I decided to make a mental note of the guy. Good suit. Knows how to show respect to the right people.

I rang Ove from a telephone box next to the Narvesen kiosk while checking my mobile phone. Eight messages. I deleted them.

‘We have a candidate,’ I said when Ove answered. ‘Jeremias Lander, Monolittveien.’

‘Shall I check if we have him?’

‘No, I know you’ve got him. He’s been selected for a second interview tomorrow. Twelve till two. Twelve hundred hours. Give me one hour. Got that?

‘Yep. Anything else?’

‘Keys. Sushi &Coffee in twenty minutes?’

‘Thirty.’

I strolled down the cobbled street towards Sushi &Coffee. The reason they have chosen a road surface that makes more noise, pollutes more and in addition costs more than normal tarmac is presumably because of the need for an idyll, the desire for something traditional, lasting and authentic. More authentic than this anyway, this mock-up of a neighbourhood where once things were created by the sweat of workers’ brows, where products were crafted with a fiery hiss and the ring of hammer blows. Echoed now by the drone of the espresso machine and the clanging of iron against iron in the fitness centre. For this is the service industry’s triumph over the industrial worker, the triumph of design over the housing shortage, the triumph of fiction over reality. And I like it.

I peered at the diamond earrings that had caught my eye in the jeweller’s window opposite Sushi &Coffee. They would grace Diana’s ears to perfection. And they would spell disaster for my finances. I rejected the idea, crossed the street and entered the doorway to the place that nominally prepares sushi, but in fact just serves dead fish. However, there was nothing you could say against their coffee. Inside, it was half full. Slim platinum blondes fresh from training, still in their workout gear, because it would not occur to them to shower at a fitness centre in full view of others. Strange in a way, since they had spent a fortune on these bodies, which celebrated the triumph of fiction. They belonged to the service sector, to be more precise, the serving staff who tended to their wealthy husbands’ needs. Had these women been lacking in intelligence, that would be one thing, but they had studied law, information technology and art history as a part of their beauty treatment, they had let Norwegian taxpayers finance years at university just so that they could end up as overqualified, stay-at-home playthings and sit here exchanging confidences about how to keep their sugar daddies suitably happy, suitably jealous and suitably on their toes. Until they finally chained him down with children. And, of course, after children everything is changed, the balance of power has been turned upside down, the man castrated and held in check. Children…

‘Double cortado,’ I said, perching on one of the bar stools.

I watched the women in the mirror with satisfaction. I was a lucky man. Diana was so different from these smart, empty-brained parasites. She had everything I lacked. A caring nature. Empathy. Loyalty. Height. To sum up, she was a beautiful soul in a beautiful body. Her beauty, though, was not of the perfect kind, her proportions were too special for that. Diana had been drawn in manga-style, like those doll-like Japanese cartoon figures. She had a small face with a tiny, narrow mouth, a small nose and large eyes filled with wonderment, which had a tendency to bulge when she was tired. But in my view it was precisely these deviations from the norm that made her beauty stand out, made it striking. So what had made her choose me? A chauffeur’s son, a slightly above-average student of economics with slightly below-average prospects and well under medium height. Fifty years ago one metre sixty-eight would not have elicited the term ‘short’, at least not in most parts of Europe. And any anthropometric history would tell you that only a hundred years ago one sixty-eight was indeed the average height in Norway. However, events had taken an unfortunate turn for me.

That she had chosen me in a moment of insanity was one thing, but it was quite another, and beyond my understanding, how a woman like Diana – who could have had absolutely anyone she wanted – should wake up every morning and want me for another day. What sort of mysterious blindness was it that made her incapable of seeing my contemptibility, my treacherous nature, my weakness when I encountered adversity, my mindless wickedness when I encountered mindless wickedness? Didn’t she want to see? Or was it just guile and skill on my part that had allowed the real me to end up in this love-blessed blind spot. And then of course there was the child that I had so far denied her. What power was it I had over this angel in human form? According to Diana, the very first time we met I had bewitched her with my contradictory mixture of arrogance and self-deprecating irony. It had been during a Scandinavian student evening in London, and my first impression of Diana had been that she was just like the women sitting here: a blonde Nordic beauty from Oslo studying art history in an international metropolis, who did the odd modelling job, was against war and poverty and enjoyed partying and all things fun. It had taken three hours and half a dozen pints of Guinness before I realised that I had been wrong. First of all, she was genuinely interested in art, almost to the point of being a nerd. Secondly, she was able to articulate her frustration at being part of a system that waged war against people who did not want to be part of Western capitalism. It was Diana who had explained to me that industrialised countries’ exploitation of the Third World minus Third World aid made, and had always made, a plus. Thirdly, she had a sense of humour, my sense of humour, a prerequisite for guys like me to get women taller than one metre seventy. And fourthly – and this is without doubt what did it for me – she was poor at languages and good at logical thought. She spoke clumsy English, to put it mildly, and with a smile she had told me that it had never even occurred to her to have a go at French or Spanish. Then I had asked whether she had a masculine brain and liked maths. She had just shrugged, but I had persisted and told her about job interview tests at Microsoft where candidates were presented with a particular logic problem.

‘The point is as much to see how the candidate deals with the challenge as whether or not they can solve it.’

‘Come on then,’ she said.

‘Prime numbers-’

‘Hang on! What are prime numbers again?’

‘Numbers that cannot be divided by numbers other than themselves and one.’

‘Oh yes.’ She still hadn’t got that distant look women often get when numbers are introduced into the conversation, and I continued.

‘Prime numbers are often two consecutive odd numbers. Like eleven and thirteen. Twenty-nine and thirty-one. Are you with me?’

‘I’m with you.’

‘Are there any examples of three consecutive odd numbers being prime numbers?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, raising her glass of beer to her mouth.

‘Oh? Why not?’

‘Do you think I’m stupid? In a sequence of five consecutive numbers one of the odd numbers has to be divisible by three. Go on.’

‘Go on?’

‘Yes, what’s the logic problem?’ She had taken a large gulp of beer and looked at me with genuinely expectant curiosity. At Microsoft, candidates are given three minutes to come up with the proof she had given me in three seconds. On average, five out of every hundred could do that. And I think that was when I fell in love with her. At least I remember jotting down on my serviette: Hired.

And I had known that I would have to make her fall in love with me while we were sitting there; as soon as I stood up the spell would be broken. So I had talked. And talked. I had talked myself up to one metre eighty-five. I can do the talking bit. But she had interrupted me when I was in full flow.

‘Do you like football?’

‘Do… do you?’ I asked, amazed.

‘QPR are playing Arsenal in the league cup tomorrow. Interested?’

‘Certainly am,’ I said. And of course I meant in her. I couldn’t give a toss about football.

She had worn a blue-and-white-striped scarf and screamed herself hoarse in London’s autumn mist at Loftus Road as her poor little team, Queens Park Rangers, were being thumped by their big brother, Arsenal. Fascinated, I had studied her impassioned face and derived no more from the match than the fact that Arsenal wore attractive red-and-white tops while QPR had diagonal blue stripes on a white background, making the players look like lollipops in motion.

At half-time I had asked why she had not chosen a big winning team like Arsenal instead of comical small fry like QPR.

‘Because they need me,’ she had answered. Seriously. They need me. I intuited a wisdom I could not fathom in her words. Then she had laughed that gurgling laugh of hers and drained the plastic beaker of beer. ‘They’re like helpless babies. Look at them. They’re so sweet.’

‘In baby outfits,’ I said. ‘So, suffer the little children to come unto me, is that your life’s motto?’

‘Erm,’ she had answered, angling her head and looking down at me with a broad beam, ‘it might become that.’

And we had laughed. Loud, liberating laughter.

I don’t remember the outcome of the match. Or, rather, I do: a kiss outside a strict girls’ brick boarding house in Shepherd’s Bush. And a lonely, sleepless night of wild dreams.

Ten days later I was looking down into her face in the flickering gleam of a candle stuffed into a wine bottle on her bedside table. We made love for the first time, and her eyes were closed, the vein in her forehead stood out and her expression varied between fury and pain as her hip bones thrashed against mine. The same passion as when she had watched QPR being sent out of the league cup. Afterwards she said she loved my hair. This was a refrain I had heard throughout my life, yet I seemed to be hearing it for the first time.

Six months were to pass before I told her that because my father worked in the diplomatic service it didn’t necessarily mean he was a diplomat.

‘Chauffeur,’ she had repeated, pulling down my face and kissing it. ‘Does that mean he can borrow the ambassador’s limousine to drive us from the church?’

I had not answered, but that spring we got married with more circumstance than pomp at St Patrick’s Church in Hammersmith. The absence of pomp was down to my talking Diana into a wedding without friends and family. Without Dad. Just us, pure and innocent. Diana provided the circumstance; she shone like two suns and a moon. Chance would have it that QPR were promoted that same afternoon, and the taxi crawled back home to her bedsit in Shepherd’s Bush through a jubilant procession of lollipop-coloured flags and banners. Joy and merriment everywhere. Not until we had moved back to Oslo did Diana mention children for the first time.

I looked at my watch. Ove ought to be here by now. I raised my eyes to the mirror over the counter and met those of one of the blondes. Our eyes held for just as long as it takes to misunderstand whether we wanted to or not. Porn-attractive, good surgical work. I didn’t want to. So my eyes drifted away. In fact, that was precisely the way my only shameful affair had started; with eyes holding on for a little too long. The first act had taken place in the gallery. The second here at Sushi &Coffee. The third act in a small flat in Eilert Sundts gate. But now Lotte was a thing of the past for me, and it would never, ever happen again. My gaze wandered round the room and stopped.

Ove was sitting at the table by the front door.

To all outward signs, reading Dagens Næringsliv, a financial paper. An amusing idea in itself. Ove Kjikerud was not only totally bored by the movements of stocks and shares and most of what was happening in so-called society, he could barely read. Or write. I can still picture his application for the security boss job: it had contained so many spelling mistakes that I had burst out laughing.

I slid off the stool and walked over to his table. He had folded up Dagens Næringsliv and I nodded towards the newspaper. He gave a fleeting smile to indicate that he had finished with it. I took the paper without a word and went back to my place at the counter. One minute later I heard the front door close and when I peered at the mirror again, Ove Kjikerud had gone. I flicked through to the shares pages, discreetly wrapped my hand around the key that had been left there and slipped it into my jacket pocket.

When I returned to the office there were six text messages waiting for me on my mobile phone. I deleted five without reading them and opened the one from Diana.

Don’t forget the private view tonight, darling. You’re my lucky mascot.

She had added a smiley with sunglasses, one of the sophistications of the Prada telephone I had given her on her thirty-second birthday this summer. ‘This is what I wanted most!’ she had said, opening the present. But we both knew what she wanted most. And which I was not going to give her. Nonetheless she had lied and kissed me. What more can you ask of a woman?

3 PRIVATE VIEW

ONE METRE SIXTY-EIGHT. I don’t need a brain-dead psychologist to tell me that compensation is a factor, that small physical stature is a great motivator. A surprisingly large number of the world’s great works of art have been created by small men. We have conquered empires, thought the smartest thoughts, laid the most beautiful female stars of the screen: in short we have always been on the lookout for the biggest platform shoes. Many an idiot has made the discovery that some blind people are good musicians and that some autistic people can work out square roots in their heads, and this has led them to conclude that all handicaps are a blessing in disguise. Firstly, that is nonsense. Secondly, I am, despite everything, not a dwarf, just marginally under average height. Thirdly, over seventy per cent of all people in the highest management positions are of above-average height in their respective countries. Height also has a positive correlation with intelligence, income and popularity surveys. When I nominate someone for a top job in business, height is one of my most important criteria. Height instils respect, trust and authority. Tall people are visible, they can’t hide, they are masters, all nastiness air-blasted away, they have to stand up and be counted. Short people move around in the sediment, they have a hidden plan, an agenda which revolves around the fact that they are short.

Of course, this is rubbish, but when I propose a candidate for a job I don’t do it because the person in question is the best but because he is the one the client will employ. I provide them with a head that is good enough, placed on the body they want. They are not qualified to judge the first; they can see the second with their own eyes. Like the stinking rich so-called art connoisseurs at Diana’s exhibitions, they are not qualified to give an opinion about the portrait, but they are capable of reading the artist’s signature. The world is full of people who pay serious money for bad pictures by good artists. And mediocre heads on tall bodies.

I steered my new Volvo S80 round the bends, climbing up towards our new, beautiful and somewhat too expensive home on Voksenkollen. I bought it because Diana had this pained expression on her face when we were being shown round. The vein on her forehead that tended to expand when we made love had turned blue and was quivering above her almond-shaped eyes. She had raised her right hand and drawn short strands of fine, straw-coloured hair behind her right ear as if to hear better, to listen carefully to be sure her eyes had not deceived her; that this was the house for which she had been searching. And there was no need for her to say a word; I knew it was. Even as the gleam in her eyes died when the estate agent told us that they already had an offer of one and a half million over the asking price, I knew I had to buy it for her. Because this was the only offering I could make to compensate for talking her out of having the child she wanted. I no longer quite remember the arguments I had used in favour of abortion, just that none of them had been the truth. Which was that even though we were two people with 320 exorbitant square metres, there was no room for a child. That is, no room for a child and me. For I knew Diana. She was, in contrast to me, perversely monogamous. I would have hated the child from day one. So instead I had given her a new start, a home, and a gallery.

I swung into the drive. The garage door had sensed the car a long time ago and opened automatically. The Volvo glided into the chilly darkness and the engine breathed its last as the door slid to behind me. I went out through the side door of the garage and along the flagstone path leading up to the house. It was a magnificent construction, vintage 1937, designed by Ove Bang, the functionalist who considered cost to be less important than aesthetics and was thus one of Diana’s soulmates.

I often thought that we could sell up, move into something a bit smaller, a bit more normal, a bit more practical even. But every time I came home and it was like now, with the low afternoon sun causing the contours to stand out clearly, the play of light and shade, the autumnal forest behind, glowing like red gold, I knew it was impossible. That I couldn’t stop. Quite simply because I loved her and could therefore do nothing else. And with that came the rest: the house, the financial drain of a gallery, the costly and unnecessary demonstrations of my love and the lifestyle we could not afford. All to alleviate her longing.

I unlocked the house, kicked off my shoes and deactivated the alarm within the twenty seconds I had before a bell would go off at Tripolis. Diana and I had discussed the code for a long time before reaching an agreement. She had wanted it to be DAMIEN after her favourite artist Damien Hirst, but I knew that was the name she had given our aborted child, and thus I insisted on a random collection of letters and numbers that could not be guessed. And she had given in. As always, when I stood up to her, tough on tough. Or tough on soft. For Diana was soft. Not weak, but soft and flexible. Like clay where even the slightest pressure leaves a mark. The strange thing was that the more she gave in, the bigger and stronger she became. And the weaker I became. Until she towered above me like a gigantic angel, a firmament of guilt, debts and bad conscience. And however hard I grafted, however many heads I brought home, however much of Stockholm’s central office bonus pot I raked in, it was not enough to bring me absolution.

I walked upstairs to the living room and kitchen, took off my tie, opened the Sub-Zero fridge and helped myself to a bottle of San Miguel. Not the usual Especial but 1516, the extra mild beer that Diana preferred because it was brewed according to purity laws. From the living-room window I looked down on the garden, the garage and the neighbours. Oslo, the fjord, Skagerrak, Germany, the world. And discovered I had already finished the beer.

I fetched another and went down to the ground floor to change for the private view.

Passing the Forbidden Room I noticed the door was ajar. I pushed it open and at once saw that she had laid fresh flowers by the tiny stone figure standing on the low, altar-like table beneath the window. The table was the only furniture in the room and the stone figure looked like a child monk with a contented Buddha smile. Beside the flowers were a pair of small children’s shoes and a yellow rattle.

I went in, took a swig of beer, crouched down and ran my fingers over the figure’s smooth bare head. It was a mizuko jizo, a figure that according to Japanese tradition protected aborted children, or mizuko - meaning a water child. I had brought the figure home after an unsuccessful headhunt in Tokyo. It was the first months after the abortion while Diana was still shattered, and I had thought it might be of some comfort. The salesman’s English had been too poor for me to understand all the details, but the Japanese idea appears to be that when the foetus dies the child’s soul returns to its original fluid state – it becomes a water child. Which – if you mix in a bit of Japanese-style Buddhism – is waiting to be reborn. In the meantime you carry out what is known as mizuko kuyo, ceremonies and simple sacrifices to protect the unborn child’s soul and, at the same time, the parents against the water child’s revenge. I never told Diana about the last part. To begin with, I had been happy, and she had seemed to find comfort in the stone figure. But as her jizo gradually became an obsession and she wanted it in the bedroom, I had to put my foot down. And I said that from then on that she should not pray or make sacrifices to the figure. Although on that particular point I had never been tough. For I knew that I could lose Diana. And that would be unforgivable.

I went into my study, switched on my PC, searched on the Net until I found a high-resolution picture of Edvard Munch’s The Brooch, also known as Eva Mudocci. Three hundred and fifty thousand on the legal market. Hardly more than two hundred on mine. Fifty per cent to the fence, then twenty per cent to Kjikerud. Eighty thousand to me. That was the usual split; hardly worth the trouble and definitely not the risk. The picture was in black and white. 58 x 5 cm. Just right for a piece of A2 paper. Eighty thousand. Too little to pay for the next quarterly instalment of the mortgage. And nowhere near enough to cover the previous year’s deficit on the gallery that I had promised the accountant to pay during November. For some reason the intervals between decent pictures turning up were getting longer and longer, too. The last one, Model in High Heels, by Søren Onsager, had been more than three months ago, and even that had barely brought in sixty thousand. Something would have to happen soon. QPR would have to score a flukey goal, a mishit cross that – deserved or otherwise – would send them to Wembley. That sort of thing happened, I had heard. I sighed and sent Eva Mudocci to the printer.

Champagne was the order of the evening, so I rang for a taxi. After getting in, I just said the name of the gallery, as usual – it was a kind of test of our marketing skills – but, also as usual, the driver just looked at me in the mirror, bewildered.

‘Erling Skjalgssons gate,’ I sighed.

Diana and I had discussed the location long before she had chosen the rooms. I had been keen to make sure it lay on the Skillebekk-Frogner axis since that is where you find the clients with the means to pay and other galleries of a certain niveau. To be located outside the cluster can mean an early death for a new gallery. Diana’s ideal had been the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park in London, and she had been determined that the gallery should not face onto one of the busy thoroughfares, like Bygdøy allé or Gamle Drammensvei, but should be situated in a quiet street where there was room for contemplation. Furthermore, a set-back location emphasised exclusivity, signalled that it was for initiates, connoisseurs.

I had expressed agreement, thinking that perhaps the rent would not have to be ruinous after all.

Until she had added that in that case she would be able to spend money on extra square metres for a salon where there could be receptions after private views. In fact, she had already looked at a vacant site in Erling Skjalgssons gate, which was perfect, the best of the best. I was the one who had come up with the name: Galleri E. E for Erling Skjalgssons gate. It was, moreover, the same formulation as the best run gallery in town, Galleri K, and hopefully showed that we were targeting the affluent, the quality-conscious and the cool.

I had not argued that the pronunciation in Norwegian made it sound like the gallery. Diana didn’t like that kind of cheap gimmick.

The lease had been signed, the extensive decoration work was under way and our financial ruin secured.

When the taxi pulled up outside the gallery I noticed more Jaguars and Lexuses parked up and down the pavement than usual. A good omen, although of course it could have been because of a reception in one of the surrounding embassies or that Celina Midelfart was having a party in her GDR fortress.

Bass-dominated eighties ambient music poured out through the speaker system at a pleasantly low volume as I entered the rooms. It would be followed by the Goldberg Variations. I had burned the CD for Diana.

It was already half full despite it being only half past eight. A good sign – usually Galleri E clientele didn’t appear before half past nine. Diana had explained to me that packed private views were seen as vulgar; half-full ones accentuated the exclusivity. My experience was now, however, that the more people there were, the more pictures would be sold. I nodded to the left and right without anyone reciprocating and headed for the mobile bar. Diana’s permanent bartender, Nick, passed me a glass of champagne.

‘Expensive?’ I asked, tasting the bitter bubbles.

‘Six hundred,’ Nick said.

‘Better sell a few pictures,’ I said. ‘Who’s the artist?’

‘Atle Nørum.’

‘I know his name, Nick, just not what he looks like.’

‘Over there.’ Nick angled his big ebony-black head to the right. ‘Next to your wife.’

I noted that the artist was a hunk of a man with a beard but that was all. Because she was there.

A pair of white leather trousers clung to long, slim legs, making her seem even taller than she was. Her hair hung down on either side of her fringe, which had been cut straight, and this perpendicular frame heightened the impression of Japanese comic-strip art. Under the spot lighting, the loose silk blouse shone almost bluish-white on her narrow, muscular shoulders and breasts, which in profile resembled two perfectly formed waves. My God, she would really have set off the diamond earrings!

Reluctantly, my gaze left her and swept around the rest of the room. Those invited stood making polite conversation in front of the pictures. They were the usual suspects. Rich, successful financiers (suit with tie) and celebrities of the right sort (suit with designer T-shirt), the ones who had actually achieved something. The women (designer clothes) were actresses, writers or politicians. And then there was, of course, the flock of young, so-called promising and allegedly poor, rebellious artists (jeans with holes, T-shirts with slogans) whom in my own mind I termed QPR. When, at the beginning, I had wrinkled my nose up at these elements on the guest list, Diana had argued that we needed ‘some spice’, some life, something a bit more dangerous than art patrons, calculating investors and those who came just to have their public images massaged. Fair enough, but I knew that the scum were here because they had asked Diana nicely for an invitation. And even though Diana knew that they were here angling for buyers of their own works, it was well documented that Diana could never say no if she was asked for a favour. I noticed several people – mostly men – occasionally casting furtive glances in Diana’s direction. Be my guest. She was finer than anyone they would ever get. This was not just an assumption, but an unshakeable logical fact as she was the finest of the finest. And she was mine. Just how unshakeable was something with which I tried not to torment myself. For the time being I found peace of mind thinking that she seemed to be permanently blind.

I counted how many men there were wearing ties. As a rule, they were the ones who bought. The current square-metre price for Nørum’s works lay at around fifty thousand. With fifty-five per cent commission to the gallery you didn’t need many sales before this would become a lucrative evening. To put it another way: it had better be; Nørums were few and far between.

People were streaming in through the doors now, and I had to move out of the way to let them get to the tray of champagne glasses.

I ambled towards my wife and Nørum to tell him what a grovelling admirer I was. An exaggeration, of course, but not a bare-faced lie; the guy was good, no doubt about that. But as I was going to stretch out my hand, the artist was collared by a sputum-spouting man he obviously knew and dragged off to a giggling woman in apparent dire need of the toilet.

‘Looks good,’ I said, standing next to Diana.

‘Hi, darling.’ She smiled down at me, then motioned to the twin girls that they should do another round with the finger food. Sushi was out, but I had suggested the new Algerian catering service, French-inspired North African, very hot. In all senses. But I could see that she had ordered the food from Bagatelle again. It was good, too, my goodness. And three times as expensive.

‘Good news, my love,’ she said, slipping a hand into mine. ‘Do you remember the job for that firm in Horten you told me about?’

‘Pathfinder. What about it?’

‘I’ve found the perfect candidate.’

I observed her with mild surprise. As a headhunter, from time to time naturally I used Diana’s customer portfolio and circle of acquaintances, which counted many business honchos among its number, without any pangs of conscience; after all, it was me who was financing this drain on the budget. What was unusual was that Diana had herself come up with a specific candidate for a specific job.

Diana took the underside of my arm, leaned closer and whispered: ‘His name is Clas Greve. Dutch father, Norwegian mother. Or the other way round. Whatever. He stopped working three months ago and has just moved to Norway to do up a house he’s inherited. He was the CEO of one of Europe’s biggest GPS technology companies in Rotterdam. He was a co-owner until they were bought up by the Americans this spring.’

‘Rotterdam,’ I said, sipping some champagne. ‘What’s the company’s name?’

‘HOTE.’

I almost choked on the champagne. ‘HOTE? Are you sure?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘Have you got the guy’s number?’

‘No.’

I groaned. HOTE. Pathfinder had named HOTE their model company in Europe. Just as Pathfinder was now, HOTE had been a small high-tech business specialising in delivering GPS technology to the defence industry in Europe. An ex-CEO from there would be absolutely ideal. And it was urgent. All recruitment agencies say that they only take assignments where they have exclusive rights because it is a prerequisite for serious, systematic work. But if the carrot is big and orange enough, when the gross annual salary begins to approach seven figures, everyone modifies their principles. And the top job with Pathfinder was extremely big, extremely orange and extremely competitive. The assignment had been given to three agencies: Alfa, ISCO and Korn/Ferry International. Three of the best. That was why this was not solely about money. Whenever we work on a no win, no fee basis, we first get a one-off fee to cover costs and then a fee if the candidate we present fulfils the needs we have agreed with the client. For us to get the real payout, however, the client has to appoint the person we recommend. OK by me, but what this was really, really about was simple: winning. Being king of the heap. Platform shoes.

I leaned over to Diana. ‘Listen, sweetie, this is important. Have you any idea at all how I can get hold of him?’

She chuckled. ‘You’re so nice when something catches your interest, darling.’

‘Do you know where…?’

‘Of course.’

‘Where, where?’

‘He’s standing over there.’ She pointed.

In front of one of Nørum’s expressive paintings – a bleeding man in a bondage hood – stood a slim, erect figure in a suit. The spotlight reflected on his shiny, bronzed skull. He had hard, knotted blood vessels in his temples. The suit was tailor-made. Savile Row, I assumed. Shirt without a tie.

‘Shall I bring him over, darling?’

I nodded and watched her. Prepared myself. Noted his gracious bow when Diana approached and pointed. They came towards me. I smiled, but not too broadly, stretched out my hand slightly before he arrived, but not too prematurely. My whole body turned to him, my eyes on his. Seventy-eight per cent.

‘Roger Brown, pleased to meet you.’ I pronounced both names in the English way.

‘Clas Greve. The pleasure is all mine.’

Apart from the un-Norwegian formal greeting, his Norwegian was nigh on perfect. His hand was warm, dry, the handshake firm without overdoing it, the recommended duration of three seconds. His eyes were calm, curious, alert; the smile friendly without being forced. My only complaint was that he was not as tall as I had hoped. Just under one metre eighty, a bit disappointing considering that Dutch men are the anthropometric world champions with an average height of 183.4 centimetres.

A guitar chord sounded. To be precise, a G11sus4, the opening chord of the Beatles ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ from the album of the same name, 1964. I knew that because it was me who had put it on the Prada phone and set it as the ringtone before giving it to Diana. She raised the attractively slim object to her ear, nodded to us in apology and distanced herself.

‘I understand you have just moved here, herr Greve?’ I could hear myself sounding like an old radio play, using the Norwegian formal terms ‘De’ and ‘herr’, but during the introductory sales pitch it is important to adapt and assume low status. The metamorphosis would come soon enough.

‘I inherited my grandmother’s apartment in Oscars gate. It’s stood empty for a couple of years and needs redecorating.’

‘I see.’

I raised both eyebrows with a smile, curious, but not insistent. Just enough. If he was able to follow the social code, he would now reply with a little more information.

‘Yes,’ said Greve. ‘It’s a pleasant break after so many years’ hard graft.’

I saw no reason not to go straight to the point. ‘At HOTE, from what I understand.’

He sent me a look of mild surprise. ‘Do you know the company?’

‘The recruitment agency I work for has its competitor, Pathfinder, on its books. Have you heard of them?’

‘Bits and pieces. Main office in Horten, if I’m not much mistaken. Small but competent, isn’t that right?’

‘They must have grown quite a lot in the months you’ve been out of circulation.’

‘Things move quickly in the GPS industry,’ Greve said, twirling the champagne glass in his hand. ‘Everyone thinks expansion. The motto is: Expand or die.’

‘So I understand. Perhaps that was why HOTE was bought up?’

Greve’s smile produced a fine network of creases in the tanned skin around the pale blue eyes. ‘The fastest way to grow is, as you know, to be bought up. Experts reckon that those not among the top five GPS companies in two years’ time are finished.’

‘Doesn’t sound like you agree?’

‘I think that innovation and flexibility are the most important survival criteria. And that, as long as there is sufficient funding, a small unit that can adapt quickly is more important than size. So I have to confess that, even though I became a rich man through the sale of HOTE, I was against selling and resigned straight afterwards. I’m obviously not quite in sync with current thinking…’ Again this flashing smile that softened the hard but well-cared-for exterior. ‘But perhaps that is just the guerrilla warrior in me. What do you think?’

He used the informal form of ‘you’. A good sign.

‘I only know that Pathfinder is looking for a new boss,’ I said, signalling to Nick that he should bring us more champagne. ‘Someone who can resist the overtures from foreign companies.’

‘Uh-uh?’

‘And to me it sounds like you could be a very promising applicant for them. Interested?’

Greve laughed. It was an engaging laugh. ‘My apologies, Roger. I have an apartment to do up.’

Christian name.

‘I didn’t think you would be interested in the job, Clas. Just in talking about it.’

‘You haven’t seen the apartment, Roger. It’s old. And big. Yesterday I found a new room behind the kitchen.’

I looked at him. It wasn’t only down to Savile Row that the suit fitted him so well; he was in good shape. No, not in good shape; excellent shape was the expression. There were no bulging muscles here, just the sinewy strength that reveals itself with discretion, in the blood vessels in the neck, in the posture, in the low resting heart rate, in the blue oxygen capillaries on the back of his hands. Nevertheless, you had a sense of the muscular strength that lay beneath the suit material. Stamina, I thought. Unrelenting stamina. I had already made up my mind; I wanted this head.

‘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.

4 EXPROPRIATION

‘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.

I had plenty of time but still hurried down the hall. On the wall above the staircase hung portraits of what must have been Lander’s children. I am at a complete loss to understand what it is that makes grown people spend money on whoring artists’ embarrassing lachrymose versions of their beloved offspring. Do they like to see their guests blush? The living room was lavishly furnished but humdrum. Apart from Pesche’s fire-engine-red chair, which looked like a buxom woman with her legs apart, who had just given birth to a baby: the big square pouffe you can rest your feet on. Doubt if it was Jeremias Lander’s idea.

Above the chair hung the picture, Eva Mudocci, the British violinist Munch had met at around the turn of the previous century and whom he had sketched straight onto stone when doing her portrait. I had seen other copies of the print before, but it wasn’t until now, in this light, that I could see who Eva Mudocci resembled. Lotte. Lotte Madsen. The face in the picture had the same pallor and melancholy in her eyes as the woman I had so emphatically deleted from my memory.

I took the picture off the wall and placed it on the table face down. Used a Stanley knife to cut. The lithograph was printed on beige paper and the frame was modern, so there were no pins or tacks that had to be removed. In short, the simplest of jobs.

Without warning the silence was broken. An alarm. An insistent pulsation fluctuating in frequency from under a thousand hertz to eight thousand, a sound that cuts through the air and background noise so effectively that you can hear it several hundred metres away. I froze. It lasted only a few seconds, then the alarm in the street stopped. The car owner must have been careless.

I continued working. Opened the portfolio, laid the lithograph inside and took out the A2 sheet of Miss Mudocci that I had printed off at home. Within four minutes it was framed, in place and hanging on the wall. I angled my head and inspected it. It could be weeks before the victims of our scam discovered the most ridiculously obvious of fakes. In the spring I had replaced an oil painting, Knut Rose’s Horse with Small Rider, with a picture I had scanned from an art book and blown up. Four weeks passed before the theft was reported. Miss Mudocci would probably be given away by the whiteness of the paper, but it might take some time. And by then it would be impossible to pinpoint the time of the theft, and the house would have been cleaned enough times to remove all traces of DNA. Because I knew they would look for DNA. Last year, after Kjikerud and I had performed four burglaries in under four months, Inspector Brede Sperre – that blond, media-horny idiot – appeared in Aftenposten maintaining that a gang of professional art thieves was on the prowl. And that even though the values involved were not the highest, the Robberies Unit – in order to nip this turn of events in the bud – were using investigative methods normally reserved for murder and the big drug busts. All citizens of Oslo could rest assured on that account, Sperre had said, letting his boyish locks flutter in the wind and looking into the camera lens with steely grey eyes as the photographer snapped away. Of course he had not told the truth: that this priority was being pushed on them by the residents of these areas, the affluent people with political influence and the will to protect theirs and their kind. And I had to admit that I gave a start when Diana, earlier that autumn, had told me that the dashing policeman in the papers had been into the gallery, wanting to know whether anyone had been grilling her about her clients and who had which works of art in their homes. Apparently the art thieves were well informed about what was hanging where. When Diana had queried the reason for my furrowed brow, I had given her the wry smile and replied that I didn’t much like having a rival closer than two metres to her. To my surprise, Diana had blushed before laughing.

I marched smartly back to the front door, removed the bathing cap and the gloves with care, wiped the door handle on both sides before letting myself out. The street lay just as morning-still and crisply autumn-dry in the unbroken sunshine.

On my way to the car I checked my watch. Fourteen minutes past twelve. It was a record. My pulse was fast but regulated. In forty-six minutes Ove would activate the alarm in the operations room. And at roughly the same time I guessed that Jeremias Lander would be getting to his feet in one of our interview rooms and shaking the chairman’s hand with a final apology before leaving our offices and placing himself out of my control. But in my stable of candidates, of course. Ferdinand would – as I had instructed him – have to explain to the client it was a shame that this hadn’t worked out, but that if they were going to angle for applicants as good as Lander, they ought to consider jacking up the salary by twenty per cent. A third of more is, as we all know, more.

And this was just the start. In two hours and forty-six minutes I would be going on a big game hunt. A Greve hunt. I was underpaid, so what? Fuck Stockholm and fuck Brede Sperre; I was king of the heap.

I whistled. The leaves crackled beneath my shoes.

5 CONFESSION

IT HAS BEEN said that when the American police investigators Inbau, Reid and Buckley published Criminal Interrogation and Confessions in 1962, they laid the foundations for what have since become the prevailing interview techniques in the Western world. The truth is, of course, that the techniques prevailed long before then, that Inbau, Reid and Buckley’s nine-step model merely summarised the FBI’s hundred-year experience of extracting confessions from suspects. The method has shown itself to be enormously effective, on both the guilty and the innocent. After DNA technology made it possible for old cases to be re-examined, hundreds of people were found to have been wrongly imprisoned in the USA alone. Around a quarter of these wrongful convictions were based on confessions extracted by the nine-step model. That says everything about what a fantastic tool it is.

My goal is to induce the candidate to admit he is bluffing, that he is unsuitable for the job. If he can get through the nine steps without confessing this, there is reason to assume that the candidate himself really believes he has the necessary qualifications. And those are the candidates I am looking for. I persist in saying ‘he’ as the nine-step model is most usefully applied to men. My not inconsiderable experience is that women seldom apply for jobs they are not qualified – and they prefer to be overqualified – to do. And even then it is the easiest task in the world to make her break down and confess she hasn’t got what is required. False confessions are not uncommon with men, too, of course, but that’s fine. After all, they don’t land in prison, they only miss out on a management job that requires calm under pressure.

I have absolutely no scruples about using Inbau, Reid and Buckley. It is a scalpel in a world of healing, herbs and psychobabble.

Step one is a direct confrontation and many do not get any further than this point. You make it crystal clear to the candidate that you know everything and that you are sitting on evidence that proves the person in question does not have the requisite abilities.

‘I may have been somewhat hasty in expressing an interest in your application, Greve,’ I said, leaning back in my chair. ‘I’ve been doing a bit of research, and it turns out that the HOTE shareholders consider that you failed as a CEO. That you were weak, you lacked the killer instinct and it was your fault the company was bought up. Being bought up is precisely what Pathfinder fears, so I’m sure you understand that it will be difficult to view you as a serious candidate. But…’ With a smile, I raised my cup of coffee. ‘Let’s enjoy the coffee and talk about other things instead. How’s the decorating going?’

Clas Greve sat on the other side of the fake Noguchi table with an erect back, his eyes boring into mine. He laughed.

‘Three and a half million,’ he said. ‘Plus share options, naturally.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘If the board of directors at Pathfinder is afraid the shares might motivate me to sex up the business for potential buyers, you can reassure them that we’ll put in a clause about the shares becoming invalid in the case of a buyout. No parachutes. In that way the board and I have the same incentive. To build a strong company, a company that will eat rather than be eaten. The value of shares is calculated according to the Black-Scholes pricing model and added to the fixed salary after your third has been worked out.’

I put on the best smile I had. ‘I’m afraid you’re taking some things for granted, Greve. There are several points here. Don’t forget you’re a foreigner, and Norwegian companies prefer to have their own to-’

‘You were literally salivating all over me yesterday at your wife’s gallery, Roger. And you were right to. After your proposition I did some research into you and into Pathfinder. I became immediately aware that even though I am a Dutch citizen, you will have difficulty finding a more appropriate candidate than me. The problem then was that I wasn’t interested. But one can do a lot of thinking in twelve hours. And in that time, for example, one might conclude that the pleasures of house renovation may be restricted over the long term.’

Clas Greve folded his suntanned hands in front of him.

‘It’s time I got back in the saddle. Pathfinder is perhaps not the sexiest company I could have chosen, but it has potential, and a person with vision and the board on his side could build it up into something really interesting. However, it is by no means certain that the board and I share the same vision, so your job is, I suppose, to bring us together as soon as possible in order that we might see whether there is any point continuing.’

‘Listen, Greve-’

‘I am in no doubt that your methods work on many people, Roger, but with me you can give the show a miss. And go back to calling me Clas. After all, this is supposed to be just a cosy chat, isn’t it?’

He lifted his coffee cup as if he were going to make a toast. I grabbed the opportunity for a timeout and lifted my own.

‘You seem a bit stressed, Roger. Are there competitors for this commission of yours?’

My laryngeal reflex has a tendency to kick in when I am caught unawares. I had to swallow quickly so as not to cough up coffee over Sara Gets Undressed.

‘I understand all too well that you have to go for it, Roger,’ Greve smiled, leaning closer.

I could smell the heat of his body and a faint aroma which reminded me of cedar trees, Russian leather and citrus. Cartier’s Declaration? Or something in that price range.

‘I’m not at all offended, Roger. You’re a pro, and I am, too. Naturally, you just want to do a good job for the client, that’s what they’re paying you for, after all. And the more interesting the candidate, the more important it is to give the person in question a thorough going-over. The claim that HOTE shareholders were not happy is not a stupid one. I would have tried something like that if I’d been you.’

I couldn’t believe my ears. He had thrown step one right back in my face by stating that we should give the show a miss; my ploy had been blown. And now he was running step two, what Inbau, Reid and Buckley call ‘sympathising with the suspect by normalising actions’. And the most incredible thing was that even though I knew exactly what Greve was doing, it did build up, this feeling I had read so much about: the suspect’s desire to throw in his cards. I almost felt like laughing out loud.

‘I don’t quite understand what you mean now, Clas.’ Although I was trying to appear relaxed, I could hear that my voice had a metallic timbre and my thoughts were wading through syrup. I was unable to mobilise a counter-attack before the next question came.

‘Money is not actually my motivation, Roger. But if you like, we can try to increase the salary. A third of more…’

… is more. He had taken over the interview completely now and gone straight from step two to step seven: Present the alternative. In this case, give the suspect an alternative motivation for confessing. The execution was perfect. Of course he could have brought my family into play, said something about how proud my deceased parents or my wife would be if they heard how I had pushed up the salary, our commission, my bonus. But Clas Greve knew that would be going too far, of course he knew that. I had quite simply met my match.

‘OK, Clas,’ I heard myself say. ‘I give in. It is just as you say.’

Greve leaned back in his chair again. He had won, and now he was letting his breath out and smiling. Not with a sense of triumph, just happy that it was over. Used to winning, I noted down on the sheet I already knew I would throw away afterwards.

The strangest part about it was that it didn’t feel like a defeat, but a relief. Yes, I felt nothing less than invigorated.

‘Nevertheless, the client requires concrete information,’ I said. ‘Would you mind if we went on?’

Clas Greve closed his eyes, placed the tips of his fingers against each other and shook his head.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Then I would like you to tell me about your life.’

I made notes as Clas Greve told his story. He had grown up as the youngest of three. In Rotterdam. It was a rough seaport, but his family were among the privileged, his father had a top job with Philips. Clas and his two sisters had learned Norwegian during the long summers with their grandparents in a chalet in Son, on the Oslo fjord. He had had a strained relationship with his father, who considered the youngest child spoilt and lacking in discipline.

‘He was right,’ Greve smiled. ‘I was used to achieving good results at school and on the sports track without doing any work. By the time I was around sixteen everything bored me, and I began to visit “shady areas”. They’re not hard to find in Rotterdam. I had no friends there and didn’t make any new ones, either. But I did have money. So, systematically, I began to try out everything that was forbidden: alcohol, hash, prostitution, minor break-ins and bit by bit harder drugs. At home my father believed I had taken up boxing and that was why I returned with a bloated face, a runny nose and bloodshot eyes. I was spending more and more time in these places where people let me stay and above all left me in peace. I don’t know if I cared for this new life of mine. Those around me saw me as a weirdo, a lonely sixteen-year-old they couldn’t make out. And it was precisely this reaction that I liked. Gradually my lifestyle began to show in my school results, but I didn’t care. Eventually my father woke up. And perhaps I thought I finally had what I had always wanted: his attention. He spoke to me in calm, serious tones; I yelled back. Sometimes I could see he was on the point of losing control. I loved it. He sent me to my grandparents in Oslo where I did my last two years of school. How did you get on with your father, Roger?’

I jotted down three words with ‘self’. Self-assured. Self-deprecating. And Self-aware.

‘We didn’t speak much,’ I said. ‘We were quite different.’

‘Were? So he’s dead?’

‘My parents died in a road accident.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Diplomatic corps. The British Embassy. He met my mother in Oslo.’

Greve tilted his head and studied me. ‘Do you miss him?’

‘No. Is your father alive?’

‘Doubt it.’

‘Doubt it?’

Clas Greve took a deep breath and pressed his palms together. ‘He went missing when I was eighteen. He didn’t come home for dinner. At work they said he had left at six as usual. My mother rang the police. They immediately went into action as this was a time when left-wing terrorist groups were kidnapping rich business people in Europe. There hadn’t been any accidents on the motorway; no one by the name of Bernhard Greve had been taken to hospital. He wasn’t on any passenger lists and the car had not been registered anywhere. He was never found.’

‘What do you believe happened?’

‘I don’t believe anything. He may have driven to Germany, stayed at a motel under a false name, unable to shoot himself. So instead he could have pushed on in the middle of the night, come across a black lake in some forest and driven in. Or maybe he was kidnapped in the car park outside Philips, two men with pistols on the back seat. Put up a fight, got a bullet through his head. The car with Dad in was then driven to a breaker’s yard the same night, crushed into a metal pancake and cut up into tiny bits. Or perhaps he’s sitting somewhere with umbrella-adorned cocktail in one hand and call girl in the other.’

I tried to detect a reaction in Greve’s face, in his voice. Nothing. Either he had considered the thought too often, or else he was just a stony-hearted bastard. I didn’t know which I preferred.

‘You’re eighteen years old and living in Oslo,’ I said. ‘Your father’s gone missing. You’re a young man with problems. What do you do?’

‘I finished school with top grades and applied to join the Dutch Royal Marines.’

‘Commandos. The macho elite stuff, eh?’

‘Definitely.’

‘The sort where one in a hundred get in.’

‘That kind of thing. I was selected to take part in the preliminary tests where they spend a month systematically trying to break you down. And afterwards – if you survive – four years building you up.’

‘Sounds like something I’ve seen in films.’

‘Believe me, Roger, you won’t have seen this in a film.’

I looked at him. I believed him.

‘Later I joined the counter-terrorism unit BBE in Dorn. I was there for eight years. Got to see the whole world. Suriname, the Dutch West Indies, Indonesia, Afghanistan. Winter exercises in Harstad and Voss. I was taken prisoner and tortured during an anti-drugs campaign in Suriname.’

‘Sounds exotic. But you kept your mouth shut?’

Clas Greve smiled. ‘Shut? I chatted away like an old fishwife. Cocaine barons don’t play at interrogation.’

I leaned forward. ‘Really? What did they do?’

Greve observed me thoughtfully with a raised eyebrow before answering. ‘I don’t think you really want to know, Roger.’

I was a little disappointed, but nodded and sat back.

‘So your comrades were picked off or something like that?’

‘No. When they attacked the positions I had given away, of course everything had been moved on. I spent two months in a cellar living on rotten fruit and water infested with mosquito eggs. When the BBE carried me out I weighed forty-five kilos.’

I looked at him. Tried to imagine how they had tortured him. How he had taken it. And what the forty-five-kilo variant of Clas Greve had looked like. Different, of course. But not that much, not really.

‘Hardly surprising you stopped,’ I said.

‘That wasn’t why. The eight years in the BBE were the best in my life, Roger. First of all, it is in fact the stuff you’ve seen in films. The comradeship and the loyalty. But in addition there was what I learned, what came to be my craft.’

‘Which is?’

‘Finding people. In the BBE there was something called TRACK. A unit which specialised in tracking down people in all possible situations and places in the world. They were the ones who found me in the cellar. So I applied to the unit, was accepted, and there I learned everything. From ancient Indian tracking skills to interrogation methods and the most modern electronic tracking devices in existence. That was how I got to know HOTE. They had made a transmitter the size of a shirt button. The idea was to attach it to someone and then follow all his movements via a receiver, the kind you saw in spy films way back in the sixties, but which no one had actually managed to operate satisfactorily. Even HOTE’s shirt button turned out to be useless; it couldn’t take body sweat, temperatures below minus ten, and the signals only penetrated the thinnest of house walls. But the HOTE boss liked me. He had no sons of his own…’

‘And you had no father.’

Greve sent me an indulgent smile.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘After eight years in the military I started Engineering Studies in The Hague, paid for by HOTE. During my first year at HOTE we had made a tracking device which would function under extreme conditions. After five years I was number two in the command chain. After eight I took over as boss, and the rest you know.’

I leaned back in my chair and sipped my coffee. We were already there. We had a winner. I had even written it. Hired. Perhaps that was why I hesitated to go on, perhaps there was something inside me that said enough was enough. Or perhaps it was something else.

‘You look as if you would like to know more,’ Greve said.

I replied with an evasion. ‘You haven’t talked about your marriage.’

‘I’ve talked about the important things,’ said Greve. ‘Would you like to hear about my marriage?’

I shook my head. And decided to wind things up. But then fate intervened. In the form of Clas Greve himself.

‘Nice picture you’ve got,’ he said, turning to the wall behind him. ‘Is that an Opie?’

‘Sara Gets Undressed,’ I said. ‘A present from Diana. Do you collect art?’

‘I’ve made a small start.’

Something inside me still said no, but it was too late; I had already asked: ‘What’s the best thing you’ve got?’

‘An oil painting. I found it in a hidden room behind the kitchen. No one in the family knew my grandmother had it.’

‘Interesting,’ I said, feeling my heart give a curious jump. Must have been from the tension earlier in the day. ‘What’s the painting?’

He studied me for a long time. A tiny smile stole onto his mouth. He formed his lips to answer, and I had a strange premonition. A premonition that made my stomach recoil like a boxer’s abdominal muscles do when they see a blow coming. But his lips changed shape. And all the premonitions in the world could not have prepared me for his reply.

‘The Calydonian Boar Hunt.’

‘The…’ In two seconds my mouth had gone as dry as dust. ‘The Boar Hunt?’

‘Do you know anything about it?’

‘If you mean the picture by… by…’

‘Peter Paul Rubens,’ Greve completed.

I concentrated on one thing only. Keeping the mask. But something was flashing in front of me, like a scoreboard in the London fog in Loftus Road: QPR had just lobbed the ball into the top corner. Life had been turned upside down. We were on our way to Wembley.