been something I had painted in slightly too vivid colours, the way people do sometimes, trying to imagine the worst thing that can happen, if for no other reason than to feel what it is like, to see if it would be tolerable. And as if to confirm that it was just a dream, I had said I had changed my mind, she was right, we really ought to book the trip to Tokyo in December. But she had looked at me in surprise and said that she couldn’t close the gallery right before Christmas, that was the peak period, wasn’t it? And no one went to Tokyo in December, it was freezing cold. What about spring then? I said. I could book tickets. And she had said that was a little too much long-range planning, wasn’t it, couldn’t we just wait and see? Fine, I had answered and said I was going to bed, I was really tired.
And when I was downstairs, I had gone into the nursery, over to the
‘Two days later we found the drug smuggler in a small village. He was being kept hidden by a very young foreign girl who, it later transpired, was his girlfriend. They usually find themselves such innocent-looking girls and then use them as couriers. Until the girl is caught by customs and gets life. Sixty-five days had passed since the hunt had started.’ Clas Greve drew a deep breath. ‘For my part, another sixty-five would have been fine.’
In the end it was the public relations manager who broke the ensuing silence. ‘And you arrested the man?’
‘Not only him. He and his girlfriend gave us enough information to arrest twenty-three of his colleagues at a later point.’
‘How…’ the chairman started. ‘How do you arrest someone like that?’
‘In this case it wasn’t so dramatic,’ Greve said with his hands behind his head. ‘Equality has come to Suriname. When we stormed the house he had laid down his weapons on the kitchen table and was helping his girlfriend with a mincer.’
The chairman burst into laughter and glanced across at the public relations manager who obediently chimed in with a jerky, though more tentative, laugh. The chorus became a three-part harmony as Ferdinand added to the merriment with his bright squeal. I studied the four shiny faces while thinking about how dearly I wished I had a hand grenade at this very moment.
After Ferdinand had rounded off the interview, I made it my job to escort Clas Greve out while the other three took a break before summing up.
I accompanied Greve to the lift doors and pressed the button.
‘Convincing performance,’ I said, folding my hands in front of my suit trousers and peering up at the floor indicator. ‘You’re a big hit with your seduction skills.’
‘Seduction… not sure about that. I assume you don’t perceive it as dishonourable to sell yourself, Roger.’
‘Not at all. I would’ve done exactly the same if I’d been you.’
‘Thank you. When will you be writing the report?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Good.’
The lift doors opened, we stepped in and stood waiting.
‘I was just wondering,’ I said. ‘The person you were pursuing…’
‘Yes?’
‘It wasn’t by any chance the same person who had tortured you in the cellar?’
Greve smiled. ‘How did you know?’
‘Pure guesswork.’ The lift doors slid into place. ‘And you confined yourself to arresting him?’
Greve raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you find that difficult to believe?’
I shrugged. The lift began to move.
‘The plan was to kill him,’ Greve said.
‘Did you have so much to avenge?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how do you answer to murder charges in the Dutch army?’
‘You make sure you aren’t caught. Curacit.’
‘Poison? As in poison-tipped arrows?’
‘That’s what headhunters use in our part of the world.’
I assumed the ambiguity was deliberate.
‘A solution of Curacit in a rubber ball the size of a grape with a barely detectable sharp needle. You hide it in the target’s mattress. When he goes to bed the needle pricks the skin and the weight forces the poison in the rubber ball into his body.’
‘But he was at home,’ I said. ‘And had a witness in this girl.’
‘Precisely.’
‘So how did you get him to snitch on his pals?’
‘I offered him a deal. I got my colleague to hold him down while I fed his hand into the mincer and said we would grind it into pieces and let him watch our dog eat the minced flesh. Then he talked.’
I nodded, visualising the scene. The lift doors opened and we walked to the front entrance. I held the door open for him. ‘And what about after he talked?’
‘What about it?’ Greve squinted up at the sky.
‘Did you keep your part of the deal?’
‘I…’ Greve said, fishing out a pair of Maui Jim titanium sunglasses from his breast pocket and putting them on, ‘always keep my part of the deal.’
‘A measly arrest then? Was it worth two months of chasing and risking your own life?’
Greve laughed softly. ‘You don’t understand, Roger. Giving up a chase is never an option for types like me. I’m like my dog, a result of genes and training. Risk doesn’t exist. Once fired up, I’m a heat-seeking missile that cannot be stopped, that basically seeks its own destruction. Put your first-year psychology course to the test on that.’ He placed a hand on my arm, gave a thin smile and whispered: ‘But keep the diagnosis to yourself.’
I stood holding the door. ‘And the girl? How did you get her to talk?’
‘She was fourteen years old.’
‘And?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
Greve released a deep sigh. ‘I don’t know how you’ve got such an impression of me, Roger. I don’t interrogate underage girls. I took her with me to Paramaribo, bought a ticket with my soldier’s wage and put her on the first plane home to her parents before the Surinamese police got their hooks into her.’
My eyes followed him as he strode over to a silver-grey Lexus GS 430 in the car park.
The autumn weather was stunningly beautiful. It had rained on my wedding day.
10 HEART CONDITION
I PRESSED LOTTE MADSEN’S doorbell for the third time. In fact, her name was not on the bell, but I had rung at enough doors in Eilert Sundts gate to know that it was hers.
Darkness and the temperature had fallen early and fast. I was shivering in my shoes. She had hesitated for a long time when I rang her from work after lunch to ask whether I could visit her at around eight. And when, at length, she had, with a monosyllable, granted me an audience, I knew she must have broken a vow she had made to herself: not to have anything more to do with this man who had left her so emphatically.
The lock buzzed and I tore at the door as if frightened it was the only chance I would get. I went upstairs; I didn’t want to risk ending up in the lift with some nosy neighbour who had time on their hands to gawp, take note and draw conclusions.
Lotte had opened the door a crack and I glimpsed her pale face.
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
