Headhunters

the place is already taken. And afterwards she sleeps, and he lies listening to her breathing, feeling the satisfaction of a job well done. Knowing things can never be the same as they were. But they could be similar. There could be a life ahead. He could look after her. He could love someone. And as if that alone were not overwhelming enough, he even sees a point to loving, a ‘because’, an echo of an argument used at a football match in London fog: ‘Because they need me.’

EPILOGUE

THE FIRST SNOW had come and gone again.

I had read on the Net that a purchase option and the display rights for The Calydonian Boar Hunt had been sold at an auction in Paris. The buyer was the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which could now exhibit the painting – unless in the two-year option period an owner appeared from out of the blue and laid claim to the property – and could take up the option and acquire permanent possession. There were a few brief sentences about its origins and the discussions that had raged about whether it was a copy or an original by a different painter, since there were no sources proving that Rubens had ever painted any Calydonian boars. But the experts were now agreed that Rubens was the artist. There was nothing about how the picture had come to light, the fact that the Norwegian state was the vendor or any mention of price.

Diana had realised that it would be difficult to run the gallery alone now that she was a mother-to-be, and had therefore – after consulting me – decided to bring in a partner who could take care of the more practical aspects, such as the financial management, so that she could concentrate more on art and artists. Our house had, furthermore, been put up for sale. We had agreed that a slightly smaller terrace house in a more rural setting would be a better place for a child to grow up. And I had already received a very high offer. It was from someone who had rung me the second he had seen the ad in the newspaper and asked for a viewing that very evening. I had recognised him as soon as I opened the door. Corneliani suit and geek-chic glasses.

‘Not one of Ole Bang’s very best perhaps,’ he commented after racing from room to room with me in tow. ‘But I’ll take it. How much do you want?’

I mentioned the quote in the ad.

‘Plus a million,’ he said. ‘Deadline the day after tomorrow.’

I said we would consider his offer and escorted him to the door. He passed me his business card. No title, just his name and a mobile phone number. The recruitment agency’s name was written in such small letters that to all practical intents and purposes it was unreadable.

‘Tell me,’ he said on the doorstep, ‘didn’t you use to be king of the heap?’ And before I could reply: ‘We’re thinking of expanding. We may ring you.’

We. Small letters.

I let the deadline pass without mentioning the offer to the estate agent or Diana. I didn’t hear anything from ‘we’, either.

Since, on principle, I never start working before it is light, on this particular day I was – as on most other days – the last man to arrive in the car park outside Alfa. ‘The first shall be last.’ This is a privilege I have formulated myself and implemented, a privilege that can only be granted to the company’s best headhunter. The position also implies that no one can take your parking spot even though, on paper, it is subject to the same first-come-first- served rule as other company parking spaces.

But on this day there was a car there nonetheless. An unfamiliar Passat, probably one of our customers who thought it would be fine to park there because of the Alfa sign hanging from the chain behind the space, a halfwit who did not have the capacity to read the large sign by the entrance directing them to VISITOR PARKING.

All the same, I felt a little uncertainty. Could it be that someone in Alfa had come to the conclusion that I was no longer… I didn’t complete the thought.

While I was casting around for another spot, annoyed, a man strode out of the office building heading in the vague direction of the Passat. He had a Passat-owner gait, I determined, and breathed a sigh of relief. For this was definitely not a rival for the spot but a client.

I parked my car demonstratively in front of the Passat, waited and hoped. Perhaps it was a good start to the day after all, perhaps I could shout at an idiot. And, sure enough, the man tapped on my side window, and I looked into a coat at stomach height.

I waited a couple of seconds before pressing the window button, and the glass slid down slowly – yet still a little faster than ideally I would have liked.

‘Listen-’ he began before being interrupted by my studied drawl.

‘Well, how can I help you today?’ Without deigning to cast him a glance, I prepared to deliver a refreshing sign-reading lecture.

‘Would you mind moving your car a bit? You’re b-ocking my way out.’

‘I think you’ll find that you are blocking my way in, my good-’

At last the atmospheric noises reached my brain. I peered out of the window and up. My heart almost stopped beating.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Just a moment.’ I fumbled manically for the button to close the window. But my fine- motor-coordination skills seemed to have vanished.

‘Wait a sec,’ said Brede Sperre. ‘Haven’t we met before?’

‘I doubt it,’ I said, trying to produce a calm, relaxed bass voice.

‘Are you sure? I’m certain we’ve met.’

Shit, how could he have recognised the alleged third cousin of the Monsen brothers at the Pathology Unit? That version had been bald and dressed like a bumpkin. This one had luxuriant hair, an Ermenegildo Zegna suit and a freshly pressed Borelli shirt. But I knew I shouldn’t be too dismissive, put Sperre into defensive mode and set his brain whirring until he remembered. I took a deep breath. I was tired, more tired than I ought to have been today. This was a day when I had to deliver the goods. Show that I could live up to the reputation I had once enjoyed.

‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘To tell the truth there’s something familiar about you, too…’

At first he seemed a little bewildered by this counteroffensive. Then he put on the boyish winsome smile that made Sperre so well suited to the visual media.

‘You’ve probably seen me on TV. I hear that all the time…’

‘Right, that’s probably where you’ve seen me too,’ I said.

‘Oh?’ he said, curious. ‘Which programme was that, then?’

‘Must have been your programme. Since you think we’ve met. Because the TV screen is not actually a window through which we can see each other, is it? On your side of the camera it’s more like… a mirror maybe?’

Sperre looked slightly confused.

‘I’m joking,’ I said. ‘I’ll move. Have a great day.’

I activated the car window and reversed. There were rumours going round that Sperre was screwing Odd G. Dybwad’s new wife. Rumours that he had screwed the old one, too. And – for that matter – that he was screwing Dybwad.

As Sperre was driving out of the car park, he stopped before turning, so that for two seconds we were sitting in our cars windscreen to windscreen. I saw his eyes. He was looking at me as though he had just been tricked and only realised that now. I sent him a friendly nod. Then he accelerated and was off. And I looked in the rear-view mirror and whispered: ‘Hi there, Roger.’

I entered Alfa and roared a deafening ‘Good morning, Oda!’ and then Ferdinand came rushing towards me.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Have they come?’

‘Yes, they’re ready,’ Ferdinand said, tripping down the corridor after me. ‘By the way, there was a policeman here. Tall, blond and quite, erm… good-looking.’

‘What did he want?’