Headhunters (26 page)

For several seconds there was total silence in the sitting room. How many I don’t know. I was a fly and the hand was on its way. Kjikerud’s Glock pistol was directed at my chest; Greve’s eyes at my shiny pate.

‘Aha,’ he said at length.

This one word contained everything. Everything about how we humans have been able to conquer the earth, rule over the elements, kill creatures that are greater than ourselves in speed and strength. Processor capacity. Greve’s ‘Aha’ came at the end of an avalanche of thoughts, the search for and filtering of hypotheses, relentless deductive powers that together led to an inevitable conclusion: ‘You’ve shaved off your hair, Roger.’

Greve was – as suggested earlier – an intelligent person. Of course he had done more than state the banal fact that my hair had been removed, but also when, how and why it had happened. Because that cleared up all the confusion, answered all the questions. That was why he
added
, more as a fact than as a question: ‘In the wrecked car.’

I nodded.

He sat down in the chair at the foot of the bed, rocked it back against the wall, without the barrel of the gun deviating an inch from me.

‘And then? Did you plant the hair on one of the bodies?’

I thrust my hand in the jacket pocket.

‘Freeze!’ he screamed, and I saw the finger pressing the trigger. No cocked hammer. Glock 17. A dame.

‘It’s my left hand,’ I said.

‘OK. Slowly does it.’

I took my hand out slowly and slung the bag of hair on the table. Greve nodded gently without taking his eyes off me.

‘So you knew,’ he said. ‘That the transmitters were in your hair. And that she had put them there for me. That was why you killed her, wasn’t it?’

‘Did it feel like a loss, Clas?’ I asked, leaning back. My heart was pounding, yet I felt remarkably mellow in this, my final hour. The flesh’s mortal dread and the spirit’s serenity.

He didn’t answer.

‘Or was she just – what did you call it? – a means to an end? A necessary expense to acquire income?’

‘Why do you want to know, Roger?’

‘Because I want to know if people like you really exist or whether they’re just fiction.’

‘Like me?’

‘People who are unable to love.’

Greve laughed. ‘If you wanted an answer to that you only needed to look in the mirror, Roger.’

‘I loved someone,’ I said.

‘You might have imitated love,’ Clas said. ‘But did you really love? Do you have any proof of that? I see
only
proof of the opposite, that you denied Diana the one thing she wanted besides you: a child.’

‘I would’ve given her that.’

He laughed again. ‘So you’ve changed your mind? When did that happen? When did you become the contrite husband? When you discovered that she was fucking another man?’

‘I believe in contrition,’ I said quietly. ‘In contrition. And in forgiveness.’

‘And now it’s too late,’ he said. ‘Diana got neither your forgiveness nor your child.’

‘Not yours either.’

‘It was never my intention to give her a child, Roger.’

‘No, but if you’d wanted it, you’d never have been able to do it, would you?’

‘Of course I would. Do you think I’m impotent?’

He spoke quickly. So quickly that only a fly could have perceived the nanosecond of hesitation. I breathed in. ‘I’ve seen you, Clas Greve. I’ve seen you from … a frog’s-eye view.’

‘What the fuck are you on about now, Brown?’

‘I’ve seen your reproductive organs at a closer range than I would’ve chosen of my own accord.’

I watched his mouth slowly drop, and went on.

‘In an outside toilet near Elverum.’

Greve’s mouth seemed poised to formulate something, but nothing emerged.

‘Was that how they made you talk when you were in the cellar in Suriname? By targeting your testicles? Battering them? A knife? They didn’t take the desire, only the reproductive capacity, didn’t they? What was left of your balls was sewn together with rough thread.’

Greve’s mouth was closed now. A straight line in a stony face.

‘That explains the fanatical hunt for what you yourself
said
was a pretty insignificant drug smuggler in the jungle, Clas. Sixty-five days, wasn’t it? Because it was him, wasn’t it? He was the one who’d slashed your manhood. Taken from you the ability to make replicas of yourself. He’d taken everything from you. Almost. So you took his life. And I can understand that.’

Yes, indeed, this was Inbau, Reid and Buckley’s sub-point in step two: suggest a morally acceptable motive for the crime. But I no longer needed his confession. Instead he got mine. In advance. ‘I understand, Clas, because I’ve decided to kill you for the same reason. You took everything from me. Almost.’

Greve’s mouth made a sound I interpreted as laughter. ‘Who’s sitting with the gun here, Roger?’

‘I’m going to kill you the way I killed your damned dog.’

I saw his jaw muscles tighten as he clenched his teeth, saw the white of his knuckles.

‘You never saw that, did you, now? It ended its days as crow fodder. Transfixed on the prongs of Aa’s tractor.’

‘You make me sick, Roger Brown. You sit there moralising while you yourself are an animal killer and a child murderer.’

‘You’re right. But wrong about what you said to me at the hospital. That our child had Down’s syndrome. Quite the opposite, all the tests showed that it was healthy. I persuaded Diana to have an abortion simply because I didn’t want to share her with anyone. Have you ever heard anything so childish? Pure, unadulterated jealousy towards an unborn baby. I assume I didn’t get enough love when I was growing up. What do you think? Perhaps it was the same for you, Clas? Or were you evil from birth?’

I don’t think Clas took the questions in because he was staring at me with that gawping expression that
showed
his brain was working at full capacity again. Reconstructing, following the branches on the tree of decisions back down to its trunk, to the truth, to where it had all started. And found it. One single sentence at the hospital. Something he had said himself: ‘… have an abortion because the baby has Down’s syndrome.’

‘So tell me,’ I said when I saw that he had understood, ‘have you loved anyone else apart from your dog?’

He raised the gun. There were only seconds left of the new Roger Brown’s short life. Greve’s ice-blue eyes sparkled and the gentle voice was just a whisper now.

‘I had been thinking of putting a single bullet through your head as a mark of respect for being a prey worthy of a hunter, Roger. But I think I’ll go back to the original plan after all. Shooting you in the stomach. Have I told you about stomach shots? How the bullet bores through your spleen causing the gastric acid to leak out and burn its way through the rest of the intestines? Then I have to wait until you beg me to kill you. And you will, Roger.’

‘Perhaps you ought to cut the chat and shoot, Clas? perhaps you shouldn’t wait as long as you did at the hospital?’

Greve laughed again. ‘Oh, I don’t think you’ve invited the police here, Roger. You’ve killed a woman. You’re a murderer like me. This is between you and me.’

‘Think again, Clas. Why do you reckon I risked going to the Pathology Unit and tricking them into handing over the bag of hair?’

Greve rolled his shoulders. ‘Simple. It’s the DNA evidence. Probably the only thing they had which they could have used against you. They still think the name of the person they’re looking for is Ove Kjikerud. Unless you wanted your beautiful mane back, that is. Make a wig out of it? Diana told me your hair was very important to you. That you used it to compensate for your height?’

‘Correct,’ I said. ‘But incorrect. Sometimes the headhunter forgets that the head he is hunting can think. I don’t know if it thinks better or worse without hair, but in this case it has enticed the hunter into a trap.’

Greve blinked slowly while I observed his body tense up; he sensed mischief.

‘I don’t see a trap, Roger.’

‘It’s here,’ I said, whisking aside the duvet next to me. I saw his eyes fall on the body of Ove Kjikerud. And on the Uzi machine gun that lay on his chest.

He reacted with lightning speed, pointing the pistol at me. ‘Don’t try anything, Brown.’

I moved my hands towards the machine gun.

‘Don’t!’ Greve screamed.

I raised the weapon.

Greve fired. The explosion filled the room.

I pointed my gun at Greve. He had half risen to his feet in the chair and loosened off another round. I pressed the trigger. Pressed it all the way. A hoarse roar of lead tore through the air, Ove’s walls, the chair, Clas Greve’s black trousers, the perfect thigh muscles beneath, tore open his groin and, I hoped, his genitals which had been inside Diana, his well-developed abdominal muscles and the organs they were supposed to protect.

He fell back in the chair and the Glock thudded to the floor. There was an abrupt silence, then the sound of a cartridge rolling over the parquet. I angled my head and peered down at him. He returned the look, his eyes black with shock.

‘Now you won’t pass the medical for Pathfinder, Greve. Sorry about that. You will never steal the technology. However thorough you are. In fact, that bloody thoroughness was your undoing.’

Greve’s groan was barely audible, something Dutch.

‘It was the thoroughness that tempted you here,’ I
said
. ‘To the final interview. Because do you know what? You’re the man I’ve been seeking 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, herr Greve.’

Greve didn’t answer, just stared down at himself. The blood had made the black roll-neck even blacker. So I went on.

‘You are hereby appointed as the scapegoat, herr Greve. As the man who killed Ove Kjikerud, the body lying next to me.’ I patted Ove on the stomach.

Greve groaned again and raised his head. ‘What the fuck are you babbling on about?’ His voice sounded desperate and at the same time groggy, sleepy. ‘Ring for an ambulance before you murder someone else, Brown. Think about it, you’re an amateur, you’ll never get away from the police. Ring now, and I’ll save you, too.’

I looked down at Ove. He seemed peaceful where he lay. ‘But it’s not me who will kill you, Greve. It’s Kjikerud here, don’t you understand?’

‘No. Christ, ring for a bloody ambulance now. Can’t you see I’m bleeding to death here!’

‘Sorry, it’s too late.’

‘Too late? Are you going to let me die?’

Something different had crept into his voice. Could it have been tears?

‘Please, Brown. Not here, not like this! I implore you, I beg you.’

It was tears indeed. They streamed down his cheeks. Not that strange perhaps, if what he had said about being shot in the stomach was correct. I could see blood dripping from the inside of his trouser legs onto the polished Prada shoes. He had begged. Had not been able to maintain dignity in death. I have heard it said that no one can, that those who appear to manage it are just
emotionless
from shock. The most humiliating part for Greve was of course that there were so many witnesses to his breakdown. And there would be more.

Fifteen seconds after I had let myself into Kjikerud’s house and entered the sitting room without tapping in ‘Natasha’ on the alarm, the CCTV cameras would have begun to record as the alarm went off at Tripolis. I formed a mental image of how they would have flocked around the monitor, how they would have stared at the silent film in disbelief, with Greve as the only visible actor, seen him open his mouth but would have been unable to hear what he said. They would have seen him shoot and take a hit, and cursed Ove for not having had a camera that showed the person in bed.

I looked at my watch. Four minutes had passed since the alarm had gone off, and, I presumed, three minutes since they had phoned the police. They, in turn, had rung Delta, the armed unit that was used on stake-outs. And whom it took some time to assemble. Tonsenhagen was also quite some distance from the centre. Assumptions of course, but the first police cars would hardly be here in less than, at best, a quarter of an hour. On the other hand, there was no reason to let this drag on. Greve had fired two of the seventeen shots in the magazine.

‘Alright, Clas,’ I said, opening the window behind the headboard. ‘You can have a last chance. Pick up your gun. If you can shoot me, I suppose you can ring for an ambulance yourself.’

He stared at me with empty eyes. An icy cold wind swept into the room. Winter had arrived, no question.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘What have you got to lose?’

The logic of this seemed to penetrate his shock-addled brain. And with a swift movement, much swifter than I had believed possible with the injuries he had, he threw himself sideways to the floor and grabbed the gun. The
bullets
from the machine gun,
plumbum
, the soft, heavy, toxic metal, gouged up splinters from the parquet floor between his legs. But before the spray of bullets reached him again, before it swept across his chest, pierced his heart and punctured both lungs, causing him to wheeze his last, he managed to fire one shot. A single shot. The sound quivered between the walls. Then it was quiet again. Deathly quiet. Only the wind sang its low song. The silent film had become a freeze-frame, frozen in the cold temperature that seeped into the room.