Jo Nesbø - Headhunters

‘Can you forgive me?’ I asked.

‘Couldn’t she?’ Lotte asked in a monotone. But perhaps it was just Danish intonation.

‘I never told her what happened.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s very likely that I have a heart condition.’

She sent me a long searching look. And I caught the suggestion of a smile at the back of those brown and much too melancholic eyes of hers.

‘Why are you here?’

‘Because I can’t forget you.’

‘Why are you here?’ she repeated with a firmness I had not heard before.

‘I just think we should-’

‘Why, Roger?’

I sighed. ‘I don’t owe her anything any more. She has a lover.’

A long silence ensued.

She jutted out her bottom lip a fraction. ‘Has she broken your heart?’

I nodded.

‘And now you want me to put it together for you again?’

I hadn’t heard this woman of few words express herself in such a light, effortless fashion before.

‘You can’t, Lotte.’

‘No, I suppose not. Do you know who her lover is?’

‘Just a guy who’s applied for a job with us he won’t get, let me put it like that. Can we talk about something else?’

‘Just talk?’

‘You decide.’

‘Yes, I will. Just talk. And that’s your department.’

‘Yep. I brought a bottle of wine.’

She gave an imperceptible nod of the head. Then she turned, and I followed.

I talked us through the wine and fell asleep on the sofa. When I awoke, I was lying with my head in her lap and she was stroking my hair.

‘Do you know what the first thing I noticed about you was?’ she asked when she spotted that I was awake again.

‘My hair,’ I said.

‘Have I told you before?’

‘No,’ I said, looking at my watch. Half past nine. It was time to go home. Well, the ruins of a home. I dreaded it.

‘May I come back?’ I asked.

I saw her hesitate.

‘I need you,’ I said.

I knew this argument didn’t carry much weight. It was borrowed from a woman who chose QPR because the club had made her feel wanted. But it was the only argument I had.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’

Diana was sitting in the living room reading a large book when I went in. Van Morrison was singing ‘… someone like you makes it all worth while ’, and she didn’t hear me until I was standing in front of her and reading the title on the front cover out loud.

‘ A Child is Born ?’

She gave a start, but brightened up and hurriedly put the book back on the shelf behind her.

‘You’re late, darling. Have you been doing something nice or just working?’

‘Both,’ I said, walking over to the living-room window. The garage was bathed in white moonlight, but Ove wasn’t due to collect the painting for several hours. ‘I’ve been answering a few phone calls and thinking a bit about which candidate to nominate for Pathfinder.’

She clapped her hands with enthusiasm. ‘So exciting. It’s going to be the one I helped you with, that… oh, what’s his name again?’

‘Greve.’

‘Clas Greve! I’m becoming so forgetful. I hope he buys a really expensive painting from me when he finds out. I deserve that, don’t I?’

She gave a bright laugh, stretched out her slim legs which had been tucked beneath her and yawned. It was like a claw tightening round my heart and squeezing it like a water balloon, and I had to turn quickly back to the window so that she wouldn’t see the pain in my face. The woman I had believed devoid of all deception was not only successfully maintaining the mask, she was playing the role like a professional. I swallowed and waited until I was sure I had my voice under control.

‘Greve is not the right person,’ I said, scrutinising her reflection in the window. ‘I’m going to select someone else.’

Semi-professional. She didn’t tackle this one quite so well. I saw her chin drop.

‘You’re joking, darling. He’s perfect! You said so yourself…’

‘I was mistaken.’

‘Mistaken?’ To my great satisfaction I could hear a low screech in her voice. ‘What in the name of God do you mean?’

‘Greve is a foreigner. He’s under one eighty. And he suffers from serious personality disorders.’

‘Under one eighty! My God, Roger, you’re under one seventy. You’re the one with the personality disorder!’

That hurt. Not the bit about the personality disorders, she might have been right about that, of course. I strained to keep my voice calm.

‘Why the passion, Diana? I had hopes for Clas Greve too, but people disappointing us and not living up to expectations is something that goes on all the time.’

‘But… but you’re wrong. Can’t you see that? He’s a real man!’

I turned to her with an attempt at a condescending smile. ‘Listen, Diana, I’m one of the best at what I do. And that is judging and selecting people. I may make mistakes in my private life…’

I saw a tiny twitch in her face.

‘But never in my work. Never.’

She was silent.

‘I’m exhausted,’ I said. ‘I didn’t sleep much last night. Goodnight.’

Lying in bed, I heard her footsteps above. Restless, to and fro. I didn’t hear any voices, but I knew she tended to pace the floor when she was on the phone. It struck me that this was a feature of the generations that had grown up without cordless communication, that we moved about while talking on the telephone as though still fascinated that it was possible. I had read somewhere that modern man spends six times as many hours communicating as our forefathers. So we communicate more, but do we communicate any better? Why, for example, had I not confronted Diana with the fact that I knew she and Greve had made love in his apartment? Was it because I knew she would not be able to communicate why, that I would be left to my own assumptions and conjecture? She might have told me it was a chance meeting, for example, a one-off, but I would have known it was not. No woman tries to manipulate her husband into giving a well-paid job to a man because she has had casual sex with him.

There were other reasons for keeping my mouth shut, though. For as long as I pretended not to know about Diana and Greve, no one could accuse me of being too partial to assess his application, and instead of having to leave Alfa’s appointment to Ferdinand, I could enjoy my pathetic little revenge in peace and quiet. Then there was the matter of explaining to Diana how I had come to have suspicions. After all, revealing to Diana that I was a thief and regularly broke into other people’s homes was out of the question.

I tossed and turned in bed, listening to her stiletto heels banging down their monotonous, incomprehensible Morse signals to me. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to dream. I wanted to escape. And wake up having forgotten everything. For that was of course the most important reason for not saying anything to her. As long as things remained unsaid, there was still a chance that we could forget. That we could sleep and dream in such a way that when we awoke it had disappeared, become something abstract, scenes from something that only took place in our heads, on the same level as those treacherous thoughts and fantasies that are the daily infidelity in every – even the most all-consuming – loving relationship.

It occurred to me that if she was talking on a mobile phone now, she must have bought a new one. And that the sight of the new one would be irrefutable, concrete, commonplace evidence that what had happened was not just a dream.

When at last she entered the bedroom and undressed, I pretended I was asleep. But in a pale strip of moonlight that crept in between the curtains, I managed to catch a glimpse of her switching off the phone before slipping it into her trouser pocket. And that it was the same one. A black Prada. So I might have been dreaming. I felt sleep catch hold of me and begin to drag me down. Or perhaps he had bought one just like it. The drift downwards came to a halt. Or perhaps she had found her phone and they had met again. I rose upwards, broke the surface and knew that I was not going to sleep tonight.