Jo Nesbø - Headhunters

‘Lucky you didn’t sit on it then,’ she said, examining the small object. ‘What is it actually?’

Yes, she certainly was a professional.

‘I don’t know,’ I said airily. ‘What did you want here?’

She looked at me, her mouth dropped open and for a second I was staring into a void.

‘I…’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘I was lying in bed and I heard you go down to the garage, but the car didn’t start up and drive off. Naturally enough, I wondered if something had happened. And in a sense I was right.’

‘Well, nothing really happened. It’s just a little needle, darling.’

‘Needles like that can be dangerous, my love!’

‘Can they?’

‘Didn’t you know? HIV, rabies, all sorts of viruses and infections.’

She came closer, I recognised the movements, the way her eyes softened, the lips pouted; she was going to hug me. But the embrace was interrupted, something had stopped her, something in my eyes perhaps.

‘Oh dear,’ she said, looking down at the rubber ball and putting it on the workbench I would never, ever use. Then she took one quick pace towards me, put her arms around me, stooped a little to reduce the height difference, laid her chin on the side of my neck and ran her left hand through my hair.

‘I’m a bit worried about you, you know, my love.’

It was like being embraced by a stranger. Everything was different with her now, even her smell. Or was it his? It was revolting. Her hand went back and forth in a slow massaging movement as if she were shampooing me, as if her enthusiasm for my hair was reaching new heights at precisely this moment. I felt like hitting her, hitting her with a flat hand. Flat so that I could feel the contact, the smack of skin on skin, feel the pain and the shock.

Instead I closed my eyes and let her do it, let her massage me, soften me, please me. I may be a very sick man.

‘I have to go to work,’ I said when she didn’t seem to want to stop. ‘I have to have the nomination tied up by twelve o’clock.’

But she wouldn’t let go, and in the end I had to release myself from her embrace. I saw a glint in the corner of her eye.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

But she wouldn’t answer, just shook her head.

‘Diana…’

‘Have a good day,’ she whispered with a little quiver to her voice. ‘I love you.’

Then she was out of the door.

I wanted to run after her, but stood still. Comforting your own murderer, where was the sense in that? Where was the sense in anything? So I got into the car, exhaled deeply and looked at myself in the rear-view mirror.

‘Survive, Roger,’ I whispered. ‘Pull yourself together and survive.’

Then I shoved the Rubens back under the lining, closed it up, started the car, heard the garage door go up behind me, reversed out and drove slowly round the bends down towards Oslo.

Ove’s car was parked by the pavement four hundred metres away. Good, it could stay there for weeks without anyone reacting, until the snow and the snow ploughs came. I was more concerned that in my car I had a corpse to dispose of. I considered the problem. Paradoxically enough, it was now that my precautions when dealing with Kjikerud would receive their full reward. Once I had dumped the body somewhere, no one would be able to establish a link between the two of us. But where?

The first solution that came to mind was the waste incineration plant at Grønmo. Before I did anything else I would have to find something to wrap the body in, then I could drive right up to the plant, open the boot and manoeuvre the body onto the ramp and from there down into the crackling sea of flames. There was a risk that other waste-disposers would be standing around me, not least staff, monitoring the incinerator. What about burning it myself in some far-flung spot? Apparently human bodies burn pretty badly. I had read that in India they reckon it takes ten hours to burn an average funeral pyre. What about driving back to the garage after Diana had left for the gallery and finally using the workbench and compass saw that my father-in-law without any apparent irony had given me as a Christmas present? Hack the body up into suitably sized chunks, wrap them in plastic together with a rock or two and then sink the packs in some of the hundreds of woodland lakes around Oslo?

I banged my fist against my forehead several times. What the hell was I thinking of? Hack the body up, why? First of all: hadn’t I seen enough episodes of CSI to know that that was asking to be found out? A drop of blood here, marks from the teeth of father-in-law’s saw there and I would be up shit creek. Secondly: why make any effort to hide the body? Why not just find a relatively deserted bridge and hoist Kjikerud’s earthly remains over the parapet? The body would perhaps float to the surface and be found, but so what? There was nothing that could link me to the murder, I didn’t know any Ove Kjikerud, and I couldn’t even spell the word ‘Curacit’.

The choice fell on Lake Maridal. It was only a ten-minute drive from town; no one would be around on a midweek morning. I rang Ida-Oda and said I would be late in today.

I drove for half an hour and had passed a few million cubic metres of forest and two hill billy settlements lying at such a shockingly short distance from Norway’s capital. But there, on a gravel byroad was the bridge I was after. I stopped the car and waited for five minutes. No people, cars or houses were in seeing or hearing range, just the odd chilling bird cry. A raven? Something black, anyway. As black as the mysterious still water only a metre beneath the low wooden bridge. Perfect.

I got out and opened the boot. Ove was lying as I had left him, face down, his arms by his sides and his hips at an angle with his backside sticking up. I took a last glance around to make sure I was alone. Then I acted. With speed and efficiency.

The splash as the body hit the water was surprisingly restrained, more like a squelch, as if the lake had decided to be my fellow conspirator in this dark deed. I leaned against the railing and stared down at the silent, closed lake. I considered what to do next. And while I was doing that Ove Kjikerud seemed to be rising up to meet me; a pale green face with wide eyes that wanted to surface, a ghost with mud in its mouth and seagrass in its hair. I was thinking that I needed a whisky to steady my nerves when the face broke the surface of the lake and continued to rise towards me.

I screamed. And the corpse screamed, a rattling noise that seemed to drain the air around me of oxygen.

Then it was gone again, swallowed up by the black lake.

I stared down into the dark. Had it happened? Of course it had bloody happened, the echo was still rolling round the treetops.

I swung myself over the railing. Held my breath, waited for my body to be enclosed by ice-cold water. A shock ran through me from my heels to my head. And I discovered that I was standing with the water just over my waist, and that there was something moving under one foot. I stuck my hand down in the muddy water, grabbed hold of what I at first thought was seagrass until I felt the scalp beneath and pulled. Ove Kjikerud’s face reappeared, he blinked water off his eyelashes, and again it was there, the deep rattle of a man who was drawing air for all he was worth.

It was too much. And for a moment I just wanted to let go of him and run away.

But I couldn’t do that, could I?

In any event I started to drag him towards the bank by the end of the bridge. Ove’s consciousness took another timeout and I had to fight to keep his head above water. Several times I almost lost my balance on the soft, slippery bed that shifted under my now ruined John Lobb shoes. But after a few minutes I had managed to haul both of us onto the bank and then into the car.