The sound came from behind a half-open door to the corridor on the far side of the reception rooms.
I opened the door.
It was a bedroom.
The bed in the middle of the room was made but had obviously been slept in. At the foot lay a suitcase, and beside it was a chair with some clothes draped over the back. A suit hung on a hanger in the open wardrobe. The suit Clas Greve had worn at the interview. From somewhere in the room Lennon and McCartney were singing in unison with an energy they were never to regain on subsequent records. I looked around. And knelt. Bent down. And there it was. The Prada mobile phone. Under the bed. It must have slipped out of her pocket. Presumably as he tore her trousers off. And she had not realised the phone was gone until… until…
I visualised her tempting backside this morning, the furious search through clothes and handbag.
I stood up again. Much too quickly, I suppose, for the room began to whirl around. I stuck out a hand against the wall.
The answerphone cut in, and there was her chirrupy voice.
‘Hi, this is Diana. I haven’t got my phone to hand…’
True enough.
‘But you know what to do…’
Yes, I did. My brain had registered somewhere that I had used the ungloved hand to support myself, and that therefore I would have to remember to wipe the wall.
‘Have a brilliant day!’
That might be difficult, though.
Beep.
PART THREE Second Interview
9 SECOND INTERVIEW
MY FATHER, IAN BROWN, was a keen, though not a very good, chess player. He had been taught to play by his father when he was five, and he read chess manuals and studied classic games. However, he didn’t teach me to play chess until I was fourteen, when my most receptive years were over. I had an aptitude for chess, though, and when I was sixteen I beat him for the first time. He smiled as though he were proud of me, but I know he hated it. He reassembled the pieces and we began a revenge match. I played with the white pieces as usual; he tried to make me believe that he was giving me an advantage. After a few moves he excused himself and went into the kitchen, where I knew he took a swig from a bottle of gin. When he returned I had swapped two pieces, but he didn’t realise. Four moves later he sat gawping at my white queen opposite his black king. And he saw that the next move would be checkmate. He was so funny to look at that I couldn’t restrain myself and started to laugh. And I could see from his expression that he knew what had happened. He stood up and swept all the pieces off the board. Then he hit me. My knees gave way and I fell, more out of terror than the force of the blow. He had never hit me before.
‘You switched some pieces,’ he hissed. ‘My son does not cheat.’
I could taste blood in my mouth. The white queen lay on the floor in front of me. The crown was chipped. Hatred burned like bile through my throat and chest. I picked up the damaged queen and put it back on the board. Then the other pieces. One by one. Replaced them exactly as they had been.
‘Your move, Dad.’
For that is what the player with the most cold-blooded hatred does when he has been on the point of winning and his opponent has unexpectedly hit him in the face, struck somewhere it hurts, found his terror. He doesn’t lose his overview of the board but puts his terror aside and keeps to his plan. Breathes in, reconstructs, continues the game, walks away with the victory. Leaves the scene without any triumphant gestures.
I sat at the end of the table and saw Clas Greve’s mouth moving. Saw his cheeks tensing and relaxing and forming words that were obviously comprehensible to Ferdinand and the two Pathfinder representatives, at any rate they were clearly satisfied, all three of them. How I hated that mouth. Hated the grey-pink gums, the solid tombstone teeth, yes, even the shape of that revolting orifice; a straight cleft between two upward-pointing corners suggesting a smile, the same incised smile with which Bjørn Borg had charmed the world. And with which Clas Greve was now seducing his future employer, Pathfinder. But most of all I hated his lips. The lips that had touched my wife’s lips, my wife’s skin, probably her pale red nipples and for certain her dripping wet, open vagina. I imagined I could see a blonde pubic hair in a crease in the fleshy part of his lower lip.
I had sat silently for almost half an hour while Ferdinand with imbecilic commitment had reeled off idiotic questions from the interview guide as though they were his own.
At the beginning of the interview Greve had exclusively addressed himself to me. But increasingly he realised that I was only there as an unannounced, passive monitor and that his job today was to enlighten the other three with the gospel according to Greve. He had, however, at regular intervals sent me quick questioning looks as though searching for a hint as to my role.
After a while the two representatives from Pathfinder, the company chairman and the public relations manager, had asked their questions, which naturally enough had centred around Greve’s time with HOTE. And Greve had given an account of how he and HOTE had taken a leading role in the development of TRACE, a lacquer containing around a hundred transmitters per millilitre which could be applied to any object. Its advantage was that the varnish was almost invisible and just like normal varnish it adhered so firmly to the object that it was impossible to get rid of it without using a paint scraper. The disadvantage was that the transmitters were so small that their signals were too weak not to penetrate any matter denser than air that might cover the transmitters, such as water, ice, mud or the extremely thick layers of dust to which vehicles in desert wars might be subject.
On the other hand, walls, even made of thick bricks, were seldom a problem.
‘Our experience was that soldiers painted with TRACE lost contact with our receivers when the dirt on them reached a certain point,’ Greve said. ‘We don’t yet have the technology to make microscopic transmitters more powerful.’
‘We do at Pathfinder,’ the chairman said. He was a sparse-haired man in his fifties who kept twisting his neck at various junctures as though afraid it would stiffen, or else he had swallowed something big that he couldn’t quite get down. I suspected it was an involuntary spasm caused by a muscular disease for which there was only one outcome. ‘But unfortunately we don’t have the TRACE technology.’
‘Technologically speaking, HOTE and Pathfinder would have made the perfect married couple,’ Greve said.
‘Just so,’ the chairman said pointedly. ‘With Pathfinder as the housewife, receiving a few miserable titbits from the monthly pay packet.’
Greve chuckled. ‘Quite right. Besides, HOTE’s technology would be easier for Pathfinder to acquire than the other way round. That’s why I believe there is only one viable route for Pathfinder. And that is to undertake the journey on its own.’
I saw the Pathfinder representatives exchange glances.
‘Anyway, you have an impressive CV, Greve,’ the chairman said. ‘But what we set great store by at Pathfinder is that our CEO should be a stayer… what do you call it in your recruitment-speak?’
‘A farmer,’ Ferdinand sprang to the rescue.
‘A farmer, yes. A good image. In other words, someone who cultivates what is already there, who builds things up, brick by brick. Who is tough and patient. And you have a record which is erm…, spectacular and dramatic, but it doesn’t tell us if you have the stamina and doggedness that is necessary for the director we are seeking.’
Clas Greve had listened to the chairman with a serious expression and now he was nodding.
‘First of all, I would like to say that I share your view of the type of director Pathfinder should be looking for. Secondly, I wouldn’t have shown any interest in this challenge if I had not been that type.’