Headhunters Read Online Free PDF

and helped myself to a bottle of San Miguel. Not the usual Especial but 1516, the extra mild beer that Diana preferred because it was brewed according to purity laws. From the living-room window I looked down on the garden, the garage and the neighbours. Oslo, the fjord, Skagerrak, Germany, the world. And discovered I had already finished the beer.
    I fetched another and went down to the ground floor to change for the private view.
    Passing the Forbidden Room I noticed the door was ajar. I pushed it open and at once saw that she had laid fresh flowers by the tiny stone figure standing on the low, altar-like table beneath the window. The table was the only furniture in the room and the stone figure looked like a child monk with a contented Buddha smile. Beside the flowers were a pair of small children’s shoes and a yellow rattle.
    I went in, took a swig of beer, crouched down and ran my fingers over the figure’s smooth bare head. It was a mizuko jizo , a figure that according to Japanese tradition protected aborted children, or mizuko – meaning a water child. I had brought the figure home after an unsuccessful headhunt in Tokyo. It was the first months after the abortion while Diana was still shattered, and I had thought it might be of some comfort. The salesman’s English had been too poor for me to understand all the details, but the Japanese idea appears to be that when the foetus dies the child’s soul returns to its original fluid state – it becomes a water child. Which – if you mix in a bit of Japanese-style Buddhism – is waiting to be reborn. In the meantime you carry out what is known as mizuko kuyo , ceremonies and simple sacrifices to protect the unborn child’s soul and, at the same time, the parents against the water child’s revenge. I never told Diana about the last part. To begin with, I had been happy, and she had seemed to find comfort in the stone figure. But as her jizo gradually became an obsession and she wanted it in the bedroom, I had to put my foot down. And I said that from then on that she should not pray or make sacrifices to the figure. Although on that particular point I had never been tough. For I knew that I could lose Diana. And that would be unforgivable.
    I went into my study, switched on my PC, searched on the Net until I found a high-resolution picture of Edvard Munch’s The Brooch , also known as Eva Mudocci . Three hundred and fifty thousand on the legal market. Hardly more than two hundred on mine. Fifty per cent to the fence, then twenty per cent to Kjikerud. Eighty thousand to me. That was the usual split; hardly worth the trouble and definitely not the risk. The picture was in black and white. 58 x 5 cm. Just right for a piece of A2 paper. Eighty thousand. Too little to pay for the next quarterly instalment of the mortgage. And nowhere near enough to cover the previous year’s deficit on the gallery that I had promised the accountant to pay during November. For some reason the intervals between decent pictures turning up were getting longer and longer, too. The last one, Model in High Heels , by Søren Onsager, had been more than three months ago, and even that had barely brought in sixty thousand. Something would have to happen soon. QPR would have to score a flukey goal, a mishit cross that – deserved or otherwise – would send them to Wembley. That sort of thing happened, I had heard. I sighed and sent Eva Mudocci to the printer.
    Champagne was the order of the evening, so I rang for a taxi. After getting in, I just said the name of the gallery, as usual – it was a kind of test of our marketing skills – but, also as usual, the driver just looked at me in the mirror, bewildered.
    ‘Erling Skjalgssons gate,’ I sighed.
    Diana and I had discussed the location long before she had chosen the rooms. I had been keen to make sure it lay on the Skillebekk–Frogner axis since that is where you find the clients with the means to pay and other galleries of a certain