A four-wheel-drive rental car awaited him at Jomo Kenyatta Airport, its steering wheel on the wrong side. The Brits had really colonized this country with a vengeance.
The GPS on Hugo’s phone led him on a four-hour journey through the Kenyan countryside, followed by another two through the Kenyan savanna and bush. Whether he passed a post office that was no longer there along the way, he had no way of knowing.
Ole Mbatian’s village was strikingly similar to what he had imagined. About forty mud-and-wood huts, each with four straight walls and roofs of dried palm grass. All of them within a pole fence that protected them from the wild animals at night. Even the buffalo in its best of moods could otherwise be a danger to life and limb if it got the bright idea of scratching its back against one of the fragile hut walls. The wall would collapse, a sleepy Maasai family would rise from the wreckage and meet the gaze of the beast. A buffalo was to a human more or less as the llama creature was to the German shepherd. Things would be sure to start off on the wrong hoof.
Ole Mbatian’s three huts were on the other end of the village, next to the fence. In hut number one he lived with his first wife; in hut number two, with his second, and – most of the time – up on the hill in hut number three with Kevin, the paintings, and his collected apothecary.
The medicine man had warned the adman against simply storming into any of the huts without first announcing his presence and drinking tea with the chief. He could converse about whatever he liked, of course, but Ole recommended avoiding any questions about why there were no teeth in the chief’s mouth. On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt for Hugo to happen to say something positive about Ole.
‘Such as?’
The medicine man didn’t know, just something small. Like that he’d brokered peace between people or saved someone’s life. It wouldn’t be true in the strictest sense, but there were deeper, more philosophical ways to see things. Who knew? Perhaps Ole had saved the life of that art dealer by selling the two paintings. He’d been so angry he might have burst otherwise.
Hugo privately thought that he himself had just about suffered a heart attack on account of that sale, but he nodded. A medicine man on a long journey would only benefit from having his position in the village affirmed now and then. Otherwise he might find someone else at his post on the day he returned.
Hugo politely greeted a few of the villagers and was about to ask after the chief’s hut when he realized which one it was. It was the largest one, located in the centre of the village. It could very well have been a four-room home. With a two-roomer right next to it.
Outside the large hut, three women were crouching down and washing clothes, each with a basin full of water. Hugo guessed they were wives one, two, and three. He asked if they knew where the chief was, but there was no need for them to answer, for at that very moment a half-toothless man came out through the opening.
The toothless man eyed the white man up and down.
‘Good day. How can I help you? I’m the chief. My name is Olemeeli the Well-Travelled, son of Kakenya the Handsome and grandson of Lekuton the Bold.’
Hugo said he was Hugo Hamlin, son of Erik Hamlin the drunk and grandson of Rurik Hamlin who had been stationmaster in his time. A job for the courageous; each day one had to keep from being run over by a train.
Olemeeli was impressed by the guest’s family tree, and it didn’t hurt that Hugo said he was a chief himself, over a tribe called Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd. Ole Mbatian was a guest of honour there, ever since he had … brokered peace between Israel and Palestine and saved the life of … a man of very great worth. Potentially.
The chief didn’t know who Israel and Palestine were or why they had been enemies, but he thanked Hugo for the information about the medicine man’s doings.
Deep down, Olemeeli was happy the troublesome medicine man was off somewhere else; he was the only one who dared, thanks to his position, to act obstinate with his chief. To be sure, the knocked-out teeth incident was fifty years in the past, but not only was Olemeeli well-travelled, he also held a grudge.
He did not, however, share any of this with the guest from afar. He said that Ole Mbatian was missed, and that it was good to hear he was well and that his talents were flourishing.
It was getting on towards evening. Hugo wanted to make his return trip as soon as he had completed his errand, but he knew that he had to be patient. Olemeeli announced that the two chiefs would drink to success before dinner. Then the guest could choose which wife he wanted to sleep with that night. Two of the three had already expressed interest; the third might be open to persuasion.
Hugo feared both stages of the evening. But life had taught him not to be tormented by anticipated misfortunes ahead of time but to take them as they came. The first one was what he and the chief would drink to their mutual successes. Ox blood?
No – rather, an eighteen-year-old Glenfiddich. The chief poured them each a glass.
‘My father and grandfather made their toasts with fermented goat’s milk, but I’m well-travelled and happened to get a taste of this in my relative youth. This was during a field trip to Loiyangalani way up north. I was attacked by an electrical outlet in the wall and passed out. All they had to do was pass the drink under my nose and I woke right up again.’
Olemeeli took a sip without first offering a toast – anathema in Sweden. Hugo thought perhaps this wasn’t part of Maasai culture, or maybe the chief was simply thirsty. The adman followed his lead as he listened to the rest of the story.
Immediately after the outlet accident, something even worse happened. Olemeeli got his left index finger stuck in a typewriter and broke it in two places. It hurt something awful and the local medicine man suggested that Olemeeli should not merely sniff the golden-brown liquid, but also drink it.
‘And that was that,’ said Olemeeli.
Because, what a flavour! It filled his mouth and soul in a way the future chief had never before experienced. It was as if it had been sent to him directly from En-Kai.
Hugo didn’t know what En-Kai was; it sounded like God, or maybe heaven. But he did know Glenfiddich, and although it wasn’t as smoky as he would have wished, there was no ruling out that both God and heaven might have had a finger in that pie. After all the trials and tribulations of the last twenty-four hours, it was as if his whole body was startled back to life.
‘En-Kai,’ he said.
After the second glass, Hugo wondered where the chief had got hold of the magical drink. Because surely it wasn’t the same bottle from his time up north?
No, there was a liquor store in Nairobi that offered delivery service. They grumbled when Olemeeli wanted liquor driven to a village in Maasai Mara, a six- or seven-hour drive from the store, and they grumbled a little more when he wanted to pay in livestock. But after a few days’ negotiations, the puzzle pieces fell into place. Now they came once a year in a lorry, dropped off crates of Glenfiddich, and received cows and goats as thanks for their trouble.
‘One cow for every two boxes. Or six goats. Like I always say: they can’t count in Nairobi!’
Which left the question of which of the wives Hugo would spend the night with. But that problem solved itself. He fell asleep with his left cheek on the dinner table after seven courses and most of a second bottle of whisky. The chief put two blankets over him and assigned an underling to keep watch.
At breakfast, Olemeeli thanked him for the previous evening and added that his head was pounding so badly that he actually missed his medicine man. Hugo wouldn’t go so far as to say that he missed Ole Mbatian, but he agreed about the pounding.
After an omelette, mixed fruits and coffee, he thought it was time to get down to business. Olemeeli beat him to it.
‘I understand that you’re a big deal back home, Chief Hugo. Unlike the mzungu who was here and left two days ago.’
‘Mzungu?’
‘Your colleague, Chief Hugo. The one who took the medicine man’s belongings. I must say, however – just between us chiefs – that the colleague was not a pleasant experience. I’ll leave any potential punishment up to you. I’ve always been of the opinion that chiefs ought not step on each other’s feet.’
At first, Hugo understood nothing. Then everything.
Victor Alderheim had beat him there. And Ole Mbatian’s phone call had helped him.
Victor had travelled the route before. Stockholm–Nairobi, rental car, making tracks straight to the middle of nowhere. He took the same flight as he had five years earlier, but he really hit the gas for the last few hours, so it was still light when he arrived. Because of course he had to ask his way to the goddamn medicine man’s village, starting from the spot where he had once dumped Kevin. Once Victor got to the village, he planned to track down those pictures the medicine man had mentioned, the ones of him and Irma together. He had his pockets full of bills to help him along the way. If there was anything the locals understood, it must be dollars.
With the help of double goatherds (just imagine) he found himself in Ole Mbatian’s village even faster than he could have hoped. There he was welcomed as if they expected him. Simply inconceivable. He hardly had to clear his throat before they carried out all the evidence in a box and put it in the back of his car.
Victor had hoped for a blurry photograph of the Maasai in the red sheet, along with Irma. That would be enough to answer all questions about the authenticity of the paintings. What he received instead was a treasure he couldn’t even have dreamed up.
All that was left was to snub the chief, who seemed to think they should sit there chatting half the night. Idiot!
While the old man disappeared into the hut to fetch some sort of hocus pocus for them to toast with, Victor took the opportunity to leave. Without saying goodbye.
He slept a few hours in the car, halfway to Nairobi, and was on his way home again by seven o’clock the next morning. Somewhere in the sky above Egypt he passed Hugo heading in the other direction. Neither of them knew it. Any more than they knew anything about what awaited them.
Victor Alderheim needed, once and for all, to find someone to look at the paintings and evidence. And to say: ‘These are authentic goods.’ This could be none other than Dr Frank B. Harris of New York, the world’s leading expert on Irma Stern. His word was law – literally, according to a series of paragraphs in the American legal system.
As it happened, Dr Harris was deeply religious and of a high moral standing. His social circle was mainly populated by two Supreme Court justices, a Republican senator and the Archbishop of New York.
For several days, the leading topic of conversation in Dr Frank B. Harris’s Manhattan office had been the two presumably counterfeit Irma Stern paintings that had shown up at the home of a man who apparently had sex with animals. All of this likely would have been possible to shake off if the published photographs of the aforementioned paintings hadn’t suggested that they were masterpieces rather than forgeries. Or both.
Dr Harris felt that he needed to know who had painted them, if indeed it had not been Irma Stern herself. On the one hand, it was inconceivable that she had. On the other hand, for the past day or so there had been rumours online that the alleged owner claimed the works were authentic. Not that the doctor spent time on obscure internet sites or on social media in general. But he did have colleagues, including two secretaries. Who in turn had assistants. Simpler folks socialized in simpler ways than did the doctor himself.
Dr Harris had no desire to meet the Swedish zoophile. Unfortunately, it would be impossible to avoid if he wanted a closer look at the paintings. And he did. He must. What’s more, the man who had sex with animals had contacted his office to ask for help.
The doctor was at a loss. He needed to buy time, so decided to bounce the horrible man between his secretaries for a few days.
Meanwhile he called his friend the archbishop, who in turn contacted his childhood friend and mentor, the former archbishop of Buenos Aires. Things had gone really well for him since last they spoke. He now lived in a massive house in Rome after having been offered the job as boss of everything.
Pope Francis was as happy to hear from his friend the archbishop as he was concerned about their topic of conversation. He firmly believed that he already had plenty of sex-related nuisances to deal with. Oh well, the Lord continued to give him crosses to carry. All he could do was grin and bear it.
The question his friend posed was as concrete as it was infernal:
Was it advisable for the friend’s friend to associate with, and perhaps even shake hands with, a man who copulated with animals?
In fact, it really was not. Such a sin must be repudiated at all imaginable levels and in all imaginable ways.
But what if there might be a greater purpose, for instance the possibility that one might be able to give the world two new, extraordinary paintings by a great artist?
The Pope sought answers in the Bible, where else? Certainly, Psalms did say ‘depart from evil, and do good’. This was not a signal to fraternize with persons who, according to Leviticus, should be punished by death. But in Romans 12, it said ‘do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’.
Confronting the horrible man was the right path. The Bible was great in the sense that it often contradicted itself. You could choose whatever fit best in a given situation.
‘Tell your friend he can travel to see the lost Mr Alderheim in Stockholm, and shake his hand if he must, but at the same time he must take every measure to bring him to rights, he must overwhelm him with goodness.’
So it came to pass that Dr Frank B. Harris, with the indirect blessing of the Pope, landed at Terminal 5 at Stockholm Arlanda Airport early one morning, where he was met by one very eager Victor Alderheim.
‘Dr Harris? It’s an honour to welcome you to Sweden.’
‘He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God,’ said Dr Frank B. Harris.
‘What now?’ said Victor Alderheim.
One silent journey from the airport to the capital city later, Dr Harris was sitting in the lost man’s kitchen with the alleged Irma Stern paintings on the table in front of him. He gave thanks to the Lord that there were no goats in the room.
The doctor studied the paintings minutely for over half an hour but was deeply enamoured of both works after ten seconds.
‘Well, what do you say?’ Victor Alderheim asked at last.
When the doctor didn’t respond, Victor took out the evidence he’d gathered in Africa.
What a treasure trove! Black-and-white pictures of Irma painting the child by the stream. That child, of course. And her letters to the man who had apparently saved her life.
Dr Harris looked breathlessly through the photographs. The American expert’s eyes filled with tears at the sight.
And the letters – definitely penned by the great artist! No one spelled as badly as she. No one else placed their periods and commas so incorrectly. And, on top of that, the handwriting: When Irma wrote, the recipient had to guess at every fourth word.
But the one who guessed right, and moved the punctuation around, would also discover a beauty to her words. Such as in the letter to the medicine man who had saved her life, in which the ageing woman thanked him for the chance to live a little longer.
It was established beyond all doubt that what lay on the table before Dr Harris were two previously unknown late Sterns.
‘Who owns the paintings, in God’s name?’ he said.
He found himself thinking too much of the Pope.
‘I do, of course,’ said Victor. ‘In my name.’
‘Can you prove it?’
Prove it? Victor’s excited tension turned into a moderate rage.
‘How is that relevant to the appraisal? You just confirm that the paintings are authentic, and I’ll deal with the rest.’
Until this point, the terrible man who had sex with animals had remained calm. But now Dr Harris felt he was getting a glimpse of the man’s true nature.
‘Even Paul the Apostle felt remorse. You ought to consider the same, Mr Alderheim.’
Who was this fruitcake they had shipped across the Atlantic?
‘Soon I will feel remorse for having invited you here. Just tell me what the paintings are worth, and I’ll drive you back to your plane.’
Money, Dr Harris thought. A constant threat to piety. Humanity had been on a downhill slide ever since the advent of mercantilism.
‘I will sign a certificate of authenticity and give an estimated value, but only to the owner of the works. Judging by the photographs and letters, this person was one Mr Ole Mbatian in the sixties. It is not my responsibility to guess, but if I permit myself the freedom, I would guess that Ole Mbatian is dead. In that case, one might reasonably assume that the ownership transferred to his children and perhaps grandchildren, given that there are no letters of sale along the way.’
Victor wanted to strangle the American. But that bastard would probably be delighted at the chance to meet his maker. Instead he pulled up a video clip he’d saved from TV4, in which a man named Ole Mbatian the Younger, apparently the son of his father, announced that he had sold the paintings to ‘the goat-sex man’.
‘And that’s you?’
‘Yes,’ said Victor. ‘That is, no, that is, yes.’
After all, no one wanted to be the goat-sex man, but more important things were at stake here.
Dr Harris studied the clip again.
‘There is clear circumstantial evidence,’ he said. ‘May I then just ask you to produce a copy of the receipt.’
Dr Harris lifted his briefcase into his lap as if to put inside it what he would soon hold in his hand.
‘That’s not how it works in Africa,’ Victor attempted.
‘Have you purchased two probable Irma Sterns without a receipt?’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.’
‘Huh?’
‘Matthew 12:31.’
It was impossible to get anywhere with the religious nut of an American expert. Victor had planned to drive him to the hotel, but the weather was so bad he was happy to let him walk. As an alternative to a goodbye, Dr Harris repeated his conditions.
‘In a few days I’m going back to the United States. Before I do, I intend to visit Moderna Museet and a few other places. Judging by Irma Stern’s letters, the masterpieces were owned by Ole Mbatian the Elder. I accept that Ole Mbatian the Younger inherited them from him. I judge these men to be the original owners of the works. To produce the certificate you have requested, Mr Alderheim, I want evidence for each new owner after them and up to you. The television clip about the goat-sex man, that is to say, you, God forgive you, indicates that no change in ownership has taken place in recent decades. Which means I must get in writing what was said on TV. Amen.’
Now Harris was mixing God up in what he said again. It threw Victor off.
‘What are you saying?’
Dr Harris was only human; he was under pressure. He tried to express himself in a worldly way but felt the Pope looming over him. What he wanted to say was that spoken words were all well and good, but in this case, it was necessary to have them in writing. When his brain mixed up the Writ with the Word, it all came out wrong.
‘This is he who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the delight in riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.’
‘Do you have a screw loose, Dr Harris?’
The doctor tried again.
‘Make sure that you get Ole Mbatian’s signature on a transfer-of-ownership document.’
‘But you already said that.’
The snow was coming down in clumps. The snowploughs had not yet begun their work.
‘Now, don’t slip and fall, Dr Harris.’
Where should Victor begin? He had not only to find a black medicine man in snow-white Stockholm and get him to sign his name on the correct paper, he also had to protect what he’d already achieved. After all, he was in possession of two paintings potentially worth millions and the almost unparalleled evidence of just how authentic they were. Even the evidence itself was a cultural treasure with monetary value.
What he also had was a front door that Kevin, with or without a companion, had come through without even damaging the lock. It was thirty years old and apparently could be forced with a yawn by anyone who knew what he or she was doing.
A new lock. Now.
Then it would be time to find the Maasai. Should the bizarre American authenticator have time to head home, then so be it. There was a flight to New York every day; all he’d have to do was go after him and shove the evidence down his throat, preferably along with the New Testament.
A new lock? No.
The average locksmith in Stockholm was, like the average Stockholmer, active on social media. A place where one could, in contrast to traditional media, find out the actual state of things. Accordingly, it had been firmly established that the state of things inside the art dealer’s door was beyond disgusting. The four goats (one can easily become four when the truth gets out) were involuntarily in the company of both lambs and calves. It was said, but not confirmed, that the art dealer also had a cage with a hamster inside. No one wanted to know more. Everyone wanted to know more. Enough people knew what they knew, that Victor Alderheim’s best bet would have been to move to the other side of the globe, or to another planet had that been feasible.
The long and the short of it was that the first three locksmiths refused to help him. The fourth was more defensive and might have time next autumn.
Victor would have to find a makeshift solution. For it was clear that Kevin had forced his old lock without even leaving a mark. It was almost as if he had a key of his own.
While Victor drilled and installed a hasp and a sturdy padlock, his thoughts returned to the key. They didn’t take him as far as Jenny, but they did go so far as to wonder whether Kevin might decide to try again. The first time, the kid had – among other things – placed two paintings in his cellar, at which point the police arrived and accused Victor of forgery. Who would place two authentic Irma Sterns anywhere but on their own wall or in a safe?
Conclusion number one: Kevin didn’t know what he was doing when he did it.
Conclusion number two: If Kevin had been watching TV or had found the Maasai, he would have wised up since. And he might try again. In this case to steal back what he’d given away.
Victor had installed the hasp and padlock on the inside of the door. From the street side, there would be no reason to suspect that this was anything but the same easily forced door as last time.
Victor Alderheim didn’t know of anyone more gifted than he.
A long day was nearing its end. The art dealer was back in his apartment, sitting on the same chair Dr Harris had sat on while he alternately studied the paintings and made references to God. Time to open the day’s post, which consisted of a single envelope. From the Tax Authority.
Five years and three days after the former guardian had reported Kevin missing and presumed dead, the decision had been made.
He had been declared deceased.
Too bad it wasn’t true.
While Hugo was in Kenya drinking whisky, Jenny and Kevin set about entertaining themselves and the Maasai to the best of their ability. First, Moderna Museet.
The two youngsters had already hit it off, of course, but it had all happened so fast. Each affirmation of their sudden feelings was, therefore, to their benefit. For instance, an encounter with Sigrid Hjertén, one of the few female Swedish representatives of expressionism. In one of her works she had placed a lady of the fancier persuasion on a balcony overlooking a bustling Stockholm. Down below were horse-drawn vehicles, streetcars, social encounters and commerce. In the foreground was the woman on the balcony, which had an extra-high railing, as if she were a prisoner in her own social situation.
Kevin thought the work was like a rendezvous of expressionism and the yet-to-be-invented feminism. Jenny knew what he meant. Her feelings for her boyfriend were affirmed every day.
‘Why does she look so grumpy?’ said Ole Mbatian.
After the museum, Jenny suggested they visit Skansen, Stockholm’s renowned open-air museum. There one could look at interesting animals and historical buildings. Ole said he had already looked at plenty of animals over the years. When he found out that some of the historical Skansen buildings were several hundred years old, he was merely annoyed. It reminded him that no hut back home had stood for more than four years without collapsing and having to be rebuilt.
The Skansen plan was a bad one from a number of perspectives. It was still below freezing outside, and Ole Mbatian had no intention of abandoning his shúkà.
Perhaps an indoor shopping centre might be just the thing? Ole thought that sounded good; there were a few purchases he wanted to make. Above all, he needed a new set of weapons. They’d confiscated his spear and knife way back in Nairobi. The club had made it all the way to Sweden, but now the police were holding it simply because it happened to land on a forehead belonging to one of them.
Jenny and Kevin suggested a trip to Mall of Scandinavia – over two hundred shops, restaurants and experiences spread out over one hundred thousand square metres. All the international brands you could think of competed for visitors there: luxury clothing, interior design, electronics … you could even purchase an electric vehicle on the spot, if you liked.
This last bit did not impress. Ole Mbatian assumed that an electric vehicle required electricity, which would render it useless back home in his village. Chief Toothless had more than a few things to answer for when the day came.
But a few articles of clothing under his shúkà wouldn’t hurt. The medicine man wasn’t the sort to complain, but the cold certainly did nip at one’s skin.
Even though Jenny and Kevin prevented the purchase of any weapons, the shopping centre was a success, not least thanks to all the escalators. Ole simply had to try going the wrong direction on one to confirm his hypothesis. Fascinating! No matter how much he walked, he got nowhere.
You couldn’t tell to look at him, but underneath his shúkà he now wore both long johns and a thin turtleneck. On his hands were a pair of black gloves in real leather. Ole knew what gloves were, of course, but he’d never worn any before.
‘The black really brings out the checks of my shúkà,’ he said in admiration.
‘You’re very stylish,’ said Jenny.
Which left footwear. The medicine man didn’t want to seem backwards like his chief, but while gloves felt cosy, shoes made his feet feel trapped. He wanted to keep wearing his sandals, but he would consider socks as long as the weather insisted on being the way it was.
Sandals with socks? Speaking of stylish …
The salesperson at the shoe store saw the face Jenny made but found a way to make a sale. She pointed out that even the Wall Street Journal had addressed the question of whether it wasn’t aesthetically reasonable after all, to wear socks with sandals. To accompany the outfit in question she recommended burgundy ones with a pair of black Birkenstocks. It just so happened that she had both in stock.
The medicine man nodded. His current light-brown sandals not only slipped about, they also clashed with his new black gloves. Ole didn’t want to have to walk around feeling ashamed while he was in Sweden. If Mrs Salesperson didn’t think Mr Wall Street Journal would take offence, he was ready to make a deal. Should any uncertainty arise, perhaps they could call him and ask.
When Hugo got back home again, he gathered Jenny, Kevin and Ole Mbatian in the living room. The Maasai had his gloves on, inside as well as outside. Furthermore, he was sporting a watch on his left wrist. Kevin had found it at the second-hand shop in Bollmora for next to nothing. Ole had gazed so jealously at the watch, and for so long, that his son gave it to him. Included in the gift was an introductory course in how to read the hands. Papa learnt quickly.
Hugo recounted his meeting with the chief, their all-but-ritual drinking, and the next day’s excruciating headache and realization that Victor Alderheim had already been there and was now sitting on both the paintings and the proof of their true value. Hugo turned to Ole Mbatian, a faintly detectable chill in his voice:
‘Did you tell Alderheim … the angry man … that there were photographs of you and Irma on the savanna?’
Ole understood that this was something he could have avoided, but of course there had been no way to know this during his breakfast of caviar in a tube.
‘It’s true that the angry man bought my paintings. What’s done is done. But taking things that don’t belong to you … Do you know what we Maasais call that?’
‘No?’ said Hugo.
‘Theft.’
Did Hugo sense an opening here? He pointed out that, with their provenance, the paintings increased in value. The international attention, along with the previously demonstrated pricing trends for Irma Stern, would likely lead to their valuation at over two million dollars.
‘How much is that?’ Ole Mbatian wondered.
‘How much what?’ Jenny said.
Kevin made a conversion.
‘About two thousand cows, Papa.’
‘Oh my!’
Had the medicine man absorbed what a grotesquely massive amount of money was on the line? Hugo cautiously inquired whether it might be a viable path for Ole Mbatian to challenge the sale after all.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Say that you never sold the paintings? That he misunderstood you.’
‘Misunderstood me?’
Now Hugo had really lost it. The angry man had certainly understood; he’d gone from angry to ridiculously happy in the blink of an eye. Then, of course, he’d swung back in the other direction, but that likely had more to do with his personality. The deal had been perfectly executed. Hugo need not worry about any misunderstandings.
The Maasai and the adman did not inhabit the same world.
‘What I mean is, should we allow ourselves to claim that he misunderstood? Then maybe we can get the paintings back, and exchange them for, say, two thousand cows.’
Ole Mbatian shook his head. Said was said. Sold was sold. Anyway, who was going to herd two thousand cows all the way home from Sweden? Poor cows, by the way, in this weather. Put some gloves on their hooves, at least.
Back to this again. When was the Maasai fact and when was he fiction?
No matter how lamentable their situation, Kevin couldn’t help feeling proud of his father for keeping his word. Hugo was mostly annoyed. And Jenny, empty.
The medicine man wanted to make one thing clear. Like he’d said, sold was sold. Just as stolen was stolen. For the latter, the art dealer – the angry man – deserved a proper upbraiding. Preferably in the Maasai fashion.
‘The Maasai fashion?’ said Hugo.
Kevin explained the anthills. For a minor infraction, the guilty party’s head must stay there for fifteen minutes or so. For more grave ones, a half hour or more.
Now, it wasn’t easy to find an anthill in Greater Stockholm, and anyway it would have been frozen solid in the present season. Still, Hugo wanted to know where on the scale the medicine man would locate the crime in question.
‘If only we could get back what belongs to us, fifteen minutes would do nicely,’ said Ole. ‘But if he’s ornery and we add in all the other messes he’s made, then the other extreme might be of interest, if you ask me. Which you just did.’
‘The other extreme?’
‘Where you tie the thief’s hands behind his back, push his head into the anthill, and walk away.’
As an alternative to the anthill, the Maasai suggested that they arm themselves with whatever they could find in Hugo’s garage and pay a visit to the art dealer to give him what-for.
This was not a plan the others could agree to. Certainly Alderheim deserved a little of everything, but if Ole Mbatian took the lead, no one would have any control over the level of punishment. Probably including the Maasai himself, who already seemed to have dropped the issue. While the others pondered their next step, he sat there fluttering his glove-clad hands in the air, except for those moments when he took yet another look at his watch to tell them what time it was. Absent? Present? Situationally aware? Who could say.
Hugo felt that his brain wasn’t keeping up. He cursed the whisky. Its remnants seemed to be sticking with him even two days later. Alcohol and double intercontinental flights – quite the combination. He wasn’t getting sick, was he?
Ole nodded in recognition when the brown drinks came up. He, the chief, and Glenfiddich had, by tradition, a meeting each Thursday after sundown. The gist was that the chief talked nonsense and the medicine man corrected him.
‘Around nineteen hundred hours, I imagine,’ he said, indicating his fine watch. ‘Or seven, as we say.’
The meetings between chief and medicine man were followed by a follow-up the next morning, in which they helped each other recall what they hadn’t been able to decide the night before, since they were never in agreement.
‘Between ten o’clock and ten thirty. More or less. Maybe eleven. But no later o’clock than that.’
They could not challenge the sale; Ole refused. They couldn’t track down the art dealer to demand that he return what he’d stolen; Ole refused to do that unless he was allowed to teach Alderheim a lesson at the same time. This, in turn, was something the others couldn’t go along with, despite the apparent lack of anthills. Even though on the savanna, you risked losing your life even if you hadn’t stolen any goats.
Hugo needed to think. And catch up on his sleep. Perhaps in reverse order. There was something up with his body. He asked the others to stay away until he told them otherwise. It might take a day or two.
While Hugo rested and considered the future, the Maasai, the half-Maasai, and the ex-wife of the big baddy amused themselves by going sledging at a children’s hill nearby. They ran into Hugo in the kitchen now and then.
‘Don’t you want to come out sledging with us?’ said Kevin. ‘You can’t work all the time.’
‘It’s quarter past two,’ said Ole. ‘Fourteen and fifteen.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks. And thank you for the time, Ole. Now I know.’
He took his coffee cup and went back to his bedroom one floor up. There he found sufficient peace and quiet to focus on how things actually were and how they ought to be. The image of a Maasai wearing a shúkà, gloves, and sandals on a sledge would inevitably drag him right back to surreality.
In the midst of all this, what Hugo had sensed was on its way broke out. He became feverish and developed a cold. He, the only one of them who hadn’t spent all day, every day tumbling around in the snow. There was no justice in the world.
It took three days, a lot of sleep, and even more ginger ale for the internationally renowned creator to find his way back to himself, and also to a new path forward. Or, rather, a new-ish one. It wasn’t until that weekend that he felt both healthy and like he was done thinking.
He had to win over the Maasai, which meant he had to choose his words wisely. Hugo called another general meeting and began by turning to Ole Mbatian:
‘You sold Woman with Parasol and Boy by Stream to Victor Alderheim, and you don’t wish to remedy that. Am I correct thus far?’
‘I’ve never eaten such delicious sandwiches,’ said Ole Mbatian.
‘And all the photographs and letters from before still belong to you?’
‘Theft,’ said Ole Mbatian. ‘Give me a throwing club, an anthill, or both, and I’ll take care of the rest.’
Hugo hadn’t given up the idea of proportionality in dispensing revenge.
‘We can’t allow that,’ he said. ‘I know how you feel about theft, but what would you say to breaking in to steal things if you already own what you steal?’
The Maasai considered this. It would be like going to the neighbouring village to retrieve one’s own goats.
‘With the important distinction that we’re not going to kill anyone this time,’ said Hugo.
‘And that we actually do own the goats in question,’ said Jenny.
The adman was ashamed that he had needed several days to figure out that the group must start over from square one with another night-time visit to Victor Alderheim’s place. He blamed his cold. Or the fact that he’d unconsciously put the planned solution off to the last minute because the risk was that what had to be stolen back wasn’t in the gallery on the ground floor but in the apartment one floor up. Perhaps under the pillow of a sleeping Victor Alderheim.
A high-risk project, to put it mildly. But once the paintings were conclusively upgraded to authentic it would be too late. Unauthentic paintings could still, by way of winding paths, end up where they belonged. The Maasai notwithstanding.
So: another visit to the art dealer tonight. No, Sunday night – that was when the city was at its quietest. If the art dealer was as stupid as Jenny had suggested, or preferably even a little stupider, he wouldn’t have changed the lock yet.
It was a far sight from free, the web camera Victor Alderheim had mounted to the wall diagonally above the door of his gallery. But it was an investment that might pay for itself several thousand times over. The camera responded to light and sound and delivered the recorded result to its owner. It could even film in the dark, which was a good thing considering that the Swedish winter essentially consisted of just that. Not to mention that a thief would hardly try to strike in the few hours in the middle of the day when you could see more than just your hand in front of your face.
On the first night, the camera remained in the same state of rest as its owner, one floor up.
But on night number two, Victor got a hit. A four-minute-and-thirteen-second recording – between 02:05:30 and 02:09:43. The clip was delivered, as promised, to the app on Victor’s phone.
The art dealer watched the film from the previous night with both fascination and fear. He recognized the tall man at the back of the group – the Maasai! In front of him was a man he couldn’t identify. But second from the front: Kevin! That Kevin. Victor’s dead former ward. He had known it, and yet not. How could he be alive when he was dead?
The only thing that brought him relief was that Kevin was apparently the Maasai’s son. That took care of the paternity question once and for all. That plague-ridden mother of his had been so stubborn in her claims that Victor had taken a test to shut her up. Later on, she had used it against him. Couldn’t she see that they didn’t even have the same colour skin?
In the negotiations that followed, the mother promised not to make a big deal of it as long as Victor took over responsibility for Kevin until the boy’s eighteenth birthday.
That was an easy promise to make; after all, she was going to die soon.
Unfortunately, she’d turned out to be craftier than Victor had thought. On tottering legs she dragged him along to the office of family rights, where, facing the gallows, he had gone along with things that he was later unable to simply ignore. The alternative had been a court of law, and that was worse. As Victor understood it, all lay judges were members of the Green Party or other horrible things. Plus they would have dragged the boy into the mess.
So that’s how the Bollmora and pizza delivery situation came to be, until the kid was of age. Followed by the realization that his problem wouldn’t go away until it literally went away.
The one-way ticket to Africa had been a good idea. If only those lazy lions had done their job. You couldn’t trust anyone or anything in this world; not even the wild animals were wild enough.
Kevin’s presence during the attempted break-in was no surprise. But Jenny in the lead, with a key. How on earth … Of course!
Victor had been too busy emptying her bank accounts to think of her pockets. She had, of course, locked and unlocked that same door every day since she was a child.
This time her key didn’t matter, because no matter how hard she tugged at the door it resisted, thanks to the hasp and padlock on the inside. He was her intellectual superior. Which was not news at all, but it was a refreshing confirmation.
Which left the question of how Jenny and Kevin had met each other.
Bollmora, Victor realized. Obviously!
And who the strange man was.
Yeah, who the hell was he?
A few pieces of the puzzle were still missing, but most had slotted into place. Of course Kevin and Jenny had rigged the trap in the cellar; it was revenge for Victor’s being goal-oriented to an extent they couldn’t tolerate. Kevin brought the paintings from Africa; Ole Mbatian followed him but didn’t make it in time, and the dumb kid broke into the cellar of the art gallery. At which point the even dumber Maasai sold what Kevin had already stolen from him. To Victor! For a sandwich. Well, two.
Moving on, there was no way to rule out that the news had travelled all the way from Kenya to Sweden and that Jenny and Kevin were now aware that Victor had not only the paintings they had so kindly handed over, but also the materials necessary to establish their provenance.
The art dealer was ahead in this game. Kevin and Jenny had scored a minor victory in causing all of Europe, and possibly the world, to believe that he had sex with goats. But for enough money, the world could believe whatever it wanted about what Victor did with every species in existence.
All he had to do now was get the Maasai to sell the paintings in writing as well. After all, this was what the crazy American and his god had demanded. It was frustrating. On the other hand, it was just as well – without proof of ownership, the paintings would be difficult to sell; at the very least they would go for a much lower price.
Until now, Victor hadn’t dared to believe that the Maasai would stand by his word.
Again, until now.
For now the medicine man had to choose between doing so and getting Kevin, Jenny, the stranger, and himself locked up for burglary and whatever reverse burglary was called in the book of statutes.
This would all work itself out.
If only he could find the Maasai.
A slight dip in his mood, a rather more substantial cold with a fever. But still. If he hadn’t taken so long to work out that they needed to break into Alderheim’s place again, the bastard wouldn’t have had to barricade himself in. Hugo devoted the greater part of Monday’s breakfast to pondering whom he liked the least: the art dealer or himself.
Meanwhile, Ole Mbatian inspected Hugo’s toaster and pondered product development. It seemed that toast with a fried egg, where the egg was fried inside the toaster, had a shortcoming: the egg ran off the bread before it could congeal. What if you laid the toaster on its side?
He didn’t complete the investigation; after all, toast with an egg couldn’t compete with the brown leaves and jam from prison. Caviar that wasn’t caviar wasn’t too bad itself.
Jenny and Kevin could tell that something was off about Hugo after their most recent setback. It would probably be best to let him grieve in peace for a while. Another trip to the shopping centre, perhaps? To buy cornflakes and lingonberry jam for the medicine man, and a tube of Kalles. They could browse the waffle irons, tabletop fans, coffeemakers and other exciting things that ran on electricity. And ward off Ole’s attempts to buy another knife. And explain that spears were not for sale. Maybe they would let him get a wooden club, if they could find one.
For the sake of good manners, Jenny invited Hugo to come along. Instead of responding, he became lost in thought.
Until very recently he had run a company with a brilliant business idea: to make money off people’s desire to harm one another. One hundred out of one hundred people were victims, now and then, of a wrong. Fifty out of one hundred wished to do wrong in return. Ten of those could afford to pay for it. If only one of these ten made it official, then Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd had future prospects practically brighter than one could calculate.
Globally, the biggest revenge-seekers were states and terrorist organizations. The states seldom blamed anyone else; the terrorist organizations called themselves something other than what they were. What they had in common was that they didn’t represent competition for Hugo. Rather, he considered his competition to be, for instance, the Italian mafia. Therefore it was crucial that in his marketing strategy he emphasized that his methods remained within the boundaries of the law. After all, this was not the top priority for Cosa Nostra. The fact that Hugo had ended up in alignment with their principles after his very first job was a different matter.
Subsidiary branches in a number of cities was already part of the plan. First, London. No one was better than two Englishmen at becoming enemies over basically nothing. Over whose turn it was to use the dartboard at the pub. Over which football team one should support, actual quality notwithstanding. Two Brits couldn’t even agree on the simple question of whether or not they were part of Europe.
Then Berlin. In many ways, Germans were like Swedes. Everything in order, arrive on time for meetings, stick to the rules – both written and unwritten. When someone’s toes were trodden upon, the reaction was as expected. So it had been for as long as anyone could recall. Even Hansel and Gretel retaliated with a vengeance. When the evil witch expressed malicious intent, reasoning with her was out of the question – instead, they burned her up.
After Great Britain and Germany would come France. Not because it was the most lucrative market; the French were far too skilled at getting revenge on their own, preferably in groups. But Paris had a certain ring to it. If something didn’t exist there, it didn’t exist at all.
He’d already been to Spain and back. The concrete football revenge had become a news item down there. According to El Diario, the coach had suffered fractures in eighteen separate bones in his right foot. Hugo struggled his way through the article with the help of a translation app. To think that something as simple as a foot could have eighteen bones inside.
Once Europe was conquered, the United States would be on deck. For this, Hugo would need a proper business plan with analyses of strengths, weaknesses, feasibility and threats. One complicating factor was that if you scratched someone’s car in America, you might – in accordance with the American definition of self-defence – get a bullet to the head in return.
All in all, the future had been looking bright when Jenny and Kevin stepped into Hugo’s office. Since then, a quixotic medicine man from Kenya had intervened. If the American punishment for scratched paint was a bullet to the head, what might it be for a man who sold two multimillion-dollar paintings for an equal amount of sandwiches with fake caviar from a tube? When Hugo had explained in desperation what was so unreasonable about the deal in question, the guilty Maasai had pointed out that there had been hard-boiled egg in addition to the caviar.
For the moment, Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd was a shambles. After the failed break-in attempt, the great creative had no idea what to do. All he knew was what he wouldn’t do: accompany Jenny, Kevin and the walking disaster on their shopping trip.
‘You all go ahead. I’m staying home.’
The Clas Ohlson everything-under-the-sun shop offered a wooden mallet for 79.90; it was thirty-three centimetres long and made of oak. Ole Mbatian weighed it in his hand and nodded. His son paid with a plastic card that said ‘beep’ when you held it against a little box with buttons on it. Ole observed that the ‘beep’ was the payment itself. This, if anything, was product development in comparison to the herding of four cows all the way to Narok.
Not far from Clas Ohlson was a grocery store that carried both cornflakes and lingonberry jam. After this purchase, the medicine man was in a cheerful mood; he swung his new club jauntily while Kevin carried the bag of food.
‘Perhaps I should buy something for the folks back home,’ Ole mused. ‘There’s a lot to choose from here.’
He nodded towards a shop that sold gold and silver jewellery.
Jenny lit up.
‘A necklace, perhaps?’
The medicine man shook his head. That wouldn’t work; unfortunately there were two wives.
‘Two necklaces?’
Smart! Jenny had great insight into how women worked.
‘Indeed, I happen to be one myself.’
It was Fanny Sundin’s first day on her own as a salesperson at Hellgrens Gold. She was well-prepared; she’d shadowed her more experienced colleague for a whole week. She’d learned all about the different types of customers – which ones sent signals that they wanted to buy, which ones took some extra care, which ones were only there to look. She also knew where the alarm button was located on the floor, in case the unthinkable happened.
Then the unthinkable happened.
In stepped a tall black man in a red-and-black checked cloth and only sandals, in the middle of winter. In one of his glove-clad hands he held a wooden club. He didn’t even have time to utter the obvious ‘this is a robbery’ before Fanny hit the alarm.
Ole was disappointed. He had been planning to pay with Kevin’s credit card for the first time in his life, the one that said ‘beep’. But the woman behind the counter decided to cry instead of sell. When Ole tried to pat her cheek with his gloved hand, she switched over to screaming worse than the receptionist at the hotel on that first day. The receptionist had refused to accept cows or cash; this one didn’t want to take a card. Ole didn’t understand how Sweden could function if no one wanted to accept payment.
A few minutes earlier, Jenny and Kevin had sent the Maasai into the shop on his own; the two of them planned to sit nearby with an ice cream each. Both of them thought this was a good idea, for several reasons. Jenny wanted Ole to select necklaces on his own; that was the proper way when it came to gifts for those you love, no matter how many wives you happened to have. Kevin had observed his father’s curiosity about everything they didn’t have in the valley back home. Letting him conduct a financial transaction by electronic means would make him feel proud. And Kevin would be proud of him.
Then the alarm went off.
Kevin and Jenny exchanged glances. They put down their ice cream and headed towards the racket.
How many people had already gathered outside the jewellery shop? Fifty? A hundred? It was almost impossible to crowd their way through. Ole Mbatian was having the same issue on the other side of the throng. He felt that he had no more to accomplish in the shop; kissing the salesperson on both cheeks and her forehead was out of the question. But where had all these people come from? And why all this noise?
Robbing a jewellery shop is not recommended. If you truly must do so, and intend to escape the police, you probably shouldn’t choose Sweden’s largest shopping mall as the scene of the crime. Especially not on this particular day. Not one but two police patrols were in the immediate vicinity of the mall when the alarm went off. The most senior of the four officers took charge, leading himself and his three colleagues through the sea of shoppers until he spotted the suspect in the door of the shop.
‘Drop your weapon and get down on the floor!’ the self-appointed commanding officer shouted as his three colleagues crept up behind him with guns drawn.
‘Not this again,’ said Ole Mbatian.
Jenny and Kevin managed to make it through the throngs from the other direction. But what should they do now? The atmosphere was threatening, and Kevin’s skin was as black as that of his adoptive father. He thought he would be wise not to jump in and put things to rights. He conveyed this decision to Jenny using only his eyes. At which point he retreated.
Jenny thought she looked sufficiently Swedish to avoid being shot on sight; her gender, too, might have a mitigating effect. But she didn’t have time to step in before everything went in a new direction.
One of the three cops behind the commanding officer suddenly lowered her weapon, engaged the safety, and approached the suspect.
‘Ole, for God’s sake,’ she said.
The medicine man lit up.
‘Why, if it isn’t Young Miss Officer!’
‘You promised not to call me that.’
Ole Mbatian got another ride to Kronoberg Remand Prison – not necessarily to be locked up, but the matter had to be investigated. The prosecutor on duty would at the very least have to weigh in on whether the Everything-under-the-sun shop’s item number 40-7527, a wooden mallet weighing 492 grams, could be considered a weapon.
Christian Carlander was on his fourth-to-last workday. Or whatever you’d call it. When the superintendent stuck his head into Carlander’s office, he was flipping paperclips into a wastebasket. He had hit the mark two out of three tries.
‘Hey, Carlander. Keeping busy, I see. Your buddy the Maasai is back. Just robbed a jeweller’s.’
‘What the hell?’
‘Nah, I’m exaggerating. But you need to have a chat with him before we put him back out on the street.’
It was two thirty in the afternoon. Which meant it was time to rest before he went home. But of course he couldn’t say this.
The superintendent briefed his former best investigator, then invited Ole Mbatian into the room and walked off with a smile full of Schadenfreude.
‘Welcome back, Mr Mbatian,’ said Inspector Carlander.
Ole had already realized that he wasn’t about to be locked up for nothing. He was looking forward to another nice chat. There was no reason to keep the conversation shorter than necessary.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said. ‘Although now I’ve forgotten your name. I’m bad at names. When I was young I had a friend, Mzwaga Kit Chiu Wakajawaka, which was downright impossible to remember. Although I did recall it just now. How odd.’
‘Inspector Carlander,’ said Inspector Carlander.
‘Oh, that’s right. What can I do for you?’
Indeed, what could the Maasai do? In the very best case he would go away, of course. Then Christian Carlander could do the same, at which point he would only have three days left.
‘Tell me what happened at Mall of Scandinavia.’
‘All of it, or just the last part?’
Ole was hoping for ‘all’.
‘The last part will do.’
‘I went into a shop to buy a necklace. Or two. Coming home to two wives with one is not the sort of thing you can get away with.’
Carlander mused that he had come home far too often with no necklace for his only wife. Now she was remarried.
‘And?’
‘I must have frightened the saleswoman with my wooden club, because there was quite the hullabaloo until Sofia arrived and cleared up the misunderstanding.’
‘Sofia?’
‘Young Miss Officer, but please don’t call her that.’
Carlander nodded. Sergeant Sofia Appelgren. Bright and eager. Just like Carlander himself, once upon a time.
‘But didn’t we keep your club here?’
‘Kevin bought me a new one. From someone called Ohlson, I believe. Like I said, me and names.’
‘So you’ve found Kevin?’
‘Otherwise he couldn’t have been there shopping with me.’
The Maasai had no patience for rhetorical questions.
‘Perhaps you can tell me how those paintings ended up at Victor Alderheim’s place? Last time you said that Kevin probably knew.’
Ole Mbatian considered the question. For some time now he had understood that Jenny had a key to the home of the angry man; they had used it to try to break in and steal back what belonged to them. But luckily, this was not what the inspector had asked. He still didn’t know exactly how the paintings had ended up in Alderheim’s cellar in the first place. He suspected that the key had been used once before, but what you didn’t know, you didn’t know.
‘Did I say that? Well, a person says a lot of things. Once I said so much that the man across from me asked me to shut up. That was the angry man, by the way. Alderheim. Unpleasant fellow.’
Three days and the rest of this conversation left before retirement. Christian Carlander swore to himself he would fight to the end.
‘I would like to meet Kevin,’ he said. ‘By way of information, as we at the Police Authority call it. Do you think you could ask him to come by tomorrow morning? Ten thirty? It’s getting late, and I have a number of things I need to deal with.’
Such as Gabriel García Márquez and two beers, followed by three metro stops. Or maybe one beer would suffice; it was Monday, after all.
‘I certainly can,’ said Ole Mbatian. ‘Ten thirty is the same as half past ten.’
‘I know. Well, thank you for this conversation, Mr Mbatian. Can you find the way out on your own?’
Before Ole could respond, Carlander realized it wouldn’t do to send the medicine man wandering alone through the police corridors. From experience he knew this could end any which way.
‘I’ll walk you to the lobby,’ he said.
The art dealer wasn’t as stupid as he was horrible. He read on his smartphone that the Maasai had caused a scene – again. As a result, Victor Alderheim suspected he knew where the man was currently located, so now he was waiting outside Kronoberg Remand Prison in his Mercedes AMG S 65 Coupé, purchased fair and square with what had once been Jenny’s money. Hopefully that tiresome Dr Harris was still in the country. There was still time.
The medicine man had gone in and cleared out a jewellery store. Initial reports said robbery, but after fifteen minutes the word ‘misunderstanding’ appeared in the newsfeeds for the first time. Victor didn’t believe for an instant that the Maasai was guilty. Anyone who was that clueless about the true value of objects would probably be more likely to rob a paperboy. Thus he had good reason to hope that the man he was looking for would come tumbling out of the jail any moment or hour, with that chequered curtain around his body. And anyway, he certainly didn’t have any other bright ideas about how to find the bastard.
Kevin had departed the scene of the crime that wasn’t a crime scene back when the police thought they were dealing with a robbery. He had come to the lamentable conclusion that the colour of his skin would not have a calming effect on the police officers with their weapons drawn. At least not during those first, critical seconds.
A few seconds later, Jenny followed his lead once she realized that the danger was over because one of the officers had recognized their Maasai.
So both of them were still unknown to the police, as was Hugo, while Ole Mbatian was more known than ever.
Presently the adman and Kevin were sitting at an Asian restaurant not far from Kronoberg Remand Prison, with a decent view of its entrance. Meanwhile, Jenny had snuck over to wait for Ole. Their joint assessment was that she had the greatest chance of blending into the environs as an innocent next of kin, no one worth remembering.
Unfortunately the Maasai was accompanied by a police officer. Jenny tried, by way of eye contact, to get Ole to understand that they shouldn’t know one another right there and then. It didn’t work.
‘Why hello there, Jenny,’ he said, revealing half her identity.
To think that just about everything he said and did was so wrong.
The inspector politely said hello to the Maasai’s friend but couldn’t come up with any immediate reason to ask who she was more specifically.
‘Then I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Carlander. ‘Ten thirty. When you have Kevin with you.’
‘Half past ten is great,’ said Ole Mbatian.
During the short walk from the jail to the restaurant, Jenny wondered if Ole Mbatian was quite sound of mind. Had he promised that Kevin would come talk to the inspector? What was he thinking?
She was so upset, and he was so calm, that neither of them noticed a strange man approaching from behind. It was already getting dark.
Hugo and Kevin watched from the restaurant as Jenny and the medicine man crossed the street. They also registered the shadow behind them.
‘Who could that be?’ said Hugo.
‘Just as long as it’s not the man I’m sure it is,’ said Kevin.
The Maasai and Jenny had no sooner taken seats at the table before the stranger came in and positioned himself near their table. Ole immediately recognized the letter-and-photograph thief, the one who needed to be taught a good lesson.
‘Well, look at that,’ he said. ‘Are you here to give me back what’s mine? Otherwise I have a lovely new throwing club to show you.’
The art dealer ignored the Maasai’s implied threat, but it did have the effect of causing the conversation that followed to be conducted in English. Hugo wasn’t quite sure what was happening.
‘Can I help you?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘My name is Victor Alderheim.’
‘Oh no,’ said Hugo.
‘That’s an excellent assessment. If I may take a seat, I’ll explain.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t.’
Victor Alderheim sat down.
‘Hello there, Jenny,’ he said to his ex-wife.
He said it with a smile. She didn’t respond.
‘And hello to you, Kevin. Did you get homesick in Africa?’
His former ward didn’t respond either. There was something deeply unnerving about Alderheim’s confidence. What did he know that they didn’t?
Ole Mbatian honestly believed that the art dealer was there to give back what didn’t belong to him. In which case he would let bygones be bygones. No point in fighting when it wasn’t necessary.
‘If I’ve understood correctly, you dropped by my village back home and happened to take my lovely photographs of Irma Stern and her equally lovely letters, is that true?’
Happened to? Victor Alderheim felt that the medicine man had just insulted his intelligence. Who happened to drop by a ramshackle village on the African savanna? He had gone there and taken what he wanted as a result of sheer strategy and aptitude.
When the art dealer didn’t reply, Ole Mbatian went on in a conciliatory tone:
‘It’s easy to accidentally take things. One time during the annual fire festival I happened to take a young woman behind a bush. Before I discovered this myself, one of my wives did it for me. This was both lucky and unlucky at the same time. Where were we? Oh yes, you have something that belongs to me and I want it back. Now, for example.’
Victor Alderheim ignored the medicine man and turned to Hugo.
‘I’m here because the Maasai needs to sign a transfer-of-ownership document. I mean, not you, Kevin, the other one. As soon as that’s done, I’ll be on my way.’
He placed a document and a pen on the table in front of Ole.
Victor Alderheim was just as loathsome as he’d seemed in Jenny and Kevin’s tales. In that sense, Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd had taken on the right case. There wasn’t much else to be happy about here. Hugo still assumed that a good offence was the best defence.
‘As spokesperson for Ole Mbatian the Younger, I can tell you right now that he will not sign anything without consulting an attorney.’
‘I didn’t catch your name, Mr Spokesperson.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Hugo. ‘Still …’
Ole Mbatian read the document. He recalled that the angry man had tried to create a similar one during their breakfast that time. As if the word of a Maasai warrior wasn’t sufficient. Oh well, one had to remember: different cultures, different traditions. Back home in the valley payment was made with livestock. Here, they called the police when you wanted to pay at all.
‘This paper elucidates the circumstances of ownership surrounding the two paintings one or several of which you were kind enough to place in my cellar.’
‘Like I said,’ Hugo began. ‘As the spokesperson for …’
This was as far as he got before Ole Mbatian signed the paper.
‘There we go. Time for the other part. I want you to give back what’s mine, and you want to remain in possession of your good health. Don’t you?’
Victor Alderheim had prepared himself to win a tough match in overtime; he had his trump card on his phone. And then that stupid fucking Maasai just went and signed his name without Victor even having to whip it out. Alderheim grabbed the document and put it back in the inner pocket of his jacket.
Hugo’s existence, which absolutely could not have got any worse, did just that. All while Ole waited for his photographs and letters to be returned.
‘Well?’ he said.
Did the native honestly believe he was going to get back what belonged to him? Victor racked his brains for an appropriate response. His starting point was: Not on your life! Now he had the transfer of ownership. The paintings were his, once and for all; even the American expert would agree. If he could sell them along with the stolen items, he could count on several million extra.
‘You can forget what belonged to you, you dumb Maasai,’ he said, rising from the table.
Halfway to the door, he turned around to say farewell. Circumstances had allowed him to save the best for last.
‘I know it was you who broke into my house with a goat, some bags of flour, and so on. And I know you tried again last night.’
As he said this, he took his phone from the breast pocket of his blazer with a smirk, then put it back again.
‘And now I even have the medicine man’s signature. In the event that I happened to bring a thing or two back from Africa with me, seems to me like that’s compensation for the mess you made. If you argue, I’ll go to the police. And they’ll lock all four of you up.’
Then he turned and walked away.
Ole Mbatian considered himself to be a fundamentally peaceful man. This explained why he had taken a conciliatory tone with the art dealer and thief. Just like Western doctors, he preferred to fix people rather than break them. Then again, he had no Hippocratic oath to live up to. Only his pride. He made up his mind and rose from the table.
‘If you’ll excuse me. My club and I have something to see to. Be right back.’
But Hugo didn’t want to add another disaster to the series. He jumped up from his chair and managed to get between the Maasai and the door.
‘For God’s sake, Ole, stop! You can’t club Alderheim in the middle of the street!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because the biggest police station in Sweden is seventy metres away.’
The medicine man lowered his club. There was a little too much truth in what the adman had just said. The Swedish police had already tangled with him twice and probably would do so again, given the chance. Teaching this particular lesson could wait.
Meanwhile, Hugo had time to consider the advantages in letting the Maasai loose on Alderheim. Within reason. While Ole’s throwing club talked to the art dealer, he himself could dig for Alderheim’s phone and delete what needed deleting.
The medicine man sat down. He realized that he was hungry and caught sight of sticks where he should have found a knife and fork.
‘What’s this?’ he asked.
The waiter came to the table and wondered if the lady and gentlemen had finished considering what items on the menu might best suit them. Up to this point, he had not been able to serve them anything other than two glasses of water with slices of lemon.
But this was no time for food. Alderheim must certainly be on his way back to his art gallery, or at least he would get there sooner or later during the evening. Hugo said that he would like to pay for the previously delivered waters, but that the party had discovered this establishment served Asian cuisine, which wasn’t what they had in mind, so they would look elsewhere.
‘But thank you anyway.’
The waiter apologized that the message ‘Asian cuisine’ in large letters on the restaurant window had been insufficiently clear. He promised to raise the matter with his boss. With that, he wished the party a pleasant evening; the water and lemon slices were on the house.
Victor Alderheim had a few minutes’ head start on his pursuers, but on account of Kevin’s general ignorance of traffic laws, they caught up to him. Choosing to go the wrong direction on one-way streets can be devastating. Or, as in this case, it can be a real time-saver. Suddenly they spotted the art dealer ahead of them. Apparently heading right where they expected him to go.
Jenny kept Kevin company in front; Hugo sat with the Maasai in the back and explained his plan.
‘When Alderheim stops and gets out of the car, we do the same. On my cue, you can give him a mild whack on the head with your lovely club, as I try to get his phone out of his jacket pocket.’
The Maasai thought the man deserved more than just a mild whack.
‘Halfway mild,’ Hugo compromised.
He could see the advantages. He wasn’t about to say so to Ole, but this might give him the chance to fish that damned bill of sale out of Alderheim’s inner pocket as well.
‘Wait for my cue, though, okay? We need a window of time with no witnesses.’
‘A halfway mild whack on the head, on your cue,’ said Ole Mbatian. ‘No one is better at dealing a halfway mild whack on the head than I am. Just ask Inspector Carlander. Hey, I remembered his name!’
‘Are you sure about this, Hugo?’ said Jenny.
Victor Alderheim did not discover that he was being followed. He never looked in the rear-view mirror when he drove; for him, there was only forward. Anyway, he wouldn’t have seen anything but two headlights just like all the others among the twinkling lights of the dark capital city.
When he was basically where he was going, the art dealer cruised around for a few blocks in search of an available parking space, until he decided to temporarily commandeer a spot reserved for the Ethiopian embassy. He just had to dash inside to make a copy of the proof of ownership, the photographs and the letters; then he could track down religious nut Dr Harris. If his god was good enough, the doctor was probably in his hotel room after a day of rolling around in modernist rubbish someplace.
The Alderheimian parking decision came as a surprise to Kevin, with his lack of experience. He slammed on the brakes sixty metres away, at a loss about what to do. Alderheim had almost arrived at the door to his art gallery.
‘Hurry!’ Hugo said to Ole Mbatian as he climbed out of the car.
The Maasai asked himself whether the word ‘hurry’ could be considered the cue Hugo had mentioned. Because they were in a hurry, there was no time to discuss the matter. Ole Mbatian made up his mind and acted accordingly.
Sixty metres is nothing for a several-time village throwing club champion. But unlike the original, the Clas Ohlson model made a whining sound as it flew through the air. Thus the intended victim had time to turn his head in surprise one-tenth of a second before the club reached its target. This explains why the blow struck him in the temple rather than the back of his head.
‘What the hell did you just do?’ Hugo exclaimed.
‘I acted on your cue. But that whack was not quite as halfway mild as I’d intended. At least now we have plenty of time before the thief gets up again.’
Plenty of time was in no way an accurate characterization. To be sure, the art dealer was deeply unconscious outside his own door, and no one was passing by on the sidewalk just then. But for how many more seconds would this be true? There was some activity outside a restaurant across the street. The only reason no one there had discovered the unconscious man was that parked cars blocked their view.
Hugo ran up to the knocked-out art dealer, with Ole Mbatian strolling behind him.
By the time the medicine man arrived, the adman had already nabbed the victim’s phone. But Alderheim was sleeping partway on his stomach; it was hard to get at his inner pocket.
At the same time, Kevin rolled up with the car. While Hugo dug for the confounded bill of sale, and Ole Mbatian admired the mark on the letter-and-photograph thief’s right temple, Jenny hopped out and joined the group. Ole must not forget his throwing club! After all, both the original and the replacement were known to the whole police force. Leaving one of them behind, next to an unconscious man, would be tantamount to pleading guilty.
Ole considered Jenny’s words. He had no desire to pay a third visit to the police station. On that note, he picked up his weapon from the ground, reached up, and clubbed away the video camera above the gallery door. That done, he went to the car, took an item from the sack of food in the back seat, came back, and dropped a glass jar of lingonberries onto the sidewalk, right before the nose of the sleeping man.
It splashed onto Hugo, who was just about to ask what the medicine man was doing when the lights came on in the nearest stairwell. Someone was on their way out. Hugo abandoned his search for the bill of sale: everyone in the car! Now!
If the elderly woman and her poodle had come out of the building next door just a few seconds earlier, she would have discovered, among other things, a tall black man with a club in one hand and a busted security camera in the other. The man was dressed in a red-and-black checked cloth and sandals instead of a winter coat and boots. At his feet lay another man, more traditionally dressed, but highly untraditionally asleep on the freezing-cold sidewalk – apparently knocked out by the man in the cloth. The older woman had poor eyesight, but only someone who was truly blind would have failed, later on, to provide an accurate description of the suspect.
But now all that was there to be discovered was the unconscious man and the lingonberries. The woman recognized the victim as the horrid art dealer everyone in the neighbourhood gossiped about, and she wasn’t surprised to find that someone had laid him out. Nor was she even particularly frightened, in fact. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.
Still, she wasn’t about to let him freeze to death on the street. She would have to interrupt her evening stroll with the dog. The woman called 112.
It was thanks to Jenny that the throwing club did not remain beside Alderheim. And this prompted Ole Mbatian to think another couple of steps ahead. First, there had been the security camera. Then, the mark on the thief’s temple. It was impressive. The police would wonder what had caused it.
‘Now that they’ve got the lingonberries, they won’t have to wonder,’ he said. ‘So perhaps I can keep my new club in peace and quiet.’
Hugo didn’t know where to start. Ole Mbatian deserved a good scolding for releasing his weapon without awaiting Hugo’s authorization. And he deserved praise for the strike. And for the camera and lingonberries. The second and third action might as well cancel out the first. Now all he had to do was get into the phone and clean up what oughtn’t be there.
‘Twelve zero four,’ said Jenny.
‘What?’
‘The pin code for the phone. I set it up for him. December fourth. I figured he could remember his own birthday. He always forgot mine.’
Alderheim had two downloaded files. One was the one he’d bragged about at the restaurant; the other was a brand-new video that showed the art dealer being felled by a club to the temple, followed by a razor-sharp sequence in which the city’s most renowned adman rummaged through the unconscious man’s pockets, followed by a black man in a red-and-black checked cloth picking up the club and …
That was the end of the video.
What didn’t make it in was how the Maasai first bashed in and took the security camera, and then dropped a glass jar of lingonberries on the ground before the sleeping man. But still, the evidence would be overwhelming. Impossible to deny. Hugo carefully deleted everything he could delete: the videos, the email notifications and the app itself.
‘Slow down if you see any water anywhere, Kevin. We have a telephone to get rid of.’
‘And a broken security camera,’ said Ole.
There was water everywhere in and around Stockholm, except for their present location in Roslagstull.
‘Could that be a good substitute?’ their chauffeur said, pointing ahead and to the left.
What he had spotted was a bin lorry, likely performing its last job on this late afternoon. Hugo ordered his chauffeur to slow down; he rolled down his window and managed, from a distance of several metres, to bury the Alderheimian telephone in the maw of the bin lorry.
Ole handed over the camera and asked Hugo to repeat the move if he could.
Score, again. The medicine man was impressed.
‘I wonder if there isn’t a little Maasai inside you.’
‘Let’s hope not,’ said Hugo.
The trip home to Lidingö was so charged with adrenaline that they made it all the way to assembly in Hugo’s kitchen before Kevin gave voice to the thought he assumed everyone else was thinking too.
‘How bad did your club get him, Papa? I hope Alderheim isn’t lying there and—’
‘Dying?’ said Ole. ‘I don’t expect so. A buffalo would have shaken its head and walked off.’
Jenny remarked that that pig, rat and snake Alderheim might as well be akin to a buffalo too, but she didn’t find herself quite convincing. Victor had been awfully still, there on the ground.
Ole Mbatian searched for new ways to reassure the group. He recalled that the temple is where you should hit chickens before you chop their heads off. The chicken will be out like a light, but if allowed to keep its head while unconscious – as, of course, the art dealer had – it will wake up after a while and stumble off.
Hugo pointed out that there were some differences between a chicken brain and an art-dealer brain; Jenny muttered that she wasn’t so sure. Kevin was assigned the task of following the latest news on his phone, in case there were any items about a knocked-out art dealer in Östermalm.
After this bewildering engagement with Victor Alderheim’s health, Hugo changed the subject. The adman began by thanking everyone involved for their efforts outside the art gallery. Time, in contrast to most other things, had been on their side. This increased their chances of getting away with it from zero per cent to more than that.
Moving on, Hugo apologized – they’d been in such a rush that the bill of sale remained in the victim’s inner pocket. When the art dealer woke up, he would still be holding all the trump cards, minus the videos of their attempted break-in.
On the other hand, there was no risk that Alderheim could identify Hugo or any of the others as assailants or phone thieves. After all, he’d been clubbed from a distance of sixty metres.
‘It doesn’t matter much that he knows it was us. He won’t stay knocked out for ever; he’ll be angry as a hornet now and suffering from a headache. He’s welcome to it.’
‘It’s not quite an anthill,’ said Ole. ‘But it’s close.’
Kevin took in the latest news on his phone, and let out an ‘oh my’. Followed by an ‘oh no’.
‘What is it?’ Jenny asked.
‘Alderheim isn’t knocked out anymore.’
‘That’s what I just said,’ said Hugo.
Kevin read aloud.
‘“A middle-aged man fell victim to a grave assault around four thirty this afternoon in downtown Stockholm. When the ambulance arrived on the scene, the man was unconscious. He suffered cardiac arrest in the ambulance and the paramedics were unable to revive him.”’
Hugo went perfectly cold.
Jenny buried her face in her hands.
‘Did someone die?’ said Ole.
Indeed, Victor Alderheim had been knocked out with the help of Clas Ohlson. The blow fractured the bone at his temple, just above his right ear, and the underlying artery burst. If one wishes to survive a brain bleed of this sort, it’s much better to be at a hospital when it happens rather than on a wintery sidewalk in downtown Stockholm.
The bleed increased the pressure on the art dealer’s brain as he lay there. Function after function ceased; slowly, the blood supply to his breathing centre was strangled. By the time Alderheim ended up in the ambulance twenty-three minutes later, it was already too late.