All That Man Is (24 page)

Edvard stands up. He looks out at the patchy lawn, his hand on one of the white pillars of the porch. ‘It's not true that it won't damage me politically,' he says.

‘Why? As you say, you're not married …'

‘And anyway,' he says, ‘I think it's over. With Natasha.'

Kristian feigns surprise.

‘Yes,' Edvard says. ‘She's ending it.'

‘I didn't know.'

‘How would you know?' A hollow laugh. ‘Unless your source is Natasha herself.'

‘It isn't.'

‘It's not what I want,' Edvard says. ‘I mean, to end it.'

‘How long has it been going on?' Kristian asks.

‘Two years. More or less. I was hoping,' Edvard says, still looking out to where the sprinkler has succeeded in making a muddy patch in the middle of the lawn, ‘I was hoping she'd leave her husband. No,' he says. ‘She doesn't want to do that.' He sighs, pained. He is in his mid-fifties. Still in decent shape. Only a slight paunch, leathery with sunlight, with Spanish weekends. Long thin legs.

He turns to Kristian and takes off his sunglasses. His eyebrows are thick and fair. His eyes pale blue.

‘I feel like a fool, at my age, Kristian, feeling like this,' he says. ‘About a woman.'

‘You shouldn't.'

‘Well, I do.' He has turned from the garden, the dry field of scraping insects, and is looking at Kristian, who is still in his seat, sweating. ‘When they said you wanted to see me, I hoped it wouldn't be about this.'

Kristian smiles sadly. ‘
C'est la guerre
,' he says.

‘You know I'll never be prime minister now?'

‘No, I don't know that …'

‘Oh, you do. This isn't France, Kristian.'

‘And thank God for that.'

Ignoring the flippancy, the minister says, ‘It will make me seem unsound, won't it. Not so much morally as emotionally … Unserious …'

Kristian says, ‘I think you should tell me what happened, from the start, just to make sure we have everything straight.'

‘You expect me to tell you everything?'

‘Not everything: just the main points. When did it start? How did you meet?'

In the parked Passat, with the air conditioning screaming, he phones Elin.

‘It's okay,' he says. ‘He didn't put up much of a fight. He'll work with us on it. I'll try and knock something out at the airport and send it to you. One thing,' he says, thinking ahead, ‘see if you can't find any photos of them together. They've met at social events. Her husband was there too, Søren Ohmsen. Maybe there's a photo of them together. The three of them. That would be perfect.'

He says, ‘My plane's at seven something. I should be in the office by elevenish. I'll see you there.'

It is half past five. The sun is starting to leave its seat in the top of the sky, to lose some of its force. The thermometer on the dash says
37°
. The steering wheel, for a few minutes, is too hot for him to hold. He has to keep moving his hands on it as the satnav directs him back through the village and towards the motorway, south to Málaga.

He is thinking about the splash. Something like:

DEFENCE

MINISTER'S

SECRET

LOVE

And then a smaller headline underneath:

WEEKENDS OF PASSION IN SCORCHING SPAIN

Defence Minister Edvard Dahlin has been having a secret love affair with a married woman for more than two years. The 55-year-old father of two …

USES EX-WIFE'S HOUSE FOR SECRET LIAISON

The 55-year-old father of two …

The fifty-five-year-old father of two had tried, as they parted, to make a deal with him.

Kristian, already standing, holding his jacket, sweating, thought about it for a moment.

Then he said, ‘That's nice to know.'

And smiled. And left. Walked down the path. Said, ‘Thanks, lads,' to the minister's security detail – two men in sweat-stained polo shirts and wrap-around sunglasses, sitting on white plastic chairs in the shade of a bulge of bougainvillea next to the gate.

It was an offer of sorts, wasn't it, that Edvard had made him.

Not a serious one.

Not one worthy of serious consideration.

Edvard was not, to be honest, in much of a position to be making offers.

The 55-year-old father of two says he is ‘heartbroken' that the mystery married woman …

That's something to think about. The thing about not naming her. She'll have to be named at some point. Hence his interest in the photos. She'll be named within forty-eight hours, he thinks, staring at the motorway, overtaking yet another Dutch mobile home. Once people know she exists, she'll be found and named within forty-eight hours. Will have to let someone else have the honour. Include some hints in the piece tomorrow. Yeah, mention her age.

The 55-year-old father of two says he is ‘heartbroken' that the mystery married woman, 40, …

Maybe say something about her husband.

How about

The stunning brunette, 40, is refusing to leave her husband, one of Denmark's richest men …

That might narrow it down
too
much. Want someone else to name her asap, that's all, so we can tackle the thing properly. Use the pictures. He's sure he's seen a picture of them together, Edvard and Natasha Ohmsen, and maybe Søren Ohmsen too. Would be perfect, a picture of the three of them, with her looking at Edvard. Where was that picture taken that he saw? At some National Gallery event? Does Ohmsen give money to the gallery? Probably.

Does Ohmsen even know about the affair?

What about we just phone him up and say, ‘Good evening, Mr Ohmsen. Do you know that your wife's having an affair with the defence minister?' See what he says.

The woman's husband, one of Denmark's richest men, said he was ‘shocked' …

‘Are you shocked, Mr Ohmsen? Are you dismayed?'

The woman's husband, one of Denmark's richest men, said he was ‘shocked' and ‘dismayed' to hear …

Soothed by the billowing cold of the air con, Kristian refocuses on the bright motorway, on the endless caravan of migrating Teutons in the slow lane.

It's an advantage, actually, to hold the name back for a day or two – extends the life of the story. It's a major story, and very timely. The next few days they're doing the monthly audit. That was what Elin was thinking about this morning, more than anything. Her job, it's about those numbers. If they're up, she's winning. If they're down, she's not. It actually is that simple. Nothing else matters, in the end. Everything is fairly simple, in the final analysis, he thinks. Seeing the true simplicity of everything, that was important. That was how someone like him, someone who started out in social housing in Sundbyøster, made their way in this world.

It is six o'clock.

He is not far from Málaga. The first ugly signs of the city are appearing on the hillsides.

The thermometer says
34°
.

He thinks of the shitty school he went to in Sundbyøster, patched with new paint where the latest graffiti had been obliterated. Barbed wire on the perimeter fence. The awful smell of the kitchen. Doorless stalls in the toilets.

It just happened, is how it sometimes feels, that he has this life. Deputy editor of the top-selling tabloid in Scandinavia, laying down terms to senior ministers. It was always just one step after another. He discovered, when he was eighteen years old, that he loved working on a newspaper – a local paper, that he had delivered as a kid, took him on for work experience after he left school. That was the first step. They liked that he was keen, energetic, willing to do anything. And he had this instinctive understanding of what it was all about. Not until the last few years has he looked further than just the next step. When they made him deputy editor. Yeah, that was when he first looked down and saw how high he was, how he was nearer the top now, much nearer, than the place where he'd started – that flat. Fourth floor. Lift out of order. Hear every sound the neighbours make. His father still lives there, on his own. He drove that lorry all over Europe, his father, from Portugal to Poland he drove it. That was what
he
did with his life. Now he hardly ever leaves Sundbyøster. Hardly ever leaves the fucking estate. When was Kristian last there? More than a year ago. In spring, smell of pollen on the estate. And in the flat, cigarette smoke. TV on. Sports newspapers. Sit at the tiny table in the kitchen, talking about FC Copenhagen, what a shit season they're having. Window open. Smell of pollen. Sound of the Øresundmotorvejen, leaking onto the estate.

Shouts of kids.

There's this feeling he sometimes has that he's a long way from home. That nobody's there for him if it all goes wrong.

*

It is still well over thirty degrees when he returns the car at the airport. The heat still takes him by surprise – it's like opening an oven – when he emerges from the air conditioning and walks across the soft tarmac to the office to hand back the keys and sign the papers. Then he heads for the terminal, where his flight departs in just over an hour.

Departures is a nightmare. Thousands of people are travelling on this evening in August, thousands of sun-scorched northerners on their way home, to Dublin, Manchester, Hamburg, Helsinki. Holidaymakers. He hates holidays, personally. What are you supposed to do on holiday? He doesn't understand. He would never go on holiday if it weren't for the wife and kids. Ten days in Dubai, they did, this spring. And even then he was on his phone so much to people in the office, Laura eventually hid it. His phone. So they had a huge row about that.
Where is my fucking phone?

Where's my fucking phone?

He is in the security queue, untying his shoes, when it starts to whistle and throb. His phone. He answers it. It's Elin.

‘No way,' he says, when he hears what she has to tell him. ‘You're joking.'

He indicates to the people behind him in the queue that they should move ahead.

‘You're sure?' he says, shuffling out of their way.

And then, putting his shoes back on, ‘Okay. Yes, phone him, tell him I'll be there in about an hour. Okay.'

A few minutes later he is at Hertz again. He says, frustrated with how slowly they are dealing with him, ‘It doesn't have to be the same car. Any car.'

It is a different car, a Seat.

And then the same motorway, towards Córdoba, at over 140 kilometres per hour.

It is nearly eight.

29°
says the thermometer.

*

He leaves the motorway, again, at Lucena. It is dusk. Exhausted, lurid hues in the west. There are people about now. Strip malls, the shops all still open, and supermarkets on the outskirts of the town, sitting lit up in darkening scrubland. Some sort of stadium. Football, he assumes at first. A match this evening. Floodlights. A traffic jam outside. Then he sees, from signs and posters, that it's not football that happens there. And then he has passed it, is driving away into the dark evening, away from the lights of the town, towards the village where Edvard is.

It seems strange to him, somehow, that bullfighting actually exists. He knows about it, obviously. It's just that to actually see it like that seems strange. That something so savage, to his Nordic sensibility, takes place with all the trappings of modernity – the floodlights, the ticketing systems, the parking facilities. And in the middle of it all, slaughter. Slaughter. Slaughter as a spectator sport, as entertainment.

What is sadder than the furious exhaustion of the bull? Than the bull's failure to understand, even at the very end, that his death is inevitable, and always has been? Is just part of a show.

The village is quiet in the deep dusk. Some sort of bar is open in the square where the church is.

It is still oppressively hot.

*

‘What are you doing here again?' Edvard says, standing on the steps of the porch. ‘What do you want?' He is still in his shorts, his flip-flops.

‘There's something important you didn't tell me, Edvard.'

‘What?'

‘She's pregnant, isn't she.'

Edvard looks amazed.

‘You didn't know?'

‘What are you saying?'

‘I'm telling you – she's pregnant. Is it yours?'

‘For fuck's sake,' Edvard says in a loud voice. He has been drinking. His lips are stained with red wine. ‘What are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about.'

Kristian is at the steps now. Looking up at Edvard, who is a head taller than him even without the advantage of the two steps, he says, more quietly, ‘Mrs Ohmsen is pregnant. If you didn't know, I'm sorry it has to be me who tells you that.'

‘How the fuck do
you
know?'

Elin had Mrs Ohmsen followed, and Mrs Ohmsen led two journalists to a private antenatal clinic where she spent more than an hour. That was what Elin told him on the phone.

‘I just know,' Kristian says. ‘You didn't?'

‘No,' Edvard says, pathetically.

‘Do you think it's yours?' Kristian asks him.

‘Will you just fuck off,' Edvard says. ‘I don't know what you're doing here. This is
my
life we're talking about.'

‘Yes, it is …'

‘It's
my
life. Not yours.'

‘I know …'

Edvard says, ‘Why don't we talk about your life? Would you like that?'

‘I'm not here to talk about my life …'

‘There are some things I know about your life.'

‘I'm sure you do …'

‘I know about you and Elin Møllgaard,' Edvard says, speaking more quietly, ‘your editor.'

After a momentary hesitation, Kristian says, ‘I'm not interested in that.'