In the sitting room there was a low table set for two. Harry followed Barli up the staircase and out onto a large, tiled roof terrace looking down onto the central area that was enclosed on four sides by connecting apartment buildings. The outside setting was contemporary Norwegian. There were three charred cutlets smoking on the grill.

‘It gets so warm here in the afternoon in these attic flats,’ Barli apologised, pointing to a white plastic baroque chair.

‘So I’ve been finding out,’ Harry said, walking over to the edge and looking down into the central area.

Generally heights didn’t bother him, but after longish spells of drinking relatively modest heights could suddenly make him feel dizzy. Fifteen metres beneath him he saw two ageing bikes, and a white sheet hanging from a rotary clothes dryer and flapping in the wind. He had to look up again smartish.

Facing them across the courtyard, on a balcony with wrought-iron railings, two neighbours raised bottles of beer to him in greeting. Half of the table in front of them was covered in brown bottles. Harry nodded in return. He wondered how it could be that it was windy down in the yard but not up here.

‘A glass of red wine?’

Barli had already begun to pour himself a glass from the half-empty bottle. Harry noticed that Barli’s hand was shaking. Domaine La Bastide Sy he read on the label. The name was even longer but agitated fingers had torn the rest off.

Harry sat down. ‘Thanks, but I don’t drink when I’m on duty.’

Barli grimaced and quickly put the bottle back down on the table.

‘Of course not, I apologise, I’m just beside myself with worry. I shouldn’t be drinking either in this situation.’

As he put his glass to his mouth and drank, wine dribbled down the front of his tunic where a red stain began to grow.

Harry looked at his watch so that Barli would appreciate that he would have to be fairly brief.

‘She was only supposed to be nipping down to the shop to buy some potato salad to go with the chops,’ Barli gasped. ‘Only two hours ago she was sitting where you are now.’

Harry adjusted his sunglasses. ‘Your wife’s been missing for two hours?’

‘Yes, well, I’m not very sure any longer, but she was only supposed to be going to Kiwi round the corner and back.’

The sun caught the beer bottles on the opposite balcony. Harry put his hand over his eyes, noticed his moist fingers and wondered where he could wipe off the sweat. He placed the tips of his fingers against the burning hot plastic of the chair arm and felt the moisture being slowly scorched away.

‘Have you rung round friends and acquaintances? Have you been down to the supermarket and checked? Perhaps she met someone and they went for a beer. Perhaps -’

‘No, no, no!’ Barli held up the palms of his hands in front of his chest, his fingers splayed. ‘She didn’t! She’s not like that.’

‘Not like what?’

‘She’s like someone… who comes back.’

‘Right…’

‘First of all I rang her on her mobile, but of course she’d left it here. Then I rang people we know whom she might have bumped into. I rang Kiwi, Police Headquarters, three police stations, all the casualty departments, Ulleval hospital and the Rikshospital. Nothing. Nada. Nichts.’

‘I can see that you’re concerned.’

Barli leaned across the table, his moist lips aquiver in his beard.

‘I’m not concerned. I’m scared out of my wits. Have you ever heard of anyone going out in just a bikini with a fiftykroner note while the meat is frying on the grill and then deciding that this is a good opportunity to hop it?’

Harry wavered. Just when he had decided to accept a glass of wine after all, Barli poured the rest of the bottle’s contents into his own glass. So why didn’t he stand up, say something reassuring about how many people ring in with missing person reports just like his, that almost all of them have a natural, unexceptional explanation, and then, after asking Barli to ring back later if she hadn’t turned up by bedtime, take his leave? Perhaps it was the minor detail about the bikini and the 50-kroner note. Or perhaps it was because Harry had been waiting all day for something to happen, and this was at least an opportunity to put off what was waiting for him in his own flat. But most of all it was Barli’s obvious and illogical terror. Harry had underrated intuition before, both other people’s and his own, and it had been to his cost every time without exception.

‘I have to make a couple of calls,’ Harry said.

At 6.45 p.m. Beate Lonn arrived at the flat of Wilhelm and Lisbeth Barli in Sannergata, and a quarter of an hour later a police dog handler arrived with a German shepherd. The man introduced both himself and his dog as Ivan.

‘It’s a coincidence,’ the man said. ‘It’s not my dog.’

Harry saw that Ivan was waiting for some witty comment, but Harry didn’t have one.

While Wilhelm Barli went to the bedroom to find some recent photos of Lisbeth and some clothes to give Ivan – the dog – a scent, Harry quickly spoke to the other two in a low voice:

‘OK, she could be absolutely anywhere. She could have left him, she could have had a funny turn, she could have said she was going somewhere else and he didn’t realise. There are a million possibilities, but she could also be lying in the back seat of a car at this very moment, doped up, being raped by four kids who freaked out at the sight of her bikini. I don’t want you to look for anything specific. Just search.’

Beate and Ivan nodded to show they had understood.

‘A patrol car will be on its way soon. Beate, you meet them and get them to check the neighbours out, talk to people, especially in the supermarket where she was supposed to be going. Then you talk to the people in this part of the building. I’ll just go over to the neighbours sitting on the balcony in the building over the way.’

‘Do you think they know anything?’ Beate asked.

‘They have a perfect view of this flat and, judging by the number of empty bottles, they’ve been sitting there for a while. According to the husband, Lisbeth has been at home all day. I want to know whether they’ve seen her on the terrace, and if so, when.’

‘Why’s that?’ the officer asked, jerking Ivan’s lead.

‘Because if a lady in a bikini in this oven of a flat has not been on the terrace, I’ll be damn suspicious.’

‘Naturally,’ Beate whispered. ‘Do you suspect the husband?’

‘I suspect the husband on principle,’ Harry said.

‘Why’s that?’ Ivan said again.

Beate gave the smile of the initiated.

‘It’s always the husband,’ Harry said.

‘Hole’s First Law,’ Beate said.

Ivan looked from Harry to Beate and back again.

‘But… wasn’t he the one who reported her missing?’

‘Yes, he was,’ Harry said. ‘And still it’s always the husband. That’s why you and Ivan are not starting the search outside on the street, but in here. You’ll have to find an excuse if you have to, but I want the flat and the storage areas in the loft and the cellar checked out first. Afterwards you can continue outside. OK?’

Officer Ivan shrugged his shoulders and looked down at his namesake, who returned his resigned look.

The two people on the opposite balcony did not turn out to be two young men, as Harry had assumed when he saw them from Barli’s terrace. Harry was aware that because a mature woman had pictures of Kylie Minogue on the wall, lived with a woman of the same age with a fringe and a T-shirt with Trondheim Eagles printed on it, this did not necessarily mean that she was a lesbian, but he drew this provisional conclusion anyway. He sat back in an armchair with the two women facing him, exactly as he had done with Vibeke Knutsen and Anders Nygard five days earlier.

‘Apologies for dragging you in from the balcony,’ Harry said.

The one who had introduced herself as Ruth put her hand to her mouth to suppress a belch.