‘And no other?’

She wriggled further down the bed and dragged him after her. He kissed her lightly on the mouth.

‘And no other. My plane, Liebling…’

He extricated himself.

She watched him as he walked over to the chest of drawers, opened one, took out his passport and plane tickets, put them in his inside pocket and buttoned up his jacket. It all happened in one sleek movement; this effortless efficiency and self-assurance that she found both sensual and frightening. Had it not been for the fact that he did almost everything with the same minimal effort, she would have said that he must have been in training for this all his life: departing; leaving.

Bearing in mind that they had spent so much time together over the last two years, she knew surprisingly little about him, but he never made a secret of the fact that he had been with a great many women in his previous life. He used to say it was because he had been searching so desperately for her. He had turned them away as soon as he realised they weren’t her and he had continued his restless search until one fine autumn day two years ago they had met in the bar of the Grand Hotel Europa in Wenceslas Square.

That was the most wonderful description of promiscuity she had ever heard. More wonderful than hers at any rate, which had been for money.

‘What do you do in Oslo?’

‘Business,’ he said.

‘Why will you never tell me exactly what it is that you do?’

‘Because we love each other.’

He closed the door quietly behind him, and she heard his footsteps going down the stairs.

Alone again. She closed her eyes and hoped that the smell of him would remain in the bedclothes until he returned. She placed her hand over her necklace. She had not taken it off since he gave it to her, not even when she took a bath. She stroked the pendant with her fingers and thought about his suitcase. About the stiff white clergyman’s collar she had seen next to his socks. Why hadn’t she asked him about it? Perhaps because she felt that she was asking too many questions already. She mustn’t irritate him.

She sighed, looked at her watch and closed her eyes again. The day had no shape. An appointment with the doctor at 2.00, that was all. She began to count the seconds as her fingers continued to stroke the pendant, a red diamond, shaped like a star with five points.

The front-page spread in Verdens Gang was about an unnamed celebrity in the Norwegian media having had a ‘brief, but intense’ relationship with Camilla Loen. They had got hold of a grainy holiday snap of Camilla wearing a minuscule bikini, obviously to underline the intimations made in the article as to what the main ingredient of the relationship had been.

The same day Dagbladet ran an interview with Lisbeth Barli’s sister, Toya Harang, who in a paragraph entitled ‘Always Running Off’ gave her little sister’s childhood behaviour as a possible explanation for her unexplained disappearance. She was quoted as saying: ‘She ran off from Spinnin’ Wheel too, so why not now?’

There was a picture of her wearing a Stetson and posing in front of the band’s bus. She was smiling. Harry assumed that she hadn’t really thought about what she was doing before they took her photo.

‘A beer.’

He sank down on the bar stool in Underwater and pulled over Verdens Gang. The Springsteen concert in Valle Hovin was sold out. Fine with him. For one thing, Harry hated stadium concerts, and for another, he and Oystein had hitched to Drammenshallen when they were 15 with fake Springsteen tickets that Oystein had made. That was when they had all been right at their peak: Springsteen, Oystein and Harry.

Harry pushed the paper away and opened his own Dagbladet with the photograph of Lisbeth’s sister. The likeness between the two was striking. He had talked to her in Trondheim on the phone, but she didn’t have anything to tell him, or more to the point, she didn’t have anything interesting to tell him. The fact that their conversation had lasted 20 minutes had had little to do with him. She had explained to him her name should be pronounced with the stress on the a. ToyA. And that she had not been named after Michael Jackson’s sister, who is called LaToya with the stress on oy.

Four days had gone by now since Lisbeth’s disappearance, and the case had, in a nutshell, run aground.

The same was true of the Camilla Loen case. Even Beate was frustrated. She had been working all weekend to help the few detectives who were not on holiday. Nice girl, Beate. Shame that being nice didn’t pay off.

Since Camilla had clearly been a sociable young lady, they had managed to put together most of her movements the week before the shooting, but the leads they had didn’t take them anywhere.

Actually, Harry had meant to mention to Beate that Waaler had been to his office and had more or less openly suggested that he sell his soul to him, but for some reason he held back. Besides, he had enough to think about. If he told Moller it would only lead to a row and so he immediately rejected the idea.

Harry was well into his second beer when he saw her. She was sitting on her own at one of the tables in the semidarkness by the wall. She was looking right at him and gave him a little smile. On the table in front of her was a beer and between her index and middle finger a cigarette.

Harry picked up his glass and made his way over to her table.

‘Can I sit down?’

Vibeke Knutsen nodded towards the vacant seat.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I live just round the corner,’ Harry said.

‘I thought so, but I haven’t seen you here before.’

‘No. My local and I have differing interpretations of an incident that took place there last week.’

‘They barred you?’ she asked with a hoarse laugh.

Harry liked her laugh. And he thought she was attractive, perhaps because of her makeup and because she was sitting in the dark. So what. He liked her eyes; they were playful and full of life, childlike and clever, just like Rakel’s but that was where the similarity ended. Rakel had a narrow, sensitive mouth; Vibeke’s was large and seemed even larger painted with fire-engine-red lipstick. Rakel was discreetly elegant and agile, almost as slim as a ballerina, no generous curves. Vibeke was wearing tiger stripes today, but they were as eye-catching as the leopard and the zebra stripes. Most things about Rakel were dark: her eyes, her hair and her skin. He had never seen skin glow like hers. Vibeke had red hair and was pale. Her crossed bare legs shone white in the dark.

‘What are you doing here on your own?’ he asked.

She shrugged her shoulders and took a sip from her glass.

‘Anders is away, travelling, and won’t be back until this evening. So I am indulging myself a little.’

‘Has he gone far?’

‘Somewhere in Europe. You know how it is. They never tell you anything.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He sells fittings for churches and chapels. Altar-pieces, pulpits, crosses and suchlike. Used and new.’

‘Mm. And he does that in Europe?’

‘When a church in Switzerland needs a new pulpit, it could well come from Alesund. And the old one may well end up being restored in Stockholm or Narvik. He travels all the time. He’s away more than he’s at home. Especially in the last few months. This last year really.’ She took a drag of her cigarette and added while inhaling: ‘He’s not Christian though.’

‘No?’

She shook her head as the smoke rose in a thick coil from the red lips with the small, closeset wrinkles above them.

‘His parents were in the Pentecostal sect, and he grew up with that stuff. I’ve only been to one meeting, but do you know what? I think it’s creepy, I do. When they start talking in tongues and all that. Have you been to any meetings like that?’

‘Twice,’ Harry said. ‘With the Philadelphians.’

‘Were you saved?’