‘Do you know what, Vibeke? That’s what I always thought.’

She could hear the pan bubbling behind her and looked at the cigarette. Three more drags. She took the first. It didn’t taste of anything.

She could barely remember when it was that she had started smoking again. Perhaps it was last year, around the time he had started staying away for long periods on business trips. Or was it over New Year when she had begun working overtime almost every evening? Was that because she was unhappy? Was she unhappy? They never rowed. They almost never made love either, but that was because Anders worked so hard, he had said, putting an end to any discussion. Not that she missed it particularly. When, once in a blue moon, they did make a half-hearted attempt at love-making it was as if he wasn’t really there. So she realised she didn’t really need to be there, either.

But they didn’t actually row. Anders didn’t like raised voices.

Vibeke looked at the clock: 5.15. What had happened to him? Generally he told her if he was going to be late. She stubbed out the cigarette, dropped it into the back yard and turned towards the stove to check the potatoes. She put a fork into the biggest one. Almost done. Some small black lumps bobbled up and down on the surface of the boiling water. Funny. Were they from the potatoes or the pan?

She was just trying to remember what she had last used the pan for when she heard the front door being opened. From the corridor she could hear someone gasping for breath and shoes being kicked off. Anders came into the kitchen and opened the fridge.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Rissoles.’

‘OK…?’ His intonation rose at the end and formed a question mark. She knew roughly what it meant. Meat again? Shouldn’t we eat fish a little more often?

‘Fine,’ he said with flat intonation, leaning over the pan.

‘What have you been doing? You’re absolutely soaked with sweat.’

‘I didn’t do any training this evening, so I cycled up to Sognsvann and back again. What are the lumps in the water?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vibeke said. ‘I just noticed them.’

‘You don’t know? Didn’t you work as a sort of cook once upon a time?’

In one deft movement he took one of the lumps between his index finger and his thumb and put it in his mouth. She stared at the back of his head. At his thin brown hair that she had once thought was so attractive. Well groomed and just the right length. With a side parting. He had looked so smart. Like a man with a future. Enough future for two.

‘What does it taste of?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ he said, still bent over the cooker. ‘Egg.’

‘Egg? But I washed the pan…’

She suddenly paused.

He turned round. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘There’s… a drip.’ She pointed to his head.

He frowned and touched the back of his head. Then, in one movement, they both leaned backwards and stared up at the ceiling. There were two droplets hanging from the white ceiling fabric. Vibeke, who was a little short-sighted, wouldn’t have seen the drops if they had glistened. But they did not.

‘Looks like Camilla’s got a flood,’ Anders said. ‘If you go up and ring her bell, I’ll get hold of the caretaker.’

Vibeke peered up at the ceiling. And down at the lumps in the pan.

‘My God,’ she whispered and could feel her heart pounding again.

‘What’s the matter now?’ Anders asked.

‘Go and get the caretaker. Then go with him and ring Camilla’s doorbell. I’ll call the police.’

2

Friday. Staff Leave.

Oslo Police Headquarters in Gronland was situated at the top of the ridge between Gronland and Toyen, and looked over the eastern part of the city centre. It was constructed of glass and steel and had been completed in 1978. There were no sloping surfaces; it stood in perfect symmetry and the architects Telje, Torp amp; Aasen had received an award for it. The electrician who installed the cables in the two long office wings on the seventh and ninth floors received social benefits and a good bollocking from his father when he fell from the scaffolding and broke his back.

‘For seven generations we were bricklayers, balancing between heaven and earth, before gravity brought us down. My grandfather tried to flee from the curse, but it followed him right across the North Sea. So the day you were born I swore to myself that you would not have to suffer the same fate. And I thought I had succeeded. An electrician… What the hell is an electrician doing six metres off the ground?’

The signal from the central control room ran through the copper in the exact same cables the son had laid, through the partition between the floors moulded with a factory-made cement mix, up to Crime Squad Chief Inspector Bjarne Moller’s office on the sixth floor. At this moment Moller was sitting and wondering whether he was looking forward to or dreading his impending family holiday in a mountain cabin in Os, outside Bergen. In all probability, Os in July meant dire weather. Now, Bjarne Moller had nothing against exchanging the heatwave that had been forecast for Oslo with a little drizzle, but to keep two highly energetic young boys busy with no resources other than a pack of cards minus its jack of hearts would be a challenge.

Bjarne Moller stretched his long legs and scratched behind his ear as he listened to the message.

‘How did they discover it?’ he asked.

‘There was a leak down to the flat below,’ the voice from the control room answered. ‘The caretaker and the man from downstairs rang the bell but no-one answered. The door wasn’t locked, so they went in.’

‘OK. I’ll send two of our people up.’

Moller put down the receiver, sighed and ran his finger down the plasticated duty roster which was on his desk. Half the division was on leave. That was the way it was at this time every year. Not that it meant that the population of Oslo was in any particular danger since the villains in the town also seemed to appreciate a little holiday in July. It was definitely low season as far as the law-breaking that fell to the Crime Squad was concerned.

Moller’s finger stopped by the name of Beate Lonn. He dialled the number for Krimteknisk, the forensics department in Kjolberggata. No answer. He waited for his call to go through the central switchboard.

‘Beate Lonn is in the lab,’ a bright voice said.

‘It’s Moller, Crime Squad. Could you get hold of her?’

He waited. It was Karl Weber, the recently retired head of Krimteknisk, who had recruited Beate Lonn from the Crime Squad. Moller saw this as further proof of the neo-Darwinist theory that man’s sole drive was to perpetuate his own genes. Weber clearly thought that Beate Lonn shared quite a few genes with him. At first sight, Karl Weber and Beate Lonn would probably have seemed quite different. Weber was grumpy and irascible; Lonn was a small, quiet grey mouse, who, after graduating from Police College, would blush every time you talked to her. But their police genes were identical. They were the passionate type who, when they smelled their prey, had the ability to exclude everything else and simply concentrate on a forensic lead, circumstantial evidence, a video recording, a vague description, until ultimately it began to make some kind of sense. Malicious tongues wagged that Weber and Lonn belonged in the laboratory and not in the community where an investigator’s knowledge of human behaviour was still more important than a footprint or a loose thread from a jacket.

Weber and Lonn would agree with what they said about the laboratory, but not about the footprints or the loose threads.

‘Lonn speaking.’

‘Hello, Beate. Bjarne Moller here. Am I disturbing you?’

‘Of course. What’s up?’

Moller explained briefly and gave her the address.

‘I’ll send a couple of my lads up with you,’ he said.