Then the news item is over, and you give me twelve severe looks while you read twelve similar news broadcasts and I read from 24 red lips, but you are silent and I love you for your silence.

Then there are pictures of a flood somewhere in Europe. Look, my love, we are wading through the streets. I drag my finger across a television screen and draw your star sign. Even though the television is dead, I can feel the tension between the dusty screen and my finger. The electricity. The encapsulated life. And it is my touch that brings it to life.

The tip of one of the points of the star meets the pavement outside the redbrick building on the other side of the crossroads, darling. I can stand here in the television shop and study it through the gaps between the sets. This is one of Oslo’s busiest crossroads and usually there are long queues of cars out there, but today there are only cars on two of the roads which radiate out from the tarmac heart. Five roads, darling. You have been in bed all day waiting for me. I just have to do this and then I’m coming. If you like I can take the letter out from behind the wall and whisper the words to you. ‘My darling! You are in my thoughts all the time. I can still feel your lips against mine, your skin against mine.’

I open the shop door to go out. The sun floods in. Sun. Flood. I’ll soon be with you.

The day had started badly for Moller.

The previous night he had collected Harry from custody, and then in the morning he had been awoken by pains in his stomach, which was shaped like an overinflated beach ball.

It was to get even worse though.

But at 9.00 things did not seem so bad when an apparently sober Harry came walking in through the door of the Crime Squad meeting room on the sixth floor. Already sitting round the table were Tom Waaler, Beate Lonn and four of the division’s detectives responsible for case strategy along with two specialist colleagues summoned from their holidays the night before.

‘Good morning, everyone,’ Moller began. ‘I assume you are already aware of what we have on our hands here: two cases, perhaps two killings, with some indication that the perpetrator is one and the same person. In brief, it looks suspiciously like the nightmare that we all have at some point.’

Moller put the first overhead transparency on the projector.

‘What we can see on the left is Camilla Loen’s left hand with the severed index finger. On the right, we can see the middle finger of Lisbeth Barli’s left hand, which was sent to me by post. Although we don’t have a body to match as yet, Beate identified the finger by comparing the fingerprint with those she had taken in Barli’s flat. Good initiative and good work, Beate.’

Beate blushed while drumming her pencil on her notepad and trying to look unaffected.

Moller changed the overhead transparency.

‘We found this precious stone under Camilla’s eyelid, a red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star. This ring on the right was on Lisbeth’s finger. As you can see, the diamond on the ring is paler, but the shape is identical.’

‘We have tried to find out where the first diamond comes from,’ Waaler said. ‘Without success. We sent photos to two of the biggest diamond-cutting establishments in Antwerpen, but they say that this type of workmanship probably originates from somewhere else in Europe. They suggested Russia or southern Germany.’

‘We contacted a diamond expert working for De Beers, by far the biggest buyer of uncut diamonds in the world,’ Beate said. ‘According to her, it is possible to use spectrometry and microtomography to identify precisely where a diamond comes from. She is flying from London this evening to help us.’

Magnus Skarre, one of the younger detectives and relatively new to Crime Squad, put up his hand.

‘Going back to what you said at the beginning, sir, I don’t understand why this is such a nightmare if this is a double murder. After all, we are only looking for one killer instead of two, so all of us here can work with the same focus. In my opinion, it should be the opposite…’

Magnus Skarre heard a deep clearing of a throat and the meeting’s attention turned to where Harry Hole had remained sunken in his chair until now.

‘What’s your name again?’ Harry asked.

‘Magnus.’

‘Surname.’

‘Skarre.’ The voice betrayed irritation. ‘You’ll have to remember -’

‘No, Skarre, I won’t remember. But you try to remember what I’m saying to you now. When detectives are confronted with a premeditated, and in this case carefully planned, murder, they know that the perpetrator has a number of clear advantages. He may have removed all the forensic evidence, established an apparently solid alibi for the time of the death, disposed of the weapon and so on. But there is one thing the killer can, so to speak, never hide from an investigation. And what is that?’

Magnus Skarre blinked a couple of times.

‘The motive,’ Harry said. ‘Basic stuff, isn’t it? The motive, that’s where we start our investigation. It’s so fundamental that sometimes we forget it. Until one day, out of the blue, up he pops: the killer out of every detective’s worst nightmare. Or wet dream, all depending on how your head’s wired. And the nightmare is the killer who has no motive. Or to be more precise: who has no motive that is humanly possible to comprehend.’

‘Now you’re just painting a devil on the wall, Inspector Hole, aren’t you.’ Skarre looked round at the others. ‘We don’t know yet whether there is a motive behind these killings or not.’

Tom Waaler cleared his throat.

Moller saw the muscles in Harry’s jaw tighten.

‘He’s right,’ Waaler said.

‘Of course I’m right,’ Skarre said. ‘It’s obvious that -’

‘Shut up, Skarre, Inspector Hole’s right. We’ve worked on these two cases for ten and fifteen days respectively without finding one single thing that might be a connection between these murder victims. And when the only connection between the victims is the way they were dispatched, the rituals and things that look like coded messages, then we begin to think about a word that I suggest we don’t say out loud yet, but all of us have at the back of our minds. I also suggest that Skarre and the other new boys from college keep their mouths shut from now on and open their ears when Inspector Hole speaks.’

The room went quiet.

Moller saw Harry staring at Waaler.

‘To sum up,’ Moller said, ‘we’re trying to keep two thoughts in our minds at the same time. On the one hand, we are working systematically as if these were two run-of-the-mill killings. On the other hand, we are painting a big, fat, nasty devil on the wall. No-one else speaks to the press except me. The next meeting is at five. Now get cracking.’

The man in the spotlight was elegantly dressed in tweeds, holding a Sherlock Holmes pipe and rocking on his heels as he looked upon the woman in rags in front of him with a sympathetic expression.

‘How much do you propose to pay me for the lessons?’

The woman in rags threw back her head and put her hands on her hips.

‘Oh, I know what’s right. A lady friend of mine gets French lessons for eighteen pence an hour from a real French gentleman. Well, you wouldn’t have the face to ask me the same for teaching me my own language as you would for French; so I won’t give more than a shilling. Take it or leave it.’

Wilhelm Barli sat in the twelfth row and let his tears flow freely. He could feel them running down his neck and in under his silk Thai shirt, over his chest; he felt the salt make his nipples smart before the tears continued down over his stomach.

They would not stop.

He held a hand in front of his mouth so that his sobs would not distract the actors or the stage director in the fifth row.

He gave a start when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned round and saw a tall man towering over him. A premonition rooted him to his chair.