Harry studied the glow of his cigarette.

‘And I’m a building material?’

Waaler smiled.

‘That’s one way of putting it. But the answer is yes. If you want it. I have alternatives…’

He didn’t complete the sentence, but Harry knew how it ended: ‘… but you don’t.’

Harry took a long drag on his cigarette and asked in a low voice: ‘What if I agree to come on board?’

Waaler raised an eyebrow and fixed Harry with an intent look before answering.

‘You’ll receive your first assignment, which you will carry out on your own and without asking any questions. Everyone before you has done this. As a mark of loyalty.’

‘And it is?’

‘You’ll find that out in good time. But it means burning bridges.’

‘Does it mean breaking Norwegian law?’

‘Probably.’

‘Aha,’ Harry said. ‘So that you’ve got something on me, so that I won’t be tempted to rat on you.’

‘I would perhaps have expressed that in a different way, but you’ve got the idea.’

‘What are we talking about here? Smuggling?’

‘I can’t tell you that yet.’

‘How can you be sure that I’m not a mole from POT or SEFO?’

Waaler leaned further over the railing and pointed down.

‘Do you see her, Harry?’

Harry went to the edge and peered down at the park. People were still lying on the green grass catching the last rays of the sun.

‘Her in the yellow bikini,’ Waaler said. ‘Nice colour for a bikini, isn’t it.’

Harry’s stomach churned, and he stood up straight again.

‘We’re not stupid,’ Waaler said, without taking his eyes off the lawn. ‘We follow the ones we want to join us. She wears well. Smart and independent, from what I can see. But of course she wants what all women want in her position. A man who can provide for her. It’s pure biology. And you don’t have a lot of time. Women like her are not on their own for long.’

Harry’s cigarette fell over the edge. It left behind a stream of sparks.

‘There was a warning about forest fires for all Ostland yesterday,’ Waaler said.

Harry didn’t answer. He just shuddered when he felt Waaler’s hand on his shoulder.

‘Strictly speaking, the deadline has already passed, Harry. But to show how kind we are, I’ll give you two more days. If I don’t hear anything in that time, the offer is rescinded.’

Harry swallowed hard and tried to get out the one word, but his tongue refused to obey and his salivary glands felt like the dry river beds in Africa.

Finally, he managed it.

‘Thanks.’

Beate Lonn enjoyed her work. She like the routines, the security, the knowledge that she was competent, and she knew that the others at the Forensics Institute at Kjolberggata 21A knew that too. Since work was the only thing in her life she considered important, it was reason enough to get up in the morning. Everything else was a musical interlude. She lived in her mother’s house in Oppsal and had the whole of the top floor to herself. They got on extremely well. She had always been Daddy’s girl when he was alive; she assumed that was why she joined the police force, like him. She had no hobbies. Even though she and Halvorsen, the officer Harry shared his office with, had become a sort of couple, she was not convinced about it. She had read in a women’s magazine that this kind of doubt was natural and that you should take risks. Beate didn’t like taking risks. Or being in doubt. That was why she enjoyed her work.

As she was growing up she blushed at the thought that anyone could be thinking about her and she spent most of her time devising different ways to hide. She still blushed, but she had found good places to hide. She could sit for hours inside the worn redbrick walls of Forensics studying fingerprints, ballistics reports, video recordings, comparisons of voices, the analyses of DNA or textile fibres, footprints, blood and an endless number of technical leads which might resolve important, complicated, controversial cases in total peace and quiet. She had also discovered that working was not nearly as dangerous as it seemed. So long as she spoke loudly and clearly and managed to repress her panic about blushing, losing face, her clothes, standing there exposed and full of shame, for what reason she didn’t know. The office in Kjolberggata was her castle; the uniform and her professional duties her mental armour.

The clock showed 12.30 a.m. when the telephone on her office desk rang, interrupting her reading of the laboratory report on Lisbeth Barli’s finger. Her heart began to quicken with fear when she saw on the display that the caller was ringing from an ‘unknown number’. It could only mean that it was him.

‘Beate Lonn.’

It was him. His words came out in a flurry of blows.

‘Why didn’t you ring me about the fingerprints?’

She held her breath for a second before she replied.

‘Harry said he would pass on the message.’

‘Thank you. I received it. Next time, you ring me first. Is that understood?’

Beate gulped. She didn’t know whether out of fear or anger.

‘Fine.’

‘Anything else you told him that you didn’t tell me?’

‘No. Except that I’ve got the results from the lab on what was under the finger we were sent through the post.’

‘Lisbeth Barli’s? And it was?’

‘Excrement.’

‘What?’

‘Pooh.’

‘Thank you very much. I know what it is. Any idea where it came from?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘Correction. Who it came from.’

‘I don’t know for certain, but I can guess.’

‘Would you be so kind…’

‘The excrement contains blood, perhaps from a haemorrhoid. In this particular case, blood group B. Only seven per cent of the country has this blood group. Wilhelm Barli is a registered blood donor. He has -’

‘Right. And what do you conclude from this?’

‘I don’t know,’ Beate said quickly.

‘But you know that the anus is an erogenous zone, Beate? In men and women. Or had you forgotten?’

Beate squeezed her eyes shut. Please don’t let him start again. Not again. It was a long time ago, she had begun to forget, to get it out of her system. But his voice was there, smooth and tough, like snakeskin.

‘You’re good at playing the very ordinary girl, Beate. I like that. I liked it when you pretended you didn’t want to.’

You know something, I know something, no-one else knows anything, she thought.

‘Does Halvorsen do it to you as well as I did?’

‘I’m putting the phone down now,’ Beate said.

His laughter crackled in her ears. She knew it then. There was nowhere to hide. They could find you anywhere, just as they had found the three women where they felt safest. There was no castle. And no armour.

Oystein was sitting in his cab at the taxi rank in Thereses gate and listening to a Rolling Stones tape when the telephone rang.

‘Oslo Ta -’

‘Hi, Oystein. Harry here. Have you got anyone in the car?’

‘Just Mick and Keith.’

‘What?’

‘The world’s greatest band.’

‘Oystein.’

‘Yep?’

‘The Stones are not the world’s greatest band. Not even the world’s second greatest band. What they are is the world’s most overrated band. And it wasn’t Keith or Mick who wrote “Wild Horses”. It was Gram Parsons.’

‘That’s lies and you know it! I’m ringing off -’

‘Hello? Oystein?’

‘Say something nice to me. Quickly.’

‘“Under My Thumb” is not a bad tune. And “Exile On Main Street” has its moments.’

‘Fine. What do you want?’

‘I need help.’

‘It’s three o’clock in the morning. Shouldn’t you be asleep now?’

‘Can’t do it,’ Harry said. ‘I’m terrified every time I close my eyes.’

‘Same nightmare as before?’

‘The listeners’ request from hell.’

‘The stuff with the lift?’

‘I know exactly what’s coming and I’m just as frightened every time. How quickly can you get here?’

‘I don’t like this, Harry.’

‘How quickly?’

Oystein sighed.