She came down the steps, ran over the gravel laughing and into Olaug’s embrace.

‘I was so worried about you,’ Olaug said.

‘Oh?’ Ina said with surprise in her voice. ‘We just stayed in the log cabin a little longer than we’d planned. It is a holiday, you know.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Olaug said, squeezing her tight.

The dog, an English setter, let itself get carried away by the pleasure of being reunited and it jumped up and put its paws on Olaug’s back.

‘Thea!’ the man said. ‘Sit!’

Thea sat.

‘And who’s this?’ Olaug asked, finally releasing Ina.

‘This is Terje Rye.’ Ina’s cheeks glowed in the dusk. ‘My fiance.’

‘Goodness me,’ Olaug said, clapping her hands together.

The man put his hand forward with a broad smile. He was no picture. Snub nose, wispy hair and closeset eyes. But he had an open, direct look that Olaug liked.

‘Nice to meet you,’ he said.

‘Nice to meet you, too,’ Olaug said, hoping the darkness would conceal her tears.

Toya Harang didn’t notice the smell until they were well up Josefines gate.

She examined the taxi driver suspiciously. He was dark-skinned, but he certainly wasn’t an African or she wouldn’t have dared enter the taxi. It wasn’t that she was a racist; it was just all the talk about statistics.

What was the smell though?

She caught the driver’s glance in the mirror. Had she dressed too provocatively? Was the red blouse cut too low? The skirt with the slit up the side over her cowboy boots too short? She pursued another, more pleasant, thought. He had recognised her from the splash in today’s papers with all the big pictures of her. ‘ TOYA HARANG: NEW QUEEN OF MUSICALS,’ the headline read. True, the reviewer in Dagbladet had called her ‘gauche but charming’ and said that she was more convincing as Eliza the flowerseller than as the society lady that Professor Higgins had turned her into, but the reviewers were all agreed that she could sing and dance the braids off anyone around. There. What would Lisbeth have said to that?

‘Party?’ the driver asked.

‘Sort of,’ Toya said.

A party for two, she thought. A party to Venus and… What was it again, what was the other name he had said? Well, Venus was her, anyway. He had come up to her during the celebrations after opening night was over and whispered in her ear that he was one of her secret admirers. Then he invited her back to his place tonight. He had not bothered to disguise his intentions and she ought to have said no. For decency’s sake she ought to have said no.

‘That’ll be nice,’ the driver said.

Decency and no. She could still smell the silo and the dust from the straw, and see her father’s belt cutting through the stripes of light which fell through cracks between the slats in the barn as he tried to beat it into her. Decency and no. And she could still feel her mother’s hand stroking her hair in the kitchen afterwards as she asked her why she could not be like Lisbeth. Quiet and clever. One day Toya had torn herself away and said that she was the way she was and she must have inherited it from her father and hadn’t she seen him mounting Lisbeth like a sow in the sty, or didn’t Mother know about that? Toya had watched her mother’s face change, not because her mother didn’t know that it was lies, but because she knew now that Toya would not shy away from using any weapon at her disposal to harm them. Then Toya had screamed as loudly as she could that she hated them all and her father had come in from the sitting room with the newspaper in his hand and she could see on their faces that they knew that she was not lying now. Did she still hate them now that they had gone? She didn’t know. No. Nowadays she didn’t hate anyone. That wasn’t why she was doing what she was doing. She was doing it for the fun of it. For indecency and yes. And because it was so irresistibly forbidden.

She gave the driver 200 kroner and a smile and told him to keep the change, despite the smell in the car. It was only when the taxi had driven away that she realised why the driver had been staring in his mirror. The smell had not come from him, but from her.

‘Bloody hell!’

She scraped the leather sole of her high-heeled cowboy boot against the pavement, making brown stripes. She searched around for a puddle, but there had not been one in Oslo for close to five weeks. She gave up and went to the door and rang the bell.

‘Yes?’

‘This is Venus,’ she cooed.

She smiled to herself.

‘And this is Pygmalion,’ the voice said.

That was the one!

There was a buzz in the door lock. She hesitated for a second. Last chance to retreat. She flicked back her hair and pulled open the door.

He was standing in the doorway with a drink in one hand waiting for her.

‘Did you do as I said?’ he asked. ‘You didn’t tell anyone where you were going?’

‘No, are you crazy?’

She rolled her eyes.

‘Maybe,’ he said opening the door wide. ‘Come in and say hello to Galatea.’

She laughed even though she hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. She laughed even though she knew something awful was about to happen.

Harry found a place to park some way down Markveien, switched off the engine and got out of the car. He lit up and had a quick recce. The streets were deserted. It seemed as if people had retired indoors. The innocent white clouds from the afternoon had spread out to form a blue-grey wall-to-wall carpet in the sky.

He followed the graffiti-covered house fronts until he stood outside the door. Just the filter remained on his cigarette and he threw it away. He rang and waited. It was so muggy that the palms of his hands were sweating. Or was it terror? He looked at his watch and took note of the time.

‘Yes?’ The voice sounded irritated.

‘Good evening. It’s Harry Hole.’

No answer.

‘From the police,’ he added.

‘Of course. Sorry, my mind was on something else. Come in.’

The door buzzed.

Harry took the steps slowly.

They stood waiting in the door for him, both of them.

‘Oh no,’ Ruth said. ‘All hell’s about to break loose.’

Harry stood on the landing in front of them.

‘The rain,’ the Trondheim Eagle added by way of explanation.

‘Oh, I see.’ Harry dried his palms on his trousers.

‘How can we help you, Inspector?’

‘You can help me to catch the Courier Killer,’ Harry said.

Toya lay in a foetal position in the middle of the bed staring at herself in the mirror on the wardrobe door, which hung open against the wall. She listened to the shower from the lower floor. He was washing the smell of her off him. She rolled over. The waterbed gently moulded itself to her body. She looked at the photo. They were smiling at the camera. They were on holiday. In France maybe. She ran her fingers over the cool duvet cover. His body had also been cold. Cold and hard and muscular for someone so old. Particularly his backside and thighs. It was because he had been a dancer, he said. He had trained his muscles every day for 15 years. They would never disappear.

Toya’s attention was caught by the black belt in his trousers lying on the floor.

Fifteen years. They would never disappear.

She rolled over onto her back, pushed herself up higher in the bed and heard the water gurgle on the inside of the rubber mattress. But now everything would be different. Toya was clever now. A good girl. Just the way Daddy and Mummy wanted. She was Lisbeth now.

Toya rested her head against the wall and sank deeper. Something was tickling her between the shoulder blades. It was like lying in a boat on the river. She lay there thinking.

Wilhelm had asked her if she would use a dildo while he watched. She had gone along with it. Good girl. He opened his toolbox. She closed her eyes, but still she had seen the stripes of light – the light through the cracks between the slats in the barn – on the inside of her eyelids. Then when he came in her mouth, it tasted of silo, but she didn’t say anything. Clever girl.