'Herr Nygaard first came here when? '

'In… before Christmas.'

'December? You don't remember the exact date?'

'No-o.'

Kari was still standing up, hardly daring to move for fear of knocking something over. I asked her, 'Do you confirm that he came in December?'

She nodded.'Ja.'

'Good.' I wrote it down. 'And he left when?'

Ruud frowned, coughed, and muttered, 'On Saturday.'

'Do you remember if it was morning or afternoon?'

He gave me a resentful glance. 'Morning.'

'Good.' I wrote that down, too. 'Was he alone?'

'What is this about?' A spat of the old anger – maybe of the old concern.

'Only a statement. But you don't know if he went alone or not? – it doesn't much matter.'

There was a long thick silence. Then Kari sat gently on the arm of a green velvet sofa and it creaked like a jungle bird. Ruud growled, 'I think there was an auto.'

'Taxi?'

'I do not know.' Getting stubborn, now.

So, very politely and uninterestedly, I asked, 'Did he carry his own luggage?'

After another pause, he said, 'I do not know.' I heard Kari give a prim little gasp at the obvious lie.

But I played satisfied; actually, I was – so far. 'Fine,' I said briskly, and held up the paper and read from it. ' "Herr Nygaard came to the Gulbrandsen's Seamen's Home last December. He left last Saturday morning. I did not see him go. I do not know where he has gone." Is that correct?'

'I did not say about where he has gone.'

'Well, do you know?'

A low reluctant growl, 'No.'

'Then this is correct. Will you sign, please?'

I gave him the paper and pen. He took them, peered at the paper and then back at me. 'Why should I sign?'

'Isn't it true?'

'Ja, but…'

'We're all going to sign. We're witnesses.'

'Witness? Of what?' The eyes were really hunted now, flickering from one to the other of us and finding no hiding place.

'The truth, you said.'

He crunched the paper, hurled it into a corner, and said something. Kari stiffened, so it must have been quite an interesting something. But it didn't gain him any sympathy.

I stood up. 'It doesn't matter. We both agree on what he said, I think?' The girl nodded; I went on, 'Good. That's all, then, Herr Ruud. Thank you very much. You'll probably hear something before the end of today.' And I moved towards the door.

Ruud said, 'Wait. I…"

I turned back slowly. 'Well?'

T think he went with a doctor.'

'Oh, yes? Whereto?'

'The home for… for drinking, you understand?'

'Alcoholics' home, you mean? Where?'

'On Saevarstad.'

'Never heard of it.'

Kari said, 'It is a small island near Stavanger.'

'Good.' I sat down again and got out another piece of paper.

As we drove away, Kari asked, 'But why did you write it all down again and make him sign?'

'Just to impress him. Now he can never say it wasn't him told us. And that might stop him telling somebody that we've found out. If that matters.'

'I see.' She thought this over. 'You are a bit cruel.*

'Are you glad we know, or not?'

When she didn't answer, I asked, 'How do you get to Stavanger from here?'

'You are going? There is a hydrofoil – but I think it is too late, now. There is an aeroplane.'

'Good. Back to the terminal, then, please."

She said thoughtfully, 'I think I will come, too. I have an aunt who lives near there.'

'Fine.' I was surprised, though. 'But what about the university?'

'The term ends tomorrow. And I can say my aunt is ill. She is, often. But can you lend me the money for the ticket?'

'I owe it you, after all this driving around." But of course she wasn't takingthat. Anyway, we caught the six-thirty-five plane.

Stavanger is another port, smaller than Bergen, just a hundred airline miles south. And since it was dark by the time we got into the town itself, that was about all I knew or could see. But Kari knew her way around; we took a taxi out to the ferry quayside and found there was one ferry still to go out to Saevarstad – but not another coming back. If we went now, we were stuck for the night on an island that couldn't be two miles long, and not even a youth hostel. I wanted more room for manoeuvre than that.

So I booked in at the Victoria Hotel, right down on the waterfront, and Kari rang her aunt, then caught a local train to spend the night at Sandnes – another small town about ten miles up the fjord. She'd pick me up at nine in the morning.

With her gone, I could take a serious drink in comfort, so I did that, while the hotel put through a call to Willie. The Victoria suited its name: old-fashioned, comfortable, ceilings as high as its principles, and polite with it. They said how terribly sorry they were they couldn't find Mr Winslow, but it was promised he'd ring back. So I took a bath and he rang back in the middle of that.

'Hello – Mr Card? James? Is it you, old boy? You got to Norway all right, then, but what are you doing in Stavanger?'

'Various complications, chum. Nygaard's down near here. I 'hope to find him tomorrow.'

'I see. Good, what? But the log's all right, is it?'

I must have stayed silent too long, because he said, 'I say, it is all right, isn't it?'

'Let's say I know who's got it.'

'Oh, crikey.' A humming pause. 'It sounds as if I'd better pop across, what?'

'You're welcome. I'm at the Victoria.'

Til be there by lunchtime or so.'

I thought of going back to my bath, but then put in a call to my London answering service – just in case. There was the usual amount of communicational fluff, but also a message from Draper; he'd heard that Pat Kavanagh was last heard of working for Dave Tanner.

Now he tells me.

It was a glittering blue morning; the sun warm but not yet the air. I finished breakfast early and got out for a quick stroll along the quayside before Kari arrived. Past the old wooden warehouses, the red-tiled chandlers' shops, through the bright umbrellas of the flower and vegetable market and into the sudden aroma of the fish-market. But it wasn't until then that I'd realised the weird thing: there'd been no salt sea smell in the air. That was taking the Scandinavian passion for cleanliness a bit far.

Kari was there just before nine and we walked out around the quay to the north side, where the ferries started. The place was like Piccadilly Circus on water, with every size of ferry loading cars and trucks for trips half a mile across the bay or fifty miles up the coast, 'It is how we travel in Norway,' she said. 'Do you know how long it would take me to drive to Bergen? Three days, and even that would need one ferry crossing, and I cannot do it now anyway because the roads are blocked with snow.'

Just beside us, a scruffy little trawler-shaped boat was unloading a whole family, furniture, potted plants, and cat. A removal van. Why not?

We walked aboard our own boat, one of the smaller jobs, fitted to carry about six cars and maybe forty passengers. It did a regular round tour of the smaller islands up to about ten miles away; we sat down on a wooden bench and bought tickets off the conductor. The romance of the Viking country.

Saevarstad, according to the tourist map I'd nicked from the hotel, was about five miles away, a kidney-shaped blob marked for a church and a circuit road that couldn't have been more than four miles in all. We weaved towards it, never seeing a real horizon, never more than half a mile from some other island and stopping briefly at two of them. After three-quarters of an hour, we were there.

It looked like a neat little wooden village with the quay itself as the village square. There were a few parked cars and trucks, a storage shed, a heap of crates and oil drums, and two shops. One was half hardware, half ship's chandler for the dozen or so motorboats moored at the quayside, the other the post office and everything else. It was the only one open, so we started there.