A middle-aged spinsterish-looking bird told us that the sanatorium was a couple of kilometres out along the coast road southwards. Big yellow house. And she was sorry the island taxi wasn't around – would we like her to phone hither and yon to try and find it?

I said, 'Nevermind. But if it comes, send it on after us.'

T will. Does Doctor Rasmussen know you are coming, or shall I ring to him?'

'He knows,' I said quickly. And we started walking.

The road was narrow – barely wider than a car – but properly made up. And around us, the land was lush and green and neat and, in a small way, prosperous. Once we were clear of the village it became a series of small holdings, some with rows of well-kept greenhouses, others with a couple of cows or a small flock of sheep. How they could scratch even a living out of plots that size I couldn't guess, but every house was in good repair and freshly painted.

Kari explained, 'They are all also fishermen, in winter. For prawns and lobsters as well.' Well, maybe that told me something. Certainly we passed three or four tiny landing-places, with or without a small fishing-boat moored alongside.

It took about half an hour to the sanatorium itself, a three-storey-and-semi-basement wooden house with a steeply pitched tile roof built, at a guess, by a rich Victorian family. It was painted primrose yellow, with the carved bits under the eaves and the balustrades of the roofed porch that ran the width of the front picked out in white.

There was a Volkswagen Microbus painted up as an ambulance standing in the gravel drive, a Saab 99 parked around the side of the house. We walked up the half-dozen wooden steps on to the porch and I rang the bell. There were a couple of weather-worn old rocking-chairs out there, where maybe you sat on a summer evening and dreamed of the dry martinis and whisky sours gone by for ever. Or maybe not; when you got close to the house, you could see that every window, right to the top, was barred.

The door opened with a complicated clicking and clacking of locks and a matronly woman in crisp white uniform stared woodenly out at us.

Kari said something quick in Norwegian, then introduced me. No handshake, just a brief starched nod. Then we switched to English.

'We would like to visit Engineer Nygaard,' the girl explained. 'We are friends.'

'We do not have visitors in the morning.'

'We have come from Bergen,' Kari explained.

'If you had telephoned you would have been told. You should have telephoned.'

I chipped in my piece, 'Sorry, that's my fault. I've come from London in a bit of a hurry. Can I have a word with Doctor Rasmussen?'

Somewhere inside the house somebody screamed. Not just in pain; a long, wavering, sobbing howl of simple terror that practically tore off my scalp.

But not with matron. She cocked her head and listened thoughtfully, like somebody trying to identify a tricky bird-call. Feet clattered on the stairs and a door slammed.

She sighed briefly. 'I will see if the doctor can speak with you. But he is very busy. Please to come in and wait.'

We waited in a big, bright, well-furnished room that still had that impersonal look you get in even the best of doctors' waiting-rooms. The pile of magazines, the chairs arranged so you didn't have to chat to anybody else waiting there, the carefully placed ashtrays.

We waited. Kari said in a carefully hushed voice, 'Perhaps we should have telephoned."

'I doubt it. They'd just have told us not to come at any time yet.'

It was another five minutes before Dr Rasmussen came in. He must have been about fifty, but very fit with it: deep-chested and solid-shouldered, with a bouncy gait and a rich tan on his knobbly face. He wore a short-sleeved white coat showing thick forearms covered with fine blond hairs, though the top of his head was a careful arrangement of thin grey.

This time we shook hands. He said, 'I am sorry you have come all this way for nothing. If you had rung up, I could have told you.'

'I wouldn't say it was for nothing, Doctor. At least we've established that Engineer Nygaard is still alive. I suppose he still is?'

He looked briefly startled, then laughed jovially. 'Of course. Did you really come all this way to prove that?'

'Maybe. When an elderly man in not very good health suddenly vanishes without telling somebody who's been helping look after him-' I waved a hand at Kari '-or his ex-employer, who's paying his pension, the least anybody can do is get a bit worried. There's an obvious chance that he's fallen into the harbour or frozen to death sleeping it off under a bush in the park.'

'I understand. Naturally a man in his state is rather careless about leaving messages. I must see that he writes letters to everybody who is concerned with him.'

'It runs to quite a number by now. You did know he was a star witness in a big court case? '

Kari was looking at me with a slightly schoolmarmish frown.

Rasmussen just nodded. 'He did tell me something. One does not know what to believe with such cases.' He turned to Kari. 'You were very clever to find him here, Froken Skagen. Or did he remember enough to leave a message with somebody?'

I said quickly, 'We were very clever. Can we have just a quick word with him so that I can tell my superiors in London that he is still alive and… as well as can be expected?'

The grin was gone now. 'We allow no visitors in the morning, Herr Card. And for Herr Nygaard, at his stage of treatment, we allow no visitors at all. You must understand that.'

'What stage is he at by now? '

'I cannot discuss a patient's symptoms, of course.'

'Good for you, Doctor. But I've also got the shreds of professional ethics. You don't discuss a patient. I don't tell anybody he's still alive unless I've seen him.'

I started buttoning my coat.

His big, muscular face was twitching with indecision. Finally he said, 'Wait, please,' did an about-turn, and strode out.

Kari whispered, 'What is happening?'

I shrugged, but I unbuttoned my coat again and sat down.

After a few minutes Rasmussen came back. He looked calm but serious. 'You may see him for a moment only. To reassure yourself. After that I hope you will leave me to complete the cure in peace.'

We followed him out into the hall and up a flight of broad, shallow stairs, with a big window at the turn. Even that was covered with a heavy wire mesh.

'Do many of them try to jump?' I asked cheerfully.

'Not from here. That comes later,' he said soberly. 'It is still about seven per cent that succeed.'

Kari was looking puzzled. 'Seven per cent? Of what? '

Rasmussen said, 'Cured male alcoholics who commit suicide – whosucceed, not just who try. We can – often – take away the drinking. We cannot put back what he has drunk away. A marriage, a family, a fortune, sometimes.'

Kari frowned. Rasmussen added, 'But, of course, some say an alcoholic is trying to commit suicide, subconsciously, by his drinking. So perhaps I meet only those who have suicidal tendencies already.'

I said, 'Perhaps you're saving ninety-three per cent rather than losing seven, you mean? Pretty good, that.'

He gave me a disapproving glance. 'You are forgetting those who fail to be cured.'

'Ah, yes.'

The corridor was broad and well lit and empty of furniture except for a couple of the metal tea-trolleys that you see carrying drugs and stuff around in hospitals. And the doors weren't the original ones. These were painted in nice bright colours, but it didn't hide their blank solidity, the heavy lock, the central port-hole at eye level.

Rasmussen peered in through one, then motioned me up to take a look.

Nygaard was lying in the bed, on his back with his mouth open, apparently asleep. Around him was a room such as you'd expect in a private sanatorium: walls freshly painted a gloss primrose, a heavy wooden wardrobe and cupboard, soft chair for visitors, a water-bottle, mug, and flower vase all in plastic. No glass for Dr Rasmussen's patients. No seven per cent while in his care.