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‘And now you’re going to die, nameless and alone. You’ll be forgotten and disappear. While I, the spawn of your loins, the sinful fruit of your lust, will see my name shine in the heavens. You hear me, Uncle Fredric? Doesn’t it sound poetic? I’ve written all that down in my diary, it’s important to give the biographers some material to work with, isn’t it?’

He stood up.

‘I doubt I’ll be back. So this is farewell, Uncle.’ He walked to the door, turned. ‘I don’t mean fare well, of course. I hope your journey to hell is anything but.’

Prim shut the door behind him, smiled at a nurse walking towards him and left the nursing home.

The nurse entered the old professor’s room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with a blank expression, but tears were running down his cheeks. That was how it was with the elderly, they lost control of their emotions. Especially the senile. She sniffed. Had he soiled himself? No, it was just that the air in here was stale and smelled of bodily odours and... musk?

She opened a window to air the room.

It was eight in the evening. Terry Våge listened to the metallic whining from the inner courtyard, where the rising wind was making the communal rotary clothes line turn. He had resumed the crime blog. There was so much to write about. Even so, he had been sat staring at the empty white page on the PC screen.

The phone rang.

Maybe it was Dagnija, they’d had a row last night, and she said she wasn’t coming at the weekend. Now she probably regretted it, as usual. He could feel how he hoped it was her.

He looked at the mobile. Unknown number. If it was that phoney from yesterday, he shouldn’t take it, nutcases you had responded to once or twice could be impossible to get rid of. Once — after he had written the truth about The War on Drugs being the most boring band in the world both live and on record — he had been stupid enough to answer a pissed-off fan one time, and had ended up with a pest who phoned, emailed and even collared him at gigs, and whom it took two years of ignoring to shake off.

It continued ringing.

Terry Våge cast another glance at the empty screen. Then he answered the phone.

‘Yeah?’

‘Thanks for coming alone yesterday and waiting on the roof until twenty to ten.’

‘You... were there?’

‘I was watching. I hope you understand that I had to be sure you wouldn’t try and trick me.’

Våge hesitated. ‘Yeah, yeah, OK. But I don’t have time for any more hide-and-seek.’

‘Oh yes you do.’ He heard a small chuckle. ‘But we’ll drop it, Våge. In fact, you’re going to drop everything... right now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re going to go to the end of a road called Toppåsveien in Kolsås as quickly as possible. I’ll call again, I’m not telling you when, it could be in two minutes. If I get an engaged tone, this will be the last time you and I have contact. Understood?’

Våge swallowed. ‘Yes,’ he answered. Because he understood. Understood it was to prevent him from contacting someone, like the police. Understood that this wasn’t a mindless nutjob. Crazy, yes, but not a nutjob.

‘Bring a torch and a camera, Våge. And a weapon if it makes you feel safe. You’re going to find tangible, irrefutable evidence that you’ve been talking to the killer, and you’re free to write about it afterwards. That includes this conversation. Because we want people to believe you this time, don’t we?’

‘What will—’

But the man had hung up.

Harry was lying in Alexandra’s bed, his bare feet sticking out just over the end.

Alexandra was also naked, lying crosswise, with her head on his stomach.

They had made love the night they had been at the Jealousy Bar, and now they had made love again. Now had been better.

He was thinking about Markus Røed. About the fear and hatred in his eyes while he fought for air. The fear had been greater. But had it remained so after he was able to breathe again? In that case — if Røed hadn’t reversed the money transfer — they must have released Lucille by now. As he had been instructed not to try to find her or contact her before the debt was paid, he had decided to wait a couple of days before calling her number. She didn’t have his number or details, so it wasn’t strange he hadn’t heard anything. He had looked up Lucille Owens online and the only hits had been old articles in the Los Angeles Times about the Romeo and Juliet film. Nothing about her being missing or kidnapped. And he had realised what it was they shared, what connected them. It wasn’t the outward danger after what happened in the parking lot. Nor was it that he saw his own mother in Lucille, that she was the woman in the doorway of the classroom or the woman in the hospital bed whom he had a fresh opportunity to save. It was the loneliness. That they were two people who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone noticing.