Selma glanced over her shoulder. The café was almost deserted. Breakfast time was over, and there was still a while until lunch started. An elderly woman sat on her own at a table a few metres away from them, reading a book while her tea grew cold. She had been sitting there before Selma arrived, and seemed totally engrossed. Also, she had a hearing aid, Selma noticed. The school pupils had disappeared. Away on the other side of the café, nearest to the window overlooking Åsengata, sat a postnatal group of five women. Two of their babies were screaming as if possessed.

Lars Winther had taken out an iPad and found his way to the notepad app. His fingers hovered only millimetres above the display.

‘Haakon was given a drugs test last Monday,’ Selma said, so softly she was almost whispering. ‘And the results are already available. The test was negative.’

The journalist did not start writing. His fingers still hung like claws above the keypad.

‘What?’

‘You heard what I said.’

‘Last Monday? He was clean last Monday? Then that means …’

It was obviously necessary to give this some thought before drawing a conclusion.

‘That means at some time between last Monday and last Friday he somehow ingested Clostebol,’ Selma said to help him out. ‘And in such tiny quantities that it definitely can’t have been in order to obtain any performance-enhancing effect. The time window is only four days.’

‘But … what would be the point of that?’

Selma stared at him. Did not answer. When he hadn’t spoken in almost half a minute, she gave him a condescending smile.

‘There’s no point in that kind of use of Clostebol,’ she said. ‘None whatsoever. So either it’s happened by accident, or else he’s been sabotaged.’

‘Sabotaged? Sabotaged?’

His whisper morphed into a hiss.

‘Are you telling me that someone intended to … harm Haakon Holm-Vegge? Intentionally?’