Selma sat down.

‘Yes, where do we stand.’

‘Not a single millimetre closer to an explanation of what has happened, I’m afraid.’

‘Maybe not. But we have a good deal of information. We have to start putting our facts in order.’

Leaning forward in the chair, Selma sat with her elbow leaning on her knee. She tried to catch his eye, but it was trained on something on the dark horizon to the south-west.

‘Have you anything as archaic as a flipchart in this hi-tech palace?’ she queried.

He looked as if she had asked for a weaving loom.

‘A flipchart?’ he repeated. ‘Er … no. But we have … do you want something to write on?’

‘Yes. Something big. A board, maybe? A whiteboard?’

‘No. But we have this.’

He got up stiffly.

‘I played tennis yesterday,’ he mumbled as he rubbed his thigh. ‘Just had to fill my mind with something else for a couple of hours. And arrived home to hell on earth. Look at this.’

In the middle of the pale unit that stretched along the entire inner wall of the office was a cupboard. Almost two metres wide and one metre high, Selma estimated. Jan picked up a remote control. The double doors slid to either side with a humming sound. An enormous flat screen appeared. One more touch of the keypad and a glass surface lit up in an attractive shade of egg-white.

‘You can use this,’ Jan told Selma, handing her a little metal rod. ‘Use this as you would a marker pen.’

Selma tentatively wrote Hege on the left of the screen.

‘My goodness. I’ve never seen one of these before.’

‘There’s a button in the middle of the pen. It lets you change colour.’

Haakon, Selma wrote on the other side of the screen, and drew a blue circle around both names.

‘Sit down, Jan.’

He turned his chair to face the electronic board. Replenished his whisky glass and sat down obediently.

‘The biggest change since last Thursday is obvious,’ she began firmly. ‘There’s been another doping case. We really can’t ignore that. But what is actually the similarity between Hege and Haakon?’

Such a deep frown appeared on Jan’s forehead it looked as if his eyebrows had merged.

‘They are the two best cross-country skiers in the world,’ he said tersely. ‘They are both Norwegian, they would both have won more medals if they went to PyeongChang. They are both in their twenties, they were both already good as juniors. Shall I go on?’

Selma drew a line between the two circled names.

‘No, thanks. Two cross-country skiers. Damn good ones. Norwegian. Medal candidates at the Winter Olympics. Of course, it could be that someone is out to attack them for that very reason. Either as individuals or as representatives of Norway.’

NORWAY, she wrote in big, red letters at the top of the screen.