The mobile was an old Nokia 1100, and he’d received it as a present. It contained one saved phone number, and he used it very rarely. Selma was the one who had insisted on giving him the opportunity to contact her. Cordless phones were dangerous, he was well aware of that, but Selma had guaranteed that this particular model was safer than any other. It was nonsense, of course, since in the first place mobile phones emitted cancer-producing radiation, and secondly they were under surveillance by the Norwegian security services and the CIA, one and all. After a great deal of persuasion, he had nevertheless gone along with ‘taking care of it’, as she had put it; it could hardly cause any harm when he almost never switched it on. She should have been here at ten p.m., the message confirmed. It was now twenty-three minutes to eleven.

Selma was the only one he had.

And there she came.

Einar loved the way she walked. Supple, as if she were constantly ready to break into a run. In the glow from the Maxbo billboards at the foot of the interchange and the floodlights on the football field to the north-east, he could see her nimbly jumping from one boulder to the next. They were slippery these days, he had experienced that for himself last night when he had fallen and given himself a nasty knock on the way home from a round of begging, but Selma moved like a dancer.

She was born in 1966, he knew. Fifty years old last September.

Selma moved as if she were twenty-five.

‘Hi, Einar. Sorry I’m a bit late.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said with a smile. ‘At least you came, Mariska.’

She returned his smile and began to root around in the bag she carried in her right hand.

‘Here. A fully charged power bank. Give me the empty one, please.’

Einar produced the heavy little energy supply for his mobile phone and gave it to her in exchange. Both the empty one and the full one were encased in bubble wrap and a sock.

‘And here you are,’ she said, sitting down as she unpacked a sandwich from Deli de Luca. ‘Cheese and ham with an extra dollop of red pepper. Sorry, but I didn’t have time to fill a thermos of coffee, so …’

She handed him a giant-sized cardboard beaker wrapped in napkins and sealed with tape.

‘Probably not hot any more.’

‘Doesn’t matter. What’s wrong?’

‘Wrong?’

‘Yes. You’ve been so stressed out lately. Now there’s definitely something bothering you.’

‘No, there’s not.’

‘I recognize that look of yours. Is it something at work?’

He guzzled down half the contents of the beaker without waiting for an answer.

‘No, of course not,’ she said casually as he drank. ‘Just lots to do.’

‘And the family?’

‘Absolutely fine. The kids are so busy I hardly see them. It’s only Johannes living at home these days. He’s got a lot on his plate. You know how it is.’