‘You’ll stay,’ he said, smiling, and Selma saw that the mucous membrane in his mouth was a deep shade of red. ‘You’ll stay with me. Thank you.’

His eyes slid shut.

Selma put her hand on his cheek, between the unruly beard and his eyes. He was burning hot. She took out three Paracet and sacrificed the Pepsi Max she had in reserve in her bag.

‘Take these,’ she said, handing him the tablets and the bottle.

He put the three pills on his tongue, washed them down with cola, and smiled cheerfully.

‘Make sure the gypsies don’t get me,’ he muttered.

Einar Falsen should be in hospital, but Selma knew he would never go. During all his years as a free spirit and down-and-out, she had only once managed to persuade him to accompany her to see a doctor. He had fractured a finger. There had been an unbelievable commotion. The idea that the radiographer might microchip him to gain control over his thoughts had come like a bolt from the blue. The entire time until Einar was to go in for an X-ray, he had behaved reasonably well. In exemplary fashion, in fact. Done as Selma told him and allowed the doctor to examine him. Answered questions.

It had ended with the radiographer taking a week’s sick leave and had given Selma a horrendous task to prevent criminal charges being brought.

‘Just go to sleep,’ she whispered.

Einar really ought to be in hospital, but that wasn’t going to happen. On the rare occasions when he was really unwell, or when the winter was unusually harsh, she had found a place for him in a shelter. He had stayed there for three days at most, and all he did was to watch episode after episode of Law & Order SVU in the common room until he left as soon as his legs could carry him.

Moving him would be pointless. He could sleep off the infection and the madness, as he had done before, or else he could die in the course of the night.

Einar Falsen had once been a police officer. An extremely capable police officer. At the beginning of the noughties he had led a special group combating the sexual abuse of children. The internet had seriously begun to be an arena for crimes, and the battle had to be intensified. A man was brought in following a formal complaint by two devastated couples in Romsås. Their children, a boy of five and a girl of eight, had shown a worrying change in behaviour in the past few weeks. Both had in the end told them in snatches what the detainee had done. The children knew him only as Uncle Bjørn.

Uncle Bjørn had given them lots of things. But he had also taken a great deal from them, and when the police received the complaints, they conducted an immediate search of the man’s residence. His name was actually Anders and he was in his early forties. Single and childless.