She had let him go. Turned her back on him when he needed her most. Rejected him, the way he was always overlooked and rejected by women.

By women he came close to, quietly and always in vain.

By his mother, who had let him move away with his father, far away from everything that was familiar and true.

By Vanja Vegge, when he had finally found someone to talk to. Someone who understood him and listened instead of turning away.

‘First-class cunt,’ he said loudly and harshly in order to bite off a rage so red it made him dizzy.

Leaving behind the chaos of paper, he went down into the basement and opened his gun cabinet. He took out his big game rifle and crossed to the ammunition chest. Grabbed what he needed.

For a minute or two he stood examining the pictures. A large cross was drawn above Morten Karlshaug’s face. That morning, he had hung up a picture of Vanja Vegge beside the three men.

He ran his finger between the photographs. Back and forth. In the end he slammed it down on Arnulf Selhus’s forehead.

‘You first,’ he said. ‘Then the others.’

THE FUNERAL

Ashabby, sparse crowd of people stood outside the little chapel at Østre Gravlund graveyard. It had stopped raining. Fortunately the temperature had still remained on the right side of zero degrees Celsius. All the same, a bitter wind accelerated through Groruddalen, making the mourners at the funeral turn their backs to the north.

It was all over, and two members of the press had managed, despite all the secrecy and bringing forward the appointed time, to find out about the diversionary tactics. The photographers, however, kept a respectful distance from the bleak, box-like building.

Vanja Vegge and Kristina Holm were clutching their order of service leaflets as the coffin containing Haakon’s remains was carried out to a waiting hearse. Psalms had been sung and speeches delivered. Haakon was described as a fantastic partner and father, a considerate son and a brilliant skier of several years standing.

No one had mentioned anything about doping.

Selma had felt ill throughout the service, as she always did at funerals. It was as if the glass globe around her, the barrier that made it completely impossible to be entirely present in other people’s lives, grew larger and thicker on occasions such as this. Naturally, she knew the etiquette. She did everything correctly. Squeezed hands that had to be squeezed and embraced anyone who needed that sort of thing. She had been out in plenty of time and knew that she couldn’t leave until Vanja and Kristina indicated that they wanted to go home. All the same, it was as if all her muscles were urging her to leg it. Death had an insistent proximity, she knew; it created a forced sense of fellowship, an awkward intimacy that only made her feel a strong compulsion to escape as quickly as possible. Besides, funerals were not the place to be when you didn’t even have the ability to cry.