He was so little when it had all happened. Everything became chaos and darkness, and all of a sudden he was moved away. He had no idea who they were, the three boys he had seen in the woods. The three nameless skiers who had sealed his family’s fate one day after Christmas in 1977 had long ago been reduced to faceless, vague contours. The only thing he remembered after all those years was a ski helmet, until a photograph in a newspaper, almost exactly forty years later, gave him the answer to the question he had never quite dared to ask.

Fate decreed it. The black Madshus skis in the Ski Museum, with the King and Jan Morell laughing in front of the display case, was his reward for all those silent years.

A memory had been unleashed.

It was pure karma.

A fortnight of thorough searching later, he had found the names of the other boys, in a photograph in the National Library database, where there were complete annual volumes from the time when Dagsavisen had been called Arbeiderbladet. Jan Morell was even wearing the ski helmet and looked unmistakable.

The boys looked happy in the picture.

One of them was laughing. The others were smiling. They were grinning at the photographer after completing the Grenaderløpet ski race from Hakadal to Asker.

The man with the shock of silver hair sat down on one of the chairs.

N was written on the table in front of him.

North, where according to the manuscript he was supposed to sit, but the script was now a mess, and he couldn’t find the ending.

It had all been karma.

Nearly everything. It had been so easy. So unexpectedly easy. Even the bank account numbers that he hadn’t quite known how to get hold of, had beckoned to him like the working girls in Bankplassen when the Finance Director’s door had been left open. It had taken him less than a minute to find the list of accounts for the entire Selhus family; it had been in the top, lockable drawer of the desk. Which had been left unlocked.

The man was only going to pay some accounts, after all.

Karma.

He already had Haakon Holm-Vegge’s bank details, from the repayment of a casual loan during a trip eighteen months ago. If the auditor or anyone employed in the finance department, contrary to expectation, didn’t uncover what Arnulf had apparently done, then the punctilious, argumentative skier with a bachelor’s degree in economics would very likely sound the alarm.

If even he overlooked Arnulf’s transgressions, then the man with the grey hair would rouse the sleeping dog himself. He would alert Jan Morell.

Anonymously, of course.

Creating the fake invoices had been a piece of cake.