Knut Nilssen was at the foot of the garden. She registered that he was left-handed. The butt of the rifle was leaning on his left shoulder, allowing him to catch sight of her easily if he hadn’t already been prepared to shoot, with his left eye fixed on the gun sight.

‘Say it!’ Knut Nilssen bellowed his command once again and came closer.

His thick, silver-grey hair fluttered in the wind.

Jan raised his hands a bit higher.

‘I didn’t kill him. We didn’t kill him. We tormented him, and I broke his skis. I’m really sorry about that. Terribly sorry, Knut. Put down your gun, and then we can …’

Knut walked another three steps forward, without lowering his weapon.

‘You killed Arne. You took everything I had from me. Say it!‘

Now he was screaming. Selma tried to move closer, but she had no idea what she could do. Her brain was empty. She wasn’t cold, felt nothing in fact, but was struggling with all her might to come up with a plan to do something in this absurd tableau in which Jan Morell might be shot at any moment by a big game rifle on his own frozen lawn in the month of December.

The elk emerged from the woods.

The elk heifer of Vettakollen. A city elk, one of the animals that fed on old apples and carrots left out for them in big gardens. She was used to people, but wary and alert all the same. She was seventeen months old and had managed on her own since spring. No bull had covered her in autumn, she stayed close to the residential area, and human beings had never done her any harm. She didn’t like them, but she was curious and extremely hungry. There were carrots here. Usually there were carrots here, and apples that were still juicy and sweet lying on the ground.

‘Say it!’ Knut Nilssen bawled as he came even closer.

The heifer froze on the spot, Selma saw, but she did not turn away. There were now only about twenty-five metres separating the two men. Knut couldn’t possibly miss if he pulled the trigger.

Jan should have done as Knut asked. Jan ought to say it, Selma thought, he must say what he had to, and hope it would be enough. She opened her mouth to shout, but her voice had gone, and the elk heifer was on the move again. Slowly, with a characteristic, majestic gait, the animal stepped across the grass, heading straight for Selma. The carrots and the apple tree were in the middle of the distance between them. Knut still stood with his rifle ready to fire, left-handed, with his body turned towards Selma and his right eye shut.

‘I killed Arne Nilssen,’ Jan Morell said.