At the age of almost twenty-seven, Vanja and Kristina’s son had somehow inexplicably run off the road. On roller skis, during one training session of an endless number of training sessions. Up by Skar, to all appearances, he had turned and embarked on his return journey down to the city. It was not far. The details surrounding the accident were still extremely unclear, as the policeman had explained last night. Haakon had sustained a head injury and apparently fractured his arm, but neither of these was sufficient to kill anyone. The stream he had been lying in was barely half a metre deep at most, but his body had been found face down. Drowning was the probable cause of death. That was how it looked at present, the inspector had carefully and repeatedly maintained.

We would have to wait and see.

Selma stood up again and tried to make her way out. It was difficult; the surge of journalists and photographers and other people with more or less loose connections to ski sports was never-ending. The ubiquitous Sølve Bang traipsed around at the front, adjusting the bouquets of flowers, and speaking in a quiet, earnest voice to the people seated in the front row.

A caricaturist had once depicted Sølve Bang as Batman’s archfiend the Penguin. The drawing was so like the original and so exquisitely malicious that the artist had been sued for defamation. The conflict had fortunately never reached a courtroom. It didn’t even get to the stage of reconciliation.

It had just evaporated, after Selma had explained as calmly as she could, one or two things about freedom of speech in general and caricatures in particular to her exalted as well as offended client. Sølve Bang had never paid her for that work. But he had at least given up.

Selma was not the only person who had difficulty understanding the man’s influence at the Norwegian Cross-Country Skiing Federation. He had one or two formal duties, such as being on the Selection Committee and the Ethics Board, but none of these corresponded with his true position and power.

The way he looked now, no one would believe he was once one of the world’s greatest cross-country skiing talents.

At the age of sixteen years and nine months, Sølve Bang had won a World Cup race for seniors. Ahead of Koch, Wassberg and Harri Kirvesniemi, the best skiers of the 1982 season. The three veterans had all been slightly miffed that the young lad had even been allowed the chance to have a start number on his chest. He was far too young.