‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said. ‘I’m taking over.’

Neither of them uttered a word for the remainder of the drive.

THE WALL

No. No!

He wasn’t sure whether he thought it or yelled it. The only thing he was focused on was the wall, the wall facing him, the one without the bed and the water hole that wasn’t made of brick.

The room mustn’t get any smaller.

It was already too small, too stifling; it shrank threateningly and had become a coffin he had to escape from. Or die.

His food had just come. He paid hardly any attention to it, didn’t even pick it up. The man out there didn’t wait long. After a few seconds he had pushed the bread roll in through the rectangular hole in the door and let it fall on to the floor before he slammed the hatch shut and locked it.

The mechanism was triggered. The low, rumbling noise sounded distant and yet uncomfortably close at one and the same time.

No. No. No.

It was impossible to breathe. The air felt like water, thick and suffocating; he gasped for oxygen. He stood with his back to the wall and stretched his legs out to the floor as far as he could. He spread his arms out with his palms on the boards he knew were made of plaster, since he had already torn off a lot of it. Although it hadn’t helped in the least, the rough planks below were solid and impossible to break loose. His fingers were sore with splinters, several of which were becoming infected.

He pressed against it.

The machine won.

The wall moved another ten centimetres.

The cell was killing him.

THE LIST

The summary was far longer than Hege had anticipated.

The support set-up alone filled a whole page. After all, the physiotherapists treated her constantly. As a rule Knut Nilssen, the best and oldest of them all. The two others had also had the opportunity to get close to her on a host of occasions. The same applied to Stian Bach, at least prior to the incident in Italy, and later the assistant doctor, Vibeke Stenshaug. The wax technicians, seventeen of them in total, were often in close proximity and moreover they had an enormous bus full of chemicals.

It was impossible to sleep after Selma Falck had left her just after midnight the day before yesterday. The footprints on the lawn had really terrified her. Yesterday morning, long before daybreak, and while Maggi was preparing an early breakfast in the kitchen, she had gone outside to examine them more closely. They were gone. The temperature was fluctuating, and alternating frost and thaw had transformed Oslo into a skating rink.

Hege yearned for snow. For real snow, the natural snow that made it worthwhile living up here on the heights where it was only a matter of fastening on your skis and zooming out into the woods.