‘Grocers are a dying breed. Not even the RSPCA’s worried about them.’

‘And you…’ He studied me with cheery distrust. ‘Surely you don’t call yourself a detective, do you?’

‘What do you think I should call myself? A consultant?’

‘Why not? A private-investigation consultant. No, I know: a crime consultant. Doesn’t that sound more confidence-inspiring?’

He leaned forward. ‘So if I needed help one day … all I’d have to do was call you.’

‘Fine, as long as you don’t call me a private dick. I’ve been called that a few times already,’ I said, downing a mouthful of amber nectar.

A shadow fell over our table. We looked up. There was Paul Finckel, hips swaying and hands splayed out to the side to represent a tutu as he burst into an old Bergensian song: ‘Ingeborg, she…’

Jakob joined in the refrain: ‘Ingeborg…’18

At the neighbouring table two youths clapped their hands loudly, more for exercise than out of any enthusiasm. Paul Finckel turned around anyway and gracefully acknowledged the applause, raised a finger for ‘a beer, no, three over here, frøken, for me and my friends’, then dropped down heavily on the vacant part of the wooden bench where I was sitting.

‘What’s the deal?’ he asked, looking around.

The deal was three beers and off to the next bar, a little further into Bryggen. Here the clientele was older, drinkers were more hardened and it was possible to have a conversation without being assaulted by music.

Like in Alice in Wonderland, we didn’t just drink from bottles that made us smaller than we were, we became younger too. Around the table with the checked cloth we shrank into three young boys, caught somewhere in the critical vacuum between ten and thirteen, ready to launch ourselves into life’s mysteries.

Paul Finckel regained the hair he had lost on top, recovered the Elvis quiff that his thin hair had never quite been able to emulate, sat at his desk at the back with the eternal half-smirk on his lips, a thorn in every teacher’s side and a joker for whom success was predestined. He moved back into Abels gate, the short, steep street between Nordnesveien and Haugeveien, the middle son of three, but the only one with innate wit, the brother of two sisters, all the children of an electrician called Per, and he had a narrow, rectangular face beneath a mane of fair hair, which gave rise locally to the inevitable nickname of Lys-pæren: the light bulb.

Jakob Aasen became beardless and pimply from a very young age, a thoughtful model pupil from Claus Frimannsgate, son of a shop assistant in a respectable gentlemen’s outfitter’s and a mother who taught the piano, at home.19

‘Are your parents still alive?’ I asked.

‘My mother’s dead. That’s her grand piano I have. My dad’s alive though. But the shop where he worked has been bought up by the fashion people, Bik Bok.’

Paul Finckel burst into loud laughter. ‘Do you know what Oddvar Torsheim, the artist, once said to me during an interview? “I can’t talk to anyone wearing a Bik Bok T-shirt. When I first saw the words emblazoned on his chest, I thought it was his name.”’