‘But she finished her schooling?’243

‘Oh, yes. And she started at uni. She’s always tried to stand on her own feet, but … I don’t know. Perhaps it’ll work this time.’

‘So if I contact this collective in Lindås, I’ll be able to meet her there?’

‘She was definitely there last time she rang. Two weeks ago.’

I tapped the steering wheel lightly. ‘Great. Otherwise … I should’ve said this first, but I was sad to hear about your father. Was it a terrible shock for you?’

‘My father?’ She stared straight through me, at neck height. ‘Johnny? I didn’t know him. We never had anything to do with him. Mamma had burned all her bridges and he … He never tried to contact us. Not once. He didn’t care about us. He didn’t give a damn.’

‘So…’ I was gripped by a sudden sadness. ‘So you don’t remember any of what led to the divorce between your mother and father?’

She shook her head energetically and closed her eyes, as if to show me how little she remembered. ‘Nothing. I think I was only four.’

‘Four.’ I smiled in sympathy. ‘That’s a long time ago when you’re fifteen.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Me? Ten times four, Sissel, and a few more. But strangely enough it doesn’t seem long since I was four, myself.’

‘I think,’ she said pensively, ‘that life’s a circle. In the end, you return to where you started. And when you’re past the halfway mark you don’t look forward but backward … if you understand what I mean.’

I nodded. ‘That all sounds very philosophical and wise for a fifteen-year-old. But it’s a good image. So you’ve still got your 244back turned to being four while I – according to you – am already on my way … home.’

She nodded firmly as if anxious that I might not have caught the nuances. Then she giggled quietly and sat lost in her own thoughts.

Some youths walked past the car and Sissel ducked out of view.

‘Friends of yours?’ I asked in a low voice.

She nodded. ‘I have to go now.’ She groped for the door handle. When she was outside she lowered her head and looked in at me, intently, as though keen to fix my face in her mind so that she would recognise me the next time we met.

‘Say hello,’ I said.

‘To Brevik?’

I nodded, and then she was gone.

I watched her. She had thin legs in tight trousers, a down jacket which made her upper body seem immense and unnatural, dark hair that appeared very black against the white, floodlit church she was walking towards, and a gait that seemed light-footed and pensive at the same time.

‘No, actually,’ I muttered. ‘To God. If you should meet Him.’

245

33

As for me, I definitely didn’t meet God. I had to make do with Vegard Vadheim.

The door to his office was open. He was standing by the window with a cup of coffee in his hand and a gaze that went straight through the closed blinds without seeing anything at all. Outside, a few torn-off dog-ears of the law books in the sky were falling. Winter was still in the corridor, waiting to testify. But the judge wasn’t ready yet.