He turned to the door, about to say something, when he saw who was there and bit his tongue. ‘Ah, so it’s you!’

‘Had you expected someone else?’

He didn’t answer and waved wearily to the free chair. ‘Any more deaths up your sleeves, Veum? Any new close calls, any more bodies in your slipstream?’

I sat down and he took a seat behind his desk. He looked worn out.

‘What about the ones I gave you yesterday? Have you found out anything?’

His smile was taut. ‘Same old Veum. Same old questions.’

The door opened behind us. Eva Jensen came in, also holding a cup of coffee. When she saw me she stopped, unsure whether to come in or go out. ‘Am I disturbing?’

‘No, no.’ Vadheim beckoned her in and motioned for her to close the door. ‘Veum would like to discuss the case with us, Eva. He considers himself a special envoy from … What should I say, Veum?’246

‘The Republic of Nordnes. Would that help?’

‘The Republic of Nordnes,’ Vadheim said to Eva. ‘The one in the north, you know, with its own independence day on the third of May.’

‘Surely you can tell me if you’ve found something out or not?’

He leaned back in his chair and said: ‘Yes and no, Veum. Let’s get straight to the point. We didn’t find anything about Harry Kløve. It was a traffic accident with a fatal outcome and of course there was a report about it. The bus driver was interviewed and a few bystanders. According to the driver there’d been a huddle of pedestrians waiting by the zebra crossing. The lights changed to green and he set off and then just before he reached the crossing Kløve stepped right into his path. Apparently he’d come from the back of the crowd and had been in too much of a hurry to look. But everything went so fast, of course, that the driver didn’t have a chance to see anything before he heard the thud at the front and saw Kløve rebound across the cobblestones.’

‘And the witnesses?’

‘Hadn’t heard anything or seen anything. They had enough to do looking after themselves. Apart from this one woman in her fifties…’ he thumbed through a document ‘…who thought Kløve had made an unnatural leap into the street, but that was all she could say.’

‘And that was all?’

He angled his head. ‘The death certificate: cause of death – multiple injuries – fractured skull, broken ribs leading to a punctured lung. He didn’t have much of a chance.’

Eva Jensen raised her coffee cup to her mouth, put it down again and said: ‘Coffee, Veum?’

‘No, thanks, I’ve—’

‘Hjellestad, on the other hand,’ Vadheim continued. ‘The 247night before he died he appeared at the Salvation Army hostel in Bakkegaten, totally sober, washed, spruced up, three-day beard shaved off, clean clothes … Extremely unusual for him, at his stage of life, all of it.’

I leaned forward, intrigued. ‘Mhm?’