‘If so, it would have to be Roar. She took care of him. But he’s out riding, I think.’

‘We saw someone riding through the woods when we arrived. Perhaps I can find him.’

‘You can try. But … be a little careful in the way you talk to him. He’s … special.’

‘I will. Can he turn violent?’

She shrugged. ‘Not as such. But if he feels persecuted he is prone to run off. And we don’t like bothering the police too often.’281

‘I understand.’ I turned to Laila. ‘I’ll leave you to do your own thing then. Shall we meet here afterwards?’

She nodded.

‘We have lunch at one,’ Jorunn Tveit said accommodatingly, then turned all her attention to Laila.

I left and closed the door behind me. The corridor smelt of old timber and new paint. The lino on the floor looked new and shiny. A staircase with a white balustrade led to the next floor. Through an open door I saw a lounge. There was a pile of creased newspapers on a low table and in a corner of the room the lifeless TV screen confirmed that nothing was happening.

I went out onto the steps in front of the house. The young people working in the field were having a break. Some of them were smoking; a couple of them had sat down on the plough beside the wire-netting fence that enclosed the field. In the woods I could still make out the rider on the brown horse.

I waved to him to let him know I was on my way and started to cross the land between us.

The uneven terrain was hard on my flat town feet and I almost twisted my ankle when I stumbled over a raised tuft.

The rider following the trees to the fjord paused, turned the horse and came back the same way – towards me. He reminded me of a guard. Perhaps that was what he was: someone who protected the property against incursions by underworld beings who haunted the minds of the residents.

Now he had spotted me, and from a distance I noticed the fixed stare in his eyes. He reined in the horse and it moved at walking pace. The bare trees around them and the deserted fjord below made a desolate impression, in sharp contrast to the lively, dark-brown animal and the tense, pale-faced rider.

His hair was fair and long, the way men wore it in the early 282seventies. He had a red kerchief tied round his forehead and the face…

There was something strangely familiar about it that gave me a shock.

It was…

A small child I had known once?

And his name was … Roar?

While I was still walking over to him my bad conscience grew like an ink stain on dry blotting paper. He had often been in my thoughts. I had often wondered how he was. But I had never tried to get in touch.

Of all the places on earth this was the last I would have wanted to meet him.