I sat down behind the desk, opened the lowest drawer, took out the bottle of aquavit and placed it on the desk in front of me.

I unscrewed the top and leaned forward and breathed in the familiar, distinctive smell of caraway. Then it struck me that the bottle wasn’t exactly altar wine and that Berge Brevik would have a poor impression of me if he came here and noticed that I reeked of booze.

With that, I screwed on the top, put the aquavit back in the drawer and made my way down to the café on the first floor.

The typical afternoon clientele was there: old bachelors eating the meal of the day with a newspaper open on the table; the evening’s street girls chain-smoking and staring out of the window and waiting for demand to increase; students from rural areas with modest food budgets; a single mother who had picked her daughter up from day care and couldn’t afford to have lunch today; and then a private investigator who had returned 291from a painful morning in Lindås, waiting for an afternoon conference with one of God’s representatives on earth.

I had a hamburger on rye with beetroot and pickled gherkins, two cups of coffee and rounded off with a plate of waffles, then went up to my office, leafed through the previous days’ advertising brochures, listened to the same period’s silence on the answerphone, tried to find a station on the radio that didn’t send me into a depression or bring on indigestion, and concluded by staring through the window, in silence.

Berge Brevik arrived on time, at two seconds to six. He knocked on all the doors he saw, first the waiting room, then the office. I wondered whether he had knocked on the lift door as well.

He opened the final door and closed it firmly behind him as though wanting to assure himself that there were waterproof bulkheads between us and the outside world.

As he came in he quickly looked up at me and flashed his programmed smile. In his dark-grey winter coat, brown leather gloves, with his black briefcase and sober appearance, he looked more like a businessman than a carer of souls.

There was also something businesslike about the way he asked if he could hang up his coat. I indicated the coat stand, and he removed his gloves, hung up his coat, unwound the plum-red scarf and revealed a white collar, black clerical shirt and grey suit with subtle green stripes. Finally he meticulously settled himself on my client chair and crossed his legs. Instinctively he brushed a few specks of dust from his shiny, dark-brown shoes, then began to speak. ‘I’m pleased you had time to receive me, Veum,’ he said by way of an opening gambit.

‘It’s a pleasure.’

He looked around somewhat stiffly. ‘So this … is what a private detective’s office looks like.’292

‘Private investigator. Yes, this is what it looks like.’

‘We aren’t used to so much luxury in our sector, either,’ he said, politely referring to the shabby state of my office. ‘In this respect, we’re in the same boat.’