No one stood at the entrance to receive condolences. It wasn’t hard to imagine why.

Having to shake the hand of your deceased husband’s former wife was one thing. It was quite another to shake the hand of his murderer.

I looked around. People collected in groups to go back to town together in one car.

Rebecca was already sprinting for the bus, not wishing to sit with any of us.

Jakob came up alongside me and said: ‘Tell me, Varg … Didn’t you mention recently something about … pictures of angels?’

I shot him a glance. ‘Yes?’

‘I’ve received one too.’

‘What!’

He almost looked solemn the way he was nodding.

‘Have you got it with you?’329

He nodded again, stuffed a hand in his pocket and pulled out a screwed-up piece of paper.

I took it and put it in my inside pocket. I looked around. Most people had already gone. Bente Solheim was leaning against the elderly woman I assumed was her mother. She was weeping quietly while her son looked up at her with eyes only children can make so big, and only on occasions like this.

Vegard Vadheim came towards me from the front door. ‘Well, Veum, anything new?’

I shook my head, making my neck muscles creak. ‘N-no, I don’t think so. She obviously didn’t come to the funeral either.’

‘No, but we’ll find her. And soon. This is urgent.’

I nodded, but said nothing.

‘Don’t forget to contact us should you find out something.’ He cast a dubious glance at Jakob, nodded and walked on, down to the car park.

Jakob looked at me. ‘What did he mean by that?’

I shrugged. ‘Words. The jargon of our trade. Come here.’ I pulled him away from the chapel, up a path between the gravestones to where we were hidden behind some big rhododendron bushes.

Then I took out the letter he had received. Before looking at it I asked: ‘Did you get this in the post?’

He nodded.

‘Addressed to you personally?’

He nodded again and I looked down at the crumpled piece of paper. It was virtually identical to the one I had seen at Bente Solheim’s.

Four angel stickers stuck to one sheet. Now three of the heads were crossed out and around the fourth there was an ominous black square, like in the death notices. And that was exactly what this was.

330

41

We didn’t go on the town after this funeral. I recommended that Jakob showed the letter to Vegard Vadheim. He said he would think about it.

I drove him home, dropped him off by Saint John’s church and had to go through three or four sets of traffic lights before I found an early-afternoon parking spot among the open-all-day Christmas shops and people on their way home for lunch. Two parking wardens watched me with undivided scepticism as I inserted coins into the meter, as if they were hoping I would run out.

I went down to my office, where I first sorted the post and then my thoughts. The former was easy: all the brochures straight into the bin, bills in the pile and … there was nothing else.