It wasn’t a sauna. It was a convent cell.

I nodded to the table. ‘You’re reading?’

She cleared the clothes from the chair and motioned for me to sit down. She remained on her feet by the bed as though afraid it might be misunderstood if she sat there.

‘You sit down too,’ I said.

She obeyed. She wasn’t used to protesting.

There was something perplexed and irreparable about her that reminded me of a cowed puppy.

‘You’re reading?’ I repeated.

She nodded. ‘That’s what has saved me.’ She turned her head and indicated the picture of Jesus. ‘But for Him I’d be dead now.’

‘So you’re still clean?’

She nodded.

I studied her. Her hands were scratched and thin, the backs full of scars along the blood vessels. Her face was pale, almost blue, with no make-up, as if her skin had become so thin her blue veins shone through everywhere. Her lips were full and there was still a defiant curl to the top one, but her gaze was very distant, turned in on herself in a way that gave you the uneasy feeling that she saw you without seeing you at all.

I tried to see which man she looked like, but I could find 358nothing that reminded me of any of the people I had met in the last eight or nine days.

She was wearing stained, dark-grey jeans, a greyish-white cotton shirt and a blue-and-white patterned cardigan. On her feet she wore thick, beige woollen socks.

Her hands trembled and her eyes wandered. She took a crumpled packet of cigarettes from her back pocket and lit up, as if to keep her hands occupied and her eyes focused.

‘I’ve been investigating … these deaths, as I said. I think you know why I’m here.’

She didn’t answer and inhaled the smoke as if her life depended on it.

‘I’m beginning to see the picture quite clearly now. There are only a few pieces missing and then the puzzle’s finished.’

She stared ahead, apparently not listening at all.

‘Harry Kløve,’ I said.

No reaction.

‘Arild Hjellestad.’

She took the cigarette out of her mouth, studied it and put it back in.

I hesitated.

‘Jan Petter Olsen.’

She inhaled again, as though she was going to fill every cavity in her body.

‘Your father, Johnny Solheim.’

Her eyes lighted on mine, quickly, briefly.

‘Dead, all of them, in the last fifteen months. And not one of them died naturally. They were all murdered.’

That reached her eyes. She was listening. Her gaze lighted on my face again, but focused on my mouth, where the words were coming from.359

‘There’s only one name left on the list, isn’t there.’

Silence.

‘The man who’s received the last letter containing the angels.’

A shiver went through her, as if she were cold.

‘Jakob Aasen,’ I said, wearily.

She compressed her lips around the cigarette and still said nothing.

‘The Harpers,’ I continued. ‘They called themselves the Harpegjengen as well. Apart from Jan Petter Olsen, who just happened to be there on the night no one wants to talk about. And that’s precisely why the date is so important. The sixteenth of October 1975. That’s right, isn’t it.’ I leaned forward. ‘Tell me the story, Ruth. Tell me about everything. It will do you good.’