It was only then that I realised that she hadn’t told me her name. But perhaps that didn’t matter. She had borne her own business card on her cheek, as Johnny Solheim’s own mother had done so often thirty years earlier. The badges of violence.

75

11

I drove back to town.

Despite its lurid, vulgar name, Ecstasy Videos had a modest exterior. No one had bothered to remove the old, hand-painted letters from the window, which told us that here you used to be able to buy TOBACCO and NEWSPAPERS. Only the glass in the front door bore the seductive modern slogan: ACTION – SEX – CRIME. Above it was the company’s logo cut out in plastic and glued on. It was the white silhouette of a woman who was so naked that she lacked nipples and genitals. However, she did have a smoking revolver in one hand. An illuminated sign above announced: ECSTASY VIDEOS.

I opened the door and went in.

If the woman who was half draped, half slumped over the counter had ever experienced ecstasy it must have racked her body to such a degree that she was still ravaged by it. She was one of the tall, pale, plump types, adorned in pink from her hair to her heels. She had a big, pink blob of bubble gum in her mouth and that was precisely how she looked herself. As though she were made of bubble gum, rolled into a ball, extended here and there and then finally stuck to the counter while the owner was flirting elsewhere.

She barely opened her eyes when I entered. There were no other customers. For all I knew, I was the first of the day.

The back-room door was ajar and you would have needed an oxygen mask to venture inside. Clouds of smoke hung low over 76two pairs of headless bodies protruding from either side of the doorway.

I quickly looked around. The walls were covered with shelves crammed full of video-cassettes. The same threefold promise of ACTION, SEX and CRIME flashed at me, now further reinforced by the most striking of covers, whose main constituents were flesh and metal: breasts, thighs and guns.

‘I’m looking for an animal film for the whole family,’ I said to the woman to wake her up. So as not to give her a nervous breakdown, I added quickly: ‘Is Johnny in?’

She blinked. Behind her, in the doorway, appeared a head with a Sergeant Pepper moustache and a comb-over. I recognised him by the moustache. It was Stig Madsen, from the previous night.

Madsen said something to the other side of the door. The second headless body rose and Johnny Solheim filled the doorway with a deeply sceptical expression.

When he saw who it was, the scepticism changed to wonderment. ‘You, Varg? We don’t see each other for twenty years and then suddenly twice in two days.’ He opened his hands. ‘What can I offer you? Are you after a discount?’