‘You mean she … went with you?’

‘Is that so strange?’

‘Yes, in fact it is.’

‘Why? We already knew each other well. After all, Jakob and I were in the same band for the first ten years of their marriage.’

‘But the band had broken up long before you…’

‘Yep. The Harp pluckers gave up the ghost in seventy-five. Rebecca and I had our bit of fun seven or eight years later.’

‘When was that?’79

‘In 1982, if my memory’s not playing tricks on me.’

A big, grey diesel bus drove past, creating a natural hiatus in the conversation. Filthy, brown slush splashed onto the pavement and rusty-red, black-specked exhaust fumes hung in the air like a begrimed bridal veil.

Johnny Solheim stepped closer. ‘I’ll tell you something in confidence, Varg. Actually we met by chance. On the Hurtigruten ferry. I was coming from Molde. She got on at Florø. I was alone in my cabin and invited her for a drink. Then two. Then three. She was quite merry and I could see she was ready for it. So I led her on a bit. The way I can.’ He smiled at me with what seemed like professional pride in his eyes. ‘She fell like a pear from a tree, Varg.’

I didn’t answer.

‘And she came back for more.’

I coughed. ‘After you’d returned home?’

He nodded knowingly. ‘You knew her quite well too, didn’t you?’ He sent me a triumphant look as if to tell me that he had got something we others had only dreamed about getting.

I said casually: ‘A bit. We lived in the same street when we were kids. And later … we were in the same class.’

A bit.

‘But then,’ he continued, ‘it was all over. She was gone as quickly as she’d appeared. We got tired of each other, simple as that – from one moment to the next and in the twinkling of an eye, both of us.’

‘Practical,’ I said. ‘And later … later you had the pleasure of telling Jakob everything.’

He looked at me sheepishly. ‘So he has told you? Yes, I…’ He cast around as though searching for something to cling to. ‘It was stupid of me, I admit it. But I was drunk and he was at his most 80… insufferable. All the old conflicts reared their ugly heads. Actually it was us who were so different. Him and me. Playing together for so many years was as ridiculous as Lennon and McCartney sticking together.’

‘Not that you’re making a comparison, I suppose?’

‘I just blurted it out.’ A spontaneous smirk glided across his face, or rather it slipped down a slide, as it were, and landed on its backside. ‘It was almost worth it. Seeing his mug when he realised I was telling the truth.’

‘And when did this happy event take place?’

‘A couple of years later. In eighty-three, eighty-four. I don’t remember exactly. We met at a pub in town, quite by chance. There were several other people there, too.’