I went to sea, and when I returned in the autumn of 1963 I met her and was told she was with Jakob and the conversation stalled. When I returned from Oslo in 1965, they were married.

But some moments are etched in your brain forever. And some kisses can never be erased. You always carry something with you. In all the ensuing years.

Rebecca.

Jakob had asked me to find her, and now Johnny Solheim was dead. Killed. She’d had a relationship with Johnny a few years before.

At once I knew it was inevitable. It would happen. I was going to meet her again, now, in one context or another. After so many years.

Then came the prison wardens’ fanfare. Keys jangled and the night’s drunken hordes invaded the cells and turned the remand suite into a carnival procession through the more colourful parts of hell.

I didn’t sleep much and early in the morning I was again brought before the dispensers of justice.

143

19

I cast my eyes around Vegard Vadheim’s office in surprise.

He smiled good-humouredly. ‘Had you been expecting to meet someone else?’

‘I thought … Muus.’

‘Weekend shift. It’s our case now. Mine and…’ he motioned towards the tall, fair-haired lady sitting at the edge of the desk in demure, brown culottes and a baggy blouse; ‘…Inspector Jensen’s.’

The woman grinned. She had a rather large nose, clear blue eyes, quite far apart, rosy cheeks and a kind of nervous energy. I inclined my head.

‘You do remember Eva Jensen, do you, Veum?’ Vadheim said.

‘I do,’ I answered. ‘I wonder if she remembers me.’

She smiled. ‘As if I could ever forget…’

On one occasion she had followed me … and indirectly saved my life. Another time she had watched me finish my first marathon more dead than alive. I wasn’t at all sure which of the two she remembered more fondly.

‘So you two are conducting the case,’ I said breezily. ‘Where does that leave me?’

‘Initially, in that chair,’ Vadheim said, indicating the free chair on the uncomfortable side of the desk.

Vegard Vadheim was himself a very good marathon runner, with times of 2.59 and better. Almost exactly thirty years earlier he had run the 10,000-metre final in Melbourne, finished fourth 144and was one of the few Norwegians at the Summer Olympics to gain any points that year. His hair was dark, but greying prematurely. His brown eyes betrayed an enduring melancholy: the mirror-image of two poetry collections he published almost as long ago as his Olympics performance. He wasn’t present in Rome. By then he had already conquered Parnassus, with a sensational literary debut in 1959, followed by an equally solid collection in 1961. Followed by silence. Vegard Vadheim was unlikely to become more than a footnote in Norwegian literature. However, in Bergen Kripos he was definitely one of the Four Greats.

Vegard Vadheim leaned across the desk. ‘I’m sorry you had to spend the night here, Veum. It had more to do with Dankert Muus’s nature, or should I say his view of you, than anything else.’