The organ music swirled around me like autumn leaves in the wind. It wasn’t a tune I recognised but improvisations, exercises to loosen the muscles, keystrokes and moods rather than melody lines or harmonies.

I turned and looked up at the gallery. Beneath two star-shaped lamps I met Jakob’s eyes in the mirror above the organ. He played two verses of ‘Yesterday’ to show that he had seen me then finished with a flourish and an exclamation mark in the form of a two-voiced chord.

Then he got up and signalled for me to join him. I went through the side entrance and up the staircase on the left.

He met me with a serious face. ‘Have you seen the papers?’

I nodded.

‘I tried to call you, but…’

‘Oh. I was … out of circulation, you might say.’

‘What do you think happened? Who do you think could…?’

I looked at him. ‘I was thinking of asking you the same question.’

‘I just don’t understand it.’ He smiled wanly. ‘Stig Madsen seemed pretty keen to meet Bella that night, didn’t he. And was equally agitated that Johnny hadn’t shown up.’

‘Are you suggesting…?’

‘Nothing. It just struck me.’

‘What about you? I mean … when you left. Did you say anything to him?’

‘N-no.’

‘Which route did you take?’

His eyes wandered for a second. ‘I went to the station to get a taxi.’

‘And did you find one?’

‘No. No. I had to wait a … while.’158

‘How long?’

‘I’m not sure. I … we were all a bit…’

‘But you did get one eventually?’

‘Oh, yes. And I went straight home. Alone.’ And added, pulling a face: ‘Officer.’

‘We should expect to hear from the police, both of us.’

He glanced at me nervously. ‘The police? Why?’

‘They’ll probably check his movements over the last day or so and they’re bound to hear we visited Johnny in Bella’s dressing room on Friday evening and that I was in his video shop on Saturday.’

‘Do you think they’re that thorough? Don’t you think they already have their suspicions? I mean … usually they check out the partner first, don’t they? You’re in that line of business, sort of, aren’t you?’

I nodded. ‘You mean that because he has a reputation of being abusive to his partners, one of them has finally learned to pay him back in his own coin?’

‘Don’t you think?’ He watched me expectantly.

‘I met her yesterday. I don’t know … I’ve been wrong before, and it’s just a feeling, but I didn’t get the impression she was particularly … violent.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

A door to the left of the pulpit opened. A tall, thin, dark-haired man wearing a grey suit and a priest’s collar came out and looked up at us. There was something serious and solemn about the way he moved, with slow steps, as if he were walking in fresh, wet snow.

A little smile crossed his lips and his voice was accompanied by a rude echo talking at the same time as him: ‘It was suddenly so quiet. I was wondering if something had happened.’159