I sat where I’d been earlier.

She placed her hands on the arms of the chair, looking as if she was at the dentist’s. ‘Well, you and Jakob have met again, I gather.’

‘We met at Jan Petter’s funeral the other day,’ I said quickly.

She nodded. ‘Yes, I read about it in the paper.’

‘And now … now he wants to know you’re alright.’

‘So you said. But I’m not sure I believe that. I’ve talked to him and the children, on the phone, and he knows I’m fine. The thing is he can’t stop hoping I’ll return. But this time – and you can tell him this, Varg – this time I won’t be returning. This time it’s the end.’

‘This time…’

She cast a sidelong glance at me. ‘Yes. He’s told you, hasn’t he?’ She leaned forward. ‘I’ve become quite a naughty girl since we last met, Varg.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yes.’

My gaze fell on the women’s journals on the table between us. Then I said cautiously: ‘Jakob mentioned something about … Johnny Solheim.’

Her eyes darkened and her voice became several degrees colder. ‘Oh, yes?’

‘Do you know what’s happened to him?’172

‘To Johnny? No.’

‘Haven’t you seen the papers today?’

‘No.’

‘He’s dead. Johnny was killed some time between Saturday night and Sunday morning.’

‘K-killed, but how?’

‘Stabbed to death in the street.’

She shook her head as if to rid herself of an unwanted image. ‘Stabbed … I … I haven’t seen Johnny since, since 1982.’

I waited. In the hope that she would say more. But she didn’t. Her gaze was miles and miles away.

‘In 1982,’ I said. ‘He’d just got married, hadn’t he? To Bente?’

She didn’t answer, just shrugged.

‘I still remember Anita,’ I continued. ‘And their two girls – what were their names again?’

‘Ruth … and Sissel,’ she said sullenly.

‘When did that marriage finish?’

‘In 1975.’

‘In 1975? The same year that The Harpers split up for good?’

She nodded.

I leaned forward. ‘What were you doing in 1975, Rebecca?’

‘Me?’ She ran her fingers through her thick hair. ‘In 1975 I’d just started to attend some lectures again. We had Petter in 1972 and we didn’t have Grete until 1979, so in those few years I was trying to finish my studies.’

‘Do you know anything about what happened?’

‘Who to? Anita and Johnny? I suppose they’d just got sick of fighting all the time.’

‘And to The Harpers?’

She looked at me wearily. ‘The same, I reckon. They’d been together for close on twenty years. It was time to pack it in.’173

‘But Johnny kept going?’

‘Yes, I suppose he did.’

‘So you haven’t seen him this time round?’

‘No, Varg,’ she said tartly. ‘I have not seen him.’ Then she changed her tone. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to since we last met? How do you make a living?’

‘Hm. A living? It’s almost too stupid to say.’

‘Mhm.’

‘Well, I’m a kind of private … investigator.’ I hastened to add: ‘But I’m a trained social worker with years in child welfare.’