He reappeared without the newspaper and sat down. ‘Well, did you find her?’

I nodded. ‘I’ve spoken to her.’

His face reflected eagerness and apprehension as he leaned forward and asked: ‘Right, and? What did she say?’

‘She said I should pass on the following message: She’s fine. Better than for many, many years. And she definitely won’t be returning to you.’

‘Won’t be…’ he repeated mechanically. Then he sat in silence with a grimace on his face. ‘Where was she?’ he asked at length.

‘At Helga Bøe’s, until she finds somewhere else.’

‘Did she … have a job?’

‘Temping at a school, from what I understood.’187

‘Then she’s coping.’

‘I think she is.’ I leaned closer to him. ‘I know how it feels, Jakob. I’ve been through it myself – when someone lets go of you and you float to the surface and away. Try to understand that that’s just how it is. Only then can you start your life again and detach yourself from what went before.’

‘Easy enough for you to say, Varg.’

‘It wasn’t easy for me to say thirteen years ago when the same happened to me. But now … well.’

‘We’re talking about a marriage that’s lasted, a family that’s existed for … for twenty years, Varg. Twenty-one. It’s become far too easy nowadays to walk away. You don’t just … it’s impossible to draw a line under twenty years of living together, three children and … and all that time. It’s not that simple.’

‘OK. So try to think about something else then. I’ve got something to ask you. A few things actually.’

‘Shoot.’ He looked at me with weary eyes.

‘First, I’d like to know what happened to you – all of you – after you split up in 1975.’

‘Us? In The Harpers? Why?’

‘Because three of you are dead, and I wouldn’t particularly like you to be the fourth.’

He went pale. ‘But surely you don’t mean there’s a connection between…?’

‘Between three sudden deaths inside eighteen months? Yes, I think I do, actually.’

He stared at me, slowly shaking his head.

‘You can start with Harry Kløve. He was the first to go, as it were.’

‘You remember Harry,’ he said with a wan smile.

‘Well?’188

‘He worked at an ironmonger’s; he started after he finished school, first in the warehouse, afterwards as a sales assistant. He worked in the same place the whole time, Harry did, even after we … He … he never found it easy to get to know people; he was the last in the queue when we picked up girls after a gig. He might’ve got the odd one or two but not usually anything to write home about, that’s for sure. He lived with his mother, for crying out loud. The last time I met him, though, she was in an old people’s home. So at long last he lived on his own. But shortly afterwards it was … all over.’

‘Let me see. Harry Kløve, that was a traffic accident, wasn’t it?’