Yngve drove on a few hundred yards before making a U-turn. When he got back to the petrol station, Knut was coming out with a half-eaten hot dog in one hand, and a bottle of Coca-Cola in the other. He got back in his car. Yngve waited for him at a bus stop, then followed him back the same way he had come.

Knut, as it seemed, had been hungry.

Yngve exhaled.

For a good ten minutes he’d actually thought he might be on the heels of a killer who was about to strike again. It took Yngve a while to regain his normal heart rhythm.

At 2.14 a.m. Knut turned off his lights. Yngve sat back to read again. The chances of Knut moving again were slim, but Yngve stayed there till morning.

He was just about to close his eyes for moment, when he heard her voice from the backseat. She wanted to know how he was doing. His first instinct was to say ‘terrible’, because that’s how he’d felt for so long, but it wasn’t true. The fact was, he’d felt more alive in the last couple of days than he could remember. It made him feel guilty.

Don’t be, she said.

‘Well, I do anyway,’ Yngve answered.

Now that she was there again, with him, he wanted her to tell him as much as possible about how things were where she was, if she met other people, or if it was all just quiet. He wanted to know whether it was warm or cold, dark or bright. If it was possible to feel anything at all – anger, joy, sorrow, pain. She didn’t want to say anything, though. All he could see in the mirror were her tired, beautiful eyes and that shiny, hairless head of hers.

All of a sudden an intense wave of fatigue hit him. It was like he couldn’t even sit up straight anymore. Like the muscles in his body suddenly just caved in.

Tomorrow you can rest, she said.

‘What was that?’ he asked.

She said that it would all be over tomorrow.

‘How do you know?’

She couldn’t tell him. She just knew.

70

70

That night I dreamt about Mari. I went into a room full of people, and there she was, listening to some authors blabbering about their books. She didn’t see me at first. I just stood there watching her, until she lifted her head and our eyes suddenly locked.

Her whole face lit up. She seemed surprised to see me, but all the happier for it. She was seated in the middle of a row, so she couldn’t get up to meet me. I could see that she wanted to, though. She blushed as she turned back to watch what was happening on stage, but I could tell she really wasn’t paying attention.