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five years without it leading to anything, they had started to forget all their friends’ arguments about the pollution in Oslo city centre. They had
a terrace with a Jacuzzi and barbecue, no gardening to do, and could walk to the nearest cinema without too much exertion. Even though they had a car, a Ford Sierra bought secondhand in view of the
inadvisability of investing too heavily in a vehicle that would be parked in the street, they mostly used the tram or went on foot.
    Karen had grown up in the pleasant residential district of Kalfaret in Bergen. It had been a childhood spent under the surveillance of the sophisticated local intelligence services, with agents
peering out from behind curtains, always fully informed of everyone’s slightest misdemeanours, from unwashed floors to extra-marital affairs. After a weekend visit home a couple of times a
year Karen would be seized by a feeling of unbearable claustrophobia that she couldn’t entirely account for, especially as she herself had never had anything to hide.
    So Grünerløkka for her was a place of refuge. She and Nils had stayed put, and now had no intention of ever moving.
    She paused in front of the little kiosk opposite the tram stop. The tabloid newspapers were piled high in their respective stands.
    “Brutal drugs murder shakes police.” The headline leapt out at her. She picked up a copy, went in reading it, and put the money on the counter with hardly a glance at the man behind
the counter. The tram arrived as she came out. She stamped her ticket and sat down on a folding seat. The front page referred her to page five. Beneath a photograph of the corpse that she herself
had found only four days ago, the text stated that “The police believe the brutal murder of an as-yet-unidentified man in his thirties to be a revenge killing in the drugs world.”
    No sources were given. The story was uncannily close to what Håkon Sand had told her.
    She was infuriated. Håkon had emphasised that what had been said between them was not to go any further. The caution had been completely superfluous; there was no one Karen had less time
for than journalists. She was all the more annoyed by the police’s own bungling.
    She wondered about her client. Would he get newspapers in his cell? No, he’d accepted a ban on letters and visits, and she seemed to recall that it also included a ban on newspapers, TV,
and radio. But she wasn’t sure.
    “This will make him even more afraid,” she thought, and turned her attention to the rest of the newspaper as the modern tram rolled and hummed along through the city streets with a
smoothness so unlike the clatter of its predecessors.
    In another part of the city a man was in abject fear of imminent death.
    Hans E. Olsen was as ordinary as his name. Too much alcohol over too many years had left its mark on his face. His flesh was flabby and grey, with prominent pores, and always sweaty. But his
permanently sour expression stemmed more from an innate bitterness than from his excessive consumption of alcohol. Right now he was sweating more than ever, and looked older than his forty-two
years.
    Hans E. Olsen was a lawyer. He had shown some promise in his early years as a student, and had attracted a number of friends. But his upbringing in a pious environment in southwest Norway had
put a leaden weight on any vigour and joie de vivre he might have had. His childhood faith had been jettisoned after a few months in the capital, leaving the young man with nothing to put in
its place. The concept of a vengeful and implacable God had never really lost its hold on him, and torn between his former self and the dream of the student life of wine, women, and academic
achievement, he had all too soon sought his consolation in the temptations of the big city. Even in those days his fellow students used to joke that Hans Olsen never used his cock for anything but
peeing. But this was an assertion in need of qualification: he had