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of each other’s needs – both at home and at work – more and more rows, less and less time and energy to be together. In the end, neither of them could take any more.
    Parents. The best and the worst human beings can become.
    And now her arm is entwined with another man’s. Unprofessional, he thinks, flirting at a press conference. And Nora spots him halfway through a fit of laughter. She stops immediately, as though something is stuck in her throat. They look at each other for what seems like forever.
    He blinks first. Vidar Larsen, who works for NTB, touches his shoulder and says ‘hi, so you’re back, Henning?’ He nods and decides to follow Vidar; he says nothing, but he makes sure he get as far away from Nora as he can, looking no one in the eye, following feet and footsteps through doors he could find blindfolded. He takes a seat at the back of the press room where he can watch the back of other people’s heads rather than vice versa. The room fills up quickly. He sees Nora and Corduroy enter together. They sit next to each other, quite a long way forward.
    So, Nora, we meet again.
    And, once again, we meet at a press conference.

Chapter 8
     
     
    Three uniformed officers enter, two men and a woman. Henning instantly recognises the two men: Chief Inspector Arild Gjerstad and Detective Inspector Bjarne Brogeland.
    Bjarne and Henning went to school together in Kløfta. They were never best friends, even though they were in the same year. That might have been enough to start a friendship back then. But it takes more. Chemistry and compatibility, for example.
    Later, Henning also discovered that Bjarne was a Romeo whose ambition was to sleep with as many girls as possible, and when he started turning up at the Juuls’, it wasn’t hard to decipher Bjarne’s true intentions. Luckily, Henning’s sister, Trine, was on to him and Henning avoided having to play the part of Protective Older Brother, but his loathing of Bjarne stayed with him throughout their adolescence.
    And now Bjarne is a policeman.
    *
     
    Not that this is news to Henning. Both of them applied to the police academy in the 1990s. Bjarne was accepted. Henning wasn’t. He was rejected long before the admission process even started, because he suffered from every allergy known to man, and had had asthma as a child. Bjarne, however, was the physically robust type. Twenty-twenty vision and great stamina. He had been an athlete when he was younger, and performed quite well in heptathlons. Henning seems to recall that Bjarne pole-vaulted over 4.50 metres.
    What Henning didn’t know was that Bjarne had started working in the Violent and Sexual Crimes Unit. He thought Bjarne was a plain-clothes officer, but everyone needs a change now and again. Now he is up there on the platform, gazing across the assembly. His face is grave, professional, and he looks imposing in the tight-fitting uniform. Henning reckons he can still pull. Short, dark hair, hint of grey above the ears, cleft chin, white teeth. Tanned and clean-shaven.
    Vain Bjarne, Henning thinks.
    And a potential source.
    The other man, Chief Inspector Gjerstad, is tall and slim. He has a neatly trimmed moustache which he strokes repeatedly. Gjerstad was with the murder squad when Henning started covering crime, and he seems to have stayed there. Gjerstad despises reporters who think they are smarter than the police and, to be fair, Henning thinks, I’m probably one of them.
    The woman in the middle, Assistant Commissioner Pia Nøkleby, checks if the microphone is working, then she clears her throat. The reporters raise their pens in expectation. Henning waits. He knows the first minutes will offer nothing but introductions and reiteration of information already available, but he intends to listen carefully all the same.
    Then something takes him by surprise. He feels a tingle of anticipation. To him, who has felt only rage, self-loathing and self-pity in the last two years, this tingling, this