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applied for the pardon himself, so surely it must have been encouraging that someone from the Ministry was interested in following up his case?”
    “You would think so. I don’t know. Kristiane!”
    The girl turned around and laughed loudly. Slowly she turned away from the water and trundled over toward the edge of the wood; she must have seen something.
    “Whatever, she didn’t give up. Alvhild Sofienberg, that is. She eventually managed to get in touch with the prison chaplain. A reliable man who had seen a lot. He was also convinced that Seier was . . . innocent. Obviously, that was fuel for Alvhild’s fire. She didn’t give in and went back to her superiors.”
    “Hang on.”
    Isak stopped. He nodded toward Kristiane, who had been joined by an enormous Bernese mountain dog. The child put her arms around the animal’s neck and whined. The dog growled lazily.
    “You should get a dog,” he said quietly. “Kristiane is fantastic with dogs. I think it’s good for her to be with them.”
    “Or you could,” retorted Johanne. “Why is it me who always has to carry the load? Always!”
    He took a deep breath and slowly let it out through the gap between his front teeth, a low, extended whistling sound that made the dog prick its ears. Kristiane laughed loudly.
    “Forget it,” he said, shaking his head. “Then what happened?”
    “You’re not really interested.”
    Isak Aanonsen brushed his face with a slim hand.
    “I am. How can you say that? I’ve listened to the whole story so far and I am very interested in hearing the rest. What’s the matter with you?”
    Kristiane had managed to get the dog to lie down. And now she was sitting astride its back, burying her hands in its fur. The astonished owner stood beside them, looking at Isak and Johanne with undisguised concern.
    “It’s okay,” called Isak, and sprinted over to the dog and the child. “She’s got a way with animals.”
    “You can say that again,” said the man.
    Isak lifted his daughter off the animal and the dog stood up. The owner put on its leash and headed off northwards at a brisk pace, looking back over his shoulder every now and then, as if frightened that the scary child might follow.
    “So go on,” said Isak.
    “Dam-di-rum-ram,” sang Kristiane.
    “Her boss refused her request,” said Johanne brusquely. “He said that she should leave the case alone and do her job. When she confronted him and said that she’d had all the documents sent over and had read them carefully, he became visibly agitated. And when she then said she was convinced that Seier was innocent, he was furious. But the really—the most frightening thing about the whole story is what happened next.”
    Kristiane suddenly took her by the hand.
    “Mamma,” she said happily. “My mommy and me.”
    “One day when Alvhild Sofienberg came into the office, all the papers had disappeared.”
    “Disappeared? Gone?”
    “Yep. A pile of documents over a yard high. Vanished without a trace.”
    “Go for a walk,” said Kristiane. “My mommy and me.”
    “And Daddy,” said Johanne.
    “And then what happened?”
    Isak’s brows were knitted. The likeness between him and his daughter was even more obvious; the narrow face, the knitted eyebrows.
    “Alvhild Sofienberg was quite . . . frightened. In any case, she didn’t dare to nag her boss anymore when she heard that the files had been collected ‘by the police.’”
    She made quote marks with her fingers.
    “And then completely confidentially, very hush-hush, she was told that Aksel Seier had been released.”
    “What?”
    “A long time before he should have been. Released. Just like that. Discreetly and without any fuss.”
    They had reached the big parking lot by the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences. There were hardly any cars there. The ground was crisscrossed with deep tire ruts and puddles. Johanne’s old Opel Kadett stood parked under three large weeping birches, beside Isak’s Audi TT.
    “Let