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‘Turns out he isn’t. And right afterwards I run a DNA analysis of something which turns out to be your blood, check it by mistake against the entire database of paternity tests, and it emerges that you’re Gert’s father. If it hadn’t been for me—’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘What isn’t my fault?’

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

‘That Bjørn Holm killed himself?’

‘That he...’ Harry stopped.

Alexandra saw him grimace as though he were in pain somewhere. What was it he wasn’t telling her? What was it he couldn’t tell her?

‘Harry?’

‘Yeah?’ His eyes seemed to be fixed on the row of bottles on the shelf behind the barman.

‘It was that sex offender who killed your wife, right? Finne.’

‘Ask him.’

‘Finne is dead. If it wasn’t him, then...’

‘Then?’

‘You were a suspect.’

Harry nodded. ‘We always suspect the partner. And are usually right.’

Alexandra took a gulp of her drink. ‘Was it you, Harry? Did you kill your wife?’

‘A double of that there,’ Harry said, and it took a moment for Alexandra to realise he wasn’t talking to her.

‘This?’ the barman asked, pointing to a square bottle hanging inverted in a bracket.

‘Yes, please.’

Harry remained silent until the glass with the golden-brown liquid was in front of him.

‘Yes,’ he said, lifting the glass. Held it for a moment as though dreading it. ‘I killed her.’ Then he emptied the contents in a single go and had ordered a refill before the glass was back on the counter.

Helene got her breath back but remained sitting on top of him.

She had manoeuvred him over to the passenger side, reclined the seat while he turned on the dome light and put on a condom. Then had rode him like one of her horses, although without the same feeling of control. He had come without making a sound, but she had felt how his muscles had jerked and relaxed.

She had also come. Not because he had been an adept lover, but because she had been so horny before taking off her trousers and knickers that anything would have sufficed.

She could feel him going soft inside her now.

‘So why have you been stalking me?’ she asked, looking down at him lying flat on the recumbent seat, as naked as she was.

‘Why do you think?’ he asked, putting his hands behind his head.

‘You’ve fallen in love with me.’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘I’m not in love with you, Helene.’

‘No?’

‘I am in love, but with someone else.’

Helene could feel herself getting annoyed. ‘Are you playing games?’

‘No, I’m just telling you how it is.’

‘Then what are you doing here, with me?’

‘I’m giving you what you want. Or rather, what your body and mind want. Which is me.’

‘You?’ She snorted. ‘What makes you so sure that it couldn’t have been any man?’

‘Because I’m the one who’s planted that desire in you. And now it’s crawling and creeping inside your body and mind.’

‘The desire for you specifically?’

‘Yes, for me. Or, to be more precise, what’s creeping inside you desires to enter my intestinal tract.’

‘So sweet. You mean I want to take you with a strap-on? My husband once wanted me to do that when we started going out.’

The man who called himself Prim shook his head. ‘I mean the small intestines and the large intestines. Bacterial flora. So they can multiply. As for your husband, it’s news to me he wants to be penetrated from behind. When I was a little boy, he was the one who did the penetrating.’

Helene stared down at him. In bewilderment, but she knew she hadn’t misheard.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t you know your husband fucks boys?’

‘Boys?’

‘Little boys.’

She swallowed. It had of course crossed her mind that he liked men but she had never confronted him about it. Markus being bisexual or — more likely — a closet gay wasn’t perverse. What was sick was that Markus Røed — one of the richest, most powerful men in the city, a man the press had accused of greed, tax evasion, bad taste and worse — didn’t dare admit to the world the one human characteristic which could have helped him breathe more freely. Instead he had become a textbook case of a homosexual homophobe, a self-loathing narcissist and walking paradox. But little boys? Children. No. At the same time, now that the idea was presented to her and she reflected, it was all too logical. She shuddered. Another thought made its way into her mind: that this might come in useful as regards the divorce settlement.

‘How do you know this?’ she asked, without moving while she looked around for her knickers.

‘He was my stepfather. He abused me from the time I was six years old. I say six because the earliest time I can recall him doing it was the same day he gave me a bicycle. Three times a week. Three times a week he screwed that little arse of mine. Year in. Year out.’

Helene was breathing through her mouth. The air inside the car was thick with the smell of sex and that unusual musk scent. She swallowed. ‘Your mother, did she know about...?’

‘It was the usual. She suspected, I suppose, but did nothing to confirm it. She was an unemployed alcoholic who was afraid of losing him. Yet that’s what happened.’