The previous day might have been wet, but this day was drier than white wine. Police Inspector Gunnarstranda rolled down the car window and watched the sturdy figure of Frank Frølich approaching. The car park was empty apart from the odd car frying in the sun. Through the opening in the cypress hedge that divided the car park from the cemetery came a female gardener. She was pulling off a pair of filthy gardening gloves and plodding around in shorts and heavy boots covered in soil and clay. Clumps of earth fell off, leaving a trail behind her. She wiped the sweat off her brow and lit a cigarette which she stood smoking while staring pensively at the ground. A minibus trundled into the car park, passed the gardener, and Frølich too, before parking. A logo with the name of the rehab centre was painted in large, hazy, colourful letters on the side of the bus: vinterhagen. A crowd of well- dressed young people piled out. They seemed fragile in their fine clothes, almost as though they had been rolled in starch to ensure that they remained erect. Frølich gave them a nod. The youths looked around with their hands buried deep in their trouser pockets before ambling off to the chapel where a gentleman in dark clothes from the funeral parlour was waiting for them. Ole Eidesen was there too. He stood with his nose in a booklet for the funeral ceremony. He was dressed in black.

    Frølich got into Gunnarstranda's car bringing with him a strong smell of deodorant and sweat. 'Those are the VIPs,' he mumbled, nodding towards the youths in front of the chapel. 'Shall we go in?'

    Gunnarstranda shook his head. 'Let them have half an hour to themselves.'

    Frølich rolled down his window. 'Christ, it's hot,' he groaned. 'And now I have done most of this area, but there's still no sign of Raymond Skau.'

    The youths from the minibus stood hanging around the entrance to the chapel.

    'Loads of bloody great gravestones here,' Frølich said at length.

    'You don't say!'

    'Yes, obelixes and stuff.'

    'Obelisks.'

    'It was wordplay. A comic series.'

    'Really?'

    'A Gaul, a fat guy who carries around obelisks on his back - called Obelix.'

    'Well, I never.'

    'Yes, indeed.'

    'Well, well.'

    'Have you seen anyone?' Frølich asked.

    'Henning Kramer, Annabeth s and the crew you saw from the centre. Ole Eidesen is around…' Gunnarstranda motioned towards the entrance where Eidesen had gone in.

    'Talked to anyone?'

    'No.'

    'Perhaps we ought to give Kramer another grilling?'

    'Not today. Besides, we'd better find holes in his statement first.'

    'Seen anything of Gerhardsen?' Frølich asked.

    Gunnarstranda checked his watch. 'He's still got a couple of minutes.'

    'Do you think her mother's here?'

    'I would assume so. After all, she is the next of kin.'

    'Terrible business,' Frølich mumbled. 'Terrible business.' * 'I suppose we should go through the park grounds again,' Gunnarstranda said.

    'Should we go in and say hello to her mother?'

    'I would like to, but this is not the time or place to do aggressive police work.'

    'Right,' Frølich said, wiping the sweat with a tissue he produced from his jacket pocket. 'Right,' he repeated. 'I suppose that means I'll have to drive to her place.'

    'For the time being the grounds seem quite appealing,' Gunnarstranda said.

    'I don't think so.'

    'Should I interpret that as a no to searching the grounds again?'

    'Needle in a haystack.'

    'Do you have any ambitions to be a public prosecutor at some point?'

    'And that's why I should sweat in the grounds?'

    'Not necessarily, but if there's any point in checking anything to do with this poor girl, there must be an underlying theory that the assailant is sneaking around in the bushes here or is sitting in the chapel listening to what a wonderful person he has destroyed. Look at Silver Fox…'

    Gunnarstranda stopped talking and both policemen followed Sigrid Haugom with their eyes. She closed the door of a parked Mercedes. Frølich whistled. 'Jeez, what a body,' he mumbled.

    'She's too old for you, Frølich. That's Sigrid Haugom. Katrine's confidante. The one who asked me if I liked my name.'

    'Who do you think the old codger is?'

    Gunnarstranda rolled his shoulders. 'Tax inspector from the outer isles - who knows. But the odds are it's her husband. In which case his name is Erik Haugom.'

    Both men followed the couple with their eyes. She was graceful, with an hourglass figure, cultured and suitably dressed for the occasion; she even wore a black shawl over her shoulders. He seemed like a good-looking guy, straight back, firm backside with a sullen grin on his ruddy face.

    'Guess what his job is,' Gunnarstranda said.

    Frølich took his time to answer. Both policemen were following the couple with their eyes. As they passed the last parked car before the chapel, the man stopped, took a comb from his back pocket and combed his hair back in the reflection from the car window.

    'No idea,' Frølich concluded.

    'They live in Grefsen in an architect-designed house full of old junk they have accumulated from antiques auctions here and in London. The son studies at Yale and they each have a car of their own. He has a Mercedes; she has a BMW.'

    'Suppose she must be trying to put something back,' Frølich mumbled. 'Since she rehabilitates drug addicts.'

    'But how do you think he earns his living?'

    'No idea.'

    'Doctor, of course.'

    'Doctor?' Frølich sneered. 'I know who the bugger is!'

    'You do?' Gunnar said, uninterested.

    'Yes, Erik Haugom? Doctor? He's a bloody celeb. The guy has his own column in several newspapers!'

    Gunnarstranda stared at Frølich. His expression was reminiscent of someone who had just sampled tainted food. 'Did you say celeb? Do you use such words?'

    Frølich was not listening. His face was one big, moist grin. 'I still read Haugom's columns. He calls himself a sexologist. The guy knows everything that is worth knowing about anal sex, group sex, urine sex… you name it.' He paused as though remembering something. 'They look quite respectable,' he mumbled. 'I mean… she's…'

    Gunnarstranda - who was still observing the other policeman as if he were an object he would have to tolerate for the time being, but which he had high hopes would soon be off his hands - opened his mouth and said in a toneless but earnest voice, 'Don't come out with any more idiocies now.'

    'No.' Frølich went quiet.

    They sat watching the couple greet the man from the funeral parlour. A gust of wind caught Sigrid Haugom's silver hair and she reacted with an elegant toss of the head. They went inside.

    'Come on then,' Gunnarstranda said.

    'Eh?'

    'Say what you have to say.'

    'You don't like me saying these things.'

    'But say it anyway, for Christ's sake.'

    Frølich cleared his throat. 'Well, she's a cracker, despite being fifty-something, isn't she? With that ass, I mean, she's a cracker.' He paused.

    'Well?'

    'Well, just imagine all that guy knows about sex…'

    'Shut up!'

    'I told you you didn't like the comments I make.'

    'I'm going for a walk,' Gunnarstranda said, and got out. He crossed the car park and followed the female gardener who was strolling towards a grave. She knelt down and began to remove stubborn blades of wheat grass and goutweed from between the low-growing asters and sea lavender. Gunnarstranda threw his jacket over his shoulder and breathed in the perfume of freshly mown grass and sweet summer flowers mixed with the faint stench of.decomposition. The silence surrounding the graves made him think of Edel. He strolled down to her grave. On the way he passed an open grave and a pile of earth covered with a tarpaulin. He went on to the area where Edel's urn was kept. The mauve carpet phlox he had planted the previous year had grown so big that it had spread across the little bed in front of the gravestone and on to the lawn. There were still a few small mauve flowers glistening between the seed pods against the green background. He crouched down and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He saw her in front of a window watering a potted plant. He opened his eyes and tried to remember when that had been and why he could visualize that particular image. But once it was gone, he couldn't picture it as clearly. He was unable to say how old she had been then or what clothes she had been wearing. Nor could he recall the type of plant she had been watering.

    He turned away from the grave and strolled back towards the chapel, walked past it and by the south side where another funeral had just finished; grief-stricken mourners were observing each other, relaying their condolences and holding each other's hands. Gunnarstranda felt out of place and withdrew. A thin man in filthy jeans was sitting beside a mower on a lawn some distance away.

    Gunnarstranda paused in the middle of one of the gravel paths that ran as straight as an arrow up to the huge cemetery. The path was broken by numerous other small paths crossing it and creating small squares all over the grounds, plots fenced off by tall, green cypress hedges. Some elderly women were walking down; a tractor crossed the path right in front of them, then re-crossed the path, closer this time. Gunnarstranda could see the hopelessness of the task of looking out for suspicious persons in the grounds. He walked around the chapel. In the east wall of the crematorium there were the urns of the first members of the Norwegian Crematorium Association. He stepped closer and tried to decipher the inscriptions on the urns. All of a sudden he recognized a name, an elderly neighbour from his boyhood days in Grunerlшkka. He read the man's name once more and experienced a strange feeling of awe.

    So this was where he had ended up. Gunnarstranda was reminded with a smile of the old crackpot in the window at the top of Markveien shouting propaganda for the crematorium. I'm telling you, you young whippersnappers, the crematorium is the future! he had screamed - and earned himself gales of laughter. Now he was here on the stand of honour - a handful of ashes in a clay pot.

    Gunnarstranda kept walking and rounded the corner just in time to see Bjørn Gerhardsen sneaking in through the chapel door.