After the telephone call from Frølich, Gunnarstranda sat in the car looking out of the window. He was thinking about the funeral ceremony, the faces of those who had passed him on their way into the church. He thought about Gerhardsen and his energetic spouse. The clock on the wall above the door was reflected in the window. A few hours had passed now. It was time to visit Vinterhagen again.

    On locking his car door half an hour later and gazing across the gravelled car park he wondered whether his idea would be a waste of time after all. A dense stillness hung over the large area. Everyone must have taken the day off because of the funeral. He stuffed his hands in his jacket pockets and walked along the same path he and Frølich had walked a few days, earlier, but now he didn't meet a single person. He rounded the corner of the yellow accommodation hall and saw the dark, lifeless windows of the office building. He pulled up and decided to use the opportunity to have a look around. He searched for a cigarette end from his pocket, lit up and strolled around the vegetable patch by the greenhouse. The potatoes had been earthed up at some point. It had obviously been done with a small fork or a spade. Someone had been very thorough. Other rows had been earthed up so badly that the yield would be poor. The leeks and onions were pale, thin and straggly. They needed more nitrogen. The carrots were looking good. He walked on to the greenhouse and tried the door. It wasn't locked. He flicked the cigarette into a pile of sand and entered.

    He stood avidly breathing in the warm, heavy, moist air of the greenhouse. Cucumbers and lettuces were being grown. Overhead, on the ridge, there were ventilation grilles which let in a fresh breath of cooler air that brushed his head. He walked down between two lines of potting tables and saw someone at the back, by the far wall. It was Annabeth s. She had changed out of her dark funeral clothes into a green overall, a flannel shirt and high green boots. She was watering plants, walking along the potting tables with a hose pipe to which a shower head had been attached. He coughed, but she didn't hear. He coughed again.

    'Oh,' she gasped as she turned round. 'You gave me a start!'

    'I didn't think the funeral was the right place to bother you,' Gunnarstranda said.

    'I know why you've come,' Annabeth said, resigned, and continued her watering. 'My God, Bjørn and I have had this showdown so many times I had an inkling it would re-appear. Let me make it quite clear so that we can avoid all the pomposity and the embarrassing pauses. Bjørn, my husband, is a big boy. Yes, he did confess to me that he had used her in a moment of weakness. If I hadn't already been working at getting the poor girl on to an even keel, I would have dumped her in another institution. I'm telling you that straight. It is no secret.'

    'But why didn't you do that?' Gunnarstranda asked, cleaning the dry leaves of some of the plants on the table.

    'You might well ask. It's always easy to ask when it's all over. Don't you think I wanted to do that? Don't you think I considered the problem? But she liked it with us. She trusted us. She could function here, Gunnarstranda. Believe me, it wasn't easy.'

    Annabeth lifted the hose pipe and dragged it along with her.

    'I am quite sure it wasn't easy,' Gunnarstranda broke in again. 'But it can't have been right, either. The decision to keep Katrine as a patient when your husband was having a relationship with her could never have been right.'

    'See!' Annabeth waved the hose pipe about angrily. 'There you go with your accusations. Why do you do that?' She sent the policeman a fierce look and continued in an aggressive tone. 'You say that because she was murdered. If this hadn't happened no one would have been any the wiser. She wasn't suffering any extra pressure. She was completely rehabilitated. The treatment was a success. So it hadn't been wrong to keep her.'

    Gunnarstranda went quiet. She had a point. She glared at him from the other side of the potting table.

    'Katrine had all the facilities she needed to succeed here. We had her confidence. She wanted to kick the habit. We could have sent her to other professionals - to a place where she had to live with other patients and work with new staff, but there would have been no guarantee that she would have managed any better. Well, what is done is done. No one can undo the dreadful mistake my husband committed in a moment of weakness.'

    'A moment of weakness?' Gunnarstranda queried.

    'Yes… going to a place like that - a massage parlour. But would his weakness at that time, so long ago, stand in the way of Katrine's chances of succeeding?' Annabeth tilted her head as though she were talking to a close friend. 'Would that have been right?' she asked in a gentle voice.

    Gunnarstranda smiled with one side of his mouth. 'That's one way of looking at it,' he conceded. 'But it's not necessarily a right way of looking at it. You don't know how she would have fared with her treatment elsewhere. You don't know if she would have succeeded just as well.'

    'But can't you hear what I'm saying?' Annabeth almost screamed. 'Katrine had every chance to succeed here. We were the ones who cured her. We were the ones who laid the world at her feet!'

    'It was while she was here that she was murdered,' Gunnarstranda interrupted with annoyance.

    Annabeth shut her mouth and threw the hosepipe down on the baked-earth floor. They eyeballed each other in the silence that followed.

    There was no point discussing investigative theory with this woman, the policeman thought. He had a feeling he knew what she was after. It wasn't the desire to save Katrine Bratterud that had driven this woman to keep her as a patient. It had been the chance to succeed that had driven her. That and the council subsidy that must have come with the girl. And in her hunt for success Annabeth had swallowed camels, or, to be more precise, she had shut her eyes to her own professional ethics. 'No one knows for the moment what happened that night,' he said in a milder tone. 'No one knows why Katrine had to be buried today. So we had better not make any allegations. Let us just state that you had a patient who perhaps should not have been treated here. Were there others apart from you who knew about your husband's previous… experiences with Katrine?'

    'No.'

    'How can you be so sure?'

    'Because such rumours cannot be kept secret in a place like this.'

    'Did you ever take up this matter with Katrine?'

    'Never.'

    'You never mentioned a thing about it?'

    'No.'

    'Did she ever take the matter up with you?'

    Annabeth, eyes closed, shook her head. 'No, never.'

    Never, mused Gunnarstranda. Katrine must have known she knew. And conversely, the certainty that her husband had exploited her patient's social needs must have coloured the atmosphere every single time Annabeth met Katrine. And the patient, on her side, must have felt it. Anything else would be inconceivable.

    The water from the hose reached his shoes and ran down both sides of the flagstone path he was standing on. 'Shall we turn off the water?' he said, trudging back to the tap attached to the hosepipe. He turned it off, straightened his back and observed her. She had not moved from the spot. 'I know you don't like talking about this,' Gunnarstranda said. 'But I'm obliged to probe for motives. If for a moment we assume that Katrine was an unscrupulous woman one could imagine that this relationship - I mean the fact that your husband as chairman had received sexual favours from Katrine…' He paused for a few seconds when she closed both eyes. Then went on:'… we might imagine that this fact gave Katrine a hold over your husband. Would she have blackmailed your husband or tried to exploit this hold she had?'

    'Never.'

    'You seem very sure.'

    Annabeth took off her gloves and strolled over to him. 'My good man, Katrine wanted to be cured. That was why I kept her as a patient. Katrine was perhaps the most motivated client I have ever met. Just the very idea of blackmailing Bjørn - that would never have occurred to her.'

    'But what you're saying now you could be saying to cover up the fact that pressure was applied.'

    'Why would I cover anything up if she had gone as far as blackmailing Bjørn?'

    'Because blackmail would give Bjørn a motive for murdering her.'

    'Ha,' Annabeth laughed haughtily. 'Now you're chasing shadows. Bjørn! Would Bjørn have killed Katrine?' She laughed again. 'Excuse me, but the thought is too ridiculous. Believe me, Gunnarstranda. Bjørn Gerhardsen can crunch numbers and he might sneak into some dingy place to vent his male sexuality. But other than that…? When we go fishing in Sorland in the summer it's me who has to kill the fish he catches. If there's a mouse in the trap in our mountain cabin, he can't even look at it. I have to clean up. The truth about Bjørn is that he's a good boy but as soft as marshmallow.'

    Gunnarstranda didn't speak. He was thinking about what she had said while they were walking beside the potting tables and out into the fresh weather. Good boy, soft as marshmallow. She was demeaning her husband's masculinity.

    They strolled by the vegetable plot towards the car park.

    'Believe me, Gunnarstranda, your speculations are absurd. Katrine wanted to be rehabilitated. She chose us because we could help her.' ^v

    The policeman stopped and looked into her eyes. 'Did you at any point leave the party you organized on that Saturday?'

    She still had a faint smile on her face as she shook her head. 'Not for a minute. Bjørn left with Georg Beck and a few others. He's already told you, I understand. But he returned, as soft and affectionate as the little kitten he is when he's been away from Mummy for more than two hours.'

    Gunnarstranda studied her for a while before asking, 'Do you remember what time it was when he left?'

    'Around midnight. He came back alone a bit before four and helped me clear up.'

    'Did anyone else leave the party in the course of the evening?'

    'No, as a matter of fact they didn't. There was a sort of mass departure at half past two, but it was some time before everyone had been packed off happily in taxis. It took an hour, maybe more.'