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was impossible to tell whether it was a police patrol car or an ambulance. When it disappeared from Helgeroaveien he took a bottle from the corner cupboard; Spanish, with the date 2004 emblazoned on the label in gold lettering. He thought he remembered receiving it the previous autumn after delivering a lecture to the Trades Association. It looked expensive, and letting it sit there had probably done no harm. Though he was fond of wine, he never had enough time or interest to bone up on grape varieties, producers, wine growing areas, what suited food or which type of wine could be drunk on its own. It was enough to recognise a good vintage when he tasted one.
    ‘Baron de Oña?’ He glanced in the direction of the sofa.
    Suzanne smiled, nodding towards him, and he returned her smile. She had entered his life a couple of years earlier, filling an immense void. The previous week, a water leak had sprung at her house, so she had arrived to stay with him and, though he had not told her so, he enjoyed having her here.
    Picking up two wine glasses, he squinted through the window again but now caught sight only of his own reflection, a broad coarse face with dark eyes. Turning his back, he returned to the settee and settled beside her.
    On the television screen, Thomas Rønningen’s studio couch was occupied by enthralling guests expressing a variety of viewpoints on a common topic. Wisting enjoyed this type of programme, in which serious subjects were mixed with light entertainment, and he particularly liked this presenter. With boyish charm, Thomas Rønningen created an intimate, personal and unassailable ambience in front of the studio lights. He had transformed himself into an investigator who always posed well-constructed, intelligent questions to his guests, and instead of boxing interviewees into a corner with critical probing, coaxed disclosures from them simply by allowing the conversation to flow.
    Relieving him of the glasses, Suzanne placed them on the table as he went off to fetch a corkscrew. Before returning to his seat, he peered through the window once more. Yet another emergency vehicle was heading in the same direction. He glanced automatically at his watch, noting the time: 22.02.
    ‘Congratulations, then,’ Suzanne remarked, holding out her glass as he poured.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘About the cottage,’ she smiled, nodding towards the key on the table.
    Wisting plumped himself on the settee again. The day had started at a lawyer’s office in Oslo in the company of his uncle, Georg Wisting. Seventy-eight years of age, Uncle Georg had spent most of his adult life building an engineering firm that specialised in energy conservation. Wisting had never quite understood what this involved, but knew his uncle had developed and patented equipment for sterilising and purifying water and air.
    Uncle Georg had also made it his life’s work to challenge the establishment, and his inbuilt aversion to rates and taxes had led to several rounds in the law courts, resulting in penalty taxes and suspended prison sentences.
    The meeting in the lawyer’s office concerned Georg Wisting’s last will and testament, his final attempt at ensuring the state would not benefit in any shape or form after his death. The lawyer, a specialist in inheritance matters, had drafted a fairly complex scheme to organise Uncle Georg’s estate prior to his death.
    Wisting’s involvement meant he became owner of a holiday cottage at Værvågen outside Helgeroa, valued at the most artificially low price permitted by the legal system and so reducing inheritance tax to a minimum. This had brought Wisting a degree of affluence, though in general money posed no problem. His earnings were satisfactory and the job did not allow time for much in the way of consumption. Moreover, there was the other money, the money from Ingrid. He and the children had received a million kroner in compensation when she died while working in Africa on an