The plane had definitely been delayed, according to the arrivals board. Flight SK1442 from Copenhagen was due at 21.50, but hadn't landed until forty minutes later. That was now more than three quarters of an hour ago.

She paced up and down in front of the entrance to customs control. The airport was quiet, almost deserted so late on a Sat.u.r.day evening between Christmas and New Year. The chairs were empty outside the small cafeteria where she had bought a cup of coffee and a slice of inedible lukewarm pizza. But she couldn't calm herself enough to sit down.

She usually liked airports. When she was younger, in the days when the largest Norwegian airport was actually in Denmark and little Fornebu was the biggest in the country, she sometimes drove out there on Sundays just to watch. The planes. The people. The groups of self-a.s.sured pilots and the smiling women who were still called air stewardesses and were stunningly beautiful; she could sit for hours drinking tea from her Thermos and making up stories about all the people coming and going. Airports gave her a feeling of curiosity, expectation and homesickness.

But now she was anxious, verging on irritated.

It was a long time since anyone had come through customs.

When she turned back to look at the arrivals board, she saw that it no longer said BAGS ON BELT after SK1442. She knew what that meant, but refused to accept it. Not yet.

Marianne would have let her know if anything had happened.

Sent a message. Called. She would have been in touch.

The journey from Sydney took over thirty hours, with landings in Tokyo and Copenhagen. Obviously something could have happened. In Tokyo. In Sydney, perhaps. Or in Copenhagen, for that matter.

Marianne would have let her know.

Fear sank its teeth into the back of her neck. She made a sudden decision and rushed over to the corridor leading from customs control. It probably wasn't advisable to flout the rule forbidding anyone from going further down the corridor. For all she knew, the security measures adopted by the airline industry after 9/11 might mean the customs officers had orders to shoot to kill.

'h.e.l.lo?' she called out, poking her head around the wall. 'Is anyone there?'

No response.

'h.e.l.lo?' she called again, a little louder this time.

A man wearing the uniform of the customs service came over from the opposite wall, five metres away.

'You can't go in that way!'

'No, I know. I was just wondering ... I'm waiting for someone on the flight from Copenhagen. The one that landed an hour ago. SK1442. But she hasn't turned up. I just wondered if you could ... ? Could you possibly be kind enough to check if there are any pa.s.sengers left in there?'

For a moment it looked as if he might say no. It wasn't his job to run errands for the general public. Then he changed his mind for some reason, shrugged his shoulders and gave a little smile.

'I don't think there's anyone there. Just a minute.'

He disappeared.

Maybe her mobile needed recharging. Of course, she thought, breathing a little more easily. G.o.d knows it could be difficult finding a payphone these days. And if you found one, you didn't have any change. Most took cards, of course, but when she thought about it, there must be something wrong with Marianne's mobile.

'Empty. Silent as the grave.' The customs officer had his hands in his pockets. 'We're waiting for two or three more flights tonight, but at the moment there's no one there. And the luggage carousel for the Copenhagen flight is empty.'

He took his hands out of his pockets and made an apologetic gesture.

'Thanks,' she said. 'Thank you for your help.'

She moved away and set off towards the escalator leading up to the departures hall. Took out her mobile. No messages. No missed calls. Once again she tried to ring Marianne, but it went straight to voice-mail. Her legs started to move of their own accord. The escalator was going too slowly, so she ran up it. At the top, she stopped dead.

She had never seen the departures hall so empty and quiet.

Only a few check-in desks were staffed, the operators looking bored. A couple of them were reading newspapers. At the southern end she could hear the hum of a cleaning machine gliding slowly across the floor, a dark-skinned man at the controls. Only one security post was open, and she couldn't see anyone there. It was like a scene from a film, a Doomsday film. Gardermoen should be full of life, exhausting and unfriendly, teeming with countless travellers and employees who never did more than they absolutely had to.

Her heart was in her mouth as she headed resolutely for the Scandinavian Airlines desk on the other side of the hall. There was no one there either. She swallowed several times and wiped the cold sweat from her forehead with her sleeve.

A well-built woman emerged from the back room.

'Can I help you?'

'Yes, I'm here to meet ...'

The woman sat down behind the barrier. She logged on to her computer without looking up.

'I've come to pick up a friend who should have been on the plane from Copenhagen.'

'Hasn't he turned up?'

'She. It's a she. Marianne Kleive.'

The woman behind the desk looked up in some confusion before she managed to rearrange her expression and went back to concentrating on her keyboard.

'I understand,' she said. 'Quite.'

'But she didn't turn up. She's been in Australia, and the flight was supposed to land in Tokyo and Copenhagen en route. I wonder if you could check whether she was on board?'

'I can't, unfortunately. I'm not allowed to give out that kind of information.'

Perhaps it was the threatening emptiness of the gigantic hall. Perhaps it was the sleepless nights or the inexplicable unease that had haunted her all week. Or it could have been the fact that she knew, deep down inside, she had every reason to despair. Whatever the cause, the woman in the red anorak started to cry in public for the first time in her adult life.

Slowly, silently, the tears ran down her cheeks, through the dimples on either side of her mouth that were so deep they were visible even now, and continued over her pointed chin. Slowly the big fat drops landed on the pale wood of the desk.

'Are you crying?'

The Scandinavian Airlines clerk suddenly looked more sympathetic.

The woman in the red anorak didn't reply.

'Listen,' said the clerk, lowering her voice. 'It's late. You must be tired. There's no one here and ...' She gave a quick sideways glance at the door leading to the back room. 'Which flight did you say?'

The woman placed a folded piece of paper on the desk.

'A copy of the itinerary,' she whispered, wiping her face with the backs of her hands.

She couldn't see the screen from where she was standing. Instead she fixed her gaze on the other woman's eyes. They flicked up and down between the keys and the screen. Suddenly the furrow above her eyes became more p.r.o.nounced.

'She had a ticket,' she said eventually. 'But she wasn't on the plane. She ...' The keys rattled beneath her dancing fingers. 'Marianne Kleive had a ticket, but she never checked in.'

'In Copenhagen?'

'No. In Sydney.'

It didn't make sense. It was impossible. Marianne would never, ever have failed to get in touch if something had prevented her from coming home. It was more than thirty hours since the plane had left Australian soil, and in that time Marianne would definitely have found a phone. A computer with Internet access. Something, and none of this made any sense at all.

'Just a moment,' said the clerk, picking up the copy of the itinerary again.

The woman in the anorak was forty-three years old and her name was Synnve. The name suited her perfectly. Her blonde hair was braided, her face completely free of make-up, and she could easily be taken for ten years younger. She had been 140 metres from the top of Mount Everest when she was forced to turn back, and she had sailed around the world. She had encountered pirates off the Canary Islands and had been a hair's breadth from drowning in a diving accident in Stord. Synnve Hessel was a woman who could think quickly and constructively, and who had saved both her own life and the lives of others on several occasions with her quick thinking.

Now everything stood still. Utterly, utterly still.

'I'm sorry,' the woman behind the desk whispered. 'Marianne Kleive had a ticket to Sydney last Sunday. But this shows ...'

The other woman's expression stabbed her like a knife.

'I'm sorry,' she said anyway. 'She didn't actually travel. Marianne Kleive never used her ticket. At least not for the return journey to Sydney. Of course, she could have gone somewhere else. With a different ticket, I mean.'

Without saying thank you for the kind and highly irregular service, without saying anything at all, without even picking up the copy of the itinerary which had not been followed, Synnve Hessel turned away from the information desk and began to run through the deserted departure hall.

She had no idea where she was going.

The Beloved Son.

As she stood there with her hand resting on the door handle, Trude Hansen no longer remembered where she was going. She swayed and realized she had already got hold of enough to see her through until tomorrow. The relief was so great that her knees gave way, and she had to lean on the wall when she let go of the door handle.

It still smelled vile in here.

She must do something about it.

Soon, she thought, staggering into the small room. In the alcove a sleeping bag lay on top of an unmade bed. At the bottom of the sleeping bag lay a red toilet bag with a picture of h.e.l.lo Kitty on it. Someone had given the cat fangs and a patch over one eye. With hands that somehow didn't want to obey her she eventually managed to pull out the bag and unzip it.

Everything was there.

Untouched. Three fixes.

Just like countless times before, she was intending to take the whole lot at once. Routinely, dully, she considered the chances that it would all be over if she took an overdose on purpose. She always started thinking along these lines on those rare occasions when she had enough heroin even to contemplate suicide, and it was equally inevitable that she would always reject the idea. She probably wouldn't die. And when she came round, she would have nothing left.

The thought of running out of drugs was worse than the thought of going on living.

She took the toilet bag and staggered the few steps over to a green sofa against the other wall. It was covered with empty beer bottles from yesterday. Someone had dropped a cigarette on one of the cushions during the night, and she stood for a while looking at the big brown circle with a black hole in the middle.

Above the sofa hung a confirmation photo of Runar.

She grabbed it and threw it among the beer bottles.

Runar stared at her from the large picture in its gold frame. His hair was cut in a mullet, and he'd had a perm. His suit was powder blue. The narrow tie was pink. He had looked so smart, she remembered. He was her big brother, and the most stylish person in the entire church that day. Later, when the ceremony was finally over and her mother really wanted to get away before any of the other parents started asking about the party, he had picked up his sister and carried her in one arm all the way to the bus stop. Even though she was nine years old and much too fat.

They had eaten chicken wings.

Mum, Runar and Trude.

Runar hadn't received a single present, because all the money had gone on his new suit, his hairstyle and the photographer. But they had eaten chicken wings and chips and Runar had been allowed a beer to go with it. He had smiled. She had laughed. Mum had smelled clean and wonderful.

Slowly she took out the spoon and the Bunsen burner Runar had given her. Soon she would feel better. Very soon. If only her hands would obey her a little better.

Her dull brain tried to work out how long it was since Runar died. Nineteen plus nineteen? No. Wrong. From the nineteenth to the nineteenth was thirty-one days. Or thirty. She couldn't remember how many days there were in November. Nor how many days had pa.s.sed since then. She couldn't even remember what day it was today.

The only thing she knew for sure was that Runar died on 19 November.

She had been at home. He was supposed to come. Runar had promised to come. He was just going to get some money. Score some heroin. Get everything she needed. Runar was going to help his little sister, just like he always did.

He was late. He was so f.u.c.king late. Then the cops came.

They came here. Rang the bell, at some ridiculous hour of the morning. When she opened the door they told her Runar had been robbed in Sofienberg Park that night. He had severe head injuries when he was found, and was probably already dead. Someone had called an ambulance, and he was p.r.o.nounced dead when he arrived at the hospital.

The policewoman was serious, and might possibly have tried to console her.

She didn't remember anything apart from a piece of paper in her hand. The address and phone number of a funeral director. Five days later she had woken up so late in the day she realized she wasn't going to make it to the funeral.

Since then the cops had done f.u.c.k all.

n.o.body had been caught.

She hadn't heard anything.

As the syringe emptied into a vein at the back of her knee, the blissful warmth spread so quickly that she gasped out loud. Slowly she sank back on the green sofa. She wrapped her stick-thin arms around the photo of Runar. Her last conscious thought before everything became warm clouds of nothingness was that her big brother had given her the last three chicken wings on the day he was confirmed and Mum gave him a beer for the first time.

The cops didn't care about people like Runar.

People like her and Runar.

'Do you care about this at all?'

For the first time in more than three quarters of an hour, Synnve Hessel was on the point of losing control. She leaned towards the police officer, both hands gripping the edge of the table as if she were afraid she might hit him otherwise.

'Of course,' he said without looking at her. 'But as I'm sure you understand, we have to ask questions. If you had any idea how many people just leave their normal everyday lives without-'

'Marianne hasn't left! When will you understand that she had absolutely no reason to leave?'

The police officer sighed. He leafed through the papers in front of him, then glanced at his watch. The small interview room was becoming unbearably warm. An air-conditioning unit hummed in the ceiling, but there must be something wrong with the thermostat. Synnve Hessel took off her knitted sweater and flapped her shirt in an attempt to cool down. A damp oval stain was visible between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and she could feel the sweat trickling down from under her arms. She decided to ignore it. The police officer smelled worse than she did.

At Gardermoen police station they had at least been friendly. Almost kind, in spite of the fact that all they could do was direct her to a normal police station. They had sympathized, of course, and made her a cup of coffee. An older uniformed female officer had tried to console her with the one thing everyone else seemed to know: people go missing all the time. But, sooner or later, they turn up again.