'Are you sitting here in the dark?' said a voice from behind him.

One by one the lamps in the living room were switched on.

'Marcus?' Rolf came and stood in front of him, a slightly puzzled expression on his face. 'You're ready. But it's only half-past two, and-'

'Come and sit down, please.'

'I can't make you out at all today, Marcus. I hope this won't take long, because we've got a lot to do. Marcus has decided to sleep over at Johan's, so that's-'

'Good. Sit down. Please.'

Rolf sat down in the matching armchair a metre away. They were half-facing the view, half-facing each other.

'What is it?'

'Do you remember that hard drive you found?' asked Marcus, coughing.

'What?'

'Do you remember finding a hard drive in the Maserati?'

'Yes. You said ... I can't remember what you said, but ... what about it?'

'It wasn't broken. I took it out of my computer so n.o.body would be able to see which websites I'd been surfing that night. If anyone happened to check, I mean.'

Rolf was perched on the edge of the chair, his mouth half-open. Marcus was leaning back with his feet on a matching footstool, both arms resting on the soft upholstery.

'p.o.r.n,' Rolf said with an uncertain smile, taking a guess. 'Did you ...? Have you downloaded something illegal that-?'

'No. I'd read an article in Dagbladet. It was quite harmless, in fact, but I wanted to be on the safe side. Absolutely on the safe side.' He snorted, a mixture of laughter and tears, then looked at Rolf and said: 'Could you possibly sit back a bit?'

'I'll sit how I want! What's the matter with you, Marcus? Your voice sounds strange and you're behaving ... oddly! Sitting here in your suit and tie early on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, talking about illegal surfing ... in Dagbladet! How the h.e.l.l can it be illegal to-?'

Marcus got up abruptly. Rolf closed his mouth with an audible little click as his teeth banged together.

'I'm begging you,' said Marcus, running both hands over his head in an impotent gesture. 'I'm begging you to listen to what I have to say. Without interrupting. This is difficult enough, and at least I've found a way to begin now. Let me get through this.'

'Of course,' said Rolf. 'What's ... ? Of course. Carry on. Tell me.'

Marcus stared at the armchair for a few seconds, then sat down again.

'I came across a story about an artist called Niclas Winter. He was dead. The suggestion was that it was due to an overdose.'

'Niclas Winter,' said Rolf, clearly puzzled. 'He was one of the victims of-'

'Yes. He was one of the people murdered by the American hate group that VG has been writing about over the past few days. He was also my brother. Half-brother. My father's son.'

Rolf slowly got to his feet.

'Sit down,' said Marcus. 'Please sit down!'

Rolf did as he asked, but once again he perched on the very edge of his seat, one hand on the armrest as if ready to leap up if necessary.

'I didn't know about him,' said Marcus. 'Not until last October. He came to see me. It was a shock, of course, but mostly I was pleased. A brother. Just like that. Out of the blue.'

Outside the sky was growing dark. In the west the sun had left a narrow strip of orange behind. In half an hour that, too, would be gone.

'I wasn't pleased for very long. He told me he was the rightful heir to everything. The whole lot.'

He took a quick, deep breath. There wasn't a sound.

'What do you mean the whole lot?' Rolf dared to whisper.

'All this,' said Marcus, with a sweeping gesture around the room. 'Everything that is mine. Ours. The entire estate left by his father and mine.'

Rolf started to laugh. A dry, peculiar laugh.

'But surely he can't just turn up and claim that he's a long-lost son who-'

'A will,' Marcus broke in. 'There was a will. Admittedly, he hadn't managed to get hold of it at that point, but his mother had told him such a doc.u.ment existed. All he had to do was find it. I thought he was a thoroughly unpleasant individual, and I didn't really believe him either, so I threw him out. He was furious, and swore he would have his revenge when he found the will. He seemed almost ...'

Marcus covered his eyes with his right hand.

'Crazy,' he murmured. 'He seemed crazy. I decided to forget about him, but after just a few hours I started to worry.'

He took his hand away and looked at Rolf.

'Niclas Winter was not unlike my father,' he said hoa.r.s.ely. 'There was something about his appearance that made me check out his story. Just to be on the safe side.'

'And how did you do that?'

Rolf was still sitting in exactly the same position.

'By asking my mother.'

'Elsa? How the h.e.l.l would she be able to-?'

Marcus held up his hand and shook his head.

'As soon as I told her I'd been visited by a man who not only insisted he was my brother, but also thought he had a claim on Georg's entire estate, she broke down completely. When I eventually got her to talk, she told me she had seen my father five days before he died. She had gone to see him to beg for ... to ask for money on behalf of Anine. My sister had split up with her partner, and she didn't want to lose her little apartment in Grunerlkka. She couldn't afford to keep it on the money she earns from working in a bookshop.'

'I think you should stop now,' said Rolf, swallowing audibly. 'You look like a living corpse, Marcus. You ought to go and lie down, you ought to-'

'I ought to finish telling my story!'

He banged the arm of the chair with his clenched fists. The dull thud made Rolf sink back in his own chair.

'And you are going to listen!' Marcus hissed.

Rolf nodded quickly.

'Georg threw my mother out,' said Marcus, taking a deep breath.

Keep calm, he thought. Tell your story and do what you have to do.

'But he did manage to tell her that he had made a will in favour of ... the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, as my mother refers to him. She had known about him all along. My father had no relationship with him either. He just wanted to punish us. Punish my mother, I a.s.sume.'

One of the setters stood up in its basket. The wicker creaked and the dog gave a long drawn-out yawn before padding over to Marcus and laying its head on his knee.

'When I realized the man was telling the truth, I didn't know which way to turn.'

He placed his hand on the soft head.

Rolf was breathing with his mouth open. A wheezing noise was coming from his throat, as if he were about to have an asthma attack.

'I'll cut a long story short,' said Marcus, pushing the dog away.

Slowly, as if he were an old man, he got up from his chair. He took a step forward and stopped, half-facing away from Rolf. The dog sat down beside him, as if both of them were looking for the same thing out there in the darkness.

'Three days later I was in the US,' said Marcus. His voice had acquired a metallic quality. 'It was business as usual, but I didn't feel too good. I got drunk one night with one of the directors of Lehman Brothers, who had just lost his job. I'd intended to ...'

The pause lasted for a long time.

'Forget it. The point is that I told him the story. He had a solution.'

An even longer pause.

The dog whimpered, and the very tip of his tail swept across the floor.

To the south the flashing light of a plane moved slowly across the sky.

'What kind of ... ?' Rolf had to clear his throat. 'What kind of solution?' he said.

'A contract killer,' said Marcus.

'A contract killer.'

'Yes. A contract killer. As I said, I was drunk.'

'And the following day you laughed it off, of course.'

The dog looked up at his owner and whimpered again, before getting up and ambling back to his basket.

'Marcus. Answer me. The next day you both had hangovers and laughed about it, the way you laugh at a joke. Didn't you? Didn't you, Marcus?'

Marcus didn't answer. He just stood there, shoulders slumped, arms hanging by his side, in his suit and tie and a state of total apathy.

'I set a monster free,' he whispered tonelessly. 'I couldn't have known I was setting a monster free.'

Rolf finally made his leap and grabbed Marcus by the arm.

'What are you telling me?' he roared, squeezing hard.

Marcus ignored both the pain in his arm and Rolf's violent outburst.

'Tell me you didn't order a f.u.c.king murder, Marcus!'

'He was going to take everything away from me. Niclas Winter was going to steal everything I deserved. Everything. Anine's money. And Mathias's. Ours. Everything that will go to little Marcus one day.'

His voice was nothing more than a monotone now, as if every word were being recorded individually on tape, to be edited into sentences at a later stage. Rolf raised his other hand, clenching his fist until the knuckles turned white. He was taller than Marcus. Stronger. Considerably fitter.

'If you're standing here telling me that you paid a contract killer, then I'll kill you! I'll kill you Marcus, I swear it! Tell me you're lying!'

'Two. Million. Dollars. For two million dollars, my problem would disappear. I paid. The man from Lehman Brothers organized the rest. The whole thing was so ... impersonal. A transfer to the Cayman Islands, and neither the money nor the ... order had anything to do with me any longer.'

Suddenly Rolf let go of his arm.

'That night,' Marcus went on, not even noticing that the dogs had started circling around them, yelping and whimpering, 'I got the confirmation I needed. A great deal is being written about The 25'ers at the moment, and doubtless quite a lot of it is unreliable. But the serious web pages gave me the confirmation I needed.'

'Of what?' Rolf sobbed, backing away slowly, as if he no longer wanted or dared to stand next to Marcus any longer. 'Confirmation of what?'

'The 25'ers commit murder for payment. Just like the Ku Klux Klan and The Order and ...'

He gasped for breath.

'They earn money by killing people they would like to eliminate anyway,' he whispered. 'I was the one who brought them here. My contact or whoever he contacted must have found out that the person I wanted killed was gay, and pa.s.sed the job on to The 25'ers. So simple. So ... clinical. I'm the one who has financed the murders of six Norwegians. I didn't even know that Niclas Winter ... my brother ... was gay too. I set a monster free. I ...'

He staggered backwards as the huge window exploded. A freezing cold wind rushed into the room. Shards of gla.s.s lay everywhere like fragments of ice. The dogs were howling. Rolf stood there with the heavy floor lamp in his hand, ready to strike again.

'You killed someone for this?' he yelled. 'You decided to buy a murderer? For a f.u.c.king n.a.z.i place in Holmenkollen? For expensive cars and a b.l.o.o.d.y wine cellar? You've turned into one of them, Marcus! You've turned into a f.u.c.king capitalist!'

With a roar he braced himself, lifted the two-metre tall lamp with six kilos of lead in its base and smashed it into the next window with all his strength.

'We would have managed without all this! I'm a vet, for f.u.c.k's sake! You're well educated! Things could have been just as good without ...'

He was on the way to the next window when the doorbell rang.

He stood there, frozen to the spot.

It rang again.

Marcus heard nothing. He had sunk down into the armchair, among pieces of gla.s.s and broken lampshade. The dogs were running around barking. One of them had a badly cut paw, leaving a trail of blood across the floor as the terrified animal disappeared into the hallway.

'I set a monster free,' Marcus whispered, closing his eyes.

He registered voices from the hallway, but he didn't hear what they were saying.

'A monster,' he whispered again, then stood up and walked across the room.