I saw it immediately, as he walked towards me. Someone had placed a cushion beneath my head. I was no longer compelled to gaze up at the reindeer’s muzzle, where the fur had worn away and rough seams revealed the taxidermist’s appalling work. As the little doctor moved through the room with an odd, rolling gait, the crowd parted before him like Moses parting the Red Sea. Every conversation died away; even the complaints and cries of pain stopped as he passed by.

They just stared. I closed my eyes.

‘Mmm,’ he said, kneeling down beside me. ‘And what have we here?’

His voice was surprisingly deep. I had expected some kind of helium voice, as if he were an entertainer at a children’s party. As it would be extremely impolite not to look at the doctor when he was speaking to me, and my closed eyes might suggest that I felt worse than I actually did, I opened them.

‘Magnus Streng,’ he said, taking my reluctant right hand in a thick, stubby paw.

I mumbled my name and couldn’t help thinking that the doctor’s parents must have had a very particular sense of humour. Magnus. The Great One.

He peered at me for a moment, and raised his index finger. Then his face broke into a huge smile. ‘The policewoman,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘You were the one who got shot in Nordmarka a few years ago, weren’t you?’ Once again his face acquired an expression of exaggerated thoughtfulness. This time he placed his finger against his temple before smiling even more broadly. ‘By that corrupt chief of police, isn’t that right? It was -’

‘It was a long time ago,’ I interrupted him. ‘You have a good memory.’

He toned down the smile and concentrated on my leg. Only now did I notice that the omnipresent Geir Rugholmen had sat down next to the doctor. The snowmobile suit was gone. His woolly jumper must have dated back to the war. His bare elbows protruded through holes in both sleeves. His knee breeches had presumably been blue once upon a time, but had faded to an indefinable dark-greyish shade. The man smelled of wood smoke.