We seemed to glide in circles over the floor as though entranced, with a slightly unreal feeling that I had never experienced before on the dance floor. But then again, I had stepped out onto a very special dance floor with a very special young lady. We were over by the record player when, to my annoyance, the music faded out. To my relief, Maria Irene let go of one hand and deftly put the needle down again.
We continued to dance and circle round the room for another three minutes. Our circuit took us from the sofa to her four-poster bed. As the melody faded for a second time, Maria raised her red and breathy mouth to mine. It stopped less than an inch away. I looked down into her dark eyes. And in that moment I felt certain that she would not object in any way if I was to do the only thing in the world that I wanted to do. In other words, to lift her up and kiss her beyond all reason.
Suddenly I was at the point where the temptation was so overwhelming that the rest of the world and all its worries seemed to disappear. This time it felt as though I forgot not only time and place, but also age and planet. I looked down into Maria Irene’s face, with an almost taunting smile curled on her red lips and a twinkle in her brown eyes, but still that bottomless calm. I felt a flash of teasing anger, and a deep desire to remove that taunting smile and peace from her face. In my ears I heard a kind of echo of Maria Irene’s voice from our first interview, remarking that Synnøve Jensen was surprisingly voluble in bed for someone who otherwise was so quiet. And I was instantly overcome by an irresistible desire to find out what sort of sounds were hidden in Maria Irene.
I had just lifted her up the tiny distance that still separated us when we were quite literally brought back down to earth with a bump by a noise outside in the hallway. There was a knocking at the door and an extremely irritated maternal voice said: ‘Maria Irene, if the detective inspector is still with you, please do not plague him with that terrible music of yours.’
It was the first time in the investigation that I had actually hated one of the parties involved. I would later be very grateful to Sandra Schelderup and shudder to think what might have happened if she had come a little later or, even worse, walked straight in. It is more than likely that ten seconds later I would have been standing there with my tongue in Maria Irene’s mouth. And it was not unfeasible that a minute later, I would have been lying on top of her on the four-poster bed, the spell felt so strong. But thankfully it was broken by her mother’s voice. I let go of Maria Irene instantly, as though she was burning – which in fact was perhaps not so far from the truth.
