THE CHURCH WAS AT THE end of the village, on a bit of a rise. Kjellegard had got out of the lorry near some farm cottages which straggled out to the south of the village proper; he’d taken care to give the driver the impression that one of these hovels was his destination, and now he stood on the roadside until the lorry had gone on through, out past the church and over the rise, out of sight. When it was gone, he left the road, and more carrying than pushing the bicycle he set off across the fields to the right. Skirting the houses and farmyards, he came onto the church through the spinney on its eastern side; he left the bicycle there, among the trees, then knocked the worst of the dust out of his clothes and walked up to the back door of the rectory.
Pastor Iversen’s wife caught her br
