The woman who opened the door of the yellow house exuded the sort of sharp vitality that was typical of women between thirty and fifty in the upper social segment here on the west side of the city. It was difficult to know if it was an ideal they were trying to live up to, or their true energy level, but Harry had a suspicion that there was something status-related about the effortless, loud way they marshalled their two children, gun dog and husband, preferably in a public place.
“Pia Bohr?”
“How can I help you?” No confirmation, and gently dismissive politeness, but said with a confident smile. She was short, wasn’t wearing makeup, and her wrinkles suggested she was closer to fifty than forty. But she was as slim as a teenager. A lot of time at the gym and plenty of outdoor living, Harry guessed.
“Police.” He held up his ID.
“Of course, you’re Harry Hole,” she said without looking at it. “I’ve seen your face in the paper. You were Rakel Fauke’s husband. My condolences.”
“Thank you.”
“I presume you’re here to talk to Roar? He isn’t here.”
“When...”
“This evening, possibly. Give me your number and I’ll ask him to contact you.”
“Mm. Perhaps I could talk to you, Mrs. Bohr?”
“To me? What for?”
“It won’t take long. There are just a couple of things I need to know.” Harry’s eyes roamed across the shoe rack behind her. “Can I come in?”
Harry noticed the hesitation. And found what he was looking for on the bottom shelf of the rack. A pair of black, Soviet military boots.
“Now isn’t a good time, I’m in the middle of... something.”
“I can wait.”
Pia Bohr smiled quickly. Not obviously beautiful, but cute, Harry decided. Possibly what Øystein would call a Toyota: not the boys’ first choice when they were teenagers, but the one that stayed in the best shape as the years passed.
She looked at her watch. “I need to go and get something from the chemist. We can talk while we walk, OK?”
She grabbed a coat from a hook, came out onto the steps and closed the door behind her. Harry had noted that the lock was the same sort as Rakel’s, no self-locking mechanism, but Pia Bohr didn’t bother to look for a key. Safe neighbourhood. No strange men who’d just walk into your house.
They walked past the garage, through the gate and down the road, where the first Tesla cars were humming home from their short days at work.
Harry put a cigarette between his lips without lighting it. “Are you going to pick up sleeping pills?”
“Sorry?”
Harry shrugged his shoulders. “Insomnia. You told our detective that your husband was at home all night of the tenth and eleventh of March. To know that for certain, you can’t have slept much.”
“I... Yes, it’s sleeping pills.”
“Mm. I needed sleeping pills after Rakel and I split up. Insomnia eats away at your soul. What have they put you on?”
“Er... Imovane and Somadril.” Pia was walking faster.
Harry lengthened his stride as he clicked the lighter beneath the cigarette but failed to get it to light. “Same as me. I’ve been on them for two months. You?”
“Something like that.”
Harry put the lighter back in his pocket. “Why are you lying, Pia?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Imovane and Somadril are heavy stuff. If you take them for two months, you’re hooked. And if you’re hooked, you take them every night. Because they work. So well that if you did take them that night, you were in a coma and would have no idea what your husband was doing. But you don’t strike me as the sort of person who’s hooked on sedatives. You’re a little too energetic, a little too quick-witted.”
Pia Bohr slowed down.
“But of course you could easily prove me wrong,” Harry said. “By showing me the prescription.”
Pia stopped walking. She put her hand in the back pocket of her tight jeans. Pulled out and unfolded a piece of blue paper.
“See?” she said with a light vibrato in her voice, holding it up and pointing. “So-ma-dril.”
“I see,” Harry said, taking the paper from her before she had time to react. “And when I look more closely, I see that it’s been prescribed for Bohr. Roar Bohr. He evidently hasn’t told you how strong the medication he needs is.”
Harry handed the prescription back to her.
“Perhaps there are other things he hasn’t told you, Pia?”
“I...”
“Was he at home that night?”
She swallowed. The colour in her cheeks was gone, her energetic vitality punctured. Harry adjusted his estimate of her age by five years.
“No,” she whispered. “He wasn’t.”
They skipped the chemist and walked down to Smestaddammen, then sat down on one of the benches on the slope on the eastern side, looking out at the little island that had room for a single willow tree.
“Spring,” Pia said. “Anything but spring. In the summer it’s so green here. Everything grows like mad. Loads of insects. Fish, frogs. It’s so full of life. And when the trees get their leaves and the wind plays through the willow, they dance and rustle loud enough to drown out the motorway.” She smiled sadly. “And autumn in Oslo...”
“Finest autumn in the world,” Harry said, lighting his cigarette.
“Even winter’s better than spring,” Pia said. “At least it used to be, when you could count on it being properly cold, with solid ice. We used to bring the children here to go skating. They loved it.”
“How many...?”
“Two. One girl and one boy. Twenty-eight and twenty-five. June’s a marine biologist in Bergen, and Gustav’s studying in the U.S.”
“You started early.”
She smiled wryly. “Roar was twenty-three and I was twenty-one when we had June. Couples who get moved around the country on Army postings often become parents early. So the wives have something to do, I suppose. As an officer’s wife you have two options. To let yourself be tamed and accept life as a breeding cow. Stand in your stall, give birth to calves, give milk, chew the cud.”
“And the second option?”
“Not to become an officer’s wife.”
“But you chose option number one?”
“Looks like it.”
“Mm. Why did you lie about that night?”
“To spare us from questions. From becoming the focus. You can imagine how it would have damaged Roar’s reputation if he’d been called in for questioning in a murder investigation, surely? He doesn’t need that, if I can put it like that.”
“Why doesn’t he need that?”
She shrugged. “No one needs that, do they? Especially not in our neighbourhood.”
“So where was he?”
“I don’t know. Out.”
“Out?”
“He can’t sleep.”
“Somadril.”
“It was worse when he got home from Iraq; they gave him Rohypnol for his insomnia that time. He got hooked in two weeks and it gave him blackouts. So now he refuses to take anything. He puts his field uniform on, says he has to go out on reconnaissance. Keep watch. Keep an eye out. He says he just walks from place to place, like a night patrol, staying out of sight. I suppose it’s typical of people with post-traumatic stress disorder that they’re frightened the whole time. He usually comes home and gets a couple of hours’ sleep before he goes to work.”