“A cover-up for what?”
“For Bohr’s real project. To kill someone.”
“Someone?”
“Bohr had a problem with killing, as you already know by now. And when you’re in Special Forces, that’s a big problem.”
“Really? I didn’t think they were that bloodthirsty.”
“They’re not, but... how can I explain it?” Glenne shook his head. “The old school in Special Forces, the ones who came through paratrooper training, were picked because of their long-term intelligence-gathering behind enemy lines, where patience and stamina are the most important qualities. They were the Army’s long-distance runners, OK? That’s where Bohr fitted in. Now, the focus is on antiterrorism in urban settings. And you know what? The new Special Forces look like ice hockey players, if you see what I mean? And in this new environment, a rumour had gone around saying Bohr was...” Glenne pulled a face, as if he didn’t like the taste of the word on his tongue.
“A coward?” Harry asked.
“Impotent. Imagine the shame. You’re in command, but you’re still a virgin. And not a virgin because you’ve never had the opportunity, because there are still soldiers in Special Forces who have never found themselves in a situation where it’s been necessary to kill. But because you couldn’t get it up when it mattered. See what I mean?”
Harry nodded.
“As an old hand, Bohr knew that the first kill is the hardest,” Glenne went on. “After that first blood it gets easier. Much easier. So he chose an easy first victim. A woman who wouldn’t put up a fight, who trusted him and wouldn’t suspect anything. One of the hated Hazaras, a Shia in a Sunni Muslim country, someone plenty of people might have a motive to kill. And then maybe he got a taste for it. Killing is a very special feeling. Better than sex.”
“Is it?”
“So they say. Ask people in Special Forces. And tell them to answer honestly.”
Harry and Glenne looked at each other for a few moments before Glenne looked at Kaja. “All of this is just things I’ve thought to myself. But if Bohr has admitted to his wife that he killed Hela—”
“Hala.”
“...then you can count on my help.” Glenne drank the last of his coffee. “Connolly never rests. I need to get back to training.”
“Well?” Kaja asked when she and Harry were standing outside in the street. “What do you think about Glenne?”
“I think he hits too long because he doesn’t read the spin.”
“Funny.”
“Metaphorically. He’s drawing overblown conclusions from the trajectory of the ball, but without analysing what his opponent has just done with the paddle.”
“Is the lingo supposed to tell me you know all about table tennis?”
Harry shrugged. “Øystein’s basement from when we were ten. Him, me and Tresko. And King Crimson. To be honest, by the time we were sixteen we knew more about screwballs and prog rock than girls. We...” Harry stopped abruptly and grimaced.
“What?” Kaja asked.
“I’m babbling, I...” He closed his eyes. “I’m babbling so I don’t wake up.”
“Wake up?”
Harry took a deep breath. “I’m asleep. As long as I’m asleep, as long as I can manage to stay in the dream, I can carry on looking for him. But every so often it starts to slip away from me. I need to concentrate on sleeping, because if I wake up...”
“What?”
“Then I’ll know that it’s true. And then I’ll die.”
Harry listened. The clatter of studded tires on pavement. The sound of a small waterfall in the Akerselva.
“Sounds like what my psychologist called lucid dreaming,” he heard Kaja say. “A dream where you can control everything. And that’s why we do all we can not to let it go.”
Harry shook his head. “I can’t control anything. I just want to find the man who killed Rakel. Then I’ll wake up. And die.”
“Why not try to sleep properly?” Her voice was soft. “I think it would do you good to get some rest, Harry.”
Harry opened his eyes again. Kaja had raised her hand, probably to put it on his shoulder, but instead she brushed a strand of hair from her face when she saw the look in his eyes.
He cleared his throat. “You said you’d found something in the property register?”
Kaja blinked a couple of times.
“Yes,” she said. “A cabin listed under Roar Bohr’s name. In Eggedal. An hour and forty-five minutes away, according to Google Maps.”
“Good. I’ll see if Bjørn can drive.”
“Sure you don’t want to talk to Katrine and put an alert out for him?”
“What for? The fact that his wife didn’t see with her own eyes that he was asleep in their daughter’s old room that night?”
“If she wouldn’t think what we’ve got is enough, why do you?”
Harry buttoned his coat and got his mobile out. “Because I’ve got a gut feeling that’s caught more murderers than any other gut in this country.”
He felt Kaja looking at him in astonishment as he called Bjørn.
“I can drive,” Bjørn said after a short pause for thought.
“Thanks.”
“One other thing. That memory card of yours...”
“Yes?”
“I forwarded the envelope in your name to Freund, our external 3-D expert. I haven’t spoken to him, but I’ve sent you an email with his contact details, so you can talk to him yourself.”
“I get it. You’d rather not have your name mixed up in this.”
“This is the only job I know how to do, Harry.”
“Like I said, I get it.”
“If I get fired now, with a kid and everything...”
“Stop it, Bjørn, you’re not the one who should be apologising. I should, for dragging you into this mess.”
A pause. In spite of what he’d just said, Harry could almost feel Bjørn’s guilty conscience down the phone.
“I’ll pick you up,” Bjørn said.
Detective Inspector Felah was sitting with the fan on his back, but his shirt was still sticking to his skin. He hated the heat, hated Kabul, hated his bombproof office. But most of all he hated the lies he had to listen to, day in, day out. Like the ones from the pathetic, illiterate, opium-addicted Hazara sitting in front of him now.
“You’ve been brought to see me because you claimed under questioning that you can give us the name of a murderer,” Felah said. “A foreigner.”
“Only if you protect me,” the man said.
Felah looked at the man cowering in front of him. The battered cap the Hazara was rubbing between his hands wasn’t a pakol, but it had at least covered his filthy hair. The dribbling, ignorant Shia bandit evidently thought that escaping the death penalty and getting a long prison sentence instead would be a mercy. A slow, painful death, that was what that was, and he himself would have chosen a quick death by hanging without hesitation.
Felah wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “That depends on what you’ve got to say to me. Spit it out.”
“He killed...” the Hazara said in a shaky voice. “He didn’t think anyone saw him, but I did. With my own eyes, I swear, as Allah is my witness.”
“A foreign soldier, you said.”
“Yes, sir. But this wasn’t in battle, this was murder. Murder, plain and simple.”
“I see. And who was this military foreigner?”
“The leader of the Norwegians. I know that because I recognised him. He’d been in our village, talking about how they’re here to help us, that we’d get democracy and jobs... all the usual.”
Felah felt a moment of longed-for excitement. “You mean Major Jonassen?”
“No, that wasn’t his name. Lieutenant Colonel Bo.”