‘I was just going through Tobias’s computer,’ Weedon said. ‘I checked his chat log with this Ruben guy from Solstad. They did agree that Ruben was going to come and pick Tobias up last night, and yes, it appears that Tobias had managed to get hold of some drugs. Then I checked their messages going a bit further back. And I cross-referenced those messages with the time of Børre Halvorsen’s murder.’

The room was dead quiet, hanging on Weedon’s words.

‘Tobias and Ruben were chatting non-stop between midnight and two a.m. that night,’ Weedon continued. ‘Børre Halvorsen’s body was found under Fredheim Bridge at half past midnight.’

No one said anything for a long time.

‘So Tobias didn’t kill Børre,’ Vibeke Hanstveit concluded with a heavy sigh. ‘He couldn’t have.’

‘Not unless someone else was sitting there in Tobias’s place, chatting to Ruben.’

Which is highly unlikely, Yngve thought.

‘Maybe he was just depressed, then,’ Therese said. ‘Like Davidsen first suggested.’

Yngve could tell that a lot of energy had left the room. Åse was standing at the back, urging him to say something – something positive to motivate them all. He went over to the whiteboard where the names of the people most important to the case were written in capital letters, with a few keywords underneath each one.

‘Let’s first see if Tobias makes it through this,’ Yngve said with a sigh. ‘Meanwhile, we just have to work the other clues. Let’s go through them all one more time, see if we come up with something fresh.’

His phone rang. Yngve pulled it from his back trouser pocket.

It was Reidar Lindgren. Mari’s uncle.

‘I have to take this,’ he said to the room. ‘Hi Reidar,’ he said as he walked out into the corridor. ‘What’s going on? Have you managed to get hold of your brother?’

There were traffic noises in the background.

‘No,’ Reidar said. ‘I still don’t know where Frode is. But I’ve found something in his room that … that worries me a bit.’

‘What is it?’ Yngve asked, suddenly excited.

It took a few seconds before Reidar Lindgren replied:

‘A bloody T-shirt.’

63

63

Susanne was looking at a picture she had taken of Tobias with her phone a few weeks before. He had been caught unawares, and he’d become angry, demanding that she delete it straightaway.

She hadn’t, though, simply because the photo had made her laugh. She needed something to laugh at from time to time. His half-closed eyes made him look drowsy. Maybe he was on drugs then. As soon as the thought entered her mind, she wanted to delete the picture immediately. She wondered if that’s how he’d looked when Imo had found him.