I went over to the window at the far end of the room. The one the killer was supposed to have climbed through to get out onto the roof. I opened it and stuck my head out, feeling a cold breeze on my face. It made me realise how warm I was. I looked down at the entrance to the school. I wondered where Børre Halvorsen had been standing when he saw Tobias – if he just happened to be passing, or if he had planned to graffiti a wall or two in the school grounds.

I turned to Oskar. ‘When you talked to Børre that evening, was his friend with him? The guy with the red hair?’

‘He was, yes.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘No, but I know who he is. Everybody just calls him Vic, but I think his real name is Victor. Ramsfjell, I think, is his surname. Why do you ask?’

I looked out of the window again. Børre’s murder was as much of a mystery as Mari’s and Johannes’. But if Børre was killed because he knew something, maybe his friend did too?

71

NOW

‘This sounds like the moment you decided to try and find Victor Ramsfjell.’

‘Yes,’ I say, nodding.

‘How did you go about doing that?’

‘I knew he was my brother’s age, so I figured they went to the same school. So I just went there at the end of the day and looked for him.’

‘That would be Fredly Junior High, is that correct?’

‘That’s correct, yes.’

‘And did you find him?’

‘I did, yes. I managed to get hold of him just as he was about to leave.’

‘How did he react when he learned that you wanted to talk to him?’

‘At first I think he was scared.’

‘Scared?’

‘Well, yes. At that point most people still believed I’d killed his best friend. But he agreed to talk to me, but he didn’t want to do it there, in front of everyone, so I just cycled along beside him.’

‘And what did he tell you?’

‘Nothing new, really. Certainly not then. He hadn’t been with Børre the evening Mari and Johannes were killed. He said he didn’t know anything about what went on.’

‘But he did? He did know something, didn’t he?’ Ms Håkonsen discreetly dabs at the corners of her mouth.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He knew something important. He just wasn’t aware of it at the time.’

72

THEN

‘Thanks for coming in.’

Yngve extended his hand for Knut to shake. The taxi driver was wearing his uniform – a white, unironed shirt under a dark-blue jacket. His trousers were dark blue too. His hair was brown, but short and unkempt – as if he’d been sitting with his head out the car window all the way to the precinct.