‘What’s this about, officer?’ It was the same question he’d nervously asked when Yngve had called him and asked him to come to the station.

‘We just want to clarify a few things. Please come with me.’ Yngve showed Knut into his office. ‘How’s Tobias today?’

‘He’s alright, I guess,’ Knut said. ‘I’m seeing them later.’

He offered Knut a seat, then said: ‘At ten forty-nine p.m. on Monday night you entered the school by the main door, but you didn’t come out the same way. What happened?’

Yngve hadn’t known for sure that Knut was the one they’d been looking for, but as he sat down and looked back at him with a guilty frown on his face, all of Yngve’s doubts were gone.

‘I…’

Knut seemed to be searching for the right words. ’I … was looking for someone.’

‘Who were you looking for, Knut?’

He looked at the desk in front of him for a while, seemingly worried about the direction the conversation was headed. When he spoke, his voice was like a whisper. ‘Mari.’

‘What was that?’

‘I was looking for Mari.’

Yngve stared at Knut for a few moments, at first in disbelief.

Knut continued, his voice a bit more firm. ‘She’d booked a fare with the company. I responded to the call.’ Knut didn’t look at Yngve as he spoke. ‘At first I was just waiting for her outside, but the meter was running, and she didn’t come out. She hadn’t left a number either, so I went inside to see if I could find her.’

‘Her phone wasn’t working,’ Yngve said, trying to gather his thoughts at the same time. ‘So how could she even book a fare?’

‘You can do that online these days as well,’ Knut explained. ‘Just leave your name and allow the computer to share its location with the application, and you’re all set. You have to put in your credit card details on your profile, though, before you book anything, so we don’t—’

‘Alright, OK,’ Yngve interrupted. ’I get it. So you went inside to look for her, but you didn’t come out the same way. Why was that, Knut?’

‘I couldn’t find her.’

‘Really.’

‘Yes, really. And I knew the clock was ticking; it was getting closer to eleven, when the doors would be closing – I even heard that ding-dong thing as soon as I went in too, so I just did a quick search around for her. When I got to the other side of the school, I just went out that way. Alone.’

‘And where on the other side would that be, precisely?’

‘I was quite lucky, actually. I didn’t think Tic-Tac’s door would be open. But it was, so I just used it. I’m glad I could, because otherwise I think I might have triggered the alarm.’