‘You both did?’

‘Yes. We had no other choice. Imo had his car on the other side. He dropped me off not far from our house and told me to go home. Lay low. Go to school the next day and act as if nothing had happened. Wait for instructions.’

I thought about Børre’s Facebook post that day, the one about me lying. That he’d seen me. I had shown it to Imo before we went to his house to eat and drink. If I hadn’t done that, then maybe Børre would still have been alive.

‘So what happened on the way back to Fredheim,’ I asked. ‘When Imo came to get you from Solstad?’

‘He told me what I had to say to the police,’ Tobias said. ‘In order to save us both. Told me to tell them that I just wanted to get the pictures back so Mum wouldn’t go all crazy on us. It was the only thing he could think of that would make any sense.’

I had been surprised that Tobias cared enough about Mum’s feelings that he had sought Mari out on opening night to get the pictures back. It just hadn’t seemed like something he would do. It was easy, though, to imagine the journey back from Solstad to Fredheim. Imo going over the details with my brother, how they should proceed in order not to get caught. I could understand why Tobias had finally snapped and tried to end his own life. To put himself out of his misery.

I thought about my tequila evening with Imo. My uncle had been texting Tobias. Just checking that everything is alright. In other words: checking that Tobias was sticking to their plan and that he hadn’t said anything about what they’d done. Perhaps that had been Imo’s plan all along – to make sure that Tobias was alone and that I was so drunk that I passed out. So he could go out and kill Børre.

‘How well did you know Børre?’ I asked Tobias.

‘Not very well, but I knew he used to hang out under the bridge from time to time.’

‘And you told Imo?’

Tobias nodded.

And Imo had acted on my brother’s information. He had found Børre and ended his life against the bridge wall that night.

‘The other day, you told me that Knut went into the school that night. Why did you do that? You knew he hadn’t done anything.’

Tobias paused for a moment, then said: ‘You were on to me. You’d told Imo about your suspicions, about our fight. I was scared you might say something to the cops as well, so they would put even more pressure on me. I wanted you to focus on someone else.’

‘So I wouldn’t suspect you?’

My brother nodded.

‘You thought of that? Not Imo?’

‘It was my idea, yes.’