‘She told me. She was going to write a piece on the opening night for the school newspaper.’

‘She had agreed to conduct an interview with Johannes Eklund after the show, hadn’t she?’

‘Yes. He was the star of the show.’

‘Did that make you jealous?’

‘That she was going to talk to him? No, not at all.’ I try to sit up more straight. ‘She was just doing her job.’

Ms Håkonsen checks the papers in front of her for a second, then looks up at me again.

‘According to the police records, PCI Mork asked you about the grazes on your hand.’

Without thinking about it, I glance at my hand. They’re gone now, of course, the grazes.

‘Yes, he did,’ I reply.

‘You had hurt yourself?’

‘On my way home from school that morning.’

‘What happened?’

‘I ran too fast.’

‘You ran too fast?’ Again, she sounds like she doesn’t believe me.

‘Yes. It was like … my mind was racing, and my legs couldn’t keep up. And I just fell forwards.’

I try to gesture with my hands, showing how I had just toppled over, how I had tried to break my fall. I can tell the prosecutor finds the whole incident strange. Which it was.

‘It was a heavy fall,’ I explain. ‘On a hard road.’

‘So you started to bleed?’

‘Yes, but I didn’t care. I … I wanted the pain’.

‘You wanted the pain…’

‘I just wanted to feel something, you know? So it would hurt somewhere else besides … besides in here.’ I touch my chest.

She lets this sink in for a while. It’s weird being so open about my feelings in front of so many people.

‘So when Mork asked you how you had got those grazes, did you worry they might implicate you in the murders somehow?’

‘Yes, I was afraid he’d think that.’

‘And why were you afraid of that?’

‘I knew what it looked like. And I knew my explanation – running and falling over sounded really stupid, like I’d made it up. Like when adults say they’ve cut themselves shaving, when everyone can tell they’ve been in a fight. I mean, I’m used to running. I run all the time. I never just fall on my face like that. And it was, what, less than half a day after my ex-girlfriend had been murdered. I knew I already had to be a suspect. I knew it didn’t look good for me. But I didn’t want to make up some bullshit story about my wounds, either. Imo told me to tell the truth, so that’s what I did.’

‘Imo told you that?’

‘Yes.’