He fetched himself a cup of coffee, then sat down to look through the pile of interview transcripts. He flicked through them, looking for mentions of when the students had left the school premises the previous night, who they were with, and if they noticed anything out of the ordinary – anything the police could or should be aware of. About midway through the pile he stopped and looked at a quote from an interviewee named Frida Higraff.

Even Tollefsen says that he wasn’t there, but I’ve heard that he was. If I were you, I would talk to him about this.

Beside, in the margin, the detective who had conducted the interview had written:

Check Facebook, and check BØRRE HALVORSEN.

Yngve was about to do just that when Therese Kyrkjebø entered the room. She stamped hard a few times, to shake the water from her shoes. Her hair was wet, too, as were her clothes, which strained across her growing bump.

‘How did it go at Johannes Eklund’s parents?’ Yngve asked.

‘As expected,’ Therese answered with a sigh. ‘They are in shock, obviously. Heartbroken. Johannes hadn’t argued with anyone they could think of. He was a happy kid. Popular.’

Therese also got herself some coffee. ‘How did it go at Mari’s?’

Yngve told them how quiet Cecilie and Frode had become when he asked them about Even Tollefsen and the car accident.

‘Which car accident?’ Hanstveit asked, and Yngve filled them in.

‘Mari came by the office the other day and asked if she could see the police report,’ Therese said. ‘She was writing a piece about it.’ She blew on the contents of her cup. ‘We don’t usually hand out stuff like that, so I just said no, she couldn’t.’ She took a sip and made a face as if it was still too hot. ‘But it’s a bit more interesting now, of course. As Mari was seeing Jimmy Tollefsen’s son up until a few days before her murder.’

Yngve told them how Frode Lindgren had initially said that he didn’t know what kind of story Mari was working on for the school newspaper, but later admitted that he did.

‘So he lied about it at first?’ Hanstveit said.

‘It would appear so,’ Yngve said.

‘Why lie about something like that?’ Therese wondered.

‘Why lie in general?’ Yngve asked back. ‘You do it to hide something. In an ongoing police investigation, in the case of their murdered daughter, I find that suspicious. Weird, in fact.’

There was a moment’s silence.

‘So … do you think the car accident has something to do with…?’ Hanstveit didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to.