“And the sergeant’s body?”
“I don’t know what they did with it. Quartering is probably an English thing. But decapitation is evidently pretty international, because his head was found on a pole outside the village.”
“And you reported that the sergeant went missing on the way back?”
“Yes.”
“Mm. Why do you watch over these women?”
Silence. Bohr had sat down on the edge of the table, and Harry tried to read the expression on his face.
“I had a sister.” His voice was toneless. “Bianca. My younger sister. She was raped when she was seventeen. I should have been looking after her that evening, but I wanted to go and seeDie Hardat the cinema. It was rated 18. It wasn’t until several years later that she told me she was raped that evening. While I was watching Bruce Willis.”
“Why didn’t she tell you straightaway?”
Bohr took a deep breath. “The rapist threatened to kill me, her older brother, if she said anything. She didn’t know how the rapist could have known she had an older brother.”
“What did the rapist look like?”
“She never got a good look at him, she said it was too dark. Unless her mind had blocked it. I saw that happen in Sudan. Soldiers who experienced such terrible things that they simply forgot about them. They could wake up the next day and, perfectly sincerely, deny having been there and seen anything. For some people suppression works absolutely fine. For others it pops up later, in the form of flashbacks. Nightmares. I think everything came back to Bianca. And she couldn’t handle it. The terror of it broke her.”
“And you think it was your fault?”
“Of course it was my fault.”
“You know you’re damaged, don’t you, Bohr?”
“Of course. Aren’t you?”
“What were you doing in Kaja’s house?”
“I saw that she had a video on her computer, a man leaving Rakel’s house on the night of the murder. So when she went out, I went in to take a closer look at it.”
“What did you find out?”
“Nothing. Poor-quality images. Then I heard the door. I left the living room and went into the kitchen.”
“So you could approach me from behind in the hallway. And you just happened to have some chloroform on you?”
“I always have chloroform on me.”
“Because?”
“Anyone who tried to break into any of my ladies’ houses ends up in the chair where you’re sitting.”
“And?”
“And pays the price.”
“Why are you telling me all this, Bohr?”
Bohr clasped his hands. “I have to admit that I thought you’d killed Rakel at first, Harry.”
“Oh?”
“The spurned husband. It’s the classic, isn’t it? The first thing you think. And I thought I could tell from the look in your eyes at the funeral. A mixture of innocence and remorse. The look that belongs to someone who’s killed for no other motive than their own hatred and lust, and who regrets it. Who regrets it so much that he’s managed to suppress it. Because that’s the only way he can survive, the truth is too unbearable. I saw that look in Sergeant Waage. It was as if he’d managed to forget what he’d done to Hala, and only remembered it again when I confronted him with it. But then, when I found out that you had an alibi, I realised that the guilt I’d seen in your eyes was the same I felt. Guilt because you hadn’t been able to prevent it happening. And the reason why I’m telling you this…”—Bohr got up from the table and disappeared into the darkness as he went on—“is because I know you want the same thing as me. You want to see them punished. They took someone we loved away from us. Prison isn’t enough. An easy death isn’t enough.”
The fluorescent lights flickered a few times, then the room was bathed in light.
