Sure enough, it was an office. Or had been. The six or seven desks, the pale patches where computers had stood, the wastepaper bins, random office equipment, a printer—everything suggested that the office had been abandoned in some haste. There was a picture of the king hanging on the white wooden wall. Military people, Harry thought automatically.
“Shall we go?” Bohr asked.
Harry stood up. He felt dizzy and walked rather unsteadily towards the wooden door where Bohr was waiting, holding Harry’s phone, pistol and lighter out towards him.
“Where were you?” Harry asked as he put the phone and lighter away and weighed the pistol in his hand. “The night Rakel was killed? Because you weren’t at home…”
“It was a weekend, I was at the cabin,” Bohr said. “In Eggedal. Alone, I’m afraid.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Yes, what was I doing? Polishing weapons. Keeping the stove alight. Thinking. Listening to the radio.”
“Mm. Radio Hallingdal?”
“Yes, actually, it’s the only station you can get there.”
“They had radio bingo that night.”
“They did. Do you spend a lot of time in Hallingdal?”
“No. Do you remember anything special?”
Bohr raised an eyebrow. “About the bingo?”
“Yes.”
Bohr shook his head.
“Nothing?” Harry said, feeling the weight of the pistol. He concluded that the bullets hadn’t been removed from the magazine.
“No. Is this an interview?”
“Think.”
Bohr frowned. “Maybe something about all the winners being from the same place? Ål. Or Flå.”
“Bingo,” Harry said quietly, and put the pistol in his coat pocket. “You’re hereby removed from my list of suspects.”
Roar Bohr looked at Harry. “I could have killed you in there without anyone finding out. Butradio bingois what got me off your list?”
Harry shrugged. “I need a cigarette.”
They walked down some worn, creaking wooden steps and out into the night as a clock started to chime.
“Bloody hell,” Harry said, breathing in the cold air. In the square in front of them people were hurrying towards bars and restaurants, and above the rooftops he could see the City Hall. “We’re in the middle of the city.”
Harry had heard the City Hall bells play both Kraftwerk and Dolly Parton, and once Oleg had been delighted to recognise a tune from the game Minecraft. But this time they were playing one of the regular tunes, “Watchman’s Song” by Edvard Grieg. Which meant it was midnight.
Harry turned around. The building they had come out of was a barrack-like wooden building just inside the gates of Akershus Fortress.
“Not exactly MI6 or Langley,” Bohr said. “But this did actually used to be the headquarters of E14.”
“E14?” Harry dug out his packet of cigarettes from his trouser pocket.
“A short-lived Norwegian espionage organisation.”
“I vaguely remember it.”
