“Metaphorically. He’s drawing overblown conclusions from the trajectory of the ball, but without analysing what his opponent has just done with the paddle.”
“Is the lingo supposed to tell me you know all about table tennis?”
Harry shrugged. “Øystein’s basement from when we were ten. Him, me and Tresko. And King Crimson. To be honest, by the time we were sixteen we knew more about screwballs and prog rock than girls. We…” Harry stopped abruptly and grimaced.
“What?” Kaja asked.
“I’m babbling, I…” He closed his eyes. “I’m babbling so I don’t wake up.”
“Wake up?”
Harry took a deep breath. “I’m asleep. As long as I’m asleep, as long as I can manage to stay in the dream, I can carry on looking for him. But every so often it starts to slip away from me. I need to concentrate on sleeping, because if I wake up…”
“What?”
“Then I’ll know that it’s true. And then I’ll die.”
Harry listened. The clatter of studded tires on pavement. The sound of a small waterfall in the Akerselva.
“Sounds like what my psychologist called lucid dreaming,” he heard Kaja say. “A dream where you can control everything. And that’s why we do all we can not to let it go.”
Harry shook his head. “I can’t control anything. I just want to find the man who killed Rakel. Then I’ll wake up. And die.”
“Why not try to sleep properly?” Her voice was soft. “I think it would do you good to get some rest, Harry.”
Harry opened his eyes again. Kaja had raised her hand, probably to put it on his shoulder, but instead she brushed a strand of hair from her face when she saw the look in his eyes.
He cleared his throat. “You said you’d found something in the property register?”
Kaja blinked a couple of times.
“Yes,” she said. “A cabin listed under Roar Bohr’s name. In Eggedal. An hour and forty-five minutes away, according to Google Maps.”
“Good. I’ll see if Bjørn can drive.”
“Sure you don’t want to talk to Katrine and put an alert out for him?”
“What for? The fact that his wife didn’t see with her own eyes that he was asleep in their daughter’s old room that night?”
“If she wouldn’t think what we’ve got is enough, why do you?”
Harry buttoned his coat and got his mobile out. “Because I’ve got a gut feeling that’s caught more murderers than any other gut in this country.”
He felt Kaja looking at him in astonishment as he called Bjørn.
“I can drive,” Bjørn said after a short pause for thought.
“Thanks.”
“One other thing. That memory card of yours…”
“Yes?”
“I forwarded the envelope in your name to Freund, our external 3-D expert. I haven’t spoken to him, but I’ve sent you an email with his contact details, so you can talk to him yourself.”
“I get it. You’d rather not have your name mixed up in this.”
“This is the only job I know how to do, Harry.”
