Harry turned the radio off.
Bjørn turned it back on again. Adjusted the dial. Crackling and a sense of post-apocalyptic empty space.
“DAB killed the radio star,” Harry said.
“Not at all,” Bjørn said. “They’ve got a local station here.” A razor-sharp steel guitar suddenly cut through the static. “There!” He grinned. “Radio Hallingdal. Best country channel in Norway.”
“You still can’t drive without country music, then?”
“Come on, driving and country music are like gin and tonic,” Bjørn said. “And they have radio bingo every Saturday. Just listen!”
The steel guitar faded away and, sure enough, a voice announced that it was time to have your bingo cards ready, especially in Flå, where, for the first time ever, all five winners two Saturdays before had lived. Then the steel guitar was back at full volume again.
“Can we turn it down?” Harry said, looking at the glowing screen of his phone.
“You can handle a bit of country, Harry. I gave you that Ramones album because it’s country in disguise. You really need to listen to ‘I Wanted Everything’ and ‘Don’t Come Close.’ ”
“Kaja’s calling.”
Bjørn turned the radio off and Harry put the phone to his ear. “Hi, Kaja.”
“Hi! Where are you?”
“Eggedal.”
“Where in Eggedal?”
Harry looked outside. “Somewhere near the bottom.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“OK. I haven’t found out anything specific on Roar Bohr. He hasn’t got a criminal record, and none of the people I’ve spoken to have said anything to suggest that he’s a potential murderer. Quite the reverse, in fact, they all describe him as a very considerate man. Almost overprotective when it comes to his own children and troops. I spoke to an employee at the NHRI who said the same.”
“Hang on. How did you get them to talk?”
“I told them I’m working on a flattering profile piece about Roar Bohr’s time in Afghanistan for the Red Cross magazine.”
“So you’re lying to them?”
“Not really. I might be working on that article. Maybe I just haven’t asked the Red Cross if they’re interested yet.”
“Sneaky. Go on.”
“When I asked the member of staff at the NHRI how Bohr had taken Rakel Fauke’s murder, she said he had seemed upset and exhausted, that he’d taken a lot of time off in the past few days and had reported sick today. I asked what sort of relationship Bohr and Rakel had, and she said Bohr had kept an extra eye on Rakel.”
“An extra eye? Did she mean that he looked out for her?”
“I don’t know, but that’s how she put it.”
“You said you didn’t have anythingspecificon Bohr. Does that mean you’ve something non-specific?”
“Yes. Like I said, Bohr hasn’t got a criminal record, but I did find one old case when I searched for his name in the archive. It turns out that a Margaret Bohr went to the police in 1988 because her seventeen-year-old daughter, Bianca, had been raped. The mother claimed her daughter was showing behaviour typical of a rape victim, and had cuts on her stomach and hands. The police interviewed Bianca, but she denied she’d been raped and said she had inflicted those cuts herself. According to the report there were suspicions of incest, and Bianca’s father and her older brother, Roar Bohr, who was then in his twenties, were among the suspects mentioned. Later on, both the father and Bianca were briefly admitted to hospital for psychiatric treatment. But it was never discovered what—if anything—had happened. When I searched for Bianca Bohr, a report from Sigdal Police Station popped up from five years later. Bianca Bohr had been found dead on the rocks at the bottom of the twenty-metre-high falls at Norafossen. The Bohr family’s cabin is four kilometres farther up the river.”
“Sigdal. Is that the same cabin we’re on our way to?”
“I assume so. The post-mortem showed that Bianca died from drowning. The police concluded that she could have fallen into the river by accident, but that it was more likely that she had taken her own life.”
