Harry realised he’d stepped out into the room, into the light, visible to anyone and everyone. What the hell was he doing? He closed his eyes.
And waited.
—
Roar Bohr had the crosshairs on the back of the person in the illuminated room. He had switched off the laser sight that had given him away when Pia and Hole were sitting on the bench beside Smestaddammen. The raindrops rustled in the trees above him, dripping from the brim of his cap. He waited.
—
Nothing happened.
Harry opened his eyes. Started breathing again.
And read the newspaper clippings.
Some of them had turned yellow, some were just a couple of years old. Reports of rapes. No names, just ages, locations, an outline of what happened. Oslo, Østlandet. One in Stavanger. God knows how Bohr had got hold of the photographs, but Harry had no doubt that they were the rape victims. So what about the pictures of the men? A sort of top-ten list of the worst—or possibly best—rapists in Norway? Something for Roar Bohr to aspire to, to measure himself against?
Harry unlocked the front door and opened it. “Bjørn! The coast’s clear!”
He looked at the picture that was pinned up beside the door. Sharp sunlight in squinting green eyes, a hand brushing aside a strand of honey-brown hair, a white vest with the Red Cross on it, desert landscape, Kaja smiling with those pointed teeth.
Harry looked down. Saw the same military boots he had seen in Bohr’s hallway.
The rocks in the desert. The Taliban waiting for number two to get out of the bulletproof car.
“No, Bjørn! No!”
—
“Kaja Solness,” the almost exaggeratedly deep voice from the black stone slab beside the stove.
“Officer in the Oslo Police,” Kaja said loudly as she scanned the shelves of the fridge in vain for something to eat.
“And how can I help you, Officer Solness?”
“We’re looking for a serial attacker.” She poured herself a glass of apple juice in the hope of getting her blood sugar up a bit. She checked the time. A relaxed local restaurant had opened on Vibes gate since she was last home. “Obviously I’m aware that as a psychiatrist you’re under an oath of confidentiality when it comes to patients who are still alive, but this concerns a deceased patient…”
“Same rules.”
“…whom we suspect may have been raped by someone we want to prevent from raping others.”
There was silence at the other end.
“Let me know when you’ve finished thinking, London.” She didn’t know why the man’s surname, one of the biggest cities in the world, seemed to suggest loneliness. She switched off the speaker function on her phone, and took it and the glass of juice back into the living room.
“Go ahead and ask, and we’ll see,” he said.
“Thanks. Do you remember a patient called Bianca Bohr?”
“Yes.” He said this in a tone that told Kaja that he also remembered what had happened to her.
“When you were seeing her as a patient, did you think she had been raped?”
“I don’t know.”
“OK. Did she show any behaviour that might indicate—”
“The behaviour of psychiatric patients can indicate a lot of things. I wouldn’t rule out rape. Or assault. Or other traumas. But that’s just speculation.”
