'Mm.'
'They lost control of the dog in training. The officer playing the villain had to have his hand sewn back on at Rikshospital.'
'I thought they wore thick padding.'
'They do.'
They sat listening to the barking outside. The footsteps in the living room had stopped.
'Shall we go in and say hello?' Halvorsen whispered. 'It's just a question of time before—'
'Shh.'
They heard more steps. Approaching the bedroom door. Halvorsen squeezed his eyes shut. As if to steel himself against the humiliation. On reopening them, he saw Harry holding an authoritative finger over his lips.
Then they heard a voice outside the bedroom window. 'Gregor! Come on! Let's go home!'
After a couple more barks, it was suddenly quiet. All Harry could hear was short, rapid breaths, but he didn't know if they were his or Halvorsen's.
'Really obedient, those Rottweilers,' Halvorsen whispered.
They waited until they heard the car start down on the road. Then they rushed into the living room and Harry just caught sight of the back of a navy blue Jeep Cherokee disappearing. Halvorsen fell onto the sofa and leaned back.
'My God,' he groaned. 'For a while there I imagined myself returning to Steinkjer with a dishonourable discharge. What the hell was he doing? He was barely here for two minutes.' He jumped up from the sofa again. 'Do you think he'll be back? Perhaps they were just going to the shop?'
Harry shook his head. 'They went home. People like that don't tell lies to their dogs.'
'Sure?'
'Yes, of course. One day he'll shout: "Come here, Gregor. We're going to the vet to have you put down." ' Harry scanned the room. Then he went over to the shelving and ran a finger down the spines of the books in front of him, from top to bottom shelf.
Halvorsen nodded grimly and stared into space: 'And Gregor will come wagging his tail. Really strange creatures, dogs.'
Harry stopped what he was doing and grinned. 'No regrets, Halvorsen?'
'Well, I don't regret this any more than anything else.'
'You're beginning to sound like me.'
'It is you. I'm quoting you. The time we bought the espresso machine. What are you after?'
'Don't know,' Harry said, pulling out a big, thick book and opening it. 'Look at this. A photo album. Interesting.'
'Oh, yes? Now you've lost me again.'
Harry pointed behind him and continued flicking through. Halvorsen stood up and saw. And understood. Wet bootprints leading from the front door via the hallway to the shelf where Harry was standing.
Harry slotted the album back in, pulled out another and began to flip through.
'Right,' he said after a while. He pressed the album to his face. 'Here we are.'
'What's that?'
Harry set the album on the table in front of Halvorsen and pointed to one of six photographs attached to the black page. A woman and three children smiled up at them from a beach.
'That's the same photo I found in Anna's shoe,' Harry said. 'Smell it.'
'I don't need to. I can smell the glue from here.'
'Right. He's just stuck the picture in. If you move the photo a little, you can feel the glue is still soft. Smell the photo.'
'OK.' Halvorsen put his nose against the smiles. 'It smells…of chemicals.'
'What sort of chemicals?'
'Photos always smell when they've just been developed.'
'Right again. And what can we conclude from that?'
'That, erm…he likes sticking in photos.'
Harry looked at his watch. If Albu drove straight home, he would be there in an hour.
'I'll explain in the car,' he said. 'We've got the evidence we need.'
* * *
It was raining when they drove out onto the E6. The lights from oncoming traffic reflected on the wet tarmac.
'Now we know where the photo Anna had in her shoe came from,' Harry said. 'At a guess, I'd say Anna saw her chance to take it out of the album when she was last at the chalet.'
'But what was she going to do with it?'
'God only knows. So that she could see what stood between her and Albu perhaps. To understand better. To have something to stick pins in.'
'And when you showed him the photo, did he know where it was from?'
'Naturally. The wheel marks of the Cherokee by the chalet are the same as those before. They show he was here a couple of days ago, possibly yesterday.'
'To wash the floor and wipe all the fingerprints?'
'And to check what he already suspected–that one photo was missing from the album. So when he got home, he found the negative and took it to a chemist.'
'Probably a shop where they develop photos in an hour. Then he went back to the chalet today to stick it where the old one had been.'