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woman’s head and her skull had nearly been sawn off and flipped aside so that they were attached only by the skin. The surface of the brain was left exposed. He had long since abandoned the idea that one could tell from looking at people what evil they were capable of. But this man, he . . . he didn’t exude any of the iciness, the aggression or simply the imbecility Westad thought he had detected in other cold-blooded killers.
    Westad leaned back in his chair. ‘Why are you confessing to this?’
    The man shrugged. ‘DNA at the crime scene.’
    ‘How do you know we found some?’
    The man touched his long, thick hair which the prison management could have ordered to be cut if they wanted to. ‘My hair falls out. It’s a side effect of long-term drug abuse. Can I go now?’
    Westad sighed. A confession. Technical evidence at the crime scene. So why did he still have doubts?
    He leaned towards the microphone standing between them. ‘Interview with suspect Sonny Lofthus stopped at 13.04.’
    He saw the red light go out and knew that the officer outside had switched off the recording device. He got up and opened the door so that the prison officers could enter, unlock Lofthus’s handcuffs and take him back to Staten.
    ‘What do you think?’ the officer asked as Westad came into the control room.
    ‘Think?’ Westad put on his jacket and zipped it up with a hard, irritated movement. ‘He doesn’t give me anything to think about.’
    ‘And what about the interview earlier today?’
    Westad shrugged. A friend of the victim had come forward. She had reported that the victim had told her that her husband, Yngve Morsand, had accused her of having an affair and threatened to kill her. That Kjersti Morsand had been scared. Not least because the husband had good grounds for his suspicion – she had met someone and was thinking of leaving him. It was hard to think of a more classic motive for murder. But what about the boy’s motive? The woman hadn’t been raped, nothing in the house had been stolen. The medicine cupboard in the bathroom had been broken into and the husband claimed that some sleeping tablets were missing. But why would a man who, judging from his needle marks, had easy access to hard drugs bother with a few measly sleeping pills?
    The next question presented itself immediately: Why would an investigator with a signed confession care about little things like that?
    Johannes Halden was pushing the mop across the floor by the cells in A Wing when he saw two prison officers approach with the boy between them.
    The boy smiled; he looked as if he was walking with two friends going somewhere nice, the handcuffs notwithstanding. Johannes stopped and raised his right arm. ‘Look, Sonny! My shoulder is better. Thanks to you.’
    The boy had to lift both hands to give the old man a thumbs up. The officers stopped in front of one of the cell doors and unlocked the handcuffs. They didn’t need to unlock the door as well since all cell doors were opened automatically every morning at eight o’clock and were left open until ten o’clock at night. The staff up in the control room had shown Johannes how they could lock and unlock all the doors with a single keystroke. He liked the control room. That was why he always took his time washing the floor in there. It was a bit like steering a supertanker. A little like being where he should have ended up.
    Before ‘the incident’ he had worked as an able seaman and studied nautical science. The plan had been to become a deck officer. Followed by mate, first mate and then captain. And eventually join his wife and daughter in the house outside Farsund and get himself a job as a pilot at the port. So why had he done it? Why had he ruined everything? What had made him agree to smuggle two big sacks out of the Port of Songkhla in Thailand? It wasn’t that he didn’t know they contained heroin. And it wasn’t that he didn’t know the penal code and the hysterical