Selma was still holding her hand protectively over the camera. She studied Lars Winther as he fired up his laptop. He was tall and muscular and his long legs barely fitted underneath the table. His skin was taut over his cheekbones, and his eyes were uncannily blue. When he was ready, he asked yet again for the wildlife camera.

This time he got it.

With accustomed movements he connected it to the laptop.

‘Hah!’ he said, raising two fingers in a V. ‘No password, great.’

It took him three minutes to gain entry to the camera. Selma pushed her chair closer to him. A gang of boisterous school pupils entered the café. Ostensibly from senior high school, but they could well have been in the final year of junior high. All girls. Blonde, and every one of them with a ponytail. Their clothes were all identical, and at least five had light-coloured Timberland boots on their feet.

They could have been octuplets.

‘The images are date stamped,’ Lars said.

‘Of course they are. They’re of little value otherwise.’

The chair scraped on the floor as Selma moved even closer.

‘Friday 8 December,’ Lars murmured. ‘In the evening.’

His fingers pecked at the keyboard.

‘Here!’

A picture flickered. First in black, then grey. After a few seconds the wet, ashen landscape emerged more clearly.

‘A …’

Lars leaned nearer to the screen and lowered his voice.

‘A lynx? Bloody hell, that’s a lynx. Do they come so close to the city?’

‘Yes. A couple of years ago I read about someone in Bøler who had a visit from one on their verandah.’

‘The time is 20.27,’ Lars read, pointing at the clock.

The lynx moved gingerly, slowly. It came from above, obliquely from the right in the image. Approximately halfway, it stopped. Looked straight at the camera. It approached, sniffing so close to the lens that the picture grew foggy for a moment. It came closer and lingered at the left, lower corner of the picture. The camera was directed down along the course of the stream, where no trees hindered the view of the road.

The lynx was still sharply delineated, maybe five or six metres away. The road down there was, however, out of focus. It was dark, and only a streetlight made it possible to see anything at all.

A figure emerged from the north on roller skis.

A car emerged from the same direction.

When the car passed, the man was gone.

‘Stop,’ Selma said, so loudly that all the teenagers spun around to look at them.

Some of them sniggered. They had ordered plain mocha coffees and had chosen to sit at the table furthest away from them in badly concealed antipathy. None of them had recognized Selma, which despite her shock at what she had just seen, she didn’t entirely appreciate.

‘What the hell …’