‘Wonderful,’ Jounas Smeed says. ‘That’s everyone, until Loots and Johannisen are done searching the house and the flat. We’re obviously keeping our fingers crossed one of them will contact us with good news soon, but since they won’t be here for a long while yet, we might as well get started. Karen . . . ?’

‘Can anyone set things up so I can show photos and videos from this thing on the screen?’ she says and holds up Billy’s phone.

Sören Larsen holds out his hand and takes it from her.

Karen clears her throat. Only now does she realise that what she’s about to tell them is going to cast both her and Smeed in a bad light, and for a split second she contemplates how she can best word things to minimise the damage.

Then she decides to just tell it the way it is.

‘On Sunday 24 April, a few close friends of mine came to me because they were worried about a person who appeared to have gone missing. The person in question was Lena Johanson, better known as the artist Luna.’

A collective intake of breath is heard around the table.

‘The Luna?’ Astrid Nielsen asks.

Karen nods.

‘The Luna. She had at that time been in the country for just over three weeks to record a new album in the KGB Productions studio. The recordings were pretty much done, but they had decided to meet up in the studio the following day to do some final touch-ups. That evening, having not heard from her or been able to reach her by phone, they contacted me.’

No one interrupts as she gives an account of her visit to the house on Frisel where Luna had been staying and of Brynn’s conversation with Luna’s ex-husband, who hadn’t seemed surprised, but, rather, had told him she was in the habit of disappearing for days at a time without warning.

‘When there was still no word from her on Monday, I informed Jounas Smeed, who tasked me with looking into it further, but given the ex-husband’s information, it was decided we could wait seventy-two hours before filing an official missing person report.’

She glances over at her boss, who seems to be studying a bowl of wrinkled apples left on the table from some earlier meeting, his face impassive.

‘A decision we were in complete agreement about,’ Karen adds. ‘As you will all understand, the media pressure would have been enormous if word had leaked out.’

Apparently, Astrid Nielsen can no longer keep quiet.

‘I’m sorry, the three-day rule is one thing, but it’s been almost two weeks since she disappeared,’ she says, rubbing her forehead, as though that might help her understand. ‘Why are you only telling us now?’