Yngve Mork had gathered his detectives around a large table. He stood at one end, looking at a host of coffee mugs, water bottles, mobile phones, note pads, car keys and key chains, all belonging to a group of people who were waiting for him to take the lead. He was looking at men and women he didn’t know, officers and detectives who’d been transferred in from their districts, away from other pressing matters. Here they had been told what to do for the past day and a half by a sixty-three-year-old grieving widower they’d never met before. It was a demanding situation for all of them. For Yngve this was the first time he’d had a team this big under his command.

‘It’s almost strange,’ he started with a careful smile. ‘We’ve been working together for thirty-six hours or so, and this is this first time we’ve all been gathered in the same room for more than thirty seconds.’

His jovial tone – Åse’s idea – didn’t catch on in the way he’d hoped. ‘I’d like to thank each and every one of you for your efforts so far. They’ve been impressive. But there are still a lot of questions to be answered, so I thought we could go through them one by one. Maybe talking it through will help make things a little bit clearer.’

Some of the detectives leaned forwards.

‘Alright, let’s consider Mari Lindgren and Johannes Eklund first,’ Yngve continued. ‘Ann-Mari Sara from Kripos is as sure as she can be about Mari being the first victim. Her death also differs from the others, because she was murdered in a non-violent fashion – if that’s even a term we can use. What I mean is that she was strangled first. Then someone tried to bring her back to life again, which indicates remorse. Is our killer a close relation, perhaps? Now, a lot of people in this town seem to know that Even Tollefsen is the perpetrator, because he used to be her boyfriend. In other words, they believe it was an act of jealousy. Johannes Eklund may have become a victim because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He might have seen what happened, and in order to protect that truth from getting out, he had to die. Alternatively, jealousy might have been involved. Were Johannes and Mari becoming close?’

Yngve sought Therese Kyrkjebø’s eyes. She and the others seemed to be paying careful attention to what he was saying.

‘Even, however, vehemently denies being at the school premises that night, even though several witnesses claim otherwise. One of them is Børre Halvorsen, the sixteen-year-old who was found dead with half his head smashed in under the railway bridge.’

Cold, Åse said to him. That was uncalled for.