Bare, bleak mountainsides rose up on either side of them, encrusted with ice but devoid of life. Once, for a few brief seconds, they caught sight of a herd of indigenous reindeer, with their peculiar, stunted antlers, before they vanished over a ridge. Other than that, they didn’t see a living soul. Tucked inside his breast pocket and studied on the flight over, Luke’s map was marked with the names of long-dead figures from Nordic history. He remembered one in particular: the evocative-sounding ‘King Oskar the Second’. But now the snow was coming in harder, not yet a white-out but enough to slow their speed. They had been travelling for just over forty minutes when the house appeared out of nowhere, looming ahead in a swirl of snowflakes. It was small and isolated, built beside a frozen lake. It had red-painted wooden sides and a chimney from which a coil of smoke curled into the leaden sky. Their arrival set off a spate of raucous barking from the Greenland husky tethered to a fence post, followed by a shout of command from inside. Then the front door opened and a slim, sprightly old man stepped out to meet them.

‘This is Ivan,’ Kristian introduced them. ‘He was a friend of my father’s, before he moved to Bergen.’

Close-cropped steel-grey hair, tanned, weather-beaten face, a thick, bristly red check shirt, leather trousers held up with braces. Luke put him at a fit sixty.

‘His father is from Russia, his mother is from Norway,’ Kristian continued, shaking the snow off his jacket and pulling his mask down below his chin.

‘It’s true,’ said Ivan, speaking for the first time. ‘I am – how you say? – a mongrel! Come, please, come inside.’

Beside a crackling log fire, cradling a glass of fiery, homemade akvavit spirit, Luke felt himself involuntarily relaxing. It was always like this when you came into the warm from the bleak outside: the body just gives a big aah and starts to unwind. Well, he wasn’t going to let that happen. He was on a mission and he needed to stay focused. The pleasantries over, it was time to ask questions.

‘Has anything changed here, in Barentsburg, in the last few weeks?’ he began. ‘Have you noticed anything different, anything unusual?’

‘Sure,’ Ivan replied, and Luke leaned closer, eager to catch every word. ‘The price of beer has gone up again!’

Both Ivan and Kristian collapsed into laughter. For fuck’s sake, Luke thought, is this Nordic humour? But he laughed along with them, forcing himself out of politeness.

‘Sorry, what I meant was,’ Luke continued, when they had all got over the joke, ‘have you come across anyone you didn’t recognize in recent days? Seen any activity that made you think, Aha, that’s strange?’