The officer stepped onto the quay, folded his begloved hands in front of his stomach and shivered, the red scar across the bridge of his nose turned redder, his good-natured eyes were no less so now, he said his name was Hargel, Leutnant Hargel, and began to pace to and fro while Ingrid opened the doors of the quay house and let the winter light in on the bodies. He peered in and said “Mein Gott”, turned and shouted something to the soldiers, who clambered ashore one after the other, wearing face masks and with two stretchers, and started carrying out the earthly remains of the dead.

Ingrid showed them how to work the windlass.

They lowered the bodies into the boat and laid them on pallets in the hold and on the deck, and sprinkled them with a white powder. Then they hoisted an iron tank onto land, containing the same powder, and also covered the quay-house floor, then the quay and the windlass, so it looked as if a whiter snow had covered the old.

The officer said something, which Ingrid construed as her having to wait for a few days before hosing it down, and he demonstrated the process using his begloved hands and making hissing sounds. She noticed that the shot-damaged roof was dripping and knew she would have to wait until the spring, until the summer, if indeed she ever went in there again, turned to Henriksen and told him about the body in the barn loft.

He, the officer and two soldiers went up with her.

Ingrid had covered him with the uniform and the horse cloth. Hargel asked for a light. Ingrid unbolted and opened the hatch through which they used to pitch hay. The soldiers pulled out the corpse and were about to examine it. Hargel pushed them aside and went down on one knee like a doctor. Ingrid looked away and heard words like Frost, ertrunken, Gewalt . . . Henriksen asked if she had found him here.

“Yes.”

“He must have been alive to get here then?”

“Yes,” Ingrid said, but he was dead when she found him.

He asked why she hadn’t notified them.

She said she had and turned to Hargel, who had got to his feet, and said in Norwegian that she didn’t think the man was German as he was wearing the same rags as the others, the uniform was only spread over him, like a blanket.

The Lensmann translated and Hargel pulled her into the light, scrutinised her and said something that only became threatening as Henriksen translated.

He wasn’t wearing the uniform, she repeated.

“Why didn’t you report it?” Henriksen repeated.

Ingrid asked him if he was “hard o’ hearen’”.

Henriksen went red in the face, and Hargel looked with interest at each of them in turn. With the same remarkable composure, Ingrid replied that the weather had made it impossible for her to report it earlier.