Byle tells her the Groths had decided to throw a New Year’s party for all their employees and their partners to kick off a year of significant expansion. Aside from Björn and Laura Groth, their two children Jens and Madeleine and their spouses and William Tryste and his wife, the guest list had consisted of eleven employees and six plus-ones. In other words, a total of twenty-five people, of which twenty-one were still present at midnight. Four people had left early, according to what he had been told so far, two after a call from a babysitter worried about the flu, the other two because the wife of one of the malthouse workers had had too much to drink before the main course had even been served, and had therefore been taken home by her husband. William Tryste’s wife Helena had refrained from drinking and had driven her husband home just before one. The company’s secretary, Eva Framnes, had gone with them, having been offered a ride to her home in Skreby. Madeleine Groth and her husband Elias had left the party around half past one and the rest of the family spent the night in their respective homes on the premises. The other guests had stayed at the ‘hotel’ by the golf course. This time, Byle draws air quotes around the word to underline the deficiency of the place.

‘Aside from the foreman, Bergvall, it’s all young men working in production and some of their girlfriends.’

From what Byle had been told, it had been a good party and the mood had been raucous. The Groths had spared no expense when it came to food, drinks or fireworks. Which was probably why no one had noticed one of the guests was missing.

Gabriel’s absence hadn’t been noted until breakfast the next day and at that point the general consensus had been that he was probably still sleeping it off. It wasn’t until the cleaning crew arrived at about half past nine and started to pick up the spent fireworks and empty champagne bottles and glasses out by the lookout point that Gabriel Stuub’s body had been discovered. A young cleaner had at first thought the man slumped under one of the gnarled Scots pines had lain down to sleep and been worried he might have frozen to death. She hadn’t noticed the red snow around the man, or the fact that his throat looked like the throats of the deer her father used to hang in the woodshed after the autumn hunt until she got closer.

‘OK,’ Karen says when Byle is finished, ‘so some of the guests are still at the hotel. We’re not going to be able to keep them here another night.’

‘No, I was just on the phone with Röse. He’s over there with Svanemark and tempers are apparently starting to flare.’

‘You haven’t started taking statements?’

Byle looks uncomfortable.