She has no idea how long she’s been walking for. Slightly hunched over in the wind, she has followed the winding gravel path north along the coast from the ferry port in Lysvik, passing houses and grey sheds crouched between the mountain and the sea. She has walked along bays of frozen meadowland dotted with snow covered junipers and the remnants of net pens. Forlornly, she has studied the remnants of communal efforts to protect the fishermen’s nets from grazing animals, a collective struggle to keep the nets in one piece until they go back into the sea – until the seals chew them to pieces again. She can hear her father cursing angrily, remembers the sharp undertone of worry.

Grimly, she has pressed on while the sky above her has paled, sensing something swelling inside her, something lurking under the surface like a crocodile in a muddy river, ready to pounce.

Without speaking to anyone, she had snuck out of the hotel as soon as she woke up. Just got dressed and left. Down to the ferry port first, where she watched one of the yellow steel behemoths slowly approach from the other side of the sound. When the ferry came too close, she’d turned around and walked away, had passed the cutters and trawlers in the fishing harbour and continued through the ugly old container port where only icebreakers and custom ships are berthed these days. She had put one foot in front of the other and kept moving, her mind racing and her lungs burning with the cold air.

Now she stops and checks her watch. Twenty to eight. Karl Björken is probably already halfway to the Centre for Forensic Medicine in Ravenby. She’s going to have to call him in a bit.

And Sigrid. Instead of knocking on her door to say goodbye, Karen had sent a text. She had typed, erased, fretted over the words, and, in the end, sent it.

Thank you for coming! Had to head off early. X K

Sigrid hasn’t replied. Maybe she’s still asleep.

Karen stops and gazes out across the leaden endlessness, absorbing the stillness while her breath sends out white smoke signals. If she wants to make it to the morning meeting on time, she has to turn back now, try to eat something and have a cup of coffee somewhere. She has to focus on work now, squash all other thoughts and that thing that’s rumbling inside her.

Just then, her phone rings.

‘Hi, Sören,’ she says after checking the screen.

‘Where the fuck are you? I went by that place you insist on staying at, but the lady at reception said you’d left already. Are you on your way to Ravenby?’

‘No, Karl and I decided he’ll do this one.’