Karen glances over at another road sign announcing she has another 122 miles to go and forces her mind back to the task at hand. Late last night, she managed to get hold of the regional commander of the Noorö Police, Thorstein Byle, and they agreed to meet at the clinic in Lysvik around nine. As expected, he had sounded slightly guarded. Local officers’ reactions to the CID taking over an investigation were usually characterised by a mix of irritation and relief. The decision to extend the National Criminal Investigation Department’s jurisdiction to all serious crime investigations had been made eleven years ago. The media had, as usual, adopted a ‘grassroots perspective’ in their reporting, gleefully relaying an endless string of doomsday prophecies from aggrieved officers around the country. The local connection would be lost, the number of cases solved would decrease. The general view had been that it was a reform devised by bureaucrats who had never set foot outside the capital and cared only about trimming budgets.

In reality, the reform had been driven by a catastrophically low clearance rate for violent crimes. Granted, alcohol and drug-fuelled rows, assaults and killings were solved nine times out of ten, and in those types of cases the local connection was often critically important. But proper murders were so rare local forces lacked the experience to handle them. Besides – and this had been pivotal to the controversial decision – one of the regional police chiefs had been found to have withheld information in a case involving sexual abuse of three nursery aged children in Frene, just south of Ravenby. His nephew, it turned out, was the perpetrator.

The media outrage had died down eventually, not least when new statistics showed the clearance rate had gone up every year since the reform had been implemented. Unfortunately, the number of violent crimes had also doubled over the same period, which as recently as last week had prompted an article in the Kvellsposten newspaper about the number of criminals going unpunished in Doggerland. The article had inevitably implied a connection with the old legend that Doggerland had once served as a haven for escaped criminals from both the British Isles and Scandinavia and the number of copies sold had probably contributed considerably to the newspaper owner’s Christmas cheer.

But widespread resentment still simmered among local officers and detectives from the capital didn’t often receive a warm welcome in the provinces. Karen has no illusions about this investigation being an exception. Had she been at work, she would have looked up Thorstein Byle on the intranet before going to Noorö. Now she has to make do with her own preconceived notions and the brief impression he gave on the phone: an old-fashioned type and a Noorö native, judging by his harsh consonants. He had been impeccably polite, but his voice had betrayed a level of unease.

Who cares, she thinks to herself, so long as he’s up front with me?