‘But I suppose that’s my punishment for not being a weakling, unlike the young guns who slink off to bed at the slightest sniffle. Everyone claims to have caught the flu this year. Bloody convenient, if you ask me.’

Karen changes the subject, continues to make increasingly forced chitchat, doing her best to extract more than a grunt in reply from the cranky coroner. But nothing, not the unseasonably mild weather, nor the rumours of an imminent restructuring of the Police Authority seems to interest Kneought Brodal. And since none of it interests Karen Eiken Hornby either, she eventually stops talking.

As she glances at her watch and reaches out to turn on the news, while simultaneously bracing herself to ask Brodal whether he heard the previous broadcast, and if so, whether it contained anything about the murder in Skreby, she suddenly hears snoring coming from the passenger seat.

*

She grits her teeth and drives as fast as she dares, accompanied by the sound of the coroner sawing logs, interrupted only by fits of sleep apnoea serious enough to make her eye at him worriedly until he resumes rumbling. Kneought Brodal doesn’t wake up until they bump aboard the ferry in Thorsvik, after Karen spent the eighteen-minute wait at the slip pointedly avoiding looking at the string of saliva dangling from the corner of the coroner’s mouth, and eventually landing like a snail track on his seat belt. Now he makes a series of noises that seem to signal dazed confusion and a sore neck. He gingerly rubs the back of his head and yawns.

‘This seat is bloody uncomfortable.’

‘And yet you managed to sleep in it for over two hours,’ she replies drily. ‘But at least we’re on board now and crossing the sound only takes fifteen minutes. I’m going to stretch my legs and get a bit of fresh air.’

Without waiting for a reply, she unbuckles her seat belt and climbs out of the car. She can hear Brodal open the passenger door, but gratefully notes that he doesn’t seem to make any move to get out. I can’t bear to buckle that giant baby in again today, she grumbles and slams the door shut behind her.

There are only two other vehicles on the ferry, a black Renault and a motorcycle. The driver of the hog stays seated on his Harley-Davidson with a firm grip on the curved handlebars. Karen recognises the logo on his black leather jacket: OP.

She knows the acronym is deliberately ambiguous, standing either for the Odin Predators or the One Percenters. Nor is it much of a secret that their headquarters are located on the west coast of Noorö. What’s unusual is seeing one of them on their own, Karen thinks, studying the long grey plait hanging down the man’s back.