‘And it’s looked like this since the recycling stations started to charge a fee, I assume,’ she says after opening the door and walking up to Byle.

He nods.

‘The provincial board approves a clean-up every year, but a few months later, it’s back to looking like this. We drive past here sometimes, but so far we’ve only caught a handful of people red-handed. We have to go on foot from here,’ he adds with a nod toward a steep gravel road on the other side of the turning area. ‘We could drive a bit further, but the technicians wouldn’t like it. Plus, the road’s so overgrown up there, you’d have to reverse out anyway.’

‘After you,’ Karen says, for lack of anything more imaginative.

The gravel road turns out to be surprisingly wide but very steep, and the asphalt that had been sunken and occasionally cracked on the way up to the turning area, is little more than disjointed sheets joined together by slushy snow here. Karen grits her teeth when every step provokes a sharp stab of pain.

‘The coal was transported in carts down this road from the quarry to be loaded onto lorries,’ Thorstein hollers and strides on with his long legs.

‘So, you have family on the island,’ he adds after a brief pause.

Karen hesitates briefly.

‘Yes, but I haven’t seen them in years.’

He obviously knows exactly what blood flows through her veins. Unlike Karen, Byle has had plenty of time to look her up on the intranet. And he obviously knows that once upon a time, a couple of generations ago, the Eikens were a thoroughly respectable family. God-fearing and hard-working, her grandparents – or at least their parents – had gone out in their boats come rain or shine and humbly bowed their heads in church every Sunday. Their graves up in Gudheim are a testament to that, with their black iron anchors instead of headstones. Not the largest, granted, not the man-sized ones with chains, like the pilots’, but nevertheless anchors instead of regular stones like farmers and such simple folk had to make do with for their final resting places. The Eikens had had that right once. They don’t anymore.

‘The Eikens, yes . . .’ Byle says slowly, as though he’s searching his memory, and Karen decides to come right out with it. With some of it, at any rate.

‘I’m afraid some of my relatives have had rather a lot of run-ins with the police. I seem to recall hearing something about a jacklighting incident up in Gudheim a few years ago that earned one of my cousins a couple of months in the nick.’