‘Blimey, how much land do they own?’ Karen asks looking out the passenger side window.

They are once again driving the twenty-five miles from Lysvik to Skreby, through barren heathland and past frozen peat bogs. In the distance, the island’s two mountain ranges rise up beyond stands of dark green gnarled juniper trees; these, and painstakingly constructed stone walls, are the only breaks in the flatness. Thorstein Byle turns off the highway, westward this time. Gabriel Stuub’s house is on the same side of the Skre River as his grandfather’s, but on the opposite side of the highway.

This time, instead of driving their own cars, they’re in a patrol vehicle. Karen’s question is rhetorical; Byle has already told her the Huss family used to own land from Skreby all the way up to the Gudheim county border. And she knows the land has since been divided up into smaller plots, but that most of those are still owned by the mining baron’s descendants. Instead of answering, Byle nods toward a house on their right.

‘Well, that’s Gabriel’s house. Unexpected, isn’t it?’

The yellow wooden house looks at most ten years old. The white picket fence enclosing the garden seems a bit unnecessary considering that there’s at least a few hundred yards to the nearest neighbour. It’s hardly the only wooden house on Noorö; in the larger towns – Lysvik, Skreby and Gudheimby – old stone houses coexist with modern wood and brick ones, but in this rural location, Gabriel Stuub’s house looks profoundly out of place.

‘Why in God’s name . . . ?’

‘Don’t ask me,’ Byle says and pulls the key out of the ignition. ‘There used to be a lovely old stone house here that they tore down to make room for this monstrosity.’

They open the gate and walk up the gravel path toward the house. Karen notices a small covered swimming pool, two plastic flamingos and a swing set on one side of the house and a two-door garage with something that might be an adjoining workshop on the other. Everything looks neat and well-cared-for. And completely incongruous. As though someone cut out a plot out of suburban Dunker or Ravenby and hurled it out into the middle of the Noorö countryside.