‘In Oslo alone, over six hundred people are reported missing every year. After a couple of hours only a handful of these are not found. As good as none remain missing for more than a couple of days.’

Hagen stroked a finger over the hairs on the bridge of his nose binding his eyebrows together. He had to prepare for the budget meeting in the Chief Constable’s office. The theme was cutbacks.

‘Most missing persons are escapees from mental institutions or elderly people suffering from dementia,’ Harry continued. ‘But even the relatively compos mentis who have run off to Copenhagen or committed suicide are found. Their names appear on passenger lists, they withdraw cash from an ATM or wash up on a beach.’

‘What’s your point?’ Gunnar Hagen said, looking at his watch.

‘This,’ Harry said, tossing a yellow file that landed on the POB’s desk with a smack.

Hagen leaned forward and flicked through the stapled documents. ‘My goodness, Harry. You’re not normally the report-writing type.’

‘This is Skarre’s work,’ Harry said, wasting no words. ‘But the conclusion is mine, and I’ll give it to you now, orally.’

‘Make it brief, please.’

Harry stared down at his hands, which he had placed in his lap. His long legs were stretched out in front of the chair. He took a deep breath. He knew that when he had said this out loud, there was no going back.

‘Too many people have disappeared,’ Harry said.

The right half of Hagen’s eyebrow shot into the air. ‘Explain.’

‘You’ll find it on page 6. A list of missing women aged between twenty-five and fifty from 1994 until today. Women who in the last ten years have never been found. I’ve been talking to the Missing Persons Unit, and they agree. It’s simply too many.’

‘Too many in relation to what?’

‘In relation to before. In relation to Denmark and Sweden. And in relation to other demographic groups. Married and cohabiting women are hugely over-represented.’

‘Women are more independent than they used to be,’ Hagen said. ‘Some go their own way, break with the family, go abroad with a man maybe. That has some bearing on statistics. So?’

‘They’ve become more independent in Denmark and Sweden, too. But they find them again there.’

Hagen sighed. ‘If the figures are so divergent from the norm, as you claim, why has no one discovered this before?’

‘Because Skarre’s figures are valid for the whole country and usually the police only look at those missing in their own district. There is a national missing persons register at Kripos, however, detailing 1,800 names, but it’s for the last fifty years and includes shipwrecks and disasters like the Alexander Kielland oil rig. The point is that no one has looked at countrywide patterns. Not until now.’

‘Fine, but our responsibility is not for the country, Harry. It’s for Oslo Police District.’ Hagen smacked both palms down to indicate that the audience was over.

‘The problem,’ Harry said, rubbing his chin, ‘is that it’s come to Oslo.’

‘What it?’

‘Last night I found Birte Becker’s mobile phone in a snowman. I don’t know quite what it is, boss. But I think we need to find out. Quick.’

‘These statistics are interesting,’ Hagen said, absent-mindedly taking Battalion Commander Yasuda’s little finger and pressing his thumb into it. ‘And I also appreciate that this latest disappearance is grounds for concern. But it’s not enough. So tell me: what was it that actually made you ask Skarre to write this report?’

Harry looked at Hagen. Then he pulled a dog-eared envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to Hagen.

‘This was in my mailbox after I did the TV show at the beginning of September. Until now I had thought it was a madman’s work.’

Hagen took out the letter, and after reading the six sentences, shook his head at Harry. ‘The snowman? And what is/are the Murri?’

‘That’s exactly the point,’ Harry said. ‘I’m afraid this is the it.’

The POB gave him a nonplussed look.

‘I hope I’m wrong,’ Harry said, ‘but I think we have some hellishly dark days ahead of us.’

Hagen sighed. ‘What do you want, Harry?’

‘I want an investigation team.’

Hagen studied Harry. In common with most other officers at Police HQ, he regarded Harry as a self-willed, arrogant, argumentative, unstable alcoholic. Nevertheless, he was glad they were on the same side and that he wouldn’t have this man snapping at his heels.

‘How many?’ he asked at length. ‘And for how long?’

‘Ten detectives. Two months.’

He looked around with disapproval at the other three squeezed into Harry’s office: Katrine Bratt, Harry Hole and Bjørn Holm from Krimteknisk, the Forensics Unit.

‘That’s what Hagen’s given me,’ Harry said, tipping back on his chair. ‘And this is not a murder investigation. For the moment.’

‘What is it actually?’ Katrine Bratt asked. ‘For the moment?’

‘A missing persons case,’ Harry said. ‘But one which bears a certain similarity to other recent cases.’

‘Housewives who one day in late autumn suddenly up sticks?’ asked Bjørn Holm with remnants of the rural Toten dialect he had added to the goods he had removed from the village of Skreia, along with an LP collection consisting of Elvis, hardcore hillbilly, the Sex Pistols, Jason & the Scorchers, three hand-sewn suits from Nashville, an American Bible, a slightly undersized sofa bed and a dining-room suite that had outlived three generations of Holms. All piled up on a trailer and towed to the capital by the last Amazon to roll off the 1970 Volvo assembly line. Bjørn Holm had bought the Amazon for 1,200 kroner, but even at that time no one knew how many kilometres it had done because the clock only went up to 100,000. However, the car expressed everything Bjørn Holm was and believed in; it smelt better than anything he knew, a mixture of imitation leather, metal, engine oil, sun-faded rear ledge, Volvo factory and seats impregnated with ‘personality perspiration’, which Bjørn Holm explained was not common body perspiration but a select veneer of all the previous owners’ souls, karma, eating habits and lifestyles. The furry dice hanging from the mirror were original Fuzzy Dice, which expressed the right mix of genuine affection for and ironical distance from a bygone American culture and aesthetic that perfectly suited a Norwegian farmer’s son who had grown up with Jim Reeves in one ear, the Ramones in the other, and loved both. Now he was sitting in Harry’s office with a Rasta hat that made him look more like an undercover drugs cop than a forensics officer. Two immense, fire-engine red, cutlet-shaped sideburns framing Bjørn Holm’s plump, round face emerged from the hat, and he had a pair of slightly protruding eyes, which gave him a fishlike expression of constant wonderment. He was the only person Harry had insisted on having in his small investigation team.

‘There’s one more thing,’ Harry said, reaching out to switch on the overhead projector between the piles of paper on his desk. Magnus Skarre cursed and shielded his eyes as blurred writing suddenly appeared on his face. He moved, and Harry’s voice came from behind the projector.

‘This letter landed in my mailbox exactly two months ago. No address, postmarked Oslo. Produced on a standard inkjet printer.’

Before Harry could ask, Katrine Bratt had pressed the light switch by the door, plunging the room into darkness. A square of light loomed up on the white wall.

They read in silence.

‘What’s the Murri?’ Skarre asked.

The monotonous whirr of the projector fan was the answer.

‘The most interesting part is who the snowman is,’ Katrine Bratt said.

‘Obviously someone who needs his head testing,’ Bjørn Holm said.

Skarre’s lone laughter was cut short.

‘The Murri was the nickname of a person who is now dead,’ Harry said from out of the darkness. ‘A murri is an Aborigine from Queensland in Australia. While this murri was alive he killed women all over Australia. No one knows for certain how many. His real name was Robin Toowoomba.’

The fan whirred and buzzed.

‘Serial killer,’ said Bjørn Holm. ‘The one you killed.’

Harry nodded.

‘Does that mean you think we’re dealing with one now?’

‘As a result of this letter, we can’t rule out the possibility.’

‘Whoa there. Hold your horses!’ Skarre raised his palms. ‘How many times have you cried wolf since you became a celeb because of the Aussie stuff, Harry?’

‘Three times,’ Harry said. ‘At least.’

‘And still we haven’t seen a serial killer in Norway.’ Skarre glanced at Bratt as if to make sure she was following. ‘Is it because of that FBI course you did on serial killers? Is that what’s making you see them everywhere?’

‘Maybe,’ Harry said.

‘Let me remind you that apart from that nurse feller who gave injections to a couple of old fogeys, who were at death’s door anyway, we haven’t had a single serial killer in Norway. Ever. Those guys exist in the USA, but even there usually only in films.’

‘Wrong,’ said Katrine Bratt.

The others turned to face her. She stifled a yawn.

‘Sweden, France, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Russia and Finland. And we’re only talking solved cases here. No one utters a word about hidden statistics.’

Harry couldn’t see Skarre’s flushed face in the dark, just the profile of his chin jutting forward aggressively in Bratt’s direction.

‘We haven’t even got a body, and I can show you a drawer full of letters like this one. People who are a lot nuttier than this . . . this . . . snowguy.’

‘The difference’, Harry said, getting up and strolling over to the window, ‘is that this headcase is thorough. The name Murri was never mentioned in the papers at the time. It was the nickname Robin Toowoomba used when he was a boxer with a travelling circus.’

The last of the daylight leaked out through a crack in the cloud cover. He looked at his watch. Oleg had insisted on going early so that they could take in Slayer as well.

‘Where we gonna begin then?’ Bjørn Holm mumbled.

‘Eh?’ Skarre said.

‘Where are we going to begin then?’ Holm repeated with exaggerated diction.

Harry went back to the desk.

‘Holm goes over Becker’s house and garden as if it were a murder scene. Check the mobile phone and the scarf in particular. Skarre, you make a list of ex-murderers, rapists, suspects in –’

‘—comparable cases and other scum on the loose,’ Skarre completed.

‘Bratt, you go through the missing persons reports and see if you can spot a pattern.’

Harry waited for the inevitable question: What type of pattern? But it was not forthcoming. Katrine Bratt just gave a brief nod.

‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘Get going.’

‘And you?’ Bratt asked.

‘I’m going to a gig,’ Harry said.

When the others had left the office, he looked down on his pad. At the only words he had jotted down. Hidden statistics.

She hadn’t tied up her boots, and now they were full of snow. She held the little hatchet in front of her as she burst through layer after layer of low, leafless branches. The blade was red and sleek with blood.

She knew the snow that had fallen yesterday had melted in town, but even though Sollihøgda was barely half an hour’s drive away, the snow could lie on the ground until spring up here. And right now she wished they had never moved to this godforsaken place, to this bit of wilderness by the town. She wished she were running on black tarmac, in a city where the noise drowned the sounds of escape and she could hide in the secure mass of humanity. But here she was completely alone.

No.

Not completely.