a good offer, and their father had insisted he take it. Though he stayed in touch, Sigrid’s brother almost never came home. This was family now. This and the animals.
‘I’ll grant you the point about the city, but there are still two problems,’ she said.
‘Oh?’ Her father raised his voice just enough to suggest a question.
‘The first is that I’m not pretty. I’m plain. The second is that it is near impossible to know if a Norwegian man is interested.’
She had learned this by way of empirical observation and comparison.
To wit, she had once met a British man named Miles. Miles was so forthcoming with his advances that the alcohol merely affected his aim rather than his behaviour.
She had also met a German boy who was sweet and affectionate and clever, and whose only flaw was being German — which was unfair, and she knew it, and she felt bad about it, but Sigrid still didn’t want to spend every other Christmas in Hanover. To his credit, though, neither did he.
Norwegian men, in contrast to the others, were problematic — even for Norwegian women, who presumably had the greatest motive to crack the code of their behaviour, if only for reasons of proximity.
She explained. ‘They are polite. Occasionally witty. They dress like teenagers, no matter what their age, and will never say anything romantic unless it’s during a drunken confessional.’
‘So get them drunk.’
‘I don’t think that’s the first step in a lasting relationship, Papa.’
‘Things can’t last unless they begin. Worry about duration after commencement.’
Sigrid pouted, and her father’s shoulders dropped.
‘Daughter, it’s not hard at all. You look for the man staring with the greatest intensity at his own shoes while in your presence. The kind of man who is too tongue-tied to even try talking to you. This is the one you’re looking for. And take it from me, you’ll have his love and you’ll win more arguments. In the long run, this is the key to longevity, which is apparently your goal.’
Sigrid smiled. ‘You know, Papa, they tend to be more loquacious in Oslo.’
‘Yes, well,’ he said, ‘the world is a tricky place.’
Her father finished his second beer and sat back with a heavy wooden pipe that he lit with an experienced hand and a long match.
‘So,’ he asked, ‘what will you do after university?’
Sigrid now smiled broadly.
‘I’m going to fight crime,’ she said.
Sigrid Odegard’s father nodded approvingly. ‘That’s the spirit.’
Sigrid’s interests had led her to specialise in organised crime. Traditionally, this meant drug, weapons, and human trafficking, and a smattering of economic and corporate crime — though Oslo’s police department was woefully understaffed to deal with white-collar problems. Back when she started, organised criminals were more opportunistic and disorganised than today; they were generally not linked with matters of global criminal networks and terrorism. Only in recent years, as Europe’s borders grew soft, and wars raged on in the Balkans and the Middle East and Afghanistan, did organised crime come to resemble the sorts of American TV shows she often watched alone in the early evenings after returning from work.
Sigrid, just over forty, had recently been promoted to the rank of Politiforstebetjent, or Police Chief Inspector, in her district, after dutifully working her way up from constable, to sergeant, to inspector, and now this. Not politically minded, she had little interest in this post, but it did provide an opportunity to survey the wider range of crime in the city and to see the movement of the times from a greater height and wider angle. She confidently believed this job was her final destination, and she was grateful that she had reached her potential without undue strain or frustration.
Being a professional witness, she was aided by a corps of able, respectful men in her unit who understood that she took pleasure in odd events. They each made a concerted effort to bring the most noteworthy matters to her attention, and no one was more eager to do so than Petter Hansen. Petter, thirty-six and still not needing to shave, was able to spot oddities with the careful eye of an antique collector.
His job had become easier over the past few years because Oslo was no longer the silent, uneventful city it once was. There were now rapes, thefts, armed hold-ups, violent domestic problems, and a growing tide of younger people who did not respect the police. New immigration from Africa and Eastern Europe — and Muslim countries farther east — created a new social tension in the city that still lacked the political maturity to address it. The liberals expounded limitless tolerance, the conservatives were racist or xenophobic, and everyone debated from philosophical positions but never from ones grounded in evidence, and so no sober consideration was being given to the very real question now haunting all of Western civilisation — namely,
Sigrid sets her sandwich — now half molested — onto the brown paper bag that had sheltered it for the night and looks up as Petter walks to her desk with a smile, which can only mean he’s uncovered another buried treasure.
‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Have something?’
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘Good for you.’
Petter says, ‘Something awful.’
‘OK.’
‘But different.’
‘Start with the awful.’
‘There’s been a murder. A woman in her thirties in Toyen. She was strangled, then stabbed. We’ve already secured the location. We’re starting the process now.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘I got the call twenty minutes ago. We’ve been there for five. A person in the building heard a fight and called us.’
‘I see. And what’s different?’
‘This,’ says Petter, handing Sigrid a note. It is written in English. A sort of English, at any rate. She reads it carefully. And she reads it again.
‘Do you know what this means?’
‘No. But it has spelling mistakes.’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ve called the owner of the apartment. The woman who was killed didn’t live there. She lived upstairs with her son. The son is missing. The owner is Lars Bjornsson.’
‘Do we know him?’
‘He makes video games. He’s really good.’
‘You’re thirty-six, Petter.’
‘They’re very sophisticated video games.’
‘I see.’
‘He’s here in room four. They came right away. Lars’s wife says her grandfather is missing from the apartment.’
‘He lives there?’
‘Ah, yup. American. Retired.’
‘I see. Are they suspects?’
‘Well, you know. We have to figure out where they were at the time, but I don’t think so. You’ll see.’ Petter pops his lips and then says, ‘So let’s go then.’
Sigrid looks down at her baby-blue shirt and black tie to see whether any of the sandwich’s contents are stuck to them. Satisfied, she stands up and follows Petter down the hallway, past the overhead Geographic
