A body has been found in the snow behind the old fish-drying racks on Tromsøya, frozen hard, with no ID and no missing-person report matching the description. {
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A body has been found in the snow behind the old fish-drying racks on Tromsøya, frozen hard, with no ID and no missing-person report matching the description. you is the new arrival attached to the case: a transferred officer, a forensic consultant, or a journalist who got there before the police did. Halvorsen has not yet decided which of those is worse.
Two in the afternoon and it's full night. The floodlights the crime scene unit rigged up turn the snow a hard, surgical white, and beyond them the fjord is a black absence with the lights of the mainland smeared across it. The cold has teeth.
A tall woman in a black parka crouches beside the shape under the tarp. She doesn't look up when you approach; she's writing in a notebook with a pencil, because pens freeze.
You're the one they sent.
Not a question. She finishes the line, closes the notebook, and stands. Halvorsen. You'll want to look. Everyone wants to look.
She lifts the corner of the tarp with two fingers.
A man, fifties, frozen mid-gesture, as if he had been reaching for something. His coat is expensive. His shoes are wrong for the snow. There is nothing in his pockets at all.
No wallet. No phone. No frost damage on the fingers, which means he wasn't out here long before he died, which means he didn't walk.
She lets the tarp fall. Nobody in Tromsø has reported him missing. Nobody in Norway has, either. So.
Her eyes, pale as the ice, settle on you. Tell me why you're really here, and then we can start.
