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began to pound and he realised it would give him a headache if he didn’t do something. He turned irritably towards the Red Cross team. ‘What are you sitting there for?’ he demanded.
    ‘They’ve been working since seven o’clock,’ Hammer explained. ‘They need a break.’
    Wisting regretted being so abrupt, but did not say anything further.
    Ebbe Slettaker, the oceanographer, produced a little pocket camera.
    ‘Is it okay?’ he asked, holding it up in front of Wisting.
    ‘Just don’t let the photographs go astray,’ he replied. ‘Has Mortensen been alerted?’
    ‘He’s on his way,’ Hammer confirmed.
    The oceanographer first took a couple of landscape photographs, in which he captured the inlet and the sea beyond, before venturing nearer the water to take a close-up of the shoe.
    ‘That’s good,’ he commented, making a note in a book. ‘That makes my job easier.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘It creates more work, of course, but with more finds it becomes easier to reach a qualified conclusion. It’s like taking a cross-reference bearing. The more reference points, the more accurate the answer will be.’
    These comments made Wisting feel more favourably disposed to the world. In principle the oceanographer was right. The same applied to investigation work. Three murders were easier to clear up than two, with more chance that the perpetrator had left traces and clues. Tiny details connected to each individual discovery told a different part of a single story.
    ‘Of course, I don’t know if I can be of help,’ the oceanographer went on, adjusting his glasses. ‘Obviously I’ll do my best, but the most logical explanation is probably that, somewhere out at sea, there’s a bag of severed body parts that someone has dumped from a boat. The first parts have worked themselves loose but, in all likelihood, more will be washed ashore in the next few days. I’ll have to be kept informed.’
    Wisting turned to the group of Red Cross volunteers again, watching everything that the policemen on the shore were doing, but the search was not going to start again until they had finished their business. The thought of severed body parts floating around in the sea made Wisting feel unwell. It was 23rd June, St. John’s Eve. The fjord would be filled with boats this evening. People would be gathering in lively company on all of the little islands and skerries, ready to light bonfires and celebrate midsummer. At the weekend, the trades holiday fortnight would begin. Summer cottage folk and camping tourists would double the population.
    Espen Mortensen’s crime scene vehicle swung onto the grassy area above them. The Assistant Chief of Police was first out, trotting down towards them, balancing on the round boulders, to stop about a metre from the severed foot. It looked as if he had difficulty controlling his facial expression. ‘Another one?’ he said finally, taking a grip round his own neck.
    ‘I think the meteorologist is right,’ Hammer said, nodding towards the marine researcher.
    ‘I’m not a meteorologist,’ Ebbe Slettaker corrected him, adjusting his glasses once more. ‘I’m an oceanographer.’
    ‘It’s all the same to me,’ Hammer smiled, spitting out a splinter of wood from his toothpick. ‘But I think you’re right.’ He turned to face the sea. ‘Somewhere or other out there there’s a bin-bag full of body parts.’
    The Assistant Chief of Police stood with an astonished expression on his bony face. Then he turned towards Wisting. ‘I have raised the matter with the Public Prosecutor,’ he said. ‘There will be a press conference this afternoon. We have to release information about all this. Only by doing that will we get the responses we need.’
    Wisting moved back a few steps to let Mortensen through with his equipment case. Right now he was not sure whether they had many more stones to unturn among the earlier investigative work, but he was not in disagreement. This case