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else?” she asked, signaling to Eik that they ought to be moving on. “We haven’t been to the slope yet and we still need to speak with the forest worker.”
    “Not at the moment, I don’t think,” Mik answered. “I don’t suppose you saw anything when you drove in here?”
    Louise shook her head. “Not until we found the kids.”
    The little ones were being placed in the backseat of the police car. The girl whimpered, the volume rising when the officer tried to buckle the seat belt around her slight body. The other two seemed to have gone into hibernation—they let themselves be buckled in without any objections.
    “We’ll take the back way,” Louise decided, pointing toward the slope and the lakeside below. She stood for a moment and watched the police car drive away. She actually felt more like sticking around to follow the work.
    “Coming,” Eik answered, making sure that his cigarette was out before shoving the butt in his pocket.

7
    T HE PATH LEADING to the slope where the unidentified woman had been found was not easily passable. It was muddy and slippery, and they needed to cross the creek to get to the other side.
    “There’s usually a couple of tree trunks up ahead to cross on,” Louise remembered, signaling Eik to follow her through the trees.
    She assumed that they would learn the most by going to the top of the slope. There was little to gain from seeing the place where the woman had landed.
    “Do people hang out all the way around the lake?” Eik asked, gasping for breath behind her.
    “No, mostly by the swing. And of course some go to the area below the meadow by the camping cabin.”
    “So if she was homeless and had her camp somewherenearby, it’s possible that nobody would have seen it,” he concluded just as he tripped on a stump.
    “Only if it was right around here,” Louise agreed and balanced her way across the creek on a narrow tree trunk.
    T HE SLOPE WAS steep, and the drop was about sixteen to twenty feet, Louise estimated as she contemplated the spot where the woman had fallen to her death. Neither path nor trail led down from there. From where they stood, it mostly looked as if the ground just disappeared in a free fall down through the wide tree trunks.
    “Seems like it must have happened after dark,” Louise said. “Otherwise the woman would have surely noticed the steep drop.”
    “What the hell was she doing up here?” Eik mumbled and walked all the way to the edge. “It’s not exactly a place you just happen to pass by.”
    Above the slope, the entire area was shaded by the tall trees.
    “Could she have been lost?” he suggested, looking around. He had taken off his leather jacket and carried it over his shoulder with one finger. “Perhaps if she came from that camping cabin you keep talking about?”
    Louise nodded. “It would be difficult to find your way in the dark,” she said. There was nothing to take bearings of unless light shone through the windows of the cabin.
    “Can we find out whether it was rented out last week?”
    Louise shrugged. “Maybe the forest worker knows. Let’s ask him.”
    They began walking back but stayed at the top this time to avoid the creek.
    “The cabin’s back there,” she said, pointing to the left. Shenoticed that the fire pit by the lake was still there. It had even been spruced up with stumps to sit on. As she recalled, they used to sit on the ground.
    Together they continued across a small, grassy hilltop, and from there they could see the green wooden cabin. It wasn’t as small as she recalled, but of course it could have been expanded within the past twenty years.
    “It would make sense if she’d been walking from here.” Eik looked back in the direction they’d come from.
    Louise nodded. It was possible if the woman had used the cabin for shelter when it wasn’t rented out.
    In front of the cabin was a large, gravel yard and to the left was a lawn, which needed to be mowed. There were two large swing