Closed for Winter Read Free Page B

back at him. ‘Not exactly a restaurant, but perhaps a little café with an art gallery. Life is too short to continue the way things are. Turning up at the office every morning. Meetings, budgets, cutbacks, projects.’
    Suzanne was a child welfare officer who had worked for years with young, single asylum seekers. Recently her job had become increasingly administrative, and now she spent the majority of her time sitting in an office.
    ‘What would you call it?’ he asked, replacing his glass without drinking a drop.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘If you’ve dreamt about opening a café, you must have thought of a name for it.’
    She shook her head.
    ‘Maybe something different from Shazam Station ?’
    She smiled.
    ‘In fact, that’s an amusing name.’
    ‘Do you think so?’
    ‘ Shazam ’s a magic word. It’s Persian. “Sesame” in English. Open sesame.’
    ‘Sesame Station?’
    She laughed and a gossamer web of fine wrinkles radiated from her eyes and the corners of her mouth across her temples and cheeks. Her walnut brown eyes took an entirely individual, luminous glow from the candles on the table.
    The telephone rang. OPERA , the internal abbreviation for the police centre of operations, appeared on the display. Wisting answered briefly, and the operator introduced himself in similar style. ‘Several holiday cottages out at Gusland have been broken into,’ he said. Wisting understood there was more to come. ‘A dead body has been discovered in one of them.’

3
    Slamming the car door behind him, William Wisting tugged his jacket lapels together against the cold sea breeze. His breath formed a delicate, pearly haze around his face. Already two police patrol cars and an ambulance were installed on the narrow parking spot, as well as two civilian vehicles.
    At the far end of the parking area a path led into the undergrowth, and fifty metres later the coastal vista opened up, its rocky edge merging into the murky ocean. The lighthouse beam glittered on the restless surface of the water.
    Immediately beside the sea he could make out the outline of a cottage, a faint light visible at a few windows, flashlights flickering in the darkness. An electric generator rumbled into life and the front section of the house was suddenly bathed in light. Red and white crime scene warning tape fluttered in the wind, reflective tape twinkled on police uniforms. The muffled sound of radio transmitters, telephones and subdued conversations mingled in the cold, starless, autumn night.
    Wisting dipped into the bitter wind. He had been summoned to similar assignments countless times before but the first encounter with any crime scene was never routine, and he never became immune to the sight of lacerated skin, dead human beings, and the bottomless despair of relatives. All too often he had seen the consequences of senseless violence that seemed more brutal and ruthless each time. The recurring thoughts made him irritable and withdrawn.
    He encountered two paramedics on the descent to the crime scene. Empty-handed, they approached him with sombre expressions, greeting him with nothing more than a brusque nod as they passed. The policeman in charge of crime scene operations raised the warning tape to let him pass.
    The front door of the holiday cottage was wide open, exposing the splintered frame damaged in the burglary. Inside he could see the corpse’s legs, with lumps of clay clinging to the soles of its boots. He was given a concise update which added nothing to the resumé he had heard over the phone twenty-five minutes earlier.
    Espen Mortensen, the young crime scene technician, was already donning a white overall. ‘Are you coming in?’ he asked.
    Wisting nodded, but contented himself with pulling on rubber overshoes before following his colleague upstairs.
    Conspicuous damage had been inflicted on the area surrounding the lock, with wood shavings strewn in all directions and the striking plate torn loose . Blood was