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expected.
    *   *   *
    It was 6:45. Strictly speaking, it was early, but Singsaker was no longer struggling to wake up. He felt strangely clearheaded, even though he hadn’t yet had his daily shot of aquavit. Or maybe that was precisely the reason.
    They were assembled in the conference room of the Violent Crimes and Sexual Assault team of the Trondheim police, with as much coffee as they’d been able to scrounge up. With them was the head of the department, Gro Brattberg. Also present was Inspector Thorvald Jensen, the only colleague Singsaker ever socialized with. He did his best to share Jensen’s enthusiasm for hunting and ice bathing, but in his heart he knew that it was really his colleague’s inner calm that appealed to him most. Jensen reminded Singsaker of who he himself might have been if his mind could have been toned down a notch, if he hadn’t had the brain surgery, didn’t indulge himself with a shot of aquavit every morning, and hadn’t gotten divorced, only to fall in love with a young American woman. In short, if he was not the person he was, he could have been Jensen. Singsaker wondered if that wasn’t, in fact, a good basis for a friendship. Jensen was rocking his chair back and forth, his hands clasped on his stomach, as he fixed his sleepy eyes on the ceiling. Next to him sat Mona Gran. She was the youngest of the detectives in the unit. Grongstad and Singsaker sat at either end of the table. The meeting began with the two of them, since they’d been at the crime scene.
    Grongstad went first, meticulous as always. Singsaker had little to add except to pose a few questions related to what Grongstad had told them. In his opinion, they needed to clarify three things: How had the killer and the victim arrived at the scene of the crime, and how had the murderer left? Was it possible to come up with any motive for the murder, based on the evidence discovered so far? Most noteworthy was the music box, which looked like an antique, and the fact that the victim’s larynx had been cut out. But the last question was the most important: Who was the victim?
    Brattberg started in after Singsaker finished. “Our first priority has to be identifying this woman without a throat.”
    Singsaker appreciated Brattberg’s precise descriptions, which were often specific and thought-provoking. The woman without a throat, he thought to himself. That means something. There’s something significant about that. No one in the room disagreed with the priorities of the head of the Violent Crimes team. They all knew that in most homicide cases, the killer has some sort of connection to the victim, and so the more they found out about the deceased, the closer they would conceivably get to the perpetrator.
    “Gran, I want you to go through all the missing person reports. From the whole country. Look at the most recent first and then work your way back,” said Brattberg.
    Mona Gran nodded and made a note in her iPad.
    “Singsaker, you need to find out more about the music box. Where’s it from? Is it old? Where was it made? And what about the tune it plays? I’d say that music museum at Ringve Manor would be the place to start. Don’t they have a good collection of music boxes out there?”
    “Jonas Røed,” said Gran. “Talk to Jonas Røed. He’s probably the foremost expert on music boxes in Norway. He works at the museum.”
    Everyone turned to look at their young colleague, impressed. She shrugged.
    “I go out to Ringve a lot. The best museum in the city, in my opinion,” she explained. “Singsaker, you’ll like Røed. A real nerd and kind of reserved. But he knows everything about musical instruments.”
    Singsaker wondered why that would be a reason to like someone, but he didn’t voice his puzzlement.
    “Jensen, have a talk with Kittelsen as soon as he has anything to tell us. Has the body been delivered to him yet?” Brattberg looked from Jensen to Grongstad.
    “It was taken over to the St. Olav