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woman who was murdered way down in a mine shaft, and that’s all we’ve said. That’s what the guy who found her said.”
    “Well, listen,” said the commander. “I don’t know how you all got that information. But let’s start from the beginning. For one thing, that’s no woman down there in the shaft.”
    The journalists squirmed.
    “Like I said, not a woman. It’s a man.”
    The intern felt something cold trickle down his spine. Then he heard himself protesting: “But it was a girl! That’s what he said, the guy who found her.”
    “I don’t know who
you’ve
been talking to,” the commander said curtly, “but the body down there, it’s a man. And that man has been dead for several days, maybe longer, maybe
much
longer. So this is what will happen. Before our divers bring up the body, it will bewrapped, so that we can safeguard forensic evidence. You should all try to remember that none of us knows anything about
why
this man is dead. According to our divers, there’s nothing that points to a murder.”
    “Is there anything that indicates it isn’t one, then?” ventured the intern. The commander’s jaw tightened, and it looked like he was planning to answer. But then he wrapped up instead:
    “That’s all, thanks, and you guys should try to keep to the facts from now on. We’re going to move our cordon out into a circle of about two hundred yards, out of respect for any next of kin. So you can start packing up.”
    But, despite the blockades, the next morning both of the country’s evening papers showed the picture: a man’s corpse being lifted out of a mine shaft, wrapped up to the chin in the task force’s body bag. His long hair framed a bloodless face, and the flash from the camera had illuminated the whitened strands into a wreath of light, like a halo. But what the buyers of this issue would presumably remember most was the deep notch that had been cut just above the bridge of the man’s nose like a third eye socket.

3
The Æsir Murder
    I t had been a very quiet morning meeting at
Dalakuriren
’s long center table as they worked through the list of potential follow-ups and, more important, decided who would do the job.
    No one had said anything about the mix-up with the girl; that kind of whispering took place around the paper’s coffee machines. Along with the whispers about how the intern from Stockholm would be allowed to continue shadowing the police investigation.
    But it didn’t really matter who took care of the reports from now on, because by now the evening papers had flown in their teams, and
Dalakuriren
would soon be left behind.
    E rik Hall, the diver, lived in a summer cottage outside of Falun. From the road, the intern could glimpse the barred windows of the sunporch, but in order to get closer, he would have to pass a fence as high as his chest. And a weasel-like figure with a brown leather jacket was standing guard just inside the gate. It looked as though the Weasel was writing something on a piece of cardboard, printed letters in red marker: PLEASE SHOW RESPECT! PRIVATE PROPERTY! Then he wedgedthe cardboard into the gate and ran back toward the porch, where a door opened up and closed behind his narrow back.
    By the time the other media had found their way to Hall’s cottage, the exclusive story had already been sold. The diver wasn’t answering the telephone or letting any other journalist inside.
    Instead they had to sit and brood outside the fence for an hour or so, until at last the Weasel came slinking out from the sunporch with his photographer on his heels. All the cameras flashed as they tried to get a picture of the diver’s shadow behind the windows, but no one had any luck.
    On his way out through the fence, the Weasel waved happily at his competition and ran off toward his car; and just as he passed the intern he whispered the words “special issue.”
    T he new papers came out at four that same day. The exclusive interview with Erik Hall and the