Drammen is Adele Vetlesen’s hometown and the point from which a train-ticket coincidence links her disappearance to the investigation of Borgny Stem-Myhre’s murder. The city also becomes a place where Harry Hole and Kaja Solness test that lead against the account of the man Adele lived with and the records held by local police.

Adele’s Connection to Drammen

Adele Vetlesen was 28 and came from Drammen. In November, the man she lived with reported her missing after she failed to return home; he told Harry Hole and Kaja Solness that he had felt it was his responsibility to report her disappearance. His account establishes Drammen as Adele’s domestic starting point, but does not explain where she went or what happened to her.

A search of the Norwegian State Railways ticket system produced a more specific connection. On November 7, Adele bought a train ticket online from Drammen to Ustaoset. On that same date, Borgny Stem-Myhre bought a ticket from Kongsberg to the same destination. The matching destination gave investigators a concrete link between two women whose cases had otherwise been separate; the ticket records, however, establish purchases, not that either woman boarded a train or reached Ustaoset.

The Investigation in the City

Harry Hole and Kaja Solness travel from Oslo to Drammen, a journey of about half an hour, and meet Adele’s cohabiting partner at People & Coffee. Their conversation brings the missing-person report into focus: he says Adele had not come home, while Kaja and Harry seek information that might clarify her movements.

They also visit the police headquarters in Drammen. A local commissioner explains that between five hundred and a thousand Norwegians are reported missing each year, and that most eventually turn up; without evidence suggesting a crime or accident, police cannot pursue every report. Adele’s case has an additional complication: there is a sign of life attributed to her, so her disappearance has not been treated simply as evidence of a crime.

A Lead Beyond Drammen

The commissioner produces a postcard bearing Adele’s name, a Rwandan stamp, and a Kigali postmark. Adele’s mother has confirmed that the handwriting is her daughter’s. The local account also records that Adele was listed as a passenger on a Brussels Airlines flight to Kigali on November 25, via Entebbe, and that an Interpol hotel search found a guest named Adele Vetlesen at the Gorilla Hotel in Kigali.

These records extend the trail far beyond Drammen without resolving Adele’s whereabouts. The postcard and travel records count as evidence that she may have travelled abroad, but no one knows where she is now; technically, a postcard from overseas does not end her status as a missing person. Drammen’s narrative significance lies in this contrast: the city anchors Adele’s known life and the first trace linking her to Borgny’s case, while the available documents point toward a destination that still cannot account for her disappearance.