Australia matters to the investigation as Iska Peller’s place of refuge and the point from which the police seek to draw her back to Norway. Her presence there is bound to the aftermath of Charlotte Lolles’s death: she is both a potential witness to the events at Hävasshütte and someone unwilling to be used again as bait.

Iska Peller’s refuge and the events behind it

Iska Peller is in Australia after the events that followed her and Charlotte Lolles being taken from Hävasshütte by a village policeman and lodged at his home. While Iska tried to sleep off her illness, the policeman allegedly tried to seduce Charlotte in the living room. The attempt became physical: Charlotte called for help, Iska woke and went to the room, and found that the policeman had pulled Charlotte’s ski pants down to her knees. He stopped, and the two women decided to leave, take a train, and stay at a hotel elsewhere.

By the time the investigation seeks Iska’s help, she is living under police protection in Australia. The protection has a visible, watchful routine: one man-and-woman team in a car across the street has been replaced by two men, who drink coffee slowly as they begin an eight-hour surveillance shift. Iska wonders what they could do if something actually happened. The watch may mark her as protected, but it does not make her feel safe.

Refusal to return

Mikael Bellman wants Harry Hole to persuade Iska to come back to Norway and serve as bait. Iska refuses. She says she would like the killer of Charlotte Lolles found, but will not return; in her view, she is already bait enough where she is. She insists that the police officer should take the risk himself rather than ask her to do so. Her anger breaks through the call, and she throws the handset across the room, startling her cat. Then, with the call ended, she covers her face and cries for Charlotte, whom she remembers with intimate tenderness.

The refusal is not a detached decision about travel. Iska’s fear has come to dominate her sense of the approaching night: she thinks about sunset and the return of darkness again and again. When the telephone rings once more, its display shows a number beginning with Norway’s country code, +47. Even from Australia, the investigation—and the danger associated with Norway—has reached her again.

Australia as a point in the police operation

Bellman subsequently announces at a press conference that Iska has contacted the police, will arrive in Oslo on a flight from Australia that evening, and will travel with an investigator to Hävasshütte the next day to reconstruct the night as far as possible. The announcement is not a routine disclosure of a witness’s identity. The police intend the murderer to hear that they have found someone from the hut’s guest list and to imagine her at the remote location with only one investigator.

The wording is carefully staged. Bellman’s prepared statement presents Iska’s role in a way that makes her appear less important to the police than she is, while suggesting that she may be able to identify the other guests. Harry Hole has argued for language that will not draw attention to the apparent vulnerability of sending her with a single investigator; the understated introduction and the mild expression of hope are meant to encourage the killer to underestimate the operation. Australia therefore becomes more than Iska’s current address: it is the starting point of a threatened return that the police publicly present as real in order to lure the murderer.