Sydney is both the setting of a police interview that reopens Iska Peller’s account of a mountain-hut encounter and the place where she tries to live with Charlotte Lolles’s murder. Its harbor, smoke-hazed horizon, and monitored suburban house make the city a refuge only in a limited sense: the investigation reaches across the distance, and Iska refuses to return to Norway as bait.

Setting and Local Texture

Iska lives in Bristol (Sydney), a small district whose address does not suggest great wealth. The two-storey brick house on her street is so unremarkable that it could have stood in almost any English town; nearby, dense traffic carries on a couple of blocks away, and a dog barks. This ordinary suburban setting is rendered as a place of watchfulness rather than ease: police observers sit across the road, drinking slowly from lidded takeaway cups during an eight-hour shift.

The city’s wider environment appears through the prospect McCormack turns away from. From the interview room, Port Jackson glitters in the sun; smoke still hangs above Manly more than a week after the season’s last bushfire was extinguished, carried south by a light, warm northerly wind. The water and weather suggest a fine day for sailing, a plan McCormack has made with his son at Watson Bay, but his meeting with Iska has reached a point that demands more attention.

The Interview and the Investigation

Neil McCormack, head of the Sydney South Police District homicide squad, interviews Iska after she comes directly from her publishing job. Her plain, slightly rumpled suit and composed manner lead him to see her as mature and self-possessed, not someone inclined to dramatize events or seek attention. She did not approach the police herself. McCormack hopes to finish quickly, partly because he has planned to sail with his son, but her final answer changes the course of the interview.

Iska explains that she had not previously mentioned an episode at the hut because nobody had asked about what happened afterward, and she saw no connection to Charlotte’s murder. She characterizes it as a brief encounter with an idiot, not something she thought warranted police attention. McCormack recognizes that she has a point, yet hesitates to pursue the matter because doing so would mean trouble and work if the person involved holds a police position. His reluctance is sharpened by his memory of Harry Hole, whom he had liked and who had once helped Sydney police in a major clown-murder investigation. Harry had sounded exhausted on the telephone, leaving McCormack to wonder whether he was again in trouble.

A Distant City Under Pressure

The interview’s questions do not remain contained in the police station. From her house in Bristol (Sydney), Iska receives a request to help find Charlotte’s killer by acting as bait. She refuses angrily: she has already been used as a decoy enough, and she will not go back to Norway. She insists that the police officer paid to catch the monster should take that risk himself. After ending the call, she throws the telephone across the room; the startled cat flees into the kitchen, and Iska covers her face and weeps for Charlotte.

The police watch outside continues while Iska’s grief becomes inseparable from the prospect of night. She recalls that darkness once did not frighten her, but now she thinks of little else: sunset will come, followed by the night again and again. When the telephone begins playing the opening notes of an Antony and the Johnsons song, the caller’s number starts with Norway’s country code. The detail collapses the apparent distance between Sydney and the investigation: even in the quiet, watched street where Iska has tried to remain, Norway keeps calling.