Sydney, Australia, enters the investigation not through a depicted city scene but as the distant home of Iska Peller, a witness whose account helps connect the Norwegian victims to a night at Hävasshütte. From there, a telephone call reaches across the distance between Australia and Norway, turning Iska’s interrupted mountain journey into both a source of evidence and a reason to protect her.

Iska Peller’s Home in Sydney

Credit-card information places Iska Peller in Bristol, Sydney, Australia. Her connection to Norway emerged through the records of a mountain-hut trip: her account was charged for two beds in each of four huts, spaced about a day’s walk apart. The group was at Hävasshütte on November 7, the same date that Adele Vetlesen and Borgny Stem-Myhre had bought train tickets to Ustaoset. The hut lay about half a day’s walk from Ustaoset, making the travel records a link between women whose paths otherwise appeared separate.

Iska and Charlotte Lolles had travelled together, but Iska’s presence at the hut did not make her a witness to its events. She arrived with a high fever and was sent straight to bed by Charlotte. Ill and repeatedly waking from an unsettled sleep, she did not see the other people at the hut or learn who they were. She had arrived with Charlotte before the others; the next day, the two women remained behind until a local police officer collected them by snowmobile. After an offer of accommodation fell through, they took a late train to Geilo and stayed at a hotel.

A Call Across the Distance

After reviewing his notes from a conversation with Katrine Bratt, Harry Hole called Iska in Sydney. He timed the call for the early morning there. Iska was startled when he asked about Hävasshütte, but her recollection filled in the movements that followed the night at the hut: she and Charlotte returned to Oslo, and five days after the trip Iska flew back to Sydney, still somewhat feverish.

The distance did not end the connection between the two women. After returning to Sydney, Iska remained in regular email contact with Charlotte and noticed nothing unusual until she received the shocking news that Charlotte had been found dead behind a wrecked car in a wooded area near Oslo. Sydney thus marks the point from which Iska learns that the Norwegian journey she had experienced as a feverish, largely forgotten excursion is entangled with a murder investigation.

Protection and Investigative Reach

Harry told Iska directly that he was concerned for the people who had been at the hut that night. As soon as the call ended, he intended to contact Neil McCormack, head of the Sydney South Police District’s homicide division, with whom he had worked on an earlier case. McCormack would take a detailed statement and arrange police protection for Iska until further notice. Iska appeared to receive the news with composure.

The arrangement gives Sydney a practical role in the investigation: it is where a crucial witness lives, and where Norwegian police concerns must be acted on through local law enforcement. Harry’s call does not recover what Iska could not see at Hävasshütte; instead, it establishes the limits of her knowledge while recognizing that her connection to the people who were there may put her at risk.

Narrative Significance

Sydney functions as a distant endpoint in a chain of travel, records, and testimony. A payment tied to Iska’s account helps reconstruct the four-hut route; the November 7 stay places her and Charlotte at Hävasshütte alongside the investigation’s Norwegian leads; and a call to Australia tests what Iska remembers. Her fever explains why proximity did not become knowledge, while her continued contact with Charlotte explains how the news of Charlotte’s death reached her after she had returned home.

The city also makes the case’s geographical reach concrete. The investigation extends from mountain huts and train journeys in Norway to a witness living in Australia, requiring Harry to coordinate across the distance with McCormack’s police district. Sydney is not presented as the scene of a crime; its significance lies in the evidence, communication, and protection that converge there.