Tom Petterson, a botanist, took the camera bag from his car and paused to enjoy the view across the calm fjord before heading up to the woods. It was early October and the cool Saturday sunshine bathed the landscape around him in a pretty glow, soft rays falling across red and yellow leaves which would soon be shed to make way for winter.
Tom Petterson loved his job. Especially when he was able to work outdoors. He had been hired by Oslo and Akershus County to register findings of Dracocephalum, or dragonhead as it was also known, a plant threatened by extinction but which grew in the woodlands around Oslo Fjord. He had received a fresh tip-off via his blog, and that was his task for today: log the number and exact location of newly discovered specimens of this very rare plant.
Dragonhead grew to a height of ten to fifteen centimetres and had blue, dark blue or purple flowers which would wither in the autumn, leaving behind a cluster of brown seeds reminiscent of a cereal grass. The plant was not only rare; it was also home to the even rarer dragonhead sap beetle, a tiny metallic-blue beetle which fed only on these flowers. The miracles of nature, Tom Petterson thought, and could not help smiling as he left the path and followed the route which an observant amateur biologist had sent him. Sometimes – he never said it out loud, because he had been brought up to believe that there was absolutely no God, his parents had been insistent on that, but even so – he could not help marvelling at it: the wonder of creation. The delicate relationship between all things, from the smallest to the biggest. Birds flying south every autumn to nest, vast distances to the same place every year. The leaves changing colour every autumn, turning the trees and the ground into a living work of art. No, he would never say it out loud, but the thought would often cross his mind.
He turned right between two tall spruces and followed a brook up towards the location where the plants were supposed to be, smiling to himself again.
He crossed the brook and came to a complete standstill when he heard rustling in the shrub in front of him. Petterson raised his camera ready to shoot. A badger? Was that what he had heard? This shy animal was nowhere near as common as people thought. A good picture of a badger would be great for his blog, and it would make a nice story, some dragonheads and a badger, the perfect Saturday trip. He followed the noise and soon found himself in a small clearing, but was disappointed not to see any animals.
But there was something in the middle of the clearing.
A naked body.
A girl.
A teenager?
Tom Petterson was so shocked that he dropped his camera and didn’t notice it falling into the heather.
There was a dead girl in the clearing.
Feathers?
Dear Lord.
There was a naked teenage girl in the forest.
Surrounded by feathers.
A white lily in her mouth.
Tom Petterson spun around, stumbled through the dense vegetation, found the path, ran as fast as he could back down to his car and called the police.