Karen grabs the mouse and pauses the playback. Then she leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. Behind her eyelids, the pictures keep flashing by; a seemingly endless stream of vehicles jouncing on board in one frame and rolling off in the other.
The car ferry from Noorö to Thorsvik runs every ten minutes between 6 a.m. and 11.50 p.m. and every twenty minutes after midnight. The puffing yellow boat drags itself back and forth across the sound, whether someone’s on it or not. A growing number of people eager to lower taxes have repeatedly suggested an on-demand solution, at least at night, but have been met with strident protests and so far, the Noorö locals have been able to ward off any threat of cutbacks.
Although the number of night-time passengers hardly justifies the frequent timetable, the stream of cars during other times of day is relatively constant. Big cars, small cars, white cars, dark cars; the footage is black and white and offers only an endless greyscale. Volvo dominates along with BMW, Ford and SUVs of all makes. Bus number 78 rides the ferry every thirty minutes and there are private vehicles, commercial vans, two tractors, trucks with the Ravenby abattoir logo, NoorOyl’s personnel carriers from the northern harbour, filled with exhausted men and women coming off three-week shifts on one of the oil platforms, bicycles, mopeds, an ATV. And the occasional motorcycle. Unfortunately, no Honda CRF 1000L Africa Twin. She has a printed picture of the model on her desk for reference.
*
Karen’s eyes register everyone who drives onto the ferry in Noorö Harbour and, after a few seconds of fast-forwarding, disembarks in Thorsvik. There are two cameras on the ferry, pointed in opposite directions. Both angles are shown in parallel on the screen; she shifts her attention from one during loading to the other during unloading. But after two departures and one missed moped, she realises she’s going to have to study each separately. A motorcycle is easily obscured by cars, lorries or the bus.
The break-in on Noorö had happened sometimes between half past seven in the morning on Tuesday 16 September and quarter to five on the afternoon of Friday 19 September. Three and a half days, hundreds of ferry departures when a young man on a stolen motorcycle might have been caught on film by one of the onboard CCTV cameras.
She opens her eyes and glances to her right. Karl Björken, who’s at the desk next to hers, has just put his phone down and now clicks out the tip of a ballpoint pen and crosses something off a piece of paper with a look of dejection. Another local station with nothing to report, it seems.
‘Want to swap?’ she says. ‘I can’t bear to look at any more of this.’
‘What are you whingeing about?’ Björken says with a wry smile. ‘It can’t be much more than what, a hundred departures a day?’
‘A hundred and twenty-two,’ she replies dully.
‘How far in are you?’
‘I just checked the 9.40 a.m. on 18 September. No Africa Twin on that one either. Not one single goddamn motorcycle since a Kawasaki drove on board at twenty past seven. How are you getting on?’
‘What do you think? If by some miracle I were to find anything, I wouldn’t keep it to myself. But I was actually thinking of heading home soon; Arne and Frode both have a temperature and Sara’s refusing to sleep in her own bed. Ingrid is threatening me with divorce if I’m not home by six. And I’m not taking the children,’ Karl says, imitating his wife.
‘Well, then you’d better hurry,’ Karen says with a smile. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be going on paternity leave soon, by the way?’
‘From the first of November. And no, it has nothing to do with the marten hunting season.’
So Karl’s going on leave in less than a month’s time. Right, she decides, another reason Smeed didn’t want him on his team.
‘I suppose we’d better solve this before then,’ Karl says and turns his computer off. ‘Otherwise, you’re likely to be stuck with Johannisen. Which, on the bright side, would probably lead to him having an actual heart attack.’
‘Or me. I just want to get through the rest of the Wednesday departures, then I’m off, too,’ she says and stretches.
*
Just as Karl Björken opens the front door to his semi-detached in Sande and is greeted by the sound of three crying children, Karen freezes in front of her screen and straightens up from her slumped position. She quickly rewinds the film a few seconds and watches the sequence again.
‘So,’ she says slowly. ‘That’s what you look like.’