Sand looked out the window of the small twin propeller plane at the fjord landscape passing by below him. As the plane took him further north the weak sunlight dipped below the horizon until it became black.

The call had come in while they were questioning Brit Moen at the station.

‘Dag Moen,’ Brit answered when asked her son’s name.

Gabi went out and ran the name through the police computer. No criminal record. They found his birth certificate on the city records. The father was given as ‘Unknown.’

They could get nothing else from her. No clue as to where they could find Dag Moen now that he had left the family home.

‘So far he hasn’t harmed a person, but it sounds like he intends to.’ Sand said later in Pedersen’s office. ‘Until he surfaces again and we find out who ‘D’ is, there’s not much we can do. Gabi is going over my old case notes, looking for anyone with a name starting with D that could be a target.’

Brit Moen had been released. That night the call came in. A murder in the far north of Norway, in the Alta region. The victim’s name was Dahlia Solberg. Pedersen had asked for any homicides in the country to be reported to his office.

‘Who was she?’ Pedersen asked.

Gabi answered from her notes. ‘Dahlia Solberg. Born in Oslo. Was reported missing when she was 16, at the same time as Bjarne Johansen was found dead. Turned out she was Bjarne Johansen’s girlfriend when he was murdered. She only turned up after Eckberg had been caught, so she was never questioned. Nothing else on the file for the last twenty years. She’s been living in Alta for most of that time.’

Sand picked up from his partner. ‘Johansen was bisexual. He saw that Eckberg wasn’t a balanced individual and broke it off with him. He took up with Dahlia.’

‘So Dag Moen thinks Dahlia stole his father’s boyfriend from him?’ Pedersen asked.

‘In his head, I guess so,’ Sand answered.

‘We have our ‘D’ victim. You better go up there and see what you can find.’ Pedersen said. ‘Gabi, you stay here and go over the files. Find out who is going to be ‘E’ in Moen’s alphabet. This is officially a homicide investigation now. Use the resources available to you.’

The plane landed in pitch black at the small airstrip. A car was there to meet Sand. It took him straight to the murder scene.

Dahlia Solberg had been found inside the igloo hotel, Sorrisniva. The hotel opened each winter, carved and sculptured from ice every year. It wasn’t Sand’s idea of a comfortable holiday, but apparently it was a popular experience. It had closed at the start of April.

Sand stepped out of the car and looked at the strange ice building.

Dahlia had stayed on to close up for the season. She had been found in what had been the luxury suite of the hotel, limbs pegged out in a star shape, sliced open from stomach to neck, intestines turned out, head separated from her body. The way Eckberg had left her former lover Bjarne Johansen twenty years earlier.

This is part nine of my A to Z Challenge 2017. More information on the challenge, and other stories and blogs taking part in it, can be found HERE.

Throughout April I  hope to publish a section a day, relating to a letter of the alphabet, which in the end will make up a continuous story, all based round the objects found in this children’s jigsaw:

Other entries in the challenge, and a version of the final complete, joined up story can be found here: A TO Z CHALLENGE 2017.