Hidden Statistics. THE FRAIL MORNING LIGHT SEEPED THROUGH THE BLINDS in the POB’s office, coating the two men’s faces in grey. POB Hagen was listening to Harry with a pensive furrow over bushy black eyebrows that met in the middle. On the huge desk stood a small plinth bearing a white knuckle bone which, according to the inscription, had belonged to the Japanese battalion commander, Yoshito Yasuda. In his years at the military academy, Hagen had lectured about this little finger that Yasuda had cut off in desperation in front of his men during the retreat from Burma in 1944. It was just a year since Hagen had been brought back to his old employer, the police, to head Crime Squad, and, as a lot of water had passed under the bridge in the meantime, he listened with relative patience to his veteran inspector holding forth on the theme of ‘missing persons’. ‘In Oslo alone, over six hundred people are reported missing every year. After a couple of hours only a handful of these are not found.
