I found her name in a second hand bookstore, slotted in between pages 86 and 87, the ticket slightly faded and stuck within the creased spine that linked the pages.

She had travelled on 21 March, year unknown, from Oslo to London Heathrow, the book undoubtedly clasped in one hand and her hand luggage in the other.

The flight took off in darkness, 1710, the plane leaving a briskly cold Norwegian winter far below, to land in the equally cold fog of a London night.

Inspector Van Veeteren kept her company for the journey, his forays through an unspecified Scandinavian city during the mid-90s distracting from the ever-present mewing babies and chattering travellers.

Having discovered the culprit, after countless red herrings, she took the book to a little town in the northeast of England, a few minutes train ride from her workplace in the bigger neighbouring city.

There, in Oxfam, she continued her good work and provided a pause for imaginative thought as this book-worm, entranced by the journey the novel had made, flickered through the pages and stumbled upon the British Airways ticket stub.

Reader, I bought it.

And as I read I imagine the place in which the book was first read and inwardly revel in the transnational literary link it has created.