“That may be so, but an amount like that could be useful and a source of happiness. It seems unnecessary to leave it lying wherever it is. And it’ll soon be worthless anyway.”

“It probably already is.”

“Why would that be?”

“Because we stole it from some goddamn bank robber.”

Jeanette had no idea how right she was.

“Bank robber?” said Kerstin. “Where did you get that idea from?”

“Who else do you think drives around with six million in cash in their boot?”

“You think the notes are traceable? That you and Peter sacrificed it all for a pile of useless cash?”

“Pretty much that,” Jeanette said laconically.

Kerstin thought for a while about how to tackle this. Jeanette wasn’t thick, and she’d had plenty of time to reach this conclusion after the event. It just so happened that Kerstin knew her to be wrong, but this was something she naturally couldn’t divulge.

“It may well be,” she said. “But it seems unnecessary to assume the worst. We might as well start by locating it. Then we can figure out what to do next if we find it. I suggest you have a think about where he might have hidden the money, and then we can join forces to find it. It might be really good to get away a bit—just you and me. It’s only the two of us who know about the money.”

The last bit was a lie, but a white lie—Kerstin convinced herself of that much. She saw no reason to get Sandra mixed up in this.

“Sure,” said Jeanette. “If you think it might lead somewhere.”

48. Sandra

48

Sandra

THERE WASN’T a single scratch to the car, nor to Erik either. He seemed to have found the incident most entertaining. The taxi ride to kindergarten alone was an adventure in itself. He didn’t get a chance to see the tow truck, but the thought that it had come and fetched the car and towed it to the garage was fascinating in itself. The fact that his mother had driven into a ditch was something he repeated over and over again to anyone who would listen—largely children and some of the staff at the kindergarten, and naturally his grandparents, whom they were moving in with until further notice.

It didn’t feel safe for the two of them to live alone in the countryside in a house with no intruder alarm or burglarproof doors and windows. They were usually more than welcome to stay with her parents, and it seemed unlikely that a solitary man would try to get into a house containing three adults.