Once she had finished her wine twenty minutes later, she really began to worry. She sent him a text message and called several times, but only got his voicemail. Had his mobile run out of charge without him noticing? Had he got a puncture, meaning that he was crouching in the cold and dark while changing a tire on the car? She put the tray of canapés in the fridge, sat down on the very edge of the sofa, and couldn’t decide what to do. Around an hour later she was still there in the same position, her hands entwined in a viselike grip and her thoughts flitting between various scenarios as she imagined the worst.

No road was in that big a coverage black spot. No punctured tire took that long to change. He should have been in touch if nothing serious had happened.

Had he had the police on his tail after all? Was it possible that after all this time they had eyes on Karl-Erik at every moment, that they’d known exactly where he was—and the loot for that matter—and they had pounced on him with his boot full of cash? On Gotland as well . . . Why not do it in Stockholm? Was that possible?

Was it possible that his accomplices had taken him out? Perhaps they weren’t quite as loyal as they had pretended to be—had they overpowered him in a dark and desolate spot and taken his life? Or tied his hands behind his back and chucked him in the boot of the car? Which was tantamount to murder, given it was far from certain that anyone would actually find the abandoned car before daybreak—he would freeze to death during the night. Or had other criminals caught wind of the whole thing and done something like that themselves?

The risk was there, of course. But murder . . .? The probability of this having happened—and so close to the end of the journey—was, in Kerstin’s view, almost nonexistent.

They only had one car, so Kerstin had no prospect of heading out to search for him, which would have been a foolhardy act with no likelihood of success in any case. The most probable thing was that he had been in an accident in the awful weather and had been taken to hospital.

Her heart pounding, she called the emergency room at Visby Hospital. The very fact that she had to do so felt dreadful, but the news that they hadn’t admitted any patients matching Karl-Erik’s description or with his name didn’t exactly offer her any degree of reassurance.