Karen Eiken Hornby just has time to stop the car and throw open the door before the remnants of a sticky chicken salad wrap and stale vending-machine coffee splatters against the pavement.

Chapter 63

63

It’s not just me, she realises as she enters the large conference room on the fifth floor of Dunker police station thirty minutes later. The faces that turn to her all bear the mark of sleep deprivation and the unique exhaustion that follows in the wake of a sudden adrenaline rush. Cornelis Loots, Astrid Nielsen, Karl Björken, and the uniformed officers who took part in the search are sitting around the table, looking weary, listlessly stirring more and more sugar cubes into their coffee.

Only Evald Johannisen looks relatively well-rested.

‘Has someone died?’ he says and slurps his coffee loudly. ‘Other than the Johansons up in Ravenby, I mean.’

‘Where do you find the energy?’ Astrid asks with what for her can only be described as an unusual lack of respect for a superior.

‘Had a little nap in the breakroom once I heard you’d found the broad. Coffee, Eiken?’ he says and pushes the urn towards her.

She shakes her head mutely.

‘No? Listen, you look like you need to eat something. God knows what, though—’

Just then, the door opens and Jounas Smeed enters. True to form, he seems to have somehow bent the space-time continuum to make time to have a shower down in the gym and change into the clean shirt he always keeps on the back of his office door. His hair is still damp, and he looks clean-shaven, but the circles under his eyes are very dark, Karen notes.

‘Nice work,’ he says. ‘Everybody. You should know the Head of Police is very pleased.’

Some of the uniformed officers straightened up in their chairs the moment the head of the CID stepped through the door. Now, there’s a murmur of approval and their weariness seems to have evaporated. Discreet low fives are exchanged under the table.

It’s easy for you, your shifts only started yesterday afternoon, Karen grumbles inwardly. And you’re probably not even thirty yet.

As Jounas Smeed proceeds to give a blow-by-blow account of the search operation and then a brief outline of what the watch schedule will look like at Thysted going forward, Karen listens with one ear while doing her best to stifle her yawns. The guards posted outside Luna’s room at the hospital have been supplemented with uniformed officers at every entrance. Strict prohibition against revealing the identity of the subject. Naturally.

Pointless.

DTV have already gone public.

‘They led with it on the 6 a.m. news,’ Jounas Smeed says. ‘I’ve already seen part of the segment, but I figured we could watch the whole thing together right now.’