Her voice breaks and she trails off. Digs deeper.

Do not cry.

‘None of us did,’ Jounas Smeed says. ‘And I don’t think any of us would have done much better in Karen’s shoes. The question is, what do we do now?’

‘Well, we have a press conference at eleven,’ Johan Stolt says. ‘We need answers by then. At least to the question of how long we’d known about Luna being missing. We can keep taking a pass on the questions about the perpetrator for now, don’t you think?’

Both the PR consultants smile in agreement.

‘Yes, we would suggest that you release the information in dribs and drabs. Everything you say has to be true and credibly conveyed, but you don’t have to release all the facts at once.’

‘She should have been taken to Ravenby instead,’ Haugen says. ‘Why wasn’t she?’

Why wasn’t it you in that fucking ambulance with poo on your shoes, holding her hand?

‘It was on the doctor’s recommendation,’ Karen replies. ‘She was in severe shock and Ravenby would have meant another hour on the road. I actually did try to . . .’

The last bit ruins the whole thing. Well, that pretty much sums it up, she thinks gloomily. I tried, but I failed.

A hint of sympathy can be detected in Jounas Smeed’s voice.

‘There’s no point wasting more time now on arguing about what we should have done,’ he says. ‘It’s my assessment that Eiken needs to go home and sleep.’

Then he turns to Karen and continues.

‘We just need you to tell us one more time exactly what happened. Start from the first indication that Luna might have been missing and go over everything that happened after that.’

Chapter 65

65

It’s twenty to twelve by the time PC Björn Lange stops outside Karen Eiken Hornby’s house on the outskirts of Langevik on the east coast of Heimö. Maybe he wants to say something about the view and the location, or about how he’s sorry about what happened with Martin Talliksen, or something along the lines of ‘I did wonder if there was something wrong with the bloke, but Isaksson . . .’

But instead, he just says:

‘All right, then, here we are.’

With a feeling of witnessing something he shouldn’t, he had noted DCI Eiken Hornby’s averted face as she pretended to be asleep the whole way from Dunker, had seen the hand surreptitiously wiping her chin, had heard the bubbling sound of snot and tears being held back. For once, it’s bringing him no satisfaction to see one of his superiors humiliated, even though she did chew him and Isaksson out. Without a trace of smugness, he hears how stuffy she sounds when she opens the door and gives a mumbled thanks for the ride.