Gundar Freske takes a sip of his beer and wipes his mouth after a surreptitious glance at the TV at the other end of the room. Ten years and fifty pounds seem to have done the trick. The baseball cap he bought at the petrol station along with a pair of the weakest possible reading glasses were probably unnecessary. The glasses make everything blurry, but he decides he’d better keep them on until he leaves.

An hour, no more, until night will have fallen properly. And then over to her house, get inside, and wait. Unless she’s home already.

Well, he’ll find out; the Ford Ranger the Vehicle Licensing Agency tells him belongs to a Karen Eiken Hornby won’t be hard to spot. Nor will the house, he thinks and takes another sip. Finding her address online had been as easy as establishing that the property, according to a satellite image of Langevik, is the last one on the street. And that there’s no one else registered at that address.

Once again, that feeling that someone is watching over him, giving him a helping hand. Whispering that he’s doing the right thing. Just like when her face on his TV screen made him realise what he needed to do. Just like when he pushed the screwdriver into the ignition and heard the Skoda start on the first try. Unfortunately, he’s going to have to leave the car here and cover the last bit on foot. The risk of the police turning up in this backwater is, granted, minimal. The risk of his junkie neighbour having reported his fucking wreck stolen even smaller. And even if he has, the risk of those idiotic coppers making the connection with him is virtually non-existent.

But he wouldn’t be able to drive past her house without arousing suspicion. Beyond Karen Eiken Hornby’s house there’s nothing but the sea.

He puts his hand in his pocket, digs around, and finds what he’s looking for. They have become entangled now, have turned into one big ball instead of the tidy separate strands they used to be. It doesn’t matter; the hair was never for him to wank over like some kind of psycho. They’re just proof he had the guts to do it. That he did the right thing. Now, they serve no purpose anymore, he muses and drops the hairball onto the floor. His mission is almost over.

He looks out the window. The sky has darkened further and a few stray drops of rain are already trickling down the glass. Had this been yesterday, he would have had to wait another hour. Any cloudless day, it would still have been too light out at this time. But today, there’s no need to hold off any longer. And with a feeling of his prayers having been heard yet again, he drains his glass in four big gulps and stands up.