Yes, he heard it, too. Pushes her head down so hard she’s afraid her neck’s going to snap in the angle between the steps. They’re lying completely still now. Listening. They hear the car door slamming shut, quick, light steps on the gravel, up the stone steps. Hear someone pausing at the front door that still isn’t closed. Feels the rush of cold air when it’s pulled all the way open.

And then the voice. Tentative, worried.

Sigrid’s.

‘Karen? Are you home?’

*

It probably only lasts a minute, and yet so many details are burned into her. Details she will never be able to forget. The hand around her neck letting go, the relief when the heavy body eases off her, the warm liquid streaming down her legs when she turns over. The horror when she sees Sigrid frozen in the doorway, unprotected and still unable to process what she can sense is happening in the darkness inside the house. The silhouette of Freske’s back as he gets up and races down the steps towards her.

And then the all-encompassing fear. He’s going to kill Sigrid, too.

Afterward, she will recount all these things so many times that eventually, she won’t know exactly what she actually remembers and what is now just the memories of the telling.

. . . having potentially deployed more force than the situation required . . .

That will be one of the lines in the internal investigation of DCI Karen Eiken Hornby. And maybe there’s something to it. Maybe it would have been enough to kick Freske in the back. Maybe he was actually trying to run away and had no intention of attacking Sigrid. He had already thrown away the bottle, or possibly dropped it going down the stairs. The broken 33-centilitre Budweiser bottle Karen jammed into the side of Gundar Freske’s neck when he tried to stand up.

So far, probably justified. It’s the next stab that must be considered questionable.

And the next one.

Chapter 77

77

He can’t get to the house. The two police cars he has been following since the turn-off to Langevik have turned off their sirens now and are slowing down on the narrow road. Two more cars and an ambulance are blocking the driveway.

The road is narrow here; there’s no through traffic. Whoever drives all the way up here has to turn around on the lawn, or possibly on the flat rock beyond the bend where the road ends, right behind the house. Assuming they know it’s there.

With a frustrated roar, Leo Friis throws open the car door and starts running. He slips on the grass, muddy now from all the traffic, shuts out the people shouting at him to stop, twists free of a hand around his upper arm. Feels his elbow slam into something hard and then comes to an abrupt stop.