Cover

Maps

Epigraph

The meek pray in a dead calm,

sinners in a headwind,

fishermen in a storm.

Doggerian saying

Prologue

PROLOGUE

She studies her phone with mild revulsion. Leans back, as though the mere sight of it constitutes a threat, gets to her feet and walks halfway around the kitchen table, where she pauses on the threshold to stare into the living room. Then she paces back the other way, avoiding the phone with her eyes when she passes the table again, pretending not to notice the black screen’s mute entreaty.

Halfway to the hallway, she stops mid-step and gazes vacantly out the window. It would be so easy not to do it. To heed that seductive voice whispering that she doesn’t have to, that she really shouldn’t. That it would be wrong. The voice that takes on an edge now, urging her to keep her cool, reminding her that everything could fall apart if she doesn’t.

She hesitates. Turns around and glances toward the pantry. So tempting to pull out a bottle of red, sit down in front of the TV and try to forget all about it.

It would clearly be the better decision. The right one.

And yet she knows she’s about to pick up the phone and make that damn call. The call that will cost her her job if anyone finds out, the call that might cost her a lot more than that, if the person on the other end seizes their chance to get rid of an entirely different problem instead. Her.

No, this is wrong, Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby thinks to herself – and picks up the phone.

Absolutely wrong. But the only way.

Chapter 1

1

Four weeks earlier

Christmas Day

It’s only a few degrees below freezing, yet the raw air rips at her lungs and she has to stop and breathe into her scarf. Horrified, Gertrud Stuub realises she just came close to cursing and hurriedly crosses herself with her hand. Her eyes dart around increasingly anxiously, taking in the copse of trees up on the mountain ridge and the narrow gravel path she is on. Quick glances in the other direction, toward the thing she is terrified of even thinking about.

You’re imagining things, she tells herself and feels her airway slowly relax. He never promised to come, you just assumed he’d be there. And here you are, running around like a batty old lady. She forces herself to stand still and take a few more breaths through the woollen fabric before hurrying on, as quickly as she dares, along the craggy gravel path on which puddles of water have hardened into mirrors of treacherous ice.