There’s nothing more we can do until we get the results from forensics, she tells herself, suppressing a sudden pang of guilt. And I’ll be back in – she checks her watch and counts in her head – just over forty hours. Besides, I’m technically still on sick leave. Smeed should be bloody grateful I stepped up so he can sit around on some beach sipping cocktails.

She can hear Sigrid’s outraged voice now: Am I supposed to sit on some fucking coconut beach, too?

She turns the radio down, reaches for her phone and pushes the earbud into her ear. Leo Friis picks up after eight rings.

‘I was in the shower,’ he says. ‘I think I might have used the last of the shampoo.’

‘I’m on my way home. Taking a couple of days off.’

‘Seriously? When will you be back?’

I’ve left you just enough time to tidy up, she thinks wryly.

‘Couple of hours. I’m on the motorway now. Is everything OK with you guys? How’s Rufus’s ear?’

‘Better. We did what you told us to but holding him still is a struggle. That cat doesn’t like that ointment.’

‘We’, she notes. So Sigrid is still there.

‘Do you want me to pick anything up on the way?’

‘We went to the shops this morning, so we’re good. We figured you might be back. But we forgot to buy milk.’

She can hear Leo talking to someone in the background. Then he’s back on the line.

‘Sigrid says we’re running out of washing-up liquid, too.’

They finish the call and Karen turns the radio back up. The last notes of something she doesn’t recognise are just fading out and the familiar intro to a Fugees song takes over.

Ready or not, here I come, Karen thinks.

Then she speeds up, just a little.

Chapter 30

30

‘What you need is a hideout,’ Marike says and starts to pull on tights. ‘Bloody hell, these are neat all of a sudden.’

They’re sitting in the room behind her studio. Karen looks out the window at the silent snowfall and shivers. The temperature has dropped another few degrees and the kilns haven’t been used in days. Or maybe she’s feeling cold because she’s wearing a sleeveless dress for the party. Fascinated, she watches the six-foot-tall Marike’s futile attempts to make her tights reach all the way to the crotch.

She’s a good listener, Karen thinks to herself. Marike has let her ramble on for forty-five minutes about how frustrating it is to have Leo and Sigrid on top of her. About how she wants them there one minute but then just wants to be left alone the next. About the thrill she’d felt a few hours earlier, coming home to the sound of voices and the smell of food cooking on the hob.