Marike reaches for the coffee pot only to discover that it’s empty. She slowly gets to her feet, holds the pot up with a querying look and receives a mute nod in reply. Ten minutes later, when Marike pours the freshly brewed coffee and registers Karen’s absent look, she finally breaks the silence with the words:

‘Oh, for crying out loud, will you just sleep with him already!’

Karen bangs her cup against her front teeth.

‘Or are you only into shagging men you don’t like?’

A familiar sound cuts the awkward pause that follows Marike’s question short. Grateful for the interruption, Karen gets up quickly, locates her handbag on the kitchen counter and pulls out her phone. One glance at the screen and she’s suddenly wide awake.

‘Hi, Thorstein,’ she says, knowing it’s going to be bad news.

Byle’s voice is tense, his Noorian consonants harsher than usual on the other end of the line.

‘Hi, Karen, sorry to disturb you. I’m afraid you’re going to have to come back sooner than you planned. Gabriel Stuub is dead. Murdered.’

Chapter 34

34

This time, it’s not with a sense of freedom Karen Eiken Hornby gets in her car. Aware that she shouldn’t be driving for another few hours, she keeps a white-knuckle hold on the steering wheel and frequently checks the speedometer. She’s grateful that at least the New Year’s Day traffic is light and the roads don’t seem too slippery, despite the heavy snowfall of the past twenty-four hours.

She raises her arm and sniffs her armpit. There had been no time to go back to Langevik to pack a bag. Her only chance of making it all the way up to Gudheim before nightfall had been to throw herself into her car, which was parked on the street outside the studio. After ending the call with Thorstein Byle, she’d pulled on the same clothes she’d worn when she left Langevik the day before. Thank God she’d brought her New Year’s outfit in a bag and changed at Marike’s. Jeans, an old T-shirt with a Ramones print and a much-too-thin suede jacket is hardly an appropriate ensemble for a detective inspector, she thinks ruefully and heaves a deep sigh. She probably has remnants of last night’s make-up under her eyes, and if she’s truly unlucky, pieces of the gold confetti that had filled the room at the stroke of midnight are still stuck in her hair.