She reaches for the slice of toast Marike tossed in the bag and turns the key in the ignition. Chews methodically as she makes a U-turn and drives back up the high street toward the roundabout. The snow is falling faster now, covering the windscreen like white lace between each sweep of the wipers. She glances up at the sign with a sigh before turning onto the motorway:

GUDHEIM 39 MILES

She drives as fast as she dares. The wind is still relatively low and though there is snow on the road, it’s not being packed into drifts just yet. Just south of the Skreby exit a car has broken down and she is forced to slow down until the resulting congestion clears up. After that, she sees no more than a dozen cars heading south, and she passes about as many going the other way. A combination of hangovers and bad weather is probably keeping people indoors, she thinks, and brakes hard when two deer bound out of the ditch and dash across the road. She continues at a slower pace, her heart pounding. She would hate to have to use the axe in the boot to kill an injured animal.

It’s quarter past three when she reaches the end of the motorway and the sign that announces her three options from there:

GUDHEIMBY .7 MILES

GUDHEIM SHIP SETTING 1.2 MILES

DISTILLERY .4 MILES

Next to the bottommost signpost, someone has written in black paint: God hears prayer.

Karen turns right onto a paved road. The distillery comes into view after just a few hundred yards, dramatically set against its backdrop of sky and sea. Two cars and a van are parked outside by the low wall ringing the property. Karen drives past them up the narrow road as fast as she dares. When she reaches the gate, she rolls down her window and shows her ID to a uniformed officer. He salutes her and waves her through. In the rear-view mirror she can see the journalists climbing out of their cars to try to persuade the long-suffering constable to let them in. Or at least to let them talk to someone who knows what’s going on. Karen noted the DTV logo on the white van and the Kvellsposten one on the green Saab. She suspects the third vehicle belongs to a very peeved local newspaper editor.