The back seat is quiet now. Not an excited silence, she notes and glances at her own manic face in the mirror. A frightened silence. Mikkel is sucking his thumb and running his tiny fingers along the raggedy ear of his blue terrycloth bunny. As though he can sense her watching, he meets her eyes.

‘Sweetheart, I’m sorry I yelled at you,’ she says and pulls the corners of her mouth up in a stiff smile.

Mikkel takes his thumb out of his mouth and says in a voice high and fragile from crying, ‘Do you think they got us a dog?’

Tyra says nothing.

*

Another half-mile down the road, Aylin warily approaches the intersection, terrified of Bo’s black Mercedes suddenly appearing. She tells herself that if she can just get through the intersection and turn right onto the main road before he gets back, she will make it. He’s on his way back from town, he’s coming from the other direction and won’t see her if she can just get to the spot where the road curves. Please, God, she pleads silently, feeling her sweaty palms slip on the steering wheel. Just give me a few more minutes. She doesn’t need to check her watch again; she knows time must be up.

A great wind is blowing now; the window is going to slam shut any second. And it will never open again.

Chapter 47

47

Björn Groth studies his fingertips with a look of astonishment on his face, examining the ink on them as though he still can’t fathom why someone has put a black inkpad and a sheet with ten blank squares in front of him. And then, as if suddenly overcome with revulsion, he starts rubbing his hands against his trouser legs.

‘I’m sorry we haven’t been able to get more modern equipment up here yet,’ Karen says, ‘but it comes out with soap and water. Thank you for agreeing to talk to us on a Saturday.’

‘Did I have a choice?’

‘Not really,’ she says with half a smile. ‘Can I get you anything, by the way? Coffee, tea?’

The room is small; the small table with the recording equipment and the four chairs barely fit. Annoyed, Karen glances up at the ceiling where one of the fluorescent lights has begun to flicker. If this is going to take long, her headache is definitely going to come back.