When he slams the car door shut, the garden furniture at the back of the garage suddenly catches his eye. That’s not how they’re usually stacked, is it? They’ve been moved and the protective cover has been pulled aside. Aylin must have . . . Then the penny drops. The fucking whore planned this! Not like that time she just took her coat and left. Or when she was stupid enough to go to her parents’ old hovel down on Frisel. And then a tiny pang of worry. Could she be stupid enough to actually report him this time? Could that fucking police bitch have talked her into it?

Bo Ramnes pulls out his phone. Might as well bring out the big guns.

Twenty-four hours, he thinks to himself. I’ll be damned if I let her get forty-eight.

Chapter 57

57

Forty minutes later, Karen is eyeing the cotton ball in Leo Friis’s left nostril and the bloodstains on his T-shirt. My T-shirt, she corrects herself, noting that Leo has once again helped himself to her clothes. This time, he’s gone for a white T-shirt with a print advertising boat engines that must be at least twenty years old. Her dad’s T-shirt, she corrects herself again and reflects that Leo must have dug deep into the boxes in her attic to come across that one. And when he asks if she would like a glass of wine and takes out one of her best bottles from Alsace without waiting for a reply, she doesn’t have it in her to protest.

‘Are you sure we shouldn’t get you checked out?’ she says and picks up her glass.

‘Give it a rest, will you. The bleeding already stopped. Look!’ he says and pulls the cotton ball out of his nose.

‘Fine, but you’re going to have to go in to the station tomorrow and report this.’

‘There’s no way I’m going to a police station voluntarily. They’ve dragged me in enough times against my will.’

‘Things are different now, Leo.’

‘Not really. They know who I am. Besides, I don’t want them to know I live here. And I don’t think you do either.’