Thirty seconds later, Karl Björken freezes mid-step. At the very back of the queue, effectively plugging the space between the steel railings, is a green Ford Ranger. The driver-side door is open and the dent is clearly visible even from where he’s standing. He has been badgering Karen about fixing it for six months now.

Chapter 76

76

Helena Tryste walks straight ahead, unseeing. Voices had yelled at her, cursing, asking what the hell she was doing, but no one had tried to stop her. She hadn’t said a word. What could she say? She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t know what’s going to happen now. She has never known; William is the one who knows.

He always knows what’s going to happen next.

He had dealt with that detective – Karen something-or-other – turning up at the house without missing a beat. Well, maybe one beat, just at that moment when he came up from the wine cellar and heard her talking to Alvin, that moment when Karen turned around and gave him that strange look. Yes, he’d been rattled there for a few seconds, she’d seen it. Just for a few seconds, then he’d known what to do.

William always knows what to do.

I think he enjoyed it, she muses. That brief moment when he was forced to rethink, that little shudder of fear he must have felt at the risk of being exposed, of everything falling apart. And then the thrill of finding a way around the problem. Yes, he had enjoyed it. That’s who he is, I’ve always known that. I walked into his life with my eyes open.

‘You fit together like two pieces of a puzzle,’ his mother had said. ‘William is the opposite of his father; he has ambition, reaches for the stars. But he needs someone to ground him.’

Her own parents had not been as delighted. Even though William had been so charming the first time they invited him over for dinner, kissing both her mother’s and grandmother’s hands, bringing a bottle of eighteen-year-old whiskey for her father and singing the food’s praises, they had seemed awkward and uncomfortable. But so what? William’s mother thought they were made for each other, and she if anyone should know her son, right?

But her grandmother had taken her aside, gently put her hand on hers and given her a look full of concern.

‘Be careful, sweetheart. Or he will gobble you up.’

She had laughed, then.

Now she keeps her eyes on the ground and walks on without knowing where to. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s over, she’s ruined everything. He’s never going to forgive her.