‘You’re going to have to call a tow truck. I’m not letting anyone into this car.’

‘I though you said we were going to hot-wire it?’

‘No one’s allowed in it,’ Karl repeats. ‘Consider it a crime scene.’

The guy stares at him in disbelief.

‘A crime scene? It’s just some lady who cracked up.’

No, Karl thinks to himself. This is something else entirely.

*

Half an hour later, Karl Björken leaves the police garage in Lysvik in a patrol car. While running the half-mile back to the station, he’d called Cornelis Loots, cursed when he got put through to his voicemail and then moved on to the next number.

Thorstein Byle had picked up immediately.

‘I’ll send some guys down there right now,’ he’d said when an out-of-breath Karl was done explaining the situation, ‘but I’m not sure what you think might have happened.’

‘I have no fucking idea!’ Karl had bellowed. ‘But something’s wrong. Karen would never just up and leave everything.’

Ellen Jensen had been absolutely certain when Karl burst into the pub. There had been no sign of Karen since that morning. If he wanted to, he could go upstairs and check her room himself, of course. And he had, climbing the stairs two steps at a time. Where the hell was she? Definitely not in her hotel room, that much he knew for sure.

Now he’s methodically driving up and down the streets of Lysvik, using the car’s headlights to illuminate every nook and cranny. He goes down the same back street he and Karen used to escape a pack of reporters just a few days ago. No Karen. The blustery streets are deserted.

Karl doubles back, pulls over outside Rindler’s Hotel and runs up the front steps with snow building up under the thick soles of his boots. The receptionist looks up in surprise when a tall man bursts into the lobby, loses his footing on the slippery floor and only just manages to right himself before taking a pratfall. Wasting no time, Karl urgently fires off question after question and feels hope fade with each answer. No, no one by that name has checked in. No, no other dark-haired woman either.

‘No woman of any description has checked in today. Not a single one,’ the receptionist tells him eventually in a tone that reveals her patience is wearing thin.

When Karl climbs back in behind the wheel of the patrol car, he forces himself to acknowledge the thought he has been doing his best to stamp out. Karen wouldn’t do something like this. Just get out of her car and walk away. Not normally. But then he remembers her face at the lunch restaurant in the harbour when he cajoled her into telling him about her past, forced her to talk about something she had wanted to keep to herself.