She tugs and pulls on the sharp stumps, twisting them back and forth, forcing them outward. Another piece breaks off. She straightens up and studies the hole; it’s barely large enough, but it has to do. Carefully, she puts her head through, eases out her right arm, turns sideways and slowly starts pushing the rest of her body through the opening. She can feel her T-shirt snag on something and rip, absently notes when her back and shoulders scrape against the splintered wood. It doesn’t hurt, all pain is gone now. She will feel it later, she knows, and the cold, too. Right now, all she can feel is triumph flowing through her like champagne and she lets out a shout of relief as she lands in the snow after a final heave.

Karen Eiken Hornby never gets a chance to wonder what’s lighting up the snow, what’s making the night outside less dark than the black hell she just escaped. She doesn’t have time to realise it’s not the lights from the TV tower in Skreby, doesn’t have time to notice the lights of the car parked just sixty feet away. She’s too exhausted to think, she just instinctively registers the presence of another person.

When she hears him breathe in, she realises he didn’t follow her through the tunnels, after all. He knew where the exit was all along and drove over here to wait for her. A last wave of hatred crashes over her. The bastard must have stood right next to the opening, watching her kick and claw her way out.

The voice comes from behind her.

‘Don’t you think it’s time we end this charade now?’ William Tryste asks.

Chapter 82

82

The long caravan of cars that were turned away from the ferry port is slowly making its way north. The snow has almost stopped, but the wind is making the most of the foot that has fallen, blowing in flurries from nearby fields, packing the snow into drifts against the asphalt.

‘The road’s fucking straight here, you could at least try to overtake,’ Karl Björken snaps, noting with frustration that Thorstein Byle is ignoring his request yet again.