For hours she had paced around the kitchen before making her final decision. She had listened to the tempting voice saying she didn’t have to, the stern voice saying she shouldn’t. Really shouldn’t. And then her own voice, saying she already knew she was going to do it. That all the handwringing was just a means of delaying the inevitable. She was going to pick her phone up from the kitchen table and make the call she neither has to, nor should, make. The call that’s going to cost her her job if anyone ever finds out.

They would try to understand. Maybe they would make excuses for her, saying she had still been in shock after everything that happened, that she had been fighting for her life in that tunnel only two weeks earlier, that she hadn’t been herself, hadn’t been able to grasp the consequences. Yes, that was probably what they would think.

And they would be completely mistaken.

Karen Eiken Hornby had known exactly what she was doing that day almost two weeks ago when she made the phone call that would cost her much more than her job if the person on the other end betrayed her.

Now, he’s calling her back.

*

She turns around and goes out onto the front steps before picking up. This conversation is not for Leo’s or Sigrid’s ears.

‘Yes?’ she says bluntly.

‘It’s done,’ Odd tells her.

‘He’s alive, though, right?’

‘Yes, since that’s how you wanted it. But he’s not going to bother her again.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Let’s just say we made it very clear to him what would happen if the thought ever even so much as crossed his mind. So, are we even now, Kay-Kay?’

‘Absolutely, Odd Boy,’ she replies.

And with a barely perceptible smile, Karen Eiken Hornby ends the call and goes back inside.

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maria Adolfsson (b. 1958) lives in Stockholm where she, until recently, worked as a communications director and now writes full-time. The Doggerland series has been sold into 18 languages to date, and has sold over 260,000 copies in Sweden alone.

Also by Maria Adolfsson

Fatal Isles

Keep reading for an exclusive look at DI Karen Eiken Hornby’s next case

CRUEL
TIDES

THE GLOBAL BESTSELLING SERIES

A secluded island. A missing woman. An impossible choice.

Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby is not the only person to have returned to her native Doggerland after years abroad. Following a ten-year hiatus, Luna has chosen to secretly record her comeback album where she was born and raised. Spirits are high among her team at the wrap party, though Karen is less than impressed with the simpering singer. The next morning, Luna is nowhere to be found.