Cover

Maps

Epigraph

The meek pray in a dead calm,

sinners in a headwind,

fishermen in a storm.

Doggerian saying

Prologue

PROLOGUE

She studies her phone with mild revulsion. Leans back, as though the mere sight of it constitutes a threat, gets to her feet and walks halfway around the kitchen table, where she pauses on the threshold to stare into the living room. Then she paces back the other way, avoiding the phone with her eyes when she passes the table again, pretending not to notice the black screen’s mute entreaty.

Halfway to the hallway, she stops mid-step and gazes vacantly out the window. It would be so easy not to do it. To heed that seductive voice whispering that she doesn’t have to, that she really shouldn’t. That it would be wrong. The voice that takes on an edge now, urging her to keep her cool, reminding her that everything could fall apart if she doesn’t.

She hesitates. Turns around and glances toward the pantry. So tempting to pull out a bottle of red, sit down in front of the TV and try to forget all about it.

It would clearly be the better decision. The right one.

And yet she knows she’s about to pick up the phone and make that damn call. The call that will cost her her job if anyone finds out, the call that might cost her a lot more than that, if the person on the other end seizes their chance to get rid of an entirely different problem instead. Her.

No, this is wrong, Detective Inspector Karen Eiken Hornby thinks to herself – and picks up the phone.

Absolutely wrong. But the only way.

Chapter 1

1

Four weeks earlier

Christmas Day

It’s only a few degrees below freezing, yet the raw air rips at her lungs and she has to stop and breathe into her scarf. Horrified, Gertrud Stuub realises she just came close to cursing and hurriedly crosses herself with her hand. Her eyes dart around increasingly anxiously, taking in the copse of trees up on the mountain ridge and the narrow gravel path she is on. Quick glances in the other direction, toward the thing she is terrified of even thinking about.

You’re imagining things, she tells herself and feels her airway slowly relax. He never promised to come, you just assumed he’d be there. And here you are, running around like a batty old lady. She forces herself to stand still and take a few more breaths through the woollen fabric before hurrying on, as quickly as she dares, along the craggy gravel path on which puddles of water have hardened into mirrors of treacherous ice.

On her left, bare trees dot the rise; between them she can see the blue silhouette of Goat Back Mountain rising up in the distance. Steep and inaccessible to a person her age. To a person Fredrik’s age. He’s not that stupid, she assures herself before suppressing the entire notion. The alternative on the other side is even worse. A few feet from the path on her right, the ground ends in a sheer drop.

She reluctantly turns her head. As long as she keeps her eyes focused on a point at the far end, it looks like a normal, pleasant lake, glinting in the first pale rays of the December sun. A lake in the middle of the woods, covered by a thin film of ice. But if you stray just a few steps from the path, crane your neck and look down, the quarry walls plunge precipitously into the black depths. Gertrud does not stray from the path. Nothing could make her approach that edge willingly.

‘He walks by here every day,’ she tells herself out loud and is frightened to hear her faint voice and the compact silence devouring her words. She can’t bring herself to call out his name, doesn’t want to know what that would sound like. If he’s here, she’ll find him.

He knows the terrain, she tells herself. Knows exactly where to put his feet, and so does Sammy. They’re probably back home already; she wouldn’t be surprised if he were snug in the warm kitchen, with a cup of coffee and what was left of the saffron pastry from yesterday, godless and completely unconcerned about heaven and hell. It would be just like him. No, I’m going to turn around right now and stop this nonsense, she decides and glances over her shoulder, back the way she came. On the other hand, she realises reluctantly, at this point, the walk back would take as long as completing the loop around the quarry.

With a heavy sigh, she presses on, crossing herself again while inwardly cursing her brother’s lack of consideration in general and utter want of devoutness in particular. Fredrik doesn’t often darken the church’s doorstep, she is all too aware of that, but he normally attends the early morning Christmas Day service, at least. For some reason, even the most irreverent of her neighbours, the ones who never set foot in the Lord’s house except for weddings and christenings, tend to show up on Christmas. Maybe he just overslept.

Further down the path, she catches a glimpse of the turning area where the road leading down to the highway begins. Or ends. It’s been years since the mining trucks stopped using it and the cracks in the asphalt are growing longer and wider every year. There’s no point maintaining it; these days, the only people who use it are fly-tippers who can’t be bothered to take their rubbish down to the recycling station in Valby. Stingy, dishonest people, who would do anything to save a shilling. But not even they would have the audacity to do their illegal dumping on Christmas Day, she thinks to herself. No one is stupid enough to come here, except Fredrik. Not even the height of summer seems able to draw the young people out here for forbidden swims in the unfit waters of the quarry. She instinctively touches her coat pocket to make sure she still has her phone. No one would find her here if she fell and hurt herself, especially not this time of year.

It would teach him a lesson, she muses, if he really had fallen and hurt himself. Not seriously, just enough to make him understand that he’s too old to be scampering around all alone in the middle of nowhere. Her hand automatically reaches up to her chest to atone for the forbidden thought and this time, she calls out.

‘Fredrik! Hello! Fredrik!’

Then she stops dead.

A wretched whining makes her head turn cold. And when she spots the black-and-white border collie further down the path, she knows. Sammy’s long lead drags behind him as he anxiously trots back and forth along the edge of the quarry, lying down for a few seconds, jumping back up and continuing his futile pacing, dangerously close to falling in. For a moment, it looks as though the dog is going to try to find a way down the sheer rock face, but the sound of someone approaching makes him prick up his ears and look around. Then Sammy spots Gertrud and races toward her, barking wildly. With his tail between his legs, the desperate dog dashes back and forth between Gertrud and the edge of the cliff, urging her on. She reluctantly follows, praying loudly to herself.

‘Please, dear Lord, don’t turn away from me now.’

There’s no sign of her brother from where she stops on the path with her mitten pressed to her mouth. For a dizzying second, vain hope overcomes her – maybe it’s not Fredrik down there. Maybe it’s just the old tennis ball Sammy insists on carrying with him at all times. Maybe Fredrik threw it toward the quarry in a careless moment instead of up the slope the way he usually would. And when she moves closer to the edge, heart thumping, and cranes her neck, she still can’t see him.

It’s not until Gertrud Stuub gets down on her stomach and, with one last helpless prayer, carefully inches her way to the edge to look down the precipice that hope dies.

Chapter 2

2

Karen Eiken Hornby pulls the door shut behind her and digs around her coat pocket for her packet of cigarettes. Leaning with her elbows on the cold railing of the front steps, she takes a deep drag and feels her heart rate slow. She stares blankly straight ahead.

It’s already pitch-black outside, though it’s only just gone half past four, but the December air is unseasonably mild. The light from the kitchen window pools on the ground around the large rowan tree. Only a few rapidly melting patches of snow remain of the four inches that covered the ground just a week ago. Anything that manages to freeze when the temperature dips overnight quickly thaws under the grey woollen blanket the sky has resembled over the past few days. The sounds of clattering china, laughter and yet another drinking song carry through the closed window.

Fisherman, take comfort,

The codfish is so cruel, so cruel, so cruel

Quench your thirst with spirits

It’s yule, it’s yule, it’s yule . . .

Cheers!

Without turning to look, she knows the seven people around the table inside are raising their glasses to eye height before lowering them and drinking as one. She waits for the bang of their glasses being slammed back down. There it is.

How the fuck am I supposed to survive another two days of this? she wonders.

There’s nowhere to escape for some alone time. Her mother and Harry are in the big bedroom – Karen had decidedly mixed feelings about giving up her double bed – and she has moved into the guest bedroom next door and will soon, for the third night in a row, do her best to ignore the noises on the other side of the wall.

It had seemed like a good idea when they planned the whole thing over a few glasses of wine at the Dunker pub, The Mine, a couple of weeks earlier. To have her closest friends come to stay with her over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Her mother and Harry were going to visit anyway and the more the merrier. Marike had assured her she was fine on the sofa in the living room and that she would bring both crispy pork roast and red cabbage. Kore and Eirik could take the sofa bed in the guest house with Leo and bring horseradish herring, gravlax and home-made mustard. Her mother had promised to bake both saffron biscuits and rye bread the moment she arrived, so Karen would really only have to make a big batch of juniper beer and season the snaps. Two days of good food, good conversation and long walks in the snow, because surely they’d get some snow soon?

Now, she listens to the laughter inside. Yes, everything is exactly as lovely as they planned. Everything is as it should be. Except that she wants to be alone. To hear, even if just for one moment, the sound of silence.

Just one more night, you can do it, she tells herself and takes another deep drag. Kore, Eirik and Marike will in all likelihood go home straight after breakfast tomorrow. But her mother and Harry are staying one more night, she reminds herself. They’re not flying back to Spain until the day after tomorrow. Two more mornings of pretending not to see Harry affectionately pat her mother’s bum, pretending not to hear the sound of stolen kisses every time she turns her back. Thirty-six more hours of biting back the caustic comments about to leap off her tongue every time her mother refers to the seventy-six-year-old Harry Lampard as her new ‘boyfriend’.

And then there’s Sigrid.

Why couldn’t the kid just stay with her dad after finally reconnecting after years of estrangement? It’s bloody Christmas, a time to spend with family, Karen grumbles inwardly and sucks so hard on her cigarette it burns her fingertips.

‘I won’t be staying long,’ Sigrid had happily assured her when she turned up unannounced in the kitchen almost three hours ago. ‘Just stopping by.’

And then that wave of warmth crashing over Karen before she could stop it. That unreasonable, frightening joy that rushes through her every time she sees Sigrid. All the things there is no room for in her life anymore.

I won’t be staying long. How Sigrid had planned to cover the mile and a half to her own house at the other end of the village after two glasses of juniper beer and at least one shot of snaps is her affair. Karen is not on the job tonight. And besides, she’s tired.

And then there’s her damn knee. A constantly aching reminder of what happened, and what could have happened. Karen shifts her weight onto her right leg and feels a stab of pain in her hip. Over two months ago now, and still it’s not back to normal. Four weeks at Thystedt Hospital and then rehab at home. Painful visits to the physiotherapist in Dunker three times a week. She has meekly done everything they’ve told her to, all the exercises, twice a day. And still she can’t put weight on her left leg for more than a few minutes at a time. It’s a strain, having to conceal the truth from the people sitting in the warm kitchen behind her, having to keep up appearances, to conceal the constant ache, to choose between yet another round of painkillers or a snaps with her herring, to keep the fake smile on her face: no, it doesn’t hurt at all anymore, I’m just a bit stiff still. To pretend not to notice her mother’s suspicious looks.

She is on sick leave until Twelfth Night, so just twelve more days, trapped in her house with far too many thoughts. She’s going back to work the moment the holidays are over, even if she has to crawl there. At least she has managed to persuade her doctor not to extend her sick leave. If nothing else, I’m a good liar, she muses.

For a moment or two, the din grows louder as the door opens and then closes again, slightly too hard, making the kitchen window rattle. She knows it’s Leo without turning around. She sees the flame of his lighter out of the corner of her eye, hears him inhale deeply, hold the smoke in his lungs for a second and exhale. He holds out his packet and she bums a cigarette.

‘It’ll all be over eventually,’ he says. ‘You have to cling to that thought.’

Am I that easy to read? she wonders inwardly. I thought I had a pretty good poker face.

‘How philosophical of you,’ she mutters. ‘Any other words of wisdom for me?’

‘Alcohol helps, obviously. And isn’t drinking and knowing it’ll be over eventually what Christmas is all about?’ he replies with a grin.

She briefly meets his eyes and tries to stop herself from smiling.

‘Well, you should know,’ she replies drily. ‘Was it alcohol and knowing it would all be over eventually that sustained you when you were living under that loading dock?’

‘It certainly wasn’t women and song.’

They continue to smoke in silence. Karen turns her head and notices that Eirik and Marike have started to clear the table, while Harry is using the unwashed pot to refill the coffee maker. She sighs.

‘He’s a good one,’ Leo comments, ‘your new stepdad.’

It stings when she snorts out smoke.

‘Stepdad! Oh, come off it . . .’

‘And Eleanor is happy,’ he continues.

‘Yeah, thanks, I’ve gathered. Thin walls.’

Leo takes a drag and stares mutely into the darkness.

‘I guess you’ll have to move in with me tomorrow after Kore and Eirik leave,’ he says after a while.

‘With you?’

‘Sure, they claim the sofa bed is actually comfortable if you just use a few pillows to pad the steel beam poking into your lower back. And if worst comes to worst, I’m sure I could make room in my bed.’

Taken aback, she gives him a quick, sidelong glance; this isn’t like him. Come to think of it, participating in a Christmas celebration doesn’t seem like him either, singing drinking songs and listening to Harry go on and on about how converting the attic or winterising the shed would give Karen more space. Completely oblivious to Karen’s growing irritation, Leo and Harry had continued to make plans for her house while topping up each other’s glasses. How she should go about it, how much it would cost, how much it would raise the property value now that the old fisherman’s cottages in Langevik have become popular again. Especially houses like Karen’s, with private jetties and boat sheds.

It’s probably a train of thought that comes naturally to Harry Lampard; according to her mother, he ran a successful building company in Birmingham before retiring to Spain’s Costa del Sol. But that Leo Friis would sit there and listen and take an active interest . . .

What the fuck does he know about insulation, roof shingles and loadbearing walls? Karen thinks to herself and grinds her half-finished cigarette out against the railing. On the other hand, what do I really know about Leo Friis? she thinks a moment later. Just a few months ago, he was homeless, tramping around with a trolley in Dunker, looking for glass bottles to recycle.

‘So you’re suggesting I move in with you?’ she says. ‘Last I checked, it was still my house.’

Leo shrugs as if generously allowing her point.

‘Which I rent, yes. For a pittance, granted, though I don’t recall being given a proper contract,’ he adds. ‘But I assume you don’t want to get the revenue service involved . . .’

Karen inhales sharply.

‘Oh, relax,’ he says quickly when he notices her stricken look. ‘It was a joke, Karen.’

And for a second, she’s left wondering whether he’s referring to what he said about the bed or the revenue service.

Then he puts his cigarette out in the upside-down terracotta flowerpot by the door.

‘Ready to go back in?’

She reluctantly straightens up.

‘It’ll all be over eventually,’ she says with a sigh.

Chapter 3

3

Twenty minutes later, the dishwasher has been loaded, the coffee has been poured and the saffron biscuits have been set out on the living-room table. Kore and Eirik are back after a quick visit to the annexe and Marike says something about getting a room and being considerate of their less fortunate friends when she sees them canoodling.

Harry glances their way, a look that signals equal parts discomfort and curiosity.

Marike herself seems to be in fine spirits for once, and her Danish accent is barely noticeable tonight. And yet, Karen knows the only thing standing between this version of her friend and a scary harpy, hissing in an incomprehensible North Jutland slur, is a failed kiln firing. But tonight, Marike Estrup is radiant and there is no sign of the anxiety that will slowly but surely creep over her as her exhibition in New York draws nearer. Karen leans back in her armchair. Be present. It’ll all be over eventually.

Someone has dug out a bottle of Groth’s whiskey and another of rowanberry liqueur and everyone has managed to find somewhere to sit, on the green sofa, in one of the well-worn wingback armchairs or on the old hope chest, which she still hasn’t found the time to lug up to the attic. Her first decision after taking over the house from her mother was to get that monstrosity out of the way: that’s nine years ago now.

Sigrid has sat down on the floor with her legs crossed and her elbows on the coffee table. Karen studies her long black hair – dyed so many times it’s completely lustreless – her tattoo-covered, skinny arms, the ring in her nose, which catches the light from the candles in the brass candelabrum when Sigrid nods eagerly in response to something Kore says. She and Kore actually look a lot alike, Karen realises. At least as far as their hair colour, tattoos and piercings go. Sigrid’s father wouldn’t like that comparison, Karen muses and smugly sips her drink.

Eirik, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different from his partner. In honour of the festive occasion, he is wearing a pink sweater vest over a white shirt he has paired with a subdued grey-striped tie. The creases in his grey trousers are razor sharp. As ever. Good old Eirik, Karen thinks to herself, his sartorial choices are as dependable as his friendship – without him I wouldn’t be here today. Her throat tightens and she lets her eyes move on. With a shudder, she realises her mother and Harry are wearing identical sweaters again, this time Christmas themed with juniper bushes. At least they look happy, she tells herself.

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