Karen exits the Hare and Crow, her face set. She gets into her car and leans her forehead against the steering wheel. She’s been wrong.
So goddamn incredibly wrong.
The past twenty-four hours have been filled with paperwork, phone calls to the prosecutor’s office and constant glances at her phone. Anne Crosby hasn’t got back to her. Nor has Disa Brinckmann.
She has conducted another fruitless interview with Linus Kvanne, who stood by his assertions. Yes, he confesses to all four burglaries. Yes, he tried to set fire to the houses in Thorsvik and Grunder, but he doesn’t get what the big deal is. No one was home; he knew that when he started the fires. Fine, but then the laws need to be changed!
And no, he didn’t kill Susanne Smeed; he’s never in his life even set foot in godforsaken bloody Langevik or whatever it’s called.
*
The last part was only refuted thirty minutes after Karen left the interview room. Sören Larsen had called from the lab at quarter to four that afternoon, apologising vaguely for the amount of work involved in the Moerbeck investigation delaying the results Karen had been waiting for.
She’d listened without comment when he continued.
‘Kvanne’s mobile phone was connected to one of the masts in Langevik for almost eleven hours, from 10.31 p.m. to 9.24 a.m.,’ Larsen had told her, not bothering to hide his glee. ‘That poor sod must have spent all of Oistra in that godforsaken hole. You live in Langevik, what on earth is there for a person to get up to there?’
‘Not much,’ Karen had replied. ‘Not much at all, unfortunately.’
‘Sure, he was here,’ Arild Rasmussen had confirmed when she showed him Linus Kvanne’s mug shot a few hours later at the Hare and Crow.
‘He was sitting in the corner over there, talking on his phone all night. Stayed inside even though it was a warm night and everyone else was outside. Drunk as a skunk, he got, too; I had to personally throw him out around three. No, I mean twelve, obviously . . .’
‘I don’t care how long you stayed open, Arild. But the timings could be important.’
‘All right, he was the last one to leave, just after three. It was quarter past by the time I got up to the flat.’
‘Do you know where he went after that?’
‘No idea. He asked if I had a room, but as you know, I don’t anymore. I assume he slept in his car.’
‘He had a car? Are you saying you saw it?’
Arild Rasmussen has to ponder that for a second.
‘No, I guess I didn’t, but he must have had one. How in heaven’s name would he have got here otherwise?’
*
Yes, that is the question, she thinks now, with her head against the wheel. How had Linus Kvanne made it almost twenty miles from the quarry where the stolen motorcycle had been found, to the Hare and Crow in Langevik? He had very likely had a car when he left Langevik: a Toyota with a quarrelsome starter engine.
I’ve never in my life even set foot in Langevik. The little prick had lied to her face and she’d believed him. Karen groans loudly.
I’m going to have to check every single call he made and talk to everyone who was here that night, she resolves and lifts her head back up. Someone must’ve seen which way he went after the pub closed.
Goddamn Sören, if only he’d let her know a bit sooner. But as she thinks that, she realises there’s no point shifting the blame to someone else. Her own stubbornness and refusal to accept irrefutable facts has led to this situation. Thirty-six precious hours, which she could have spent scrutinising Linus Kvanne instead of sniffing around an old hippie commune from the seventies.
With another heavy sigh, she buckles her seatbelt, turns the key and starts the car.