Five minutes later, Karen has walked down a hallway lined with flashing fruit machines and is now surrounded by loud dance music, laughter and people contributing to the unbearable noise level by shouting to make themselves heard. The baseline thuds in her chest as she pushes though the crowded room as quickly as she’s able.
It’s not really out of my way, she’d told herself. I’ll just swing by and see if I can spot her. Make sure she’s OK. Now, she realises her mission is doomed to fail. Aside from the jostling and the noise, the shipping company has also decided that appropriate lighting consists of raking lights from the bar and some kind of strobe light from the dancefloor that’s making her pulse race. Finding anyone in here is clearly impossible. A shove sends her stumbling into a young man who curses loudly when his beer spills.
‘Mind where you’re fucking going,’ he roars.
‘Sorry, someone pushed me,’ she tries to explain, but then realises he’s already turned away again and is shouting something into the ear of a girl whose face is illuminated by the phone she’s fiddling with. Taking no notice of the guy, she suddenly shrieks and holds her phone out to another girl standing next to her.
‘Oh my God, he’s insane, look!’
‘Seriously, like, he should fucking . . .’
Karen doesn’t hear the rest. Instead, she presses on through the horseshoe-shaped room, groaning loudly with relief when she reaches the other side.
The well-dressed woman with the expensive handbag has apparently tired of the serenity of the upper-deck bar and is now standing in front of one of the fruit machines up ahead.
What do you know, Karen muses, you hardly look like you need to supplement your income. That being said, she knows a percentage of the shipping company’s regulars are gambling addicts.
The well-dressed woman doesn’t look like a gambling addict, however; she hasn’t inserted so much as a shilling into the machine but rather looks like she’s just studying the unmoving rows of cherries, clocks and sevens. Her black trousers and suit jacket signal money and taste. Not Karen’s taste, granted, but the entire ensemble screams that this is a woman who cares about her appearance. Her hair completes the image. Karen’s own hairstyle doesn’t require frequent visits to the hairdresser and she usually takes care of the many grey hairs in it herself, at home in the bathroom. Yet even so, or maybe precisely because of it, she can clearly see that neither the woman’s tidy bob nor her honey-coloured highlights are the result of home dyeing. Karen experiences a vague sense of unease, studying the woman’s back. There’s something sad, almost anxious about the solitary figure standing dead still, staring at a one-armed bandit.
*
I need a smoke after living through that nightmare. Karen takes a backwards glance at the strobe-lit dance floor. One cigarette and then to bed. She sticks her hand in her handbag and digs around but can’t find her packet of cigarettes. When she sinks into a squat with her back against the wall and opens her bag wide, she notices the cold glare of her phone screen and feels her heart skip a beat. Someone has been trying to reach her.
But it’s not Sigrid calling her. Karen stares incredulously at the screen and the number shining up at her. Three missed calls from a number she knows all too well; the police station switchboard. And one from her mother.