Chapter 121
They are approaching the junction and have to make a decision.
He is on the phone, mobilizing patrol cars to look for Karin Carlsson, providing the registration number and her description.
Hanna is driving on hard-packed snow. The surface isn’t slippery, but the route is narrow and winding.
In some places it is only wide enough for one car.
Hanna isn’t too bothered about the forty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, but she doesn’t want to lose control and end up in the ditch or in a snowdrift.
They drive past Fro? mine without seeing any sign of the white Volvo. At each side road they pass, Hanna tries to spot if there are any fresh tire tracks, which might indicate that Karin has left the main road. But there is nothing, only depressing whiteness.
The landscape swishes by, the snow-clad fir trees almost blending into one another. The bright sunshine from earlier in the day has been replaced by gray afternoon clouds, giving the light a misty quality and making Hanna screw up her eyes to see properly.
Daniel has finished making his calls and is leaning forward, looking out for the Volvo with intense concentration.
“Do you think we’ve lost her?” he asks after a couple of miles.
“I don’t know.”
Soon they will reach the lake—Kallsjon—and the bay known as Grundviken.
At that point they will come to another crossroads, a crucial choice if they are going to have any chance of catching up with Karin.
It is impossible to guess where she has gone.
There are countless different ways she could have chosen.
Maybe she is trying to flee to Norway?
“I can’t believe she got away right in front of our eyes,” Daniel mutters.
Hanna has no time for that kind of self-reproach.
She has her hands full keeping the car steady.
A couple of years ago she was involved in a serious car accident, when she was run off the road between J?rpen and ?re, and almost died.
The fear when the car’s wheels left the carriageway still haunts her nightmares.
The last thing she wants is for something like that to happen again.
A few drops of sweat trickle down her forehead; she is getting more stressed by the minute. She is clutching the steering wheel tightly with both hands.
A large tractor appears up ahead, and Hanna tries to assess the possibility of overtaking it without finishing up in the ditch.
The road is terribly narrow.
“Blue lights and siren,” she says to Daniel. “Hopefully this guy will realize he needs to get out of the way.”
Daniel clamps the equipment to the roof, and the noise fills the air above their heads.
But the tractor driver, surrounded by the throbbing of his engine, ignores them completely.
Get out of the fucking way!
Hanna grinds her teeth. She is going to have to slow down, or she will crash into the back of him.
Why isn’t he reacting?
She is about to brake when the driver suddenly realizes he has a police car behind him. At last he pulls over to the right, and they are able to pass with inches to spare.
Hanna sends up a silent prayer that Karin will also have been held up by the tractor. If so, they might not be as far behind her as Hanna had feared, and they might still have a chance to pick her up before it’s too late.
If she took this route. It was a fifty-fifty choice, and they might easily have made a mistake.
They are only a hundred yards or so from the lake when Daniel suddenly yells, “There she is!”
The white Volvo has just reached the junction. They see the rear lights disappear as Karin turns onto Hus?v?gen, heading west, possibly making for the Norwegian border.
“Try to catch up with her—we can’t lose her!”
Hanna increases her speed as much as she dares; she screeches up to the T-junction and follows the Volvo, both hands gripping the steering wheel.
And then she sees the car again, but with its nose in the ditch. Karin must have skidded, driven too fast when she put her foot down after turning. The rear wheels are up in the air.
“We’ve got her!” Daniel shouts.
Hanna slows down, fighting not to lose control and suffer the same fate. She manages to pull up right behind the other vehicle. The driver’s seat is empty, but the airbag has deployed. The engine is still running.
“Where is she?” Hanna wonders.
“She can’t have gotten very far,” Daniel replies.
Hanna jumps out and looks around. Where can Karin have gone?
“Over there,” Daniel calls out, breaking into a run.
Ahead of them Karin is tottering out onto the ice.