Cruel Tides by Maria Adolfsson

Author:Maria Adolfsson [Adolfsson, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zaffre Publishing

34

Greta Hansen doesn’t want to see her. Doesn’t have time to stop by the station, doesn’t want Karen to come to Thysted Hospital where she works or to her home. She sounds tired, verging on tears, when Karen reaches her on her mobile thirty minutes after finishing up with Sandrine Broe.

‘But I was there just a few days ago. Can’t we do this over the phone?’

Karen reluctantly decides not to pressure her into a meeting.

But none of the questions she asks on the phone lead anywhere. No, Greta Hansen has no connections to New Builds Ltd. Granted, she sublet a studio flat in Gaarda fifteen years ago, but back then, the province owned the building. No, she doesn’t know anyone by the name of Gundar Freske, doesn’t know anyone in a wheelchair, unless you count her mother who spends her days in one at the nursing home. But sure, Karen can send over a picture, and sure, she promises to be in touch if she recognises the man in it.

That’s the last Karen hears from her.

*

Anita Kollbar also sounds slightly weary when Karen asks if she’s up for answering a few more questions.

‘Well, I was discharged yesterday, so you’ll have to come by my house, then. Do you know where I live?’

Karen does.

She drives past Hellen and Martin Talliksen’s house and can’t help but glance over. The sight of the blue moped leaning against a birch tree makes her stomach knot. Granted, Karl Björken had felt reassured after the conversation he had with Hellen in the morning, when he called to see how her brother was doing, but the thought of a disabled young man, unable to speak for himself, having spent the night in the nick has cast a pall over the entire police HQ.

Particularly because this wasn’t the first time serious flaws were revealed in the Doggerian police’s routines. That they lag behind their neighbours in both the east and the west in a number of important ways – resources, training, education – is something they’re all painfully aware of. The Doggerian police may be both capable and fully able to exploit the advantages of the country’s small size and their local expertise when it comes to investigating drunken manslaughter or knowing who’s selling what kind of shit to whom, but in other areas both insight and instinct seem to be sorely lacking.

After ten years, Karen still sometimes catches herself thinking she moved back in more ways than one when she returned to her home country after her years in London. The first few years had felt like time travel. The professional climate and the language used by her male colleagues and bosses had left her astonished at how much her fellow islanders had managed to avoid keeping up with the wider world. The pervasive view of gender equality within the police could be summarised exactly the way Jounas Smeed had put it: ‘Sure, whatever, that’s all fine and good. In theory.’

On the other hand, she had found

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