Behind a shield of fog, what if he or she was still out there? What if they saw us? What if they watched the whole thing? I check my windows and my door. Would he recognise me if he saw me again?

I grab two thin supermarket pancakes, douse them with sugar, fold them up, toast them until the sugar inside turns to caramel and the pancakes start to crisp. I dig them out of my toaster with a wooden butter knife, eat them and leave.

Gavrik’s busy. Hunters and mushroom pickers. Cross-country skiers stocking up on wax and new poles before the snows arrive. Tired men on parental leave, wheeling around their babies, each kid lying on a sheepskin blanket under a mosquito net. Protected from all angles. Guarded from the multifarious dangers of Toytown.

I came back because of Lena’s job offer. But also because I realised I need her and Tammy and Thord in my life. I even need Nils and Lars and Benny Björnmossen from the hunt shop, although it feels strange to acknowledge it. Sometimes you spend all your energy getting away from a place only to realise you have to go back.

I park and walk past the roofless ruin of St Olov’s church. A black crow sits atop the lichen-covered drystone wall and it tracks me with its shiny beak.

The office bell tinkles and I push the door open.

‘Look who it is,’ says Nils from inside. ‘Fancied a lie-in, did we?’

He’s still unzipping his coat. The shithead probably arrived a full thirty seconds before I did.

‘Found a decapitated corpse on Visberg hill last night, what’s your excuse?’

‘Thord told me about it in ICA,’ he says, pulling off his boots and placing them on the rack. He slides into his new Crocs, not a great look with white socks, and moves so I can peel off my autumn gear. ‘You heard the rumours?’

‘Rumours? Already?’

‘Spreading faster than a wildfire through Norrland,’ he says. ‘You should see Facebook.’

I slide on my indoor shoes and walk into his office-slash-kitchen and pour myself a coffee.

Nils checks his gelled spikes in the mirror hanging on the wall, the one sponsored by Svensson’s Saws & Axes, and sits down at his desk.

‘Marie from the Kommun heard it was the Austrian clockmaker, the one from Visberg square. Heard he’d blown off his own head with an antique shotgun.’

I sip coffee and say, ‘Incorrect.’

‘Alright, then. Benny Björnmossen got told by one of his customers it was the Yugoslav, you know the one.’

‘Care to narrow it down?’

‘Don’t know his name. Some kind of commando-marine green-beret type; war criminal, owns the pizza place in Visberg. Never been myself, my pappa told me to avoid that hill town at all costs. Accident black spot, it is.’

‘War criminal?’

‘Yugoslav,’ he says.

‘You’re not a man of nuance are you, Nils?’