‘Nobody calls me a nuisance to my face.’

‘What about innocent until proven guilty?’

‘Just sharing what I heard. Helping you out now you’re back with your big job title and your ultra-slim metal laptop.’

‘Thanks, pal.’

He runs his tongue over his teeth.

‘Watch out in Visberg, though. That steep hill. I’m serious. Take Sebastian with you and keep slow on that twisty road. It’s a blackspot.’

‘You ever hear about something called “Pan Night”, Nils?’

He puts both hands up to his hair and perfects his spikes again with his fingertips.

‘It’s what the hill people call their Halloween.’

‘Hill people?’

‘Visberg people. They have their own version of Halloween is all.’

Lena appears in the doorway, a pencil stuck in her afro.

‘It’s not Halloween,’ she says. ‘It’s one week before. Totally their own thing, started by whatever iron and steel family dominated Visberg centuries ago. But it’s got a lot darker since.’

‘You been there on Pan Night, boss?’ asks Nils, removing his Crocs from his desk, leaning in.

‘Only locals welcome,’ says Lena. ‘Nobody from Gavrik goes. It’s a Visberg thing.’ She turns to me. ‘Ragnar Falk can fill you in. He ran the Visberg Tidningen for forty-two years so if anyone knows, Ragnar knows. A one-man newspaper that whole time.’

‘I’ll get in touch with him,’ I say.

‘No need. He called this morning. Ragnar’s expecting you at Visberg town square in forty minutes. Better get going. And, Tuva…’

I look at her.

‘Watch out for that road. It’s a death trap.’

4

I pass by the sewage works and keep on going.

Marginal farms and clusters of bright white birches. Houses built in the ’70s with little or no foundations. The kind where you can’t really sell them or even get a mortgage. You have to leave them to rot down or sink.

My dash reads nine degrees and there’s a glow to the Kommun. Low sun heating up damp land. Mists rising from granite boulders as big as town halls. And that’s just the part of the rock visible above ground.

I drive past Svensson’s Saws & Axes. Big client of the Posten. Lots of advertising space this time of year. I overtake a cyclist with a leather rifle bag.

The town of Visberg is built on top of the hill. A small mountain, really. As I approach I can feel the elevation. The thinning of the wet October air. The change in temperature.

The road winds up. The hill’s so steep in places that it snakes one way and then turns back on itself like a beginners ski-slope, so it’s hard to get a good look at the town. You might glimpse it out of the corner of your eye, but then you have to refocus so as not to drive off a steep cliff or into a deep ditch full of ice-cold forest water.