According to the article in the Värmlands Tidningen Johanna was riding her bike down to meet her boyfriend by the lake in Visberg forest. She’d arranged for him to drive her back up the hill later that evening, on account of the hill being too steep to cycle up. According to the piece, she’d been hit by a vehicle that police estimated was driving at 60–80 kph. Visibility that night had been fair. No ice on the roads. Johanna was wearing a yellow coat. It doesn’t mention helmets but I guess they weren’t so common back then. Tragically. The piece says she was hit from the rear as she was descending the hill, and she was thrown some fifteen to twenty metres. Motorists found her lying in the road. Her bike had been thrown into the ditch. It says medics battled to save her in the ambulance, but she was declared dead on arrival at the hospital. It says she left behind her father, Ragnar Falk, aged forty-two.

What demon did this? Killed a young woman on a bike and then left the scene of the accident without even stopping to see if she was still alive? Without even calling 112 anonymously? What kind of animal?

By the time I close my laptop, Visberg square is dark and raindrops are beating down on my Hilux roof.

I scan around. The gamer café looks closed but it’s probably open. Preparing for tomorrow night’s Halloween launch of the new zombie game. I see Tobias, the hygienist, run away from Visberg Grill carrying two pizza boxes. He’s also wearing an orange hat. That’s what you get when everyone shops in the same store. The pharmacy is already closed. The Hive looks ominous, its black timber walls melting into the night. Its yellow-painted window frames reflecting back in the wet streetlight like dozens of identical, jaundiced eyes.

The dental surgery is closed. The newspaper office is closed. The pop-up shop is most likely closed, but I can’t really tell as they never have any lights on anyway. The clockmaker’s shop is closed and the battery-powered alarm clocks have been removed from the window display.

I think about the files in my office. On the computer, but also stored in filing cabinets near Lars’s desk and near my desk. The clippings of major stories archived by Lena over the years: the reservoir flood of 1976, the Grimberg centenary, the Medusa murders, the visit from the captain of the Swedish ice-hockey team the year I arrived here, the Ferryman saga, the pile-up on the E16 in 2014. And my private files. Stories Lena and I decided not to run for whatever reason. Research that was too important to throw away. And then I look at Ragnar Falk’s office again.