I remember when Halloween first came to Stockholm in a big way. I was ten or so. It started with the cool kids – richer kids, who’d visited Disney World or New Orleans with their parents. Kids who travelled regularly to catch up with the relatives who moved to the US during the diaspora, when Sweden was one of the poorest countries in the Western world. Those kids started celebrating Halloween, and parents all over Sweden turned their noses up. American nonsense. Even though Halloween probably arrived in the US originally from Ireland and Scotland. Swedes said it wasn’t Christian and that we should keep All Hallows Day sacred, even though most traditional Swedish holidays are about as Christian as a sacrificed virgin on a mountain to appease some god of harvest. But my first Halloweens were not good experiences. Mum wouldn’t even consider it an occasion. Banned me from making so much as a homemade mask or a witch’s hat from a cardboard cone painted black. Easter is for witches, so she said. Another oddball Swedish tradition that my London flatmates never really figured out. Easter? Witches? About as relevant as bunnies or chocolate eggs, I guess. And then, when I was old enough to disobey Mum and go out, I didn’t really have any friends to trick-or-treat with. My deafness was an isolating factor but so was my individual situation. No dad. No mum able to pick me up or drop me off. No parent to sign release forms so I could go away on school trips. No guardian to pay for official school photographs or birthday gifts for schoolmates. I became quieter. Adept at living life in the corners and the shadows. Not making a scene. Just existing on the fringes and hoping for some better days in future years once I had full independence.

Well, here I am, motherfuckas.

I shoot off emails to Lena and Thord, and tidy up the timeline of events leading up to Arne Persson’s murder that I’d like to include in next week’s issue. It needs to be accurate but also sensitive. Local people don’t want too much hard information. Nothing gratuitous. I’m not in this for clicks, I’m in it for the long haul.

A bang on my windscreen.

I wipe the condensation and strain to see who thumped the glass.

Red hair.

I turn my key one notch in the ignition and wind down my window.

‘You need my garage again, Tuva?’ asks Julia.

I smile and shake my head.

‘No need tonight,’ I say. ‘Or is there?’

‘No, no,’ she says. ‘Halloween is for kids, at least it is in Visberg. You eating before things kick off.’

I look over at the half-squashed clingfilm-wrapped meatball-and-beetroot sub I bought earlier today from the newsagent in Gavrik.

‘That thing even edible?’ she says.

‘Not sure I can stomach another pizza,’ I say.

‘Sure you can.’