I don’t want to linger by the bandstand because the music’s too loud to be comfortable. They’re playing an excellent Nick Cave song and there’s a bony black dog sat close by, and he’s howling his duet with his neck bent up to the sky.

The fog thickens.

I can see the Konsum side of the street pretty clearly, but the dark side is almost invisible. I take a few photos, adjusting my aperture to take account of the lower light. No heads on anvils and no teeth in pans. Just a backfiring Skoda. Maybe they were right. Maybe Halloween here is a gentler affair, designed mainly for the local kids. Maybe hill people exorcise their demons and get out all their pent up frustration on Pan Night each October.

Murder slugs glisten black on the wet grass.

A boy walks past me holding a bright-red toadstool covered in white dots. It’s as big as his face. Most of the other town-square toadstools have already lost their shape. They’ve gone from round to flat. They’ve released their spores. Millions of microscopic particles now float around in the low mists, ready to create new fungi next year. I can smell them. Some lethal, some delicious. The air is heavy with fungal spores and chestnut smoke, with innocent laughter and the sickly scent of decaying fruit.

Julia joins me with her own chestnuts in hand. She’s peeled them and they look like shrunken brains. A woman walks past the dental surgery with black Grimberg salt-liquorice coins taped over her eyes and Julia says to me, ‘Well, that’s in poor taste.’ I have to say I agree. Julia chases her and tells her so. The woman unpeels the coins from her eyes and eats them in one mouthful.

‘It’s not funny,’ Julia says.

‘I agree,’ says the woman.

We walk past the side of the dental surgery onto her street. There are more people wearing fancy-dress cop costumes now. I count nine just in this corner of the square. Maybe twenty in total.

Beneath a streetlight in the distance a figure stands erect wearing a top hat.

A small man heads out in that direction. It’s Emil, I can see his moustache whiskers in the glare from the light.

‘You want a tunnbrödsrulle?’ asks Julia. ‘I’m starving.’

It happens in seconds.

I see the man in the top hat seize Emil. He lifts him clear off his feet and throws him to the ground.

‘Hey!’ I shout.

‘What is it?’ asks Julia, turning to look.

The man in the top hat holds Emil by his ankles and begins to drag him toward the kerb. Emil screams obscenities at him, his head banging on the road with every bump.

‘Fuck,’ says Julia. ‘That looks real.’

‘Stop.’ I yell, running toward them. The tail-lights of a car flash on and off. Its boot pops open.

Julia yells ‘Police! Over there!’