Down the hill and through the fog. I’m starting to think it was a bad idea coming back up north for this promotion. I managed to get out and then I came back like an idiot. For a job. For friends. For Noora.

Across the old train tracks and past the cross.

The white bike has either fallen over in the high winds or else it’s been pushed. I should get out and fix it but I can’t be outside the truck on this hill on a night like this. Not after I was shot at. I’m not an idiot. I cannot end up in the boot of some maniac’s car. Won’t let it happen.

I drive on.

Past Svensson’s Saws & Axes.

The twin chimneys of Grimberg Liquorice look inviting and I’ve never had that feeling before in my life. They’re usually foreboding. The scale of them and the way their shadows cast all the way down Storgatan, the longest street in town. But tonight they pull me closer, like identical lighthouses calling out, saying, this way wanderer, seek safety over here.

I hope this is a new missing-persons case; resolvable, not another murder. I cannot countenance the idea of a fresh, severed head. The killer posturing. Taunting. Teasing us all with his or her brilliance. Poor Emil. The tone of his voice when he was dragged away. The sight of his head hitting the kerb. Who the hell pulls someone by their ankles? You drag with your arms looped under the armpits surely? Something biblically horrific about a head scraping along the ground. The disregard for life or well-being. The ritualistic animalness of it all.

Gavrik is quiet and it looks peaceful tonight.

Straggler trick-or-treaters, older kids, wandering along Eriksgatan with plastic buckets full of candy. Dude on a bike with a bag of Tam’s takeout food swinging from his handlebars. One girl on a scooter. Two adults, probably parents not wanting to appear too protective, hovering twenty metres behind their offspring.

I get to my building and park. There’s a passive-aggressive building-chairman message stuck to my mailbox with tape. It says, ‘confirm your attendance at the bi-annual building deep-clean on November 15 by no later than 17:00 on Friday’. The ‘no later’ is underlined in red ink. Twice.

I’m weary climbing the stairs. The light on our floor is fine but the stairwell light blinks on and off. Why don’t you focus on that, building chairman? And why don’t you stick your head up your ass while you’re at it?

Inside.