He doesn’t need to specify as there’s only one hotel in all of Gavrik. And Visberg doesn’t have a single one.

‘McDonalds in twenty. The coffee’s better.’

‘It’s a date.’

I pass through the twin shadows cast by Gavrik’s salt liquorice factory and head down Storgatan. McDonalds has been modernised since I left for the south. The tills have been replaced by giant touchscreens. When I get inside, Thord is tapping a screen with his knuckle.

‘I just want two cappuccinos. It’s like goddam Minority Report in here.’

I haven’t seen the film but I understand the reference.

We sit down away from everyone else.

‘You okay?’ he asks.

‘Not easy building trust in a new town, especially in a town like Visberg. Like I’m starting all over again.’

‘Hill people,’ he says.

‘Is Harry Hansson a real sheriff?’

Thord almost spits out his coffee.

‘I’m sorry, Tuvs.’ He wipes his mouth. ‘No, no, aint no such thing as a sheriff in Sweden. He’s neighbourhood watch, but he takes his role real serious. Does every course he can, gets every certificate available. In actual fact, he does a good job up that hill. Chief calls him our “eyes and ears”. But he’s got the same powers as you or Ronnie from the bar, or my dear old mamma.’

‘What’s happening with the murder case?’

He sips and looks at me.

‘What?’ I say.

‘You give me what you’ve obviously found out, and then I’ll oblige,’ he says.

Oblige?

‘Rumours a chainsaw was used in the decapitation.’

‘Shhh,’ says Thord, looking around the room, moving closer. ‘Keep your voice down.’

‘Visberg locals gossip about the Bosnian pizzeria owner. Say he has previous, although not in Sweden, not for years, not in peacetime. Others say the Edlund family are extreme hunters and that the boredom created by their wealth leads them to games. Strange rituals. And then there’s the Austrian clockmaker who lives closest to the scene of the crime.’

‘Alright.’

‘Have you found the spent shell-casing at the crime scene?’

He frowns at me.

‘Have you found it?’

‘Anybody mention Margareta Eriksson at all? Hive storage lady?’

‘No, why?’

‘No reason.’

I give him a look.

‘Just that her husband died in a chainsaw incident back in 2011. Got ruled an accident at the enquiry but people talk. They weren’t in a good marriage, so people said. Rumour she was having a long-running affair with a local man but nobody’s saying who that was. Anyway, according to the Chief, the boy, Emil his name is, he was helping his dad lop a dead branch off some kind of beech tree. Ladder slipped. Son was apparently holding the base of it. His dad, Margareta’s husband, well, he wasn’t shot with a rifle but he ended up in the same state as Arne Persson.’

I make a mental note.