The statue of Adolf-Fredrik Edlund has two masks tonight; one on the man himself and one skewered onto the pointed end of the anvil. A tall woman speed-walks past me. She’s wearing a thick grey-fur outfit of multiple layers. It looks like rough elk-fur, but there’s a gap beneath her neck to show off her cleavage, the only human skin visible. I hear her say, ‘As I walk through the valley of the shadow…’ as she speeds on by.

A couple, or maybe two strangers, are kissing furiously against the next apple tree. They are groaning and scratching at each other as they rub against the rough bark of the tree trunk. Moans of pleasure and pain. I’m transfixed. It reminds me of a kiss I witnessed in a McDonald’s outside Madrid one time. Two high-school kids, both around seventeen years old. A handsome boy with short black hair and a handsome girl with long black hair. The heat between them. The intensity of their kissing and their bodies. Their obvious lust. The craziness of it. The way they carried on regardless of us all. These two are the same. And then they’re not. They go further. The shorter one turns around so he or she is facing the tree. The taller one howls and then they start biting at each other, moving on each other. A rhythm begins. I watch them through the fog and smoke, and then I pull my gaze away.

What is this? Shopkeepers and auditors and consultants and digger drivers. Let loose. Bringing the wild back for a night.

‘Why aren’t you in Falun?’

I turn on my heels. Around the other side of the tree is the stern face of Sheriff Harry Hansson.

‘I’m… I’m…’

He shakes his head.

‘I’m…’

He takes a deep breath. ‘Well, you’re here now,’ he says. The Sheriff’s wearing a black version of his usual outfit, but hanging off his belt is a metre-long truncheon or cosh. He has black paint all over his hands and he’s carrying a large, black bladder-balloon. ‘Safe word is “bee sting”,’ he says. ‘I’ll need a word with you about all this tomorrow. Don’t forget. Bee sting.’

He walks off toward a pram left on its own beside a park bench.

The violinists pick up their tempo but it’s still not music. Sounds like a high-note aria played backwards at high-speed. Like the shopfront windows might shatter at any moment.