I’m tired all of a sudden. Exhausted. You might expect the electricity in the air to heighten with the discovery of Arne’s lifeless head. Displayed. Flaunted. But the electricity has gone. The hill people leach out into the side streets, like black treacle finding the paths of least resistance. Figures run out of the Hive, and they flee whatever action was going on inside their secure units, their premium top floor. The fires are all out. The unattended antique prams are gone. Electric lights start coming back on as the sacks covering the streetlights are pulled off and people switch on their indoor lamps as they get home and kiss the foreheads of their innocent, sleeping children.

There are four of us left in the square. Me, the Sheriff, and the two gamer-café twins, Daniel and David. They have a wheelie bin each and they’re wearing latex gloves and filling the bins with masks discarded in the panic and used condoms, neatly tied, and half-empty jars of pickled eggs and burst bladder-balloons, sagging and lifeless.

The Sheriff says something into his radio and then waves his arms around to prevent a crow from getting too close to Arne Persson’s severed head. The crow is trying. She is persistent. The Sheriff starts saying, ‘Go on, scram…’ Swinging a sandwich board up at the dark-eyed bird.

And then a boom rings out through the square and the twins drop to the ground like well-trained professional soldiers.

The crow flies away, unhurt.

Luka Kodro is backlit from his bedroom above Visberg Grill. He’s leaning out in his white T-shirt and the muzzle from his rifle, pointed up into the sky, is smoking.

The Sheriff docks his hat and Luka closes his window.

Ragnar Falk delivers the pan full of teeth to the Sheriff and then he looks at me disapprovingly and heads back to his apartment over the old newspaper office on the shady side of the street.

The sun isn’t coming up yet but it’s thinking about it. Grey pre-twilight washes over the town square and picks out the giant bee.

It’s like none of this ever happened.

A thousand people. Gone.

The prams and trolls and cauldron pans. Gone.

The sex and the chanting. The whispered psalms. The bearskins and papier-mâché Disney masks and screechy violinists. All gone.

Blue lights. Sirens.

Indoor lights switch off all around the square, like kids caught reading after lights out.

Two cop cars pull up close to the statue.

Chief Björn steps out of the lead car. Noora steps out of the other.