The biggest guy on the table throws a stringy piece of liver down by his boots and his dog swallows it whole. The dog has some kind of GPS tracker device tethered to its collar.

Another guy says something but he’s got an overgrown handlebar moustache and he’s eating so I can’t make out the words.

‘I’m deaf,’ I say. ‘What did you say?’

The man takes off his orange hunt cap and he’s bald underneath. He says, ‘I…I didn’t know you was deaf. Don’t think none of us did. I’ll pray for you.’

Where the fuck do I begin.

‘I don’t need your prayers. Have you seen anyone in the forest? Non hunters? You think this could be linked to the murder of Arne Persson?’

They all start talking at once. Group chat, the worst kind. The kind where I can’t decipher a single thing and the voices melt into noise.

‘Can I take a photo?’

Sven Edlund walks over to me. He smells terrible, like the hunt vest he’s wearing has never been washed. He leans in close and says, ‘Edlunds have been hunting this land for three-hundred years. No, you cannot take a photo. Men…’ He turns to the table. ‘Clear up, let’s get back to it.’

The handlebar-moustache guy clears paper plates stained with blood and liver juice and throws them on the fire. It flares and spits. He places empty beer cans and uneaten bread into a black bin liner. He hangs the bin liner on the branch next to the dead cow elk.

Sven says to me, ‘We have reports of a cow elk with young back that way.’ He points to the way I came. The well-trodden trail through to the cars. ‘You don’t have a gun so we cannot guarantee your safety that way.’

‘I’ll walk with you guys.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘No, you will not. We’re hunting. We’re going to the old pines. An elk would smell you a mile away.’

He sniffs the air around my head.

‘You will go that way.’ He points in the opposite direction, deeper into Visberg forest. ‘There’s a trail. Walk for five minutes, past both big beech trees, then take a right at the cliffs. Double back, follow the blue tape on the trees, and you’ll get back to Visberg hill, back to the ghost bike.’

I look that way. Dense trees, packed so tight they block all the light.

‘Think I’ll go back the way I came. Take my chances.’

‘We won’t let you do that,’ he says. ‘We will not allow it. I’m not playing games here. It’s life and death. That way…’ he points to the trail I came on, ‘is dangerous. That way…’ he points to the dense trees, ‘isn’t. We’re not giving you a choice.’

I walk a few paces, turn, and use my phone to take a low-key illicit photograph of the hunt scene. Then I run through the pines, my heart pounding. Nobody saw me. One large beech. I keep on going, my face slick with sweat and mist. A mosquito buzzing around by the back of my neck, looking for its next meal. Hunting. Everyone here’s hunting something.