Thank God I didn’t have to send Cheekbones on this assignment. He needs to shadow me, I don’t deny it, it’s just hard to know when’s a good time to start. This time last year I went to see Mum in the hospice. I was in the room when a senior doctor visited her with a medical student. I know this is an essential part of their training. I understand it completely. In theory. But them discussing the reasons why they wouldn’t resuscitate my own mother if her heart stopped was too much. Maybe they’d heard I was deaf and thought I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Me, sat there, unable to breathe, my hand gripping her tube of rose-scented hand cream so hard it lost its shape. Oozing from the screw top. Scent of wild roses filling the room. The doctor and the student turning to look at me. At the cream I was rubbing into my own skin to make it all go away.

I pass by the steaming sewage plant and keep on going.

Sebastian will do just fine. It’s just that he’s so obviously a city kid. And he’s too bloody handsome for his own good. What he needs is a broken nose and ripped fleece.

The world passes by in a blur. My wipers are on intermittent. The dash reads seven degrees.

Four trucks parked on the side of the road. No space for me so I keep on going uphill until there’s a safe place for me to park.

I bring the truck to a halt and pull hard on my hand brake.

The mist wheezes horizontally and wets my face in a way that only Swedish drizzle can. No discernible rainfall and yet I am getting completely soaked. I pull my hood to cover my aids and I walk with my head twisted round against the incessant spray.

I get to their Volvos and trucks and head into the darkness of the trees. My shins ache from the extreme gradient. Bootprints and churned mud. A tiny packet of snus tobacco, the kind that looks like a teabag and is designed to be tucked under a lip for hours to inject tobacco straight into gum blood, sits neatly on a lichen-covered rock.

A gunshot. Two more.

I head deeper into the forest and although I’m shattered from not sleeping last night, I feel alert from the cold and the wet. Not thinking of Dan now. I did the best I could for him. Just focus on the job at hand, Tuva. Survive this. There are seven missing elk skulls and one maniacal killer still on the loose.

Autumn. Sitting water, squelchy earth and old bonfire smoke.

I keep on going, following the prints. More rifle shots. I can find my way out if I need to, I have the trail. And I have a charged stungun in my pocket.