Kerstin jerked open one of the two doors, behind which a wood store was concealed. The wood was stacked from floor to ceiling, and it was most certainly not a dream job to unload the logs to see whether anything had been hidden underneath them or behind them. However, it had to be done. First she wanted to see where the other door led.

She could have guessed: an outdoor privy. Which reminded her that rather than crouching in the pouring rain, she could use the loo. There was toilet paper too, so she would be sitting pretty, even if the smell in these kinds of places wasn’t especially appealing.

That was what she thought to herself, but before she’d had time to pull down her trousers, it occurred to her what an ingenious hiding place an outhouse like this would be. Who on earth wanted to dig through human poo?

Only someone who knew what she was looking for, which Kerstin did. She promptly shelved her plans to relieve herself and instead went out into the rain to find a shovel. A broom. Anything that ensured she wouldn’t have to go overboard in her enthusiasm to dig through excrement.

A floor scraper was what she eventually found, in the slaughterhouse with Jeanette. Plus a pair of gloves that would come in handy. She started by lifting away the bench containing the toilet seat, so that she had a better view of the two latrine tanks. She shone her mobile phone torch into both of them, but all she was able to conclude was that neither had been emptied in a long time. And that any holdalls there might be were not immediately obvious to the eye, which was hardly unexpected.

All she had to do was start digging. Or more precisely, rooting around in the tanks. Pressing the shaft of the scraper down into the shit. And there . . . Wasn’t that something offering some resistance at the bottom, something of the wrong consistency that was elevated above the bottom of the tank? Despite the less than agreeable circumstances, she couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face.

But what was she supposed to do now? Lift up the entire tank and drag it into the woods to empty it? Or try to reach one of the handles of the bag—if that was what it was—and try to prise it out of there somehow?

She decided to go for the latter. Partly because it felt less hands-on and less disgusting in some way if she didn’t have to grasp the tank, partly because it felt more respectful to the plot and its owner if she didn’t empty a lot of shit onto the land.