Milo is still barking; there is a new note, as if he is afraid, angry and excited at the same time. Anna slithers down the bank. She is reaching out to help Agnes to her feet when she catches a movement out of the corner of her eye, a green figure leaping across the bank and hurling itself at the hole. It is a tall, bearded man in camouflage gear. His appearance is so unexpected that both Anna and Agnes are paralysed by shock. He dives into the hole, arms outstretched, kicking his legs until almost half of his upper body is inside. Sand and pebbles rain down on his back. The noise continues for a few seconds, then suddenly the man is out again. His beard is full of soil, and he is holding a wriggling, barking Milo by the hind legs. He drops the dog on the ground and produces a black revolver from nowhere. Milo’s hackles rise and he makes an attempt to attack the man’s ankles. Instinctively Anna pushes Agnes behind her.

‘No!’ Agnes yells, but the man isn’t pointing the gun either at them or the dog. Instead, he plunges into the hole once more. The hissing comes again, followed by a loud bang. Then silence.

They watch as the man braces his knees against the bank and slowly wriggles out. In one hand he is holding the revolver, in the other a large grey bundle. He slips the gun into his pocket, then raises the bundle with both hands. Claws, a black-and-white triangular head. Teeth bared in the throes of death.

‘Badger,’ says the man in a broad local accent as he brushes soil off his clothes. ‘It can bite a dog to death if it feels threatened.’

From his belt he takes a broad-bladed hunting knife. He finds a patch of flat ground at the top of the bank, and quickly and expertly begins to gut the animal. Håkan showed Anna how to do it, he even got her to try it on a hare once, but this guy is in a different league. It takes him no more than a minute to remove the innards, and when he’s finished he has hardly any blood on his hands. His fingers are surprisingly short, the nails bitten halfway down to the cuticles.

Agnes is sitting beside Milo, holding on to his collar to prevent him from investigating the remains. Both she and the dog are watching the man’s movements with fascination. Anna is trying to pull herself together. For a moment she had really thought he was going to point the gun at them.

‘He’s brave.’