THEN

If Imo hadn’t gone first, I wouldn’t have been able to move. I just followed his footsteps, one by one, as though on autopilot. I felt like I would throw up any second.

‘Where is he?’ I asked again.

‘In here,’ Imo said, and pointed to the pig shed.

I looked at it. ‘Imo, what have you…?’

‘Just think about it,’ Imo said over his shoulder. ‘If we bury him or drop him in a lake somewhere, there’s always a risk that someone will find him or that some animal will dig him up. If we take him somewhere else, there’s a chance that someone might see us. We can’t take any risks at this stage. It’s too dangerous.’

My stomach felt like it was doing somersaults. I couldn’t feel the ground under my feet. I hoped that he would stop and come to his senses, that he would turn around and say, no, we’re not going to do this after all – it was just a terrible, awful dream. But there was nothing to indicate that Imo would change his mind. He kept moving towards the pig shed, his face set hard, determined.

Fucking bastard, I thought. How could he do this to me? He’d said we would never talk about it, but how did he think we could live normally after this? Did he imagine that we’d just have a shot or two of tequila whenever things got too hard to handle?

No fucking way.

I wasn’t going to have anything to do with him, ever again.

Inside the pig shed, Ole was lying on the floor, curled up. His eyes were open. He was blinking furiously, breathing in through his nose. His mouth was gagged and his hands were tied behind his back.

I sighed in relief. He wasn’t dead.

At least not yet.

The pigs started to grunt as soon as they saw Imo. His appearance meant food.

Today, that food was Ole Hoff. My best friend’s father.

I just stood there with my mouth open, trying to breathe. Ole was trying to say something, but the sounds coming out of his mouth were muffled.

‘He texted me before,’ I stammered. ‘He called me, too. What if he’s tried to contact someone else? What if he told someone he was coming here?’

‘That’s a risk we’ll just have to take,’ Imo said.

He started to walk towards the pen. I closed my eyes. And when I opened them again, Ole was looking at me. I could tell he was begging me not to go through with this.

The pigs were making a racket now. ‘Can you get him up?’ Imo yelled over the noise.

‘Me?’

‘I did my back in when I carried him in here,’ he said. ‘He’ll struggle now that he’s awake.’