They put him on a gurney. Wrapped his arm in towels; Dennis stood next to him, keeping the bundle elevated. A rose of blood bloomed on the white terrycloth, growing bigger and bigger. He stared at the fluorescent ceiling lights while Dennis jabbered in his ear, pouring sour coffee breath over him.

‘Bloody hell. This was pretty unnecessary, don’t you think? Seriously.’

Johan came out with his phone in his hand, informing them that the prison transport service was currently in Härnösand and that it would be at least a couple of hours before they would deign to show up. Dennis suggested they drive him to the hospital themselves and after a while, Johan acquiesced.

The injured giant showed no signs of being aware of what was going on around him. He lay completely still, studying the ceiling through his dark glasses. But he was listening the whole time, listening closely.

*

The A&E was a hangar. Ventilation pipes wriggled across the ceiling like metal entrails. The light streaming in through the windows of the roll-up door drew a pattern of rectangles on the concrete floor. An ambulance was parked under a basketball hoop; Lennart looked at it as though he had discovered some kind of mystery. A woman in a white smock placed a disinfected little hand on his arm and asked, needlessly loudly, if he wanted to lie down.

They helped him onto a gurney; once he was on his back, he started rocking his head from side to side as though he was in the grip of despair; the woman asked him if he was in pain and then said he would be given pain relief in a little while.

‘So the hand is gone, obviously,’ Johan explained, ‘but that didn’t happen now. What he did today was bite himself. The stump, so to speak. And it’s not the first time. It’s something he does, more or less regularly. It’s bleeding, but I don’t think it’s particularly deep.’

That Lennart had bitten himself didn’t seem to faze the woman; she asked about his medications and then wheeled him off. He was pushed through a din of voices. Man, born 1914, he heard someone say, then the din subsided. The lamps in the ceiling slid by like train cars made of bright light. The gurney made a sharp turn, a sliding door was opened and now he was in a small room with bare, green walls. The nurse told him the doctor would be with him shortly; then she left, pulling the door shut behind her.

He lay there, still, like a corpse. The only sound was the gentle rush of wind from a vent. A surgical light loomed over him and he could see himself in its dome, his dark glasses and the bloody smear around his mouth.