She just wanted to drive. Put mile after mile behind her. Accelerate away from the terror. The thoughts racing around in her head hurt her. Flocks of screeching birds. Harpies. She had turned the radio on to drown out the mayhem inside her, but it didn’t help. She was only able to find two channels. Nothing about missing women in Kiruna. Of course not. Why would they care about something like that up here? And were they even officially missing? She had told Håkan she’d be back for lunch on Saturday. That was less than twenty-four hours ago. It felt like a week, but it hadn’t even been a day. Didn’t a full twenty-four hours have to pass before the police would actually start looking for missing people, at least missing adults? She thought about Missing People, an organisation Håkan loathed. People in windbreakers who tried to show off with their silly police jargon and who conducted searches, not primarily to find missing people but rather for the thrill that was missing in their own meaningless lives. Had he had time to change his mind about them in the past twenty-four hours? Had he called the police? He would talk to her mum and dad first, she was pretty sure of that. And they would probably go to Gudrun. What would she say?

Regardless, they probably hadn’t told Kiruna anything yet. They would shield her. For as long as possible. That thought had a calming effect.

Driving in her state was foolish. Nothing short of utter foolishness. She was reaching the end of her strength and ability. What she should do was call Håkan and then try to sleep for a few hours before pressing on. It would just be priceless if she ran off the road, after everything she’d been through. Though she would probably be fine. If I crash, I probably won’t die. The airbag will catch me, embrace me gently; I’ve seen how gentle it looks in the movies. Her train of thought was alarming and when she spotted a motorhome parked some way from the road, she slowed down. She was going to have to ruin this morning for some poor soul. Bang on their door and stand there with her battered face, like an emissary from the valley of the shadow of death.

It was a Norwegian vehicle, parked by the water’s edge. The loungers in which its occupants had enjoyed the midnight sun were sitting outside.

She rapped her knuckles against the door four times, waited a while and then knocked again. Then she spat on the back of her hand and rubbed off the blood dried into her skin. The vehicle rocked. Someone had got out of bed. She assumed they were having a look at her and her car, because it took a while before the lock clicked.

A pale man in nothing but his underwear appeared in the doorway.