‘Susso’s in Rumajärvi,’ he said, pointing to the handbags hanging on the wall. ‘And chances are that bloke Brösth is there too. We have nothing to lose by talking to the police. So long as we clean up Susso’s vegetable patch first.’

‘We can’t move him. It’s sick.’

‘It’s five o’clock. Balance the till and close up. Then we’ll head over to Manuella for something to eat. One step at a time.’

It was the intensifying, suffocating…

It was the intensifying, suffocating heat that eventually made Anders pull the jacket off his face. He was lying on the floor with a sofa cushion as a pillow in a room flooded with sunlight. It was cascading in through the curtainless windows.

Stava had rolled up on the loveseat that was the room’s only piece of furniture. She was still asleep, with her head hidden under a windbreaker.

The walls were covered in thin wood panelling, but there were no mouldings and no trim on either doors or windows and where light switches and electrical outlets were meant to go, there was nothing but holes.

An insect was walking across the window pane. A large stink bug with long, sweeping antennae. He followed its path across the grimy glass. He couldn’t determine whether it was on the inside or the outside. But he would soon find out. There was a sticker on the window. An oval with the text YAMAHA. The bug got closer and closer to the white patch, but just before it reached it, he turned the other way.

His back ached as he hobbled across the floor and his head pounded like the hangover from hell. She had said it would pass, but it wasn’t passing. It was getting worse. The painkillers he had gobbled up made no difference. Luckily, there was no mirror above the sink, so at least he didn’t have to look at himself. He sank down onto the toilet seat and studied his hands. They looked swollen and had a lot of tiny cuts of unknown origin on them. As though they’d been subjected to some kind of witches’ ritual during the night and scribbled full of evil inscriptions. His fingertips were trembling and his cuticles were sore and it struck him that he hadn’t had snus in days. He felt no hankering for it. What he did feel was a longing for something else, something he didn’t know what it was. He figured maybe he was hungry, but stepping into the kitchen it was clear to him that food was not what he wanted. In fact, the idea of putting something in his mouth was revolting.

He stood in the doorway, looking around the kitchen.

Where the fuck was he?

*