Her mother leaned forward and when she spoke, it was in a voice that was meant to not carry to the living room, where Kiruna was watching a children’s show on TV.

‘But what if it’s found out after the fact? If they catch Lennart Brösth and that Erasmus guy and start investigating what happened and Susso tells them what happened to her and they see a connection with a body found in Finnmark, won’t it count against Diana that she didn’t say anything? Won’t that look suspicious? To have kept something like that from the police?’

Kent turned his arm over, pinched the loose skin of his elbow and studied it.

‘This is quite a pickle,’ he said.

‘If that happens,’ Diana said, ‘I’ll have to tell them, I don’t know, I’ll think of something. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that we help Susso and that means telling the police she’s missing and reminding them that Lennart Brösth recently escaped and then tip them off about someone seeing him in that village.’

‘Or we go up there ourselves.’

‘No, Kent, you’re not going up there!’

‘They’re dangerous, Dad. You don’t understand how dangerous they are. They’re not like anything you can imagine.’

‘Then here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to talk to Denny. Keep it informal, see what he says.’

‘You have to do it today.’

He held up his phone.

‘I’ll call him right now.’

*

They walked back through the church grounds. The little girl frolicked through the undergrowth lining the footpath. She was looking for dead baby birds and found it strange that she wasn’t finding any; just a few days ago, they had been everywhere. Where had they gone? She crept through the grass, calling them, making kulning calls with her tiny voice.

‘Little dead bird babies, where are you? Come out!’

Diana pulled out her phone. Still no reply from Håkan. Her messages had been delivered but not read. Could he have left his phone at home? Considering what she had been through, she knew it was well within her rights to be furious with him. He should make sure to be available on a day like this one. At her beck and call like a hotel receptionist. But her anger never made it out of the theoretical plane. It didn’t do anything to her.