During its fall toward the table top, my gaze touched his watery, light-blue eyes. Had he really said what I thought he’d said? No matter how I looked at it, the meaning was unambiguously clear: he had implied that they had resorted to mobster methods on my behalf and with that little dig at me, he was letting me know he had the upper hand. My face flushed again and this time the heat moved like a wave down through my body, like a hot flash. And Roland, he just sat there like a fool, picking at the label of his beer bottle.

‘Do you sell records in your shop?’

‘Records?’ I said, my mouth dry.

‘Music.’

‘I have Sofia Jannok’s CD. Her latest.’

Harr reached back and dug around the pocket of his suede jacket, which was draped over the back of his chair. He took out a CD case and after putting it down on the table, he placed his hand over it and pushed it toward me with a secretive look on his face. He was sitting behind the wheel of a bus. His elbow hanging out the window rockabilly style. His hat was blindingly white and around the high crown ran a concho hat band. The album was called To Murjek and Back Again and his name was printed at the bottom, Harr Honkaniemi.

‘See who it is?’

I turned the case over and read.

‘You might have heard “Give Me Your Hand”. They’ve played it on Radio Gällivare a few times. I thought you might want to stock it.’

If this was the price for their services, it was low. The question was whether this was the final price, or just the start of a lifetime of blackmail. But I nodded. Thanked him, even.

Harr stroked his beard, looking pleased.

‘You know, Gudrun, the only people singing about life up here are the Sami. And they just wail on and on about their roots and their lost pretend-country until your ears bleed. Now they rap too. On TV. It’s Sami this and Sami that. Sami, Sami, Sami. And I know a lot of Sami people feel that way too. Sjul Jonsson, do you know Sjul, Roland, he likes to say: What’s going to become of us old Lapps, now that the Sami have taken over?’

He tapped his index finger on the CD case.

‘This here,’ he said, ‘is a different voice. You can tell them that. If anyone asks about the record and wants to know what the old man’s about. You could put it somewhere people will see it. You don’t have to advertise it or anything, but it would be nice if it sat out where people could see it.’