‘What happened to us. At your daughter’s house.’

I really didn’t want to talk about those things and I showed them as much by averting my eyes. Through the unwashed window above Harr’s hat, I could see the building where I lived; I could even see my own living room window, the little lamp.

‘How should I know?’ I mumbled, somewhat absently.

‘I think you do know.’

Something about his tone made me think he wasn’t referring to the dirty work they had performed.

‘You saw something.’

He nodded, almost imperceptibly.

‘About this size,’ I said and pointed to my pint glass. ‘Plus the bright, bushy tail?’

‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘we only glimpsed it. Once, when it was sitting up on the ridge of the roof, like a weathervane. So I said to Nänne, I said, look, a squirrel. But then we started suspecting that it wasn’t that simple. That what we’d seen was something else.’

He glanced at Nänne, who nodded agreement.

‘As I said, we barely saw it, but the whole time we were there I could sense it was looking for something. Under my hat. It was sitting up on the roof, but it was down here, under my hat. And that,’ he said and scratched his beard, ‘I didn’t much care for.’

‘It’s incredibly fond of Susso,’ I said. ‘So it probably wanted to know if you knew where she is.’

‘I felt like a pine cone. Do you understand what I mean?’

‘Maybe not entirely.’

‘Completely powerless.’

‘Yes. You were lucky to get away.’

‘I’m not sure we did.’

He bowed his head and took off his hat and after pushing his empty glass aside, he placed the hat on the table, and he did it all with slow, precise movements. His hair lay slicked across his head in sparse strands that came together in a silvery hook at the nape of his neck.

‘It doesn’t feel like we did,’ he sighed. ‘I still feel like a pine cone, just a used-up one. Pried open. And plundered.’

‘He’s a monster,’ I said and quickly washed the slur down with a sip of beer. ‘That’s what I’ve always thought.’

‘A monster?’

I nodded.

Roland tilted his head, humming agreement.

‘I don’t suppose I ever really understood what you meant by that …’

‘What do you actually know,’ Harr said, ‘about this creature?’

Sitting at Momma’s bar, or steakhouse, as they called it, discussing with two perfect strangers from Malmberget the thing I had never before had the energy or courage to even mention to anyone, was exceedingly healing.

‘I know he’s old. Over a hundred years.’

‘A hundred years?’

Harr leaned back and crossed his arms. They were alarmingly skinny; he didn’t look like he’d done manual labour a single day of his life.