‘No I haven’t! My dad took that picture in eighty-seven. I was forty-three years old! Surely that must qualify as being a grown-up!’

‘It’s emotional for you, this thing, with your family’s reputation and all the terrible things that have happened to your girls, and I’m not above admitting that I’ve assumed you’re exaggerating sometimes, seeing trolls where there are no … trolls.’

‘You don’t trust me. You trust them, but not me.’

He opened his mouth to protest but changed his mind. The conversation going off on a combative tangent. So he sat quietly for a while, looking at his bottle of beer, before continuing.

‘If it is as you say,’ he said, ‘it has to die. The simplest way of removing it securely and permanently is to kill it.’

‘And how would you go about doing that?’ I said. ‘It knows what you’re thinking.’

‘I guess we’ll have to keep our distance,’ Harr said and raised his hands like he was grasping an imaginary rifle. ‘Nänne’s an excellent shot. He can put a bullet through that rat’s eye from half a mile away. So long as he can see it. Isn’t that right, Nänne? No problem.’

‘I think it might be a bad idea. Shooting it.’

‘How is slaying a monster a bad idea?’

‘It can be. If you need the monster’s help.’

He looked at me uncomprehendingly.

‘Is Susso back? No, she’s not, and I have a very strong feeling the police won’t be much help. They’re going to go up to that village and then they’re going to go home. And Susso is going to still be there. That squirrel gives me the creeps and I hate it for what it’s done to my daughter, but I also know it’s her protector. It’s her protector. I’ve seen it protect her against a bear troll with my own eyes. Because you should know that trolls come in all sizes and if you don’t believe me, you can head up to that village and see for yourselves. The internet says it’s a ghost town, but I’m fairly convinced it should say troll town. And if I have to go there to get Susso back, which I fear it will come to, even if it will probably be the last thing I ever do, I want the squirrel with me.’

‘I get that,’ Harr said.

I shook my finger at them.

‘So you can’t shoot it!’

Harr put his hat back on and then he stood up and I realised he was considerably taller than I’d thought. He wore a denim shirt and jeans, an overall of washed-out denim it looked like, and I almost expected him to have shiny crocodile-skin cowboy boots on his feet, but he didn’t, he wore trainers.