At first, she was furious. There was something about his tone that kicked her back in time twenty years, to the period when her grades were slipping and few weekends went by without her drinking her brain to bits. Back then, he had, on a handful of occasions, talked to her in a special voice, gravelly and low, vibrating with supressed rage, and that was the tone she thought she was hearing now. The fury that erupted inside her was, however, quelled when she realised he sounded like that because he was afraid.

‘Don’t get mixed up in this, Dana.’

‘What’s going on up there?’

‘They’re not going to tell me that. Denny just said she’s not there. Which means there’s not much we can do. At the moment. You’re going to have to try to forget about it.’

‘Forget?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did Denny say?’

‘He said they’d been up there. That they went up there yesterday. And that they didn’t find Lennart Brösth or Susso. That’s what he said. Verbatim.’

‘And what else did he say? I know there’s more.’

‘He said they’d got lost.’

‘Who?’

‘The officers. Who went up there.’

‘The police officers got lost?’

‘Yes, well, they didn’t go home in any case. They drove south. Until they ran out of petrol. On the bridge in Lappeasuando, you know, that arch. Some kids from the campsite down there found them. Under the bridge.’ He cleared his throat. ‘At the foot of the bridge. They were just sitting there in the grass and were kind of, what’s it called, catatonic. And with mosquito bites all over. And Denny said one of them was in a bizarre position, but I don’t know what he meant by that. I don’t know.’

Diana said nothing for a while.

‘And you think that was a coincidence? That something like that happened right after they had been to that village, of all places.’

‘No, I guess maybe I don’t.’

‘Then surely they have to go out there again. They must realise there’s something wrong.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. At least that’s not how Denny made it sound. He just doesn’t see the connection. He doesn’t think going to that place, to Rumajärvi, has anything to do with what they were like. He was talking about the police being understaffed and stress. Constant stress.’

‘This isn’t about stress.’

‘No.’

‘We have to do something, Dad.’

‘What you have to do is get some rest.’

*