Whenever she felt like screaming at the top of her lungs, she pictured Susso. Susso sitting on the jetty in her filthy fake-fur jacket with a bottle of beer in her hand, squinting at the ball of the sun lurking behind the screen of dark trees on the other side of the river. The picture was detailed and richly coloured, because she had filled it with all the longing that had accumulated over the years, which had never found expression outside of her dreams, in which she and Susso often ran into each other in both familiar and unknown places. Susso was always quiet and morose at first, but then they invariably found their way back to each other and when she woke up, she would feel sad because it hadn’t happened in real life. Now, she drew strength from that sadness. It propelled her forward.

Gudrun was poking at her phone, which was on the counter. She was wearing a black, mesh-knit cardigan over a blue, shiny tank top that matched the agates in her necklace; when Diana told her what had happened to the police officers who had been dispatched to Rumajärvi, her hand kept tugging nervously at the cardigan. When Diana said they should drive up to the village themselves and get Susso, she walked over to a basket full of stuffed moose and started pointlessly reorganising them.

‘The road to Rumajärvi,’ she said, ‘ends in Lappeasuando. If you get my meaning.’

‘Then you know where to look for me.’

Gudrun turned to her and mulled that for a long time, all the while fiddling with her cardigan.

‘I’ll go with you, Diana. But we can’t go alone.’

‘Susso’s dad might come. Don’t you think he’d step up? Does he even know she’s missing?’

The old woman wasn’t listening. She had taken a step closer.

‘When you were at Susso’s, did you see the squirrel?’

‘Yes, I did. It was in the kitchen.’

‘What was your impression of it?’

‘What was my impression of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know. I thought it was gross.’

‘Did it seem to like you, or was it hostile?’

‘I’d say it was fairly neutral.’

‘It didn’t make you feel anything in particular?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘Then you’d better go fetch it.’

‘You want me to fetch the squirrel?’

Gudrun had taken off her glasses and was rubbing the lenses with a cleaning cloth. She was intently focused on what she was doing.

‘We have no choice.’

‘I thought it was creepy.’

‘Yes,’ Gudrun said and took another step closer. ‘Look at my hand, see how it’s shaking? See? Like an old drunk. It’s because I’m thinking about the squirrel.’

‘Susso claimed it understands Swedish.’

‘Yes,’ she said with a nod, ‘he’s very old.’

Diana turned away and shook her head, but Gudrun pressed on.