‘Do you want to head over there? If it’s what you want, it’s what we’ll do.’

I shook my head.

‘Then what do you want to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

Roland said nothing for a while.

‘Have you talked to Mona?’

‘No. God, no.’

‘If he’s looking for revenge, which I doubt, and I want to be clear about that, shouldn’t he be going after Magnus? He was the one who testified against him. He was the one who got him convicted. Not Susso.’

‘It’s not really Lennart Brösth I’m afraid of. You know, to be honest, I’m not actually afraid. I’m just tired. Tired of walking around with this secret like a millstone around my neck. Tired of having to joke around with people who come into the shop to see the picture.’

‘People come in to see the picture? You’ve never told me that.’

‘It happens. From time to time. And sell-out that I am, I play along. I turn mysterious like a fortune-teller and tell them not to ask questions they don’t want to know the answers to. Whatever that’s supposed to mean in this context. They think it’s all a gimmick to lure in more customers. And I play along so hard I don’t know what to believe any more. Can you understand how hard that is?’

‘Don’t dwell on it. It’s not good for you.’

‘They come into the shop and ask me if I believe in trolls, but I can tell what they’re really asking is if I’m an imbecile. And whatever I tell them, it comes out wrong. One time, I said: “Look, I wish I did.” And that’s the truth. I wish I believed in trolls. Because a person who believes in trolls is just an oddball. But if you know they exist, you’re cursed.’

‘Cursed?’

‘It’s a curse.’

‘There’s no such thing as a curse.’

‘My father brought a curse on himself when he took that picture. When he soared away in his plane until it was nothing more than a tiny letter in the sky that dwindled into nothingness. He abandoned his family to snap pictures of the wilderness, and abandoning one’s family comes at a cost. It always comes at a cost. As far as I can tell, that’s a universal law. That’s why things are the way they are. There was a price for taking those postcards, and we’re paying it, even now.’

‘If there’s a curse, it’s in here, in your head.’

‘I know what I know, Roland. I can’t unknow it. The only thing I can do, to stay functional, is to not think about it. Look the other way. And I’m so bloody tired of it. My neck hurts from the strain.’