In the end, I called Roland. I had told him what had happened to the police officers who had been dispatched to Rumajärvi, but I hadn’t let him in on my and Diana’s plan to go up there and now I needed to be told I’d been right not to go.

He did think I’d made the right decision.

‘So you don’t think I should go after her?’

‘What can you possibly do, Gudrun?’

‘I suppose I could talk to them.’

‘All right, look, I’m going to say something to you, and it’s just a hunch. Something I’ve been thinking. And you have to promise not to be cross with me.’

‘Okay.’

‘Have you considered that Susso may not be alive?’

‘It’s all I think about!’

‘You have to ask yourself why they kidnapped her at all. If what they were after was, in fact, revenge. Either way, I don’t think there’s any point talking to these people.’

‘So I’m just supposed to sit here?’

‘If what you’re saying, and what Harr and Nänne are affirming as well, is true, that this squirrel has special powers or whatever you want to call it, then maybe Diana can do what the police couldn’t. So we’ll have to see how she does. Or they do, rather.’

Diana sat with her hand around…

Diana sat with her hand around a can of fizzy drink in the shade under a parasol, watching the cars in the car park. One of them had Norwegian plates, so she disliked it. Like she had disliked the Norwegian girl at the till who had asked if she wanted the receipt when she paid for her petrol. She was aware it was a symptom of some kind of paranoia, but that changed nothing. She couldn’t fully escape the feeling everyone up here knew who she was and where she was going.

She hadn’t touched her burger and couldn’t understand why she’d bought it. Her stomach seemed to have shrivelled into a pointless appendix. She gave the meat patty’s rough surface an indifferent look. The napkin stuck under the plate, moving limply in the breeze. There was a couple speaking Dutch behind her. A cryptic conversation. The soft voices, the familiar but impenetrable words, the harsh ch sounds. She was pretty sure they were talking about the squirrel.

It had dashed about the outdoor seating area for a while, but now it was perched, motionless, on the backrest of the bench across from her. The greyish-red tufts of hair on its tail were so sparse the skin they grew from was clearly visible. The claws on its bony feet were long and curved like suture needles and just as sharp; she had felt them.