She picked up a portion of snus and pushed it in under her lip and just as she did, she was ambushed from the flank. It was the woman from the till. She tried to shoo the squirrel away with a towel, all the while yelling at it in a chattering language that might have been Filipino. The squirrel didn’t so much as flinch. It just sat there with its back arched, watching the woman. Who abruptly changed tack. She stopped waving her towel about and then backed up a few paces. She looked worn-out and depressed. Her brown cheeks pocked with acne scars. When Diana looked at her, she gestured toward the squirrel and said something. Then she retreated back inside. Since it seemed likely she would return with backup, Diana grabbed her tin of snus and can of fizzy drink and got to her feet. The Dutch couple were poring over a map and didn’t look up when she passed.

*

The road down to Rumajärvi consisted mostly of straights that were so long they disappeared like needles in the distance. There were no houses. No signs, no poles. Just the cracked and scarred strip of pitch and gravel, running mile after mile through the monotonous spruce forest.

She drove through Paittasjärvi and soon thereafter saw the sign for Rumajärvi. Someone had vandalised the sign, written something on it in Finnish. She rolled down a small gravel road. The squirrel must have realised they were close, because it was suddenly on the dashboard. Its tail was twitching.

She reached a boom barrier and sat staring at it for a while before climbing out of the car. A padlock lay discarded in the gravel, a shiny, silver code lock. The shackle had been cut. After establishing that there was a new lock on the barrier, she picked up the old one. She absent-mindedly rotated the numbered discs while she mulled things over. Then she got back in the car and reversed up to the main road. The squirrel immediately jumped down and sat staring out the rear window; it always wanted to see where they were going. She parked next to the road and let the squirrel out; it disappeared in an instant; it was like releasing a bird. She walked back and when she reached the boom barrier, she turned off into the woods.

It was hot. She grabbed the vizor of her baseball cap and rubbed the cap against her forehead. The forest was dead silent in the heat as she crept along between the motionless spruce branches.