When Lennart approached, Frode stepped off the porch and strode off toward the garage without a word.

She was waiting in the hallway. Her withered little-girl’s hands rested on the armrests of her wheelchair; the one concealed inside a glove was distractedly fiddling with something that didn’t exist.

‘Did you bring her?’

‘Who?’

‘Uksakka.’

He shook his head.

‘Did you see her?’

‘I don’t know. They all look the same to me.’

She wheeled herself into the dining room and he followed; the hare brought up the rear. There was a damask sofa with curved legs by the wall; he sat down on it. The old lady held her sunglasses in her hand and looked at him.

‘Where is everybody?’ he said and pushed the hare, who was huddling against his leg as if for warmth, away.

‘Ingvill’s gone. One morning, she was just gone. And I’ve waited for Abraham for a week now. I don’t think he’s coming. But I didn’t think you were either. To be honest.’

‘What about Fanny, and the little boy? Weren’t they going to come live here with you? Wasn’t that the deal?’

‘It didn’t turn out that way.’

‘So where are they?’

‘I don’t know. When I found out Erasmus had taken the thurse, I gave up. I just wanted to go home. So I left them.’

Lennart looked around the room. A long dining table of oiled oak. An enormous crystal chandelier. Oil paintings of animals and people in old-timey clothing. A mountain ridge could be seen through the window.

‘Skabram’s dead.’

‘Of course.’

‘They’d left him to rot in the woods. Like a piece of fucking offal.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘I actually thought he’d be alive. Since he wanted me to go there. But it must have just been to torture me. To humiliate me. I heard them talking about that Myrén woman like some kind of hero. Bear killer, they called her. Karhuntappaja.’

‘How did they find out he was in the bunker, do you know?’

‘I would have thought it was her? Ingvill. Since she’s disappeared.’

‘I can’t deny the thought has crossed my mind.’ She smiled. ‘All these years, I was sure she thought she was mine.’

‘You see what you want to see.’

She beckoned the hare over and whispered something to it and it hopped away. After a while, Frode entered with it in his arms.

‘Lennart’s hungry,’ she said. ‘You can bring the fish Bigga brought. The cod.’

She watched him while he ate, hunched over the table.

‘What did you think about when you were at the facility?’

He shrugged.

‘What did you get up to then? All day.’