She went upstairs and into the bedroom and looked at the unmade bed and Håkan’s dead mobile phone on the bedside table. Then she went back down. The kitchen counter was piled high with dirty dishes. It smelled like something had died there, under the plates. And something sort of had. Two weeks ago, two weeks ago exactly, they had sat here eating tacos, having a lovely time. A lovely time. That life was gone forever now. After returning from Norway, she had thought she might be able to have it again at some point in the future, but not any more.

She hadn’t slept many hours and her dreams had all been horrible. She had had a matter-of-fact conversation with her mother about how the most humane thing would be to put Kiruna down, as she put it, and even though she hadn’t wanted to, she had acquiesced and brought the little girl to the hospital, where they had walked down a long corridor to a special room for children who were being euthanised. It had all been very pragmatic; they had been received as though they were in for a tonsillectomy. But when she was about to say goodbye to Kiruna and squeeze her hand one last time, she had, thankfully, woken up and more or less thrown herself at the little girl, holding her tight and crying quietly. Then she’d heard a tiny sound and glimpsed a shadow moving along the curtain rod and after that she hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. She just dozed off from time to time. She remembered clearly how he had peered into her dream with his hideous old gnome face when she slept in her car outside Susso’s house and felt almost certain he had breathed that nightmare into her, because how would her own brain be capable of producing something so awful, something that went against her most deeply rooted instincts?

And yet, she had left the little girl in the hotel room with Susso without hesitation. Because she was right. If anyone could protect her, it was him and when she left, she had been grateful he was sitting there on the desk with those watchful eyes of his.

*

It was only just nine, but already so warm she was sweating. She had tied her fleece jacket around her waist and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. Their car was not in the driveway; she stepped over the hedge and walked around to the back. The patio door was open and there she was in the window.

When she stepped into the kitchen, her mum put her phone down. Diana studied her carefully.

‘Where’s Dad?’

‘At Lakkapää,’ she said and put her hand to her mouth and squeezed her lips as though they were numb.

Diana went to sit down on a chair without taking her eyes off her.

‘Did anyone come by here?’