‘It’s not just that. There’s other aspects. If you get blood on your hands, you’ll never be able to get it off.’ I showed him my open hands and he looked at them.

‘I just want to help.’

‘And that’s very sweet of you, of course. But you have to think about yourself too. And you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. This is going to make you miserable, I promise you.’

A van with Lithuanian plates came driving toward us. The door opened and Ensimmäinen jumped out. His hair was braided and hung down his back like a rope. He opened the Chevy’s boot, which was like a door, and pulled out a shotgun and a rifle with a scope the size of a wine bottle. That was too much for me. A wave of nausea washed over me and I got back in the car.

After the van left, Roland came back to our car.

‘All right then,’ he said. ‘You hungry?’

‘Please don’t talk about food. I want to throw up.’

I could feel him watching me.

‘What’s in the bag?’ I said.

He looked at the carrier bag he had placed in the back seat and then he looked back at me.

‘CDs.’

I nodded.

‘Want to have a listen?’

‘No, Roland, I don’t want to have a listen.’

‘Then what do you want to do?’

‘Just let me sit here for a while.’

He went over to the petrol station and when he came back, I was feeling a bit better; I could even give him a small smile. He held out a paper cup of coffee and I accepted it. Then, surprisingly, he handed me a chocolate bar as well. And a cold bottle of mineral water that he put between my thighs.

He took the cup out of my hand and slurped down some of the coffee. Then he gave me the cup back; it was like my hand was a cupholder.

‘We can’t just sit around here,’ he said and started the car.

*

We drove into Vittangi and ambled around without really knowing where to go. Several of the pavements had been demolished and there were a lot of sand heaps and traffic cones. It was warm; I could feel sweat breaking out underneath my bosom. A pitch-black child with an oversized helmet pedalled by on a bicycle; I believe that was the only person we saw.

The pizzeria was housed on the ground floor of a yellow wooden house. The awnings above the windows were so old their stripes were all but indistinguishable. The front steps had been removed to accommodate the roadworks, leaving the front door a foot and a half above ground level. To make this unmistakeably obvious, the entrance had been cordoned off with a piece of string with red and yellow plastic flags on.