She turned in the front yard and got off. Erasmus helped her unload. He had his hat on but was otherwise naked to the waist. His arms were boyishly sinewy and there was a butterfly of greyish-white hair on his chest.

‘Is it nice in there?’ Ipa said.

‘Oooh yes,’ came the reply from inside the doghouse.

‘Do you think she’ll like it?’

‘I want to live here too.’

‘It’s the new girl’s house. But if you’re nice to her, she might let you into her house sometimes.’

‘Anders,’ Erasmus called.

Anders stayed seated for a while, anxious, before crawling across the grass toward the old man, who was sitting on a plastic chair in the shade of the house.

‘You know what I think, I think you should bite Stava.’

‘You want me to bite her,’ he slurred.

‘Yes, give her a proper bite.’

Anders crawled back. He knew he was supposed to do something, but not what it was. Then he spotted Erasmus, who was watching him, and remembered. He bit her arm. Stava cursed and shoved him back. Erasmus and Näcken laughed.

‘You broke the skin,’ she said, examining the mark on her arm.

Anders wanted to know what Erasmus thought of that, that he’d bitten her hard enough to break the skin. He turned expectantly to the old man. Then he noticed Erasmus had lost his hat and that his head with its long grey hair was drooping to one side as though he’d suddenly fallen into a deep sleep. One eye stared at nothing and where the other one had been, there was nothing but a dark hole.

Näcken had sprung to his feet. He stared at the lifeless body. His hammer hit the ground and he clapped both hands to his throat. He coughed up bloody froth and staggered aside. Then he took a few steps in the opposite direction. His legs buckled and he collapsed, right on top of the bed of clattering steel mesh.

Ipa had dashed toward the quad bike and leapt onto it, but that was as far as she got. She lay slumped over the handlebar.

Anders had heard the bangs, but it took him a while to realise someone was shooting at them. When he did, he dropped to his stomach in the grass.

‘It’s the police,’ he said. ‘The police are shooting at us!’

‘No,’ Stava said, ‘it’s not the police.’

‘It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me.’

Stava tugged at him, trying to get him to stand up, but he refused. Several rifles were firing from up in the woods; it sounded like a firing range.

‘If you don’t come right now, you’re on your own.’

‘Tell them it wasn’t me!’