The reply left me lost for words. I must have looked unsteady, because Roland suddenly grabbed hold of my arm.

‘But you don’t understand …’

Harr was leaning against the van. He’d taken off his baseball cap and was looking into it, rubbing his thumb against the sweatband. His scalp shone underneath the strands of hair pulled tight over his head. Ensimmäinen unscrewed the cap of a plastic petrol canister and poured the contents into the cab of the van with a completely neutral look on his face; it looked like he was watering plants.

‘This doesn’t solve anything!’

‘At least this Erasmus bloke,’ Harr said, ‘definitely won’t bother you any more. And no one else in that village either. I swear it, on all that is sacred.’

Ensimmäinen pushed the door shut.

‘Mun aika mennä on,’ he said.

Harr put his cap back on. He touched the vizor and winked at me and then he grabbed the carrier bag with the wolf’s head and walked off toward his car.

*

It was unclear to me why they had to torch the van; wasn’t that just going to attract unwanted attention? And what if the flames spread and started a forest fire? It had been very dry lately. These and many other questions I put to Roland as we drove back home, but he made no answer, just sat with his hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead.

‘Why do you think he took that head?’

I noticed him grinning, almost imperceptibly.

‘He wouldn’t be dumb enough to stuff it, would he?’

‘Stuff what?’

‘The head!’

Now he frowned.

‘What head?’

Susso was sitting in the armchair…

Susso was sitting in the armchair with her legs on the bed, watching her. She never looked away and Diana was filled with a strong urge to hurt her. Physically. Grab the nearest object and hurl it at her. Wrestle her to the ground and push her thumb into her eye. Into her healthy eye. And she could obviously tell. Because now she smiled.

‘I’m just telling you what Mum told me.’

‘You’re bloody smiling.’

‘Only because you’re so worked up. You should see yourself, it’s like there’s one of those thunder clouds above your head. Like in a comic book.’

‘I’m worked up because you’re smiling. So your smile started it!’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise I was smiling.’

‘Okay, great, that’s all fine then.’

‘I understand that you’re feeling bad about it. On several levels.’

‘No, you don’t. You don’t have a family. You have no fucking idea. And the worst part is that you’re enjoying this.’

Susso looked down.

‘We said we weren’t ever going to get married,’ she said. ‘Traitor. The only reason you’re using your name is that he didn’t want to be called Hellström.’