A brief knock on the door. Susso shot Diana a quick glance before getting up. She opened the door and Gudrun entered. Her hair tangled and her cheeks pale. She looked around.

‘Where’s the girl?’

‘She’s watching TV. In your room.’

At that, she sighed and sat down at the foot of the bed. She removed her handbag and put it next to her. Diana and Susso waited in silence for her to say something.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s over now.’

Then it was as if she couldn’t get anything else out.

‘Are you sure?’ Diana said.

She cleared her throat.

‘We’re not going to talk about this. At all. Do you understand me, Susso? Not another word about this.’ She wagged her pudgy little finger. ‘The police are going to want to talk to both of you, sooner or later, and it would be better for everyone involved if you knew nothing. We’ve talked about this. You had a junkie boyfriend in Rumajärvi whose name you can barely remember, and you went up there and fetched her. That’s all. Any other information you may want, you’ll have to get from the papers when they start writing about what happened. Which may not be for a while.’

*

Diana held the little girl’s hand in hers and neither of them spoke. They walked through the church grounds.

‘Do you think there are any more birds?’ she said. ‘Baby birds.’

When she received no response, she stopped.

‘Do you?’

Diana sank into a squat and looked the little girl in the eyes.

‘Should we have a look?’

She pushed part of a shrubbery aside.

‘Baby birds, where are you? Hello?’

The little girl stayed on the footpath, watching her with unexpectedly grown-up eyes, full of contempt. As though she were looking at an old alcoholic answering the call of nature in the middle of the park.

Diana climbed back out of the greenery, full of despair that she immediately pushed back down. She grabbed the little girl’s hand and walked on as though nothing had happened. They followed Lasarettsgatan past the hospital and strolled down Kyrkogatan. The little girl turned a few times to look at the building where she knew both her parents worked, but she didn’t say anything and neither did Diana.

Håkan had been missing for four days now and Kiruna hadn’t asked about him once. She didn’t know what to think of that. It could be she was angry with him for being ill and then disappearing and had rejected him. That was going to leave a big mark. And those mice that had lured her into the night. What kind of nebulous harm they may have done to her was more than she could bear to think about.

*