I closed the shop, even though it was just two. Then I sat behind the counter, reading on my phone, which was shaking in my hand. Seven dead. Shot. A mass murderer matching Mattias Flink’s record from 1994. It said nothing about Lennart Brösth. Granted, Harr had told me he hadn’t been there, but I’d had hopes.

It was for the little girl, I told myself. Sooner or later, they would have taken the little girl. And they would never have left Susso alone. This was the only way.

I went home and called Roland but then I changed my mind and texted him instead. Have you seen the news? I wrote. The reply was instantaneous. An angry smiley. Not the yellow little man with the sullen mouth, the red, angry one, like a furious tomato. What was I supposed to make of that? I wanted to talk about what had happened, but he went out to his cabin in Holmajärvi to make himself unreachable. It made me red and angry.

I sat there alone in the kitchen, utterly convinced the police had already figured out that the person behind the Rumajärvi bloodbath was a sixty-nine-year-old woman in Kiruna. When the doorbell rang, I jumped, because I was so certain it was the police that when I opened the door, I was already holding my handbag ready to go with them.

But it wasn’t the police, it was Susso.

She was wearing shorts and a tank top so it was obvious the squirrel wasn’t with her. That was actually even more surprising than her visit.

‘Come in,’ I said and we went into the kitchen.

She sat down at the table.

‘You’ve caught the sun,’ I said.

She gave her upper arm an uninterested look and put her fingertips against her skin to see if they left marks. Then she looked at me.

‘Håkan’s back,’ she said.

‘Would you like coffee?’ I said.

I had already got the tin out.

‘Where has he been?’

‘He doesn’t know.’

I filled the pot with water and poured it into the tank. Then I put the pot on the warming plate and pushed the button.

‘He doesn’t know?’

She shook her head.

‘And you’re sure of that?’

‘We’re sure of that.’

‘How does he seem, does he seem stable?’

‘What’s the opposite of stable? Labile? He’s crying and so on. And he doesn’t understand jokes. He doesn’t understand much of anything, it seems. It’s like he’s not there.’

‘So a bit like Cecilia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has he said anything? About what happened?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. About what happened at your house. When you and Diana were missing.’

She shook her head.

‘And the little girl?’ I said and set cups out on the table.

‘She seems better. But I have a hunch she’s play-acting.’