When he had finished the call, he hurried over to Geir and Åsa. They stopped talking when they saw the look on his face.

‘They know we’re coming!’

‘Who?’ Åsa said.

‘Micke Moilanen from Hunt & Hunter. The entire hunting community, in other words.’

‘Okay, but wasn’t that inevitable?’

‘Was it?’ Anders said and looked over at the snowmobiles and the anonymous bunch huddled by them in yellow hi-vis vests. ‘I reckon you should be a bit more careful what kind of people you employ. To do the tracking. Are those guys from the Sami village or are they just regular wolf-haters?’

The look Åsa shot him signalled that she thought he was getting worked up over nothing. He took a deep breath, and when the air came back out it was as white gas through his nose.

‘The more people,’ he said, ‘the worse for the animal. All the eyes and scents. We have to put the animal first.’

‘We do,’ she said. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

The wolf was awake now. It was sitting up, head gently swaying from side to side. Geir hooked his fingers under the collar and led it to the crate.

‘Get in, old chap,’ he said.

The headlights ploughed the darkness aside, clearing a strip of road. Here and there, the light from a window or a lantern flickered, wandering sparks in a night that seemed infinitely deep. Geir had kept both his jacket and his hat on. He had been fiddling with his phone for a while, but now he was leaning against the window, possibly asleep. Anders had tuned in to a station playing golden oldies. He tapped along on the steering wheel from time to time and whenever he knew the lyrics, he sang along, though without ever engaging his vocal cords.

A shudder ran down his spine; he shrugged his shoulders to shake it.

‘What’s the matter?’ Geir mumbled and sat up straight.

‘I was just thinking about what it would be like to live here. To be trapped in this darkness. In this bunker!’

‘You mean Sweden?’

Anders chuckled. Geir had been strangely quiet all day, but now he recognised him, his dry, minimalist sense of humour, and so he unleashed the barrage of questions that had accumulated during the day.

The county board had acted unusually quickly when reports about the immigrated wolf had reached it. The Sami village wanted it removed from their year-round grazing land immediately and had probably delivered some kind of unspoken ultimatum, because just one day after the animal’s genetic value had been established, Anders had carried his rifle bag onto a plane headed to Gällivare like some kind of hitman. He had instantly sensed the tension surrounding the decision. Relocating a wolf without putting it through quarantine was a severe breach of regulations. Potentially fatal, according to Geir, who initially had refused even to help.