Geir, however, didn’t seem to want to talk about it.

He sat staring out the window, silent.

‘I can tell you’re angry,’ Anders coaxed.

‘What makes me angry,’ Geir replied, ‘is that the authorities in this country ignore their own rules and endanger the public. Not for the wolf’s sake, but for political reasons. Because they can’t stand not being number one in the EU.’

His voice had a disdainful tone to it when he spelled out E-U.

‘At the end of the day,’ he continued, ‘it’s about status. About prestige. And that pisses me off. If the hydatid worm is brought into Sweden, we’ll get it in Norway too.’

‘Not my doing.’

‘It’s worth asking whose wolves are more inbred in this colossal mess.’

‘Sure, okay. But this guy, he doesn’t look particularly inbred. And he’s definitely not a dog. That much we know.’

‘I’m actually not sure what he is.’

‘It’s not a dog, it’s a wolf. As the Phantom would put it.’

‘He weighs a hundred and seventy pounds. A hundred and seventy! Wolves like that don’t exist. Not west of the Urals. This wolf doesn’t exist. It can’t exist.’

‘You mean someone released it here?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is something’s wrong.’

‘Speaking of which, it’s probably time to check on him.’

Geir looked at his watch.

‘No, keep driving.’

‘I kind of need to drain the lizard.’

The reflective rectangles of Geir’s glasses turned toward him.

‘Piss. I need to take a piss.’

Anders fumbled the fly of his insulated trousers open and drilled a glittering rod into the snow bank, where it quickly rotted out a steaming hole. The cold seized him by the scruff of his neck and refused to let go. He raised his eyes above the tree tops. The stars had come out.

The car door slammed shut behind him. Then there was a scraping sound from the flatbed; when he turned his head, he saw that Geir had opened the cap and the crate as well. It surprised him. Wolves needed their privacy during transport, so they usually only peeked in through the grate to make sure they were all right.

The vet was studying a thermometer in the light of a miniature flashlight. The wolf was lying down, and Anders could both see and hear that it was breathing rapidly.

‘It’s warm,’ Geir said and turned the light off. ‘Very warm.’

He stuck his hand into the cage and ran his fingers through the fur. Turned the torch back on and aimed the beam at the wolf.

‘And it’s shedding. See?’

They each grabbed a handle and backed up a few paces to avoid the worst of the exhaust fumes; as soon as they had put the cage down, Anders dashed over to kill the engine and hit the button with the emergency triangle.