In the fruit-punch red light pulsating across the deserted road, Geir was kicking the snow bank; for a brief moment, Anders thought he had flown into a blind rage. That he had lost his mind. Then he realised it was the snow he was after. The animal obviously needed to be cooled down.

Geir picked up a few lumps of snow and crawled into the cage with them. That set things off in there. Something banged against the metal and Geir cursed. Then he came crawling back out, bum first. He fitted the hatch into its grooves and only just managed to slide it into place before the wolf hurled itself against it.

Geir was on his knees with a frozen smile on his lips.

‘I tried to feed it a bit of snow,’ he said. ‘It didn’t much care for that.’

He crawled around to the other side of the crate and pointed his flashlight in through the grate. The wolf was sitting up, glaring at them. Its eyes had cleared. There was no fear in them. No hostility. But something else. Something hard.

‘Are you going to give him something?’

Geir turned the light off and stood up.

‘Let’s leave it here for a bit. Let it cool down a little.’

‘But you said he was shedding. That’s not good, is it?’

‘That was … a mistake. I got it wrong.’

Anders phoned Johanna and paced up and down next to the snow bank while they were talking. He told her he thought they would reach the release site around six and be home by nine. When she asked him how it was going, he heard himself say it was going well. He didn’t have the energy to tell her the animal was likely in hypothermic shock. Not now. Not when the poor reception broke their words into fragments and the cold was gnawing his fingers to the bone.

Before long, they were back in the car, encapsulated in darkness, silent and dazed. Judging by how Geir stared fixedly at the road and the snow grains crashing into the windscreen like asteroids, he was deep in thought; Anders assumed he was casting about for a medical explanation for what had happened. For his part, Anders was struggling with an anxiety that was suddenly raging inside him.