‘Your mum told me you’d gone weird. I ran into her in the park, in Gruvstad Park. And she said you were living out here all by yourself and that she didn’t recognise you. And my mind immediately went: drugs. But I’ve since realised your mum suffers from delusions and that it’s probably her fault you started believing in trolls and did cryptozoology and all that stuff. It’s called folie à deux. So I really get that you wanted to make a clean break with her.’

What she said was true. Every word. But she couldn’t understand why she’d blurted it out like that. Unvarnished, no sugar-coating. It was something about the look on Susso’s face. Her pale, drawn face, and all the memories that were surfacing. It had the effect of a mental enema. It all just came out.

Susso seemed to ponder what she had said.

‘She let me move down to Kiruna after Grandpa died. I was fourteen,’ she said and illustrated the journey from Riksgränsen to Kiruna by drawing a line across the tablecloth with her index finger. Not even fifteen, I was. Fourteen.’

‘I thought you wanted to? I remember you being over the moon about not having to live up there.’

‘So what? I was fourteen years old. I didn’t even have a legal right to fuck. You can’t let a child go off on its own like that. Then, after the divorce, she came after me, in a sled full of Grandpa’s photos and all kinds of nonsense, and moved into my building.’

‘I think that was kind of sweet. Her wanting to be close to you.’

‘My mother. She just feels sorry for herself and demands that I do too. It’s all about her, actually. And now, when I’ve moved out here, up she pops again, spinning those apron strings like a lasso.’

She made a whistling sound to mimic a lasso whipping through the air.

‘She thinks that Lennart Brösth guy is going to hurt you. He’s escaped. Did you know that?’

Susso said nothing.

‘Are you afraid he might hurt you?’

‘Do I seem afraid?’

‘It took you long enough to get out of your car. I got the impression you were hanging back in there so you could speed off. If I’d been someone else.’

‘I just didn’t know whose car it was.’

‘Won’t you tell me what happened? You and Tobe were the ones who found those kids, weren’t you? In Sorsele.’

She had dreaded this moment. Aware of the risk that Susso might buck and possibly kick her out. But she didn’t. She just sat there in the bright kitchen, studying her.

‘How come you were the ones? That old man you snapped a picture of, he had nothing to do with the kidnapping. How did you find the children?’

‘They weren’t children. Not any more.’