Lennart clambered over the sharp rocks, with a hand on the rough stone wall. Susso followed him. A mute, one-eyed companion with a face streaked with dried blood.

On the ground some way into the tunnel, he glimpsed something white; at first, he thought there was someone lying there. Then he realised it was a pile of snow. He went closer and peered into the darkness.

‘He’s not in there.’

A young woman was standing above him, looking down into the ravine. She had on a camouflage baseball cap and a blue thermal underwear top and was holding a rolled-up leather dog lead in her hand.

‘We’re just looking around,’ he muttered.

She tapped the lead lightly against her thigh.

‘Erasmus wants you to come.’

He stared stubbornly at the ground, at the crystallised snow that seemed to be inching its way toward the shade inside the tunnel.

‘What did you do to him?’ he said at length.

‘He’s with Erasmus. There’s nothing here.’

Now the wolf appeared behind the woman. Grey and bony, it stood by the edge, gaping at him, and in the darkness of its maw the white row of teeth in its lower jaw glinted like a sharp smile.

‘Come on already. You’re supposed to come with me.’

‘Where?’

‘To Erasmus.’

‘I have to bring her. She’s a gift.’

That caught the wolf’s interest. It leaned out over the small ravine and watched them. The collar that was just visible among its tufts of fur was made of dark, studded leather.

‘So bring her,’ the woman said. ‘But we have to go now.’

Lennart started walking. Then he turned around and motioned for Susso to follow. The wolf followed them up on the bank, like a guard dog with its eye on a couple of suspicious types. When they climbed out of the trench, the woman was already a silhouette at the top of the mountain; there was no sign of Abraham.

*

He watched the woman while she broke her camp. The wolf padded around them incessantly as if to remind them that it was watching them. One of its eyes had a white around it like a human eye. She packed up her tent and pulled on her backpack, which was so tall it towered above her head when she started walking.

‘Do you have a phone?’

He pulled his phone out of the pocket of his miserable tracksuit bottoms and stared at it as though he didn’t quite know what it was. She held out her hand and he put the phone in it.

‘I’m Ipa,’ she said. ‘Though that’s not my real name, my real name is Ida, but everyone calls me Ipa.’