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weak coffee. Cleared my throat: ‘Excuse me, I shan’t keep pestering you, but could you help me with “trawlerman”, nine letters? The first two letters are “f” and “i”.’
    â€˜Fisherman,’ he said without looking up. But I saw him start as he heard himself say the word.
    â€˜One last word,’ I said. ‘Six letters, “tool”, starts with an “h”. Two “m”s in the middle.’
    He pushed the newspaper away and looked at me. His Adam’s apple was bobbing up and down on his unshaven neck.
    I smiled apologetically. ‘I’m afraid the deadline for the crossword expires this afternoon. I’ve got to go off and sort something out, but I’ll be back in exactly two hours’ time. I’ll leave the paper here so you can fill in the answers, if you can sort it out.’
    I went down to the harbour, smoked a bit and did some thinking. I didn’t know what was going on, why he hadn’t managed to pay off the debt. And I didn’t want to know either, I didn’t want his desperate face fixed on my retina. Not another one. The pale little face on the pillow bearing the washed-out logo of UllevÃ¥l Hospital was enough.
    When I got back Kosmos looked absorbed in his crossword, but when I opened my newspaper there was an envelope there.
    The Fisherman later told me he’d paid in full, and said I was good at my job. But what help was that? I’d talked to the doctors. The prognosis wasn’t good. She wouldn’t see out the year if she didn’t get treatment. So I went to the Fisherman and explained the situation. Said I needed a loan.
    â€˜Sorry, Jon, no can do. You’re an employee, aren’t you?’
    I nodded. What the hell was I going to do?
    â€˜But maybe we’ve got a solution to your problem after all. I need someone fixing.’
    Oh, shit.
    It had to happen sooner or later, but I’d been hoping for later. After I’d saved up what I needed and handed in my notice.
    â€˜I heard your favourite expression is that the first time is always the worst,’ he said. ‘So you’re lucky. That it isn’t the first time, I mean.’
    I tried to smile. He couldn’t know, after all. That I hadn’t killed Toralf. That the pistol registered in my name was a small-calibre thing from a sports club that Toralf needed for a job, but hadn’t been able to buy for himself because he had a record as an East German dissenter. So I – who’d never been arrested, not for my little hash business or anything else – had bought it for him in return for a small fee. I hadn’t seen it since. And I’d given up on the money I’d tried to get back because she needed it for treatment. Toralf, the depressed, drugged-up bastard, had done exactly what it looked like he’d done: he’d shot himself.
    I had no principles. No money. But neither did I have blood on my hands.
    Not yet.
    A bonus of thirty thousand.
    That was a start. A good start.
    I jerked awake. The midge bites were weeping and sticking to the wool blanket. But that wasn’t what had woken me. A plaintive howl had broken the silence out on the plateau.
    A wolf? I thought they howled at the moon, in winter, not at the fucking sun that just hung there in the burned-out, colourless sky. It was probably a dog: the Sámi used them to herd reindeer, didn’t they?
    I rolled over in the narrow bunk, forgetting my bad shoulder, swore, and rolled back. The howl sounded as though it was a long way away, but who knows? In the summer sound is supposed to move more slowly, doesn’t carry as far as it does in winter. Maybe the beast was just round the corner.
    I closed my eyes, but knew I wasn’t going to get back to sleep.
    So I got up, grabbed the binoculars and went over to one of the windows and scanned the horizon.
    Nothing.
    Just tick-tock, tick-tock.

CHAPTER 4
    KNUT BROUGHT SOME shiny,