Lars Bergström drove to the hytta in the dark.
The road into the Glasriket ran between stands of Norway spruce and Scots pine that absorbed all the light from the sky, pressing close on both sides until the headlights found the turning. He had driven this road since he was nineteen, when he had begun as a bit-pojke at the works that his uncle managed. He knew every section of it without thinking: the double bend by the frozen stream, the place where a large granite boulder had broken through the road's edge and been left standing. The straight last kilometre was where the trees thinned slightly and the first lights of the glassworks appeared among them.
He turned into the yard and parked beside the long low building. The yard was empty and dark. The spruce crowns around the perimeter were black against the slightly lighter sky, and the sky was the deep grey of a November evening that has moved past dusk into the first hours of night. It was not yet eight o'clock.
No other vehicles were in the yard. He had expected none. Karlsson and Eriksson both lived in town and both had Fridays off when there was no production scheduled. This evening was an unscheduled session, something he had decided on in the afternoon when the batch was ready and the furnace was holding its temperature well. He had found that he wanted to work rather than go home. The decision had been easy. He had called no one.