Harbour

He opened his eyes and looked at Elin, who was hunched over, staring at the floor.

'You said they disappeared. That they didn't drown, Henrik and Bjorn. What did you mean?'

'They didn't find them.'

'But they went through a hole in the ice.'

Elin shook her head. 'That's not what I heard.'

'So what did you hear?'

Elin now had the same expression in her eyes as when they arrived at the Shack twenty minutes earlier, when she caught sight of the GB-man wrapped in the plastic sack. She had wanted to run away, but Anders had stopped her. The same expression now. Like an animal surrounded on all sides, with nowhere to run. The only solution was to implode, to disappear into herself.

'It was them, Anders. They had that fucking plastic man on the platform and they were…no older, do you understand? They were just like they were when…when all that happened. They haven't got any older.'

Anders leaned back in his chair. 'What did actually happen? Back then?'

Elin clamped her lips together, blew out her cheeks and looked at him with a pleading expression that might once have worked, but now just looked revolting. She wound the rubber tube around her index finger, let her shoulders drop and said, 'Joel's in prison, did you know that?' Anders didn't reply, and she went on, 'It was some woman…he nearly beat her to death. I don't know why. I don't suppose she'd done anything.'

She snivelled and pulled the tube tighter around her finger. The top of the finger turned dark red like the skin on her face, and she said to the surface of the table, 'I don't know. I don't know anything. I suppose I was evil. Can a person be evil?'

Anders shrugged his shoulders, took a deep breath and exhaled. A fraction of the weight that had been lying in his stomach lifted. He got up and fetched a new carton of wine. 'Would you like some more?'

She nodded and unwound the tube. They drank, or sucked, respectively, in silence. After a while Anders asked, 'What did you hear? About them?'

A trickle of wine ran from the corner of Elin's mouth, and she carefully wiped it away, then said, 'Just that they rode out on to the ice on their moped. And then they were gone.'

'You mean they didn't fall through the ice?'

'No.'

'No hole, no…it hadn't cracked, they…?'

'No. They just disappeared.'

Anders pressed his fist against his lips so hard that there was a taste of metal in his mouth, then he got up and staggered around the kitchen. Elin followed him with her eyes, sucked up some more wine and asked, 'What's the matter?'

Anders shook his head to indicate that he didn't want to talk, grabbed his cigarette packet and frantically smoked a cigarette as he paced back and forth, out into the hallway, into the living room.

What can I do? What shall I do?

There was no guarantee that the same thing that had happened to Henrik and Bjorn had happened to Maja. Perhaps they just…took off. Went somewhere else and started a new life.

And now they've come hack without having aged?

Anders stopped by the window in the living room and looked towards Gavasten's flashing lighthouse far away in the distance. Tears welled up in his eyes.

Without having aged…

He saw Maja's little hands reaching for the baby's bottle with her juice in it, her thin fingers curling around the edges of a Bamse comic as she lay on her back in her bed, reading. Her feet sticking out from under the covers. Six years old.

Anders stared out into the vast darkness with its single, flashing point of light. The wine had gone to his head and the light was swaying, sliding across the sea, and he could see Maja in her red snow- suit. She was glowing in the darkness, and she was walking across the water. The little body, the soft skin, the muscles tucked into her warm suit. A patch of red that was moving closer, but which dissolved when he tried to focus his gaze on it.

He whispered, 'Where are you? Where are you?'

No reply. Just the lapping of the sea against the rocks and the single constantly repeated message from Gavasten, the message of every lighthouse: Here I am, here I am. Be careful, he careful.

Anders stood by the window staring out into the darkness until the draught through the frame made him shiver, and he went back into the kitchen.

Elin was lying across the table, her head resting on her arms. He shook her shoulder and she looked up in confusion. 'You'd better go to bed.' He gestured towards the bedroom. 'Take the big bed.'

Elin disappeared into the bedroom and Anders stayed at the kitchen table, drank more wine and smoked several cigarettes. He stared at the words scratched into the surface of the table.

Carry me.

Anders nodded drunkenly and clasped his hands as if in prayer, whispering, 'I will. I will. But where will I find you? Where are you?'

Perhaps half an hour had passed when Elin came out of the bedroom with the quilt wrapped around her. Her fingers scrabbled nervously at the fabric of the cover. Anders closed one eye so that he could see her more clearly. She looked as wretched as it is physically possible to look.

'Can't you come to bed as well?' she asked. 'I'm so bloody scared.'

Anders went into the bedroom with her and lay down beside her on top of the quilt. One hand came creeping out and found his.

What does it matter? What does it fucking matter?

He took her hand and squeezed it as if to say that everything was OK, that there was nothing to worry about. When he tried to let go, her grip tightened and he didn't pull away. The beam of the lighthouse at North Point swept through the room, flashing across the wall opposite and making the profile of Elin's flattened nose stand out. He lay there looking at it, and when the beam had swept past perhaps ten times, he asked again, 'Why are you doing this? Having all this surgery?'

'I have to.'

Anders blinked and realised he was feeling sleepy. His thoughts were far from lucid, but the suspicion of a theory came into his head, and he asked, 'Is it…a punishment?'

Elin was silent for a long time, and he thought she wasn't going to answer. The lighthouse beam had swept past many times before she finally said, 'I suppose it is,' let go of his hand and rolled over on to her side.

Anders lay there thinking about crime and punishment, the balance that is perhaps built into the world and into the souls of men. He didn't come up with anything, and his reasoning had begun to dissolve into disjointed images when he came to his senses, and heard from Elin's breathing that she was asleep. He got up, undressed and climbed into Maja's bed.

Sleep refused to come. He had probably nodded off for a few minutes in the big bed, and now he was wide- awake. He counted the flashes of the lighthouse and had reached two hundred and twenty; he was just considering switching on the bedside light and reading a Bamse comic when he saw Elin getting out of bed.

He thought she was going to the toilet. But there was something wrong with her movements. She walked towards his bed without seeing him. In only her bra and pants her body was shapeless, swollen, and when the light illuminated her face he was suddenly scared, and cowered as if expecting a blow.

The monster is coming for me.

But she passed him, oblivious, and the fear died away. Elin opened the door with the movements of a sleepwalker and went out of the room. Anders hesitated for a few seconds, then got up, pulled on his shirt and followed her.

She went through the kitchen and into the hallway, but instead of turning off towards the toilet, she carried on towards the front door. When she started fiddling with the catch to open the door, he went up to her.

'Elin, what are you doing?' he said to her back, without getting any reaction. 'You can't go outside like that.'

The lock clicked and she pushed down the handle. He grabbed her shoulder. 'Where are you going?' She stiffened in his grip and answered without turning around, 'Home. I'm going home.'

When the door opened and cold air swept in over his bare feet, he gripped her shoulder more firmly and