John Lindqvist: Harbour

Exactly.

Stop it. Stop it.

Hide and seek was Maja's favourite game. She was good at finding places to hide. Although she could be over-excited and eager in other situations, when she was playing hide and seek she could keep quiet and still for any length of time.

He walked up the stairs with his arms outstretched, stooping like a monkey so that his fingers brushed the edges where the staircase met the wall. In case she'd fallen. In case she was lying in the darkness where he couldn't see her.

In case she'd fallen and banged her head, in case she…

But he felt nothing, saw nothing.

He searched the room at the top of the stairs, found two cupboards that were too narrow for Maja to be able to hide in. Opened them anyway. Inside were rusty, unidentifiable metal parts, bottles with hand-written labels. No Maja.

He went over to the door leading to the upper tower, closed his eyes for a couple of seconds before he went inside.

She's up there now. That's where she is. We'll go home and we'll file this with all those other times she's disappeared for a while and then come back.

Next to the staircase was a system of weights and chains, the cupboard containing the light's mechanism secured with a padlock. He tugged at it and established that it was locked, that Maja couldn't be in there. He went slowly up the stairs, calling her name. No reply. There was a rushing sound in his ears now, and his legs felt weak.

He reached the room containing the reflector. No Maja.

Barely half an hour ago he had photographed her here. Now there was no trace of her. Nothing. He screamed,'Maaaajaaaa! Out you come! This isn't funny any more!'

The sound was absorbed by the narrow room, making the glass vibrate.

He walked all the way around the room, looked out across the ice. Far below he could see Cecilia following the track that had led them here. But the red snowsuit was nowhere to be seen. He was gasping

for air. His tongue was sticking to his palate. This was impossible. This couldn't be happening. Desperately he stared out across the ice in every direction. Where is she? Where is she?

He could just hear the sound of Cecilia's voice shouting the same thing as he had shouted so many times. She got no reply either.

Think, you idiot. Think.

He looked out across the ice again. There was nothing to interrupt his gaze, no cover at all. If there had been holes in the ice, they would have been visible. However good you are at hiding, you still have to have a place to hide.

He stopped. His eyes narrowed. He could hear Maja's voice inside his head.

Daddy, what's that?

He went over to the spot where she had been standing when she asked the question, looked in the direction where she had pointed. Nothing. Only ice and snow.

What was it that she saw?

He strained to try and see something, then realised he was still wearing his rucksack. He pulled out the camera and looked through the viewfinder, zoomed in and panned across the area where she had been pointing. Nothing. Not a hint of another colour, not the slightest nuance in the whiteness, nothing.

His hands were shaking as he dropped the camera back in his rucksack. Out on the ice there was only white, white, but the sky had grown a little darker. It would soon be afternoon, it would be dark in a couple of hours.

He put his hands to his mouth, stared out into the vast emptiness, heard Cecilia's distant cries. Maja was gone. She was gone.

Stop it, stop it.

And yet a part of him knew that it was so.

It was just after two when Simon's telephone rang. He had spent the last hour fiddling with old conjuring props that his hands, stiff with rheumatism, could no longer use. He had considered selling them, but had decided to keep them as a little family treasure.

He answered the telephone on the second ring. He'd hardly managed to say hello before Anders interrupted.

'Hi, it's Anders. Have you seen Maja?'

'But surely she's with you?'

A brief pause. A quivering exhalation at the other end of the line. Simon sensed that he had just extinguished a hope. 'What's wrong?'

'She's gone. I knew she couldn't have got back to the land, but I thought-I don't know, Simon, she's gone. She's gone.'

'Are you at the lighthouse?'

'Yes. And she can't…it's just not…there's nowhere…but she isn't here. Where is she? Where is she?'

Two minutes later Simon had pulled on his outdoor clothes and kicked the moped into life. He rode out on to the ice where Elof was sitting on a folding chair, gazing down into the hole he had made with Simon's drill. He looked up as he heard the moped approaching. Simon braked.

'Elof-have you seen Maja, Anders' daughter?'

'No-what, here? Now?'

'Yes. In the last hour or so.'

'No, I haven't seen a soul. Or a fish, come to that. Why?'

'She's disappeared. Out by the lighthouse.'

Elof turned his head towards the lighthouse, kept his eyes fixed in that direction for a few seconds and scratched his forehead.

'Can't they find her?'

Simon clenched his teeth so tightly that his jaw muscles tensed. This bloody long-winded way of going about things. Elof nodded and started reeling in his line.

'I'd better…get a few people together then. We'll come over.'

Simon thanked him and set off towards the lighthouse. When he turned to look back after fifty metres or so, Elof was still fiddling about with his fishing gear, making sure it was all neatly packed away before he set off. Simon ground his teeth and rode so that the snow whirled up around his wheels as twilight fell.

Five minutes later Simon was out by the lighthouse helping to search, despite the fact that there was nowhere to look. He concentrated on riding around on the ice to check if Elof had been right, that there could be weak spots. He didn't find any.

After another quarter of an hour a number of dots could be seen approaching from Domarö. Four mopeds. Elof and his brother Johan. Mats, who owned the shop, had his wife Ingrid on the back. Bringing up the rear, Margareta Bergwall, one of the few women in the village who had their own moped.

They rode around the lighthouse in ever-widening circles, searching every square metre of the ice. Anders and Cecilia wandered aimlessly around on the lighthouse rock itself, saying nothing. After an hour it was so dark that the moonlight was stronger than the small amount of sunlight that remained.

Simon went up to Anders and Cecilia, who were now sitting by the lighthouse door, head in hands. Far out on the ice the faint lights of the four mopeds were just visible, still circling round and round like satellites of a desolate planet. A police helicopter with a searchlight had arrived to extend the search area.

Simon's joints creaked as he crouched down in front of them. Their eyes were empty. Simon stroked Cecilia's knee.

'What did you say about the tracks?'

Cecilia waved feebly in the direction of Domarö. Her voice was so weak that Simon had to lean forward in order to hear.

'There weren't any.'

'You mean they didn't go off in a different direction?'

'They stopped. As if…as if she'd been lifted up into the sky.'

Anders whimpered. 'This can't be happening. How can this be happening?'

He looked into Simon, right through Simon, as if he were looking for the answer in a knowledge that lay somewhere behind Simon's retina.

Simon got up and went back down on to the ice, sat on the back of his moped and looked around.

If only there were somewhere to start.

A nuance, a shadow, anything that could serve as a loose edge where they could begin tearing away. He pushed his hand down into his jacket pocket and closed it around the matchbox that lay there. Then he placed the fingertips of his other hand on the ice and asked it to melt.