atlas. From the top of the slope, we could see for miles.
‘Well? Where are they?’ I asked.
‘Currents aren’t something you can see, but they’re everywhere.’
‘Like God, you mean?’
He laughed. ‘That’s different.’
‘Different how?’
‘God is made up.’
‘And currents aren’t?’
‘No.’ He spread out his arms. ‘They’re everywhere.’
‘So how do you know they’re real?’
‘You can feel them.’
I nodded. I thought I understood. ‘If you can feel something, then it’s real.’
‘Something like that. Yes.’
I found the page with the little cross in the sea and traced my finger along the dark-blue lines in the water. Then I leafed through the other maps. The currents travelled halfway across the world, heading north, then arching right across the ocean to North America, down past Brazil, all the way down to Antarctica, and back. Eventually the currents came out not far from where they started. They came back to us.
That’s how Dad would come back, and when the time came, I had to be the first to spot him. I climbed up on my desk and took the binoculars down off the top shelf.
It was a clear day. My gaze flashed back and forth over the waves and I tried to adjust the focus. Something black shot up from beneath the surface and I dropped the binoculars in fright. It was only a stupid shag.
My eyes jumped and jerked across the endless grey. I sighted a sailing boat on the horizon. With the naked eye, the sail was as small as a folded piece of paper, but through the binoculars I could see someone standing under the boom in a red coat. Up front there was someone else in a blue coat. I fiddled with the focus and saw it was the jib in its plastic cover.
All at once I lost sight of the boat, and it took a while for me to find it again. I knew that mustn’t happen when Dad reappeared. When I shouted to Mum to come and see, I mustn’t accidentally move the binoculars and lose sight of him, so I practised on rocks, gulls, and a bit of floating timber. I lowered the binoculars and then tried to relocate what I’d been looking at as quickly as possible. To make it more real, I tried shouting. I was getting better and better at it, though the gulls were tricky cos they moved so fast and I could never really tell if I’d found the right one again.
The door swung open. Mum stood there, staring at me wide-eyed. She was wearing Dad’s nightshirt. I could see a bushy triangle of hair below it.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she replied, breathless.
‘Nothing.’
‘Did you see something?’
‘No.’
‘But you were shouting.’
‘Wasn’t.’
‘But I heard you.’
‘I’m practising.’
‘For what?’
‘For when Dad comes back.’
She grabbed the binoculars, which were hanging from a cord around my neck, peered out to sea in no particular direction, and then let them fall. They slammed hard against my chest. It hurt, but I didn’t let on.
8
A blue boat came motoring toward us, POLICE in big letters on the bow. It had a steel arc at the back with aerials sticking out, a kind of lunchbox on a pole, and two blue lights that weren’t flashing. A searchlight was mounted on the roof of the cabin. Gulls came swooping in, thinking there was grub to be had. I chucked my binoculars on the bed, thundered down the stairs, and ran outside without my coat on.
The boat was already turning alongside the quay. The tyres on the bow scraped and groaned against the concrete. The engine sputtered. A boyish man in a baseball cap stood up front. You could tell right off he wasn’t important cos they only let him hold the rope. Another man came out of the cabin and held up his hand to me. He ducked back inside and came out again wearing a policeman’s cap. He was much more important, I reckoned. A third policeman stayed behind in the cabin.
‘Why didn’t you have the siren and the flashing lights on?’
The policeman with the cap smiled.
‘Because there’s no need.’
They let me take the rope and wrap it around the mooring post. I tied three different knots so they could see they weren’t just dealing with some dopey little kid.
‘That’s tight enough. We’re going to have to untie them in a bit.’ The policeman with the cap stepped over the rail and jumped onto the quay. ‘The Hammermanns?’
‘I’m the son.’
‘Sorry about your father.’
‘He’s called Birk,’ I said. ‘And Hammermann is with two Ns.’
‘Yep, that’s what we have here.’ He held up some papers that were stapled together.
‘Admundsen.’ He held out his hand to me. ‘You can call me Johan. I work for the police in Tramsund.’
‘I’m Mikael.’
Johan was tall and had nicks on his throat from shaving. ‘Clean cut,’ Mum would call it. A couple of dark hairs were sticking out of his nose. ‘So, here we are,’ he said as he looked around. ‘I’ve seen bigger places.’
‘Two houses.’
‘No one else?’
‘There’s a house over on the other side of the island, but it’s been empty for a few years. It used to be Miss Augusta’s.’
Smoke curled hesitantly from Karl’s chimney. He had closed the curtains in his kitchen and living room.
‘Who lives there?’
‘Our neighbour,’ I said.
‘So that must be your house,’ he said, pointing to ours.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Does your neighbour have a name?’
‘Karl.’
‘Karl what?’
‘Just Karl.’
‘And is this Karl at home?’
‘Do you want to talk to him?’
‘Maybe
