Harbour Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.
    â€˜Hi, it’s Anders. Have you seen Maja?’
    â€˜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?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Are you at the lighthouse?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Elof—have you seen Maja, Anders’ daughter?’
    â€˜No—what, here? Now?’
    â€˜Yes. In the last hour or so.’
    â€˜No, I haven’t seen a soul. Or a fish, come to that. Why?’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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