Mads did the morning rounds. He started at the cannon emplacement, where a goose was nesting on top of the old ammunition depot. He knew the eggs would hatch soon. The geese always incubated for twenty-five days. If one of the eggs was late, it risked being left behind for the crows’ hungry beaks. Only yesterday he had tried to save a gosling from another nest; it had been lying on its back, unable to roll over. But the attempt hadn’t been successful. So now it was lying in his fridge instead, waiting to be preserved.

On the other side of the island, he checked the sunken barge off the shore, where a little colony of seals had been living these past weeks. Yesterday they were suddenly gone, probably because they had eaten all the fish in the water and had moved on. He missed their big-eyed doggy heads on the surface. Six or seven years ago, he remembered, someone out in a sea kayak had thought he saw a seal on the breakwater by the sunken barge, but when he brought his kayak closer, it had turned out to be a body. A waiter from a restaurant on one of the forts who had run afoul of some gang members, Mads recalled.

Seals and dead people, rare birds and paddlers—if he waited long enough, the whole world came by Trekroner.

Mads crossed the fort’s upper level, past the lighthouse and back to the southern flank. Here he had found a spot where he could stand against the casemate building in the lee of the wind and the noise from the city and see all the way from Fort Middelgrund on the left, past the offshore wind farm, and over to Refshaleøen and the incineration plant on the right. There was a special energy here that encouraged peace and contemplation. Mads was a carpenter by training and had always considered himself to be a pragmatic northern Jutlander with his hands screwed on right. He liked the outdoors, fishing, and hunting, a practical man without too many frills. Until his life had come crashing down, and—with the help of one of his old hunting buddies—he ended up here.

During this last year, he had developed a sort of sixth sense. He didn’t know what else to call it. A connection to the other side, perhaps. When he stood here facing the sea, that connection blared loud as a car alarm and couldn’t be ignored. The dead child spoke to him in a clear voice. Without blame, without fear.

He closed his eyes and breathed in the sea air. Kelp, salt, wind, rain. Flying sand grains that prickled against his cheek and lyme grass that whispered about the transitory nature of everything.

It wasn’t my fault, he told himself, but deep down inside he knew that was a lie.