Jeppe saw her eyes light up. After a brief exchange, she hung up and got on her feet.

“That was Search and Rescue. Oscar may have been spotted on the island of Hven.”

“On Hven?”

The Swedish island, located in the strait between Denmark and Sweden, had already been scoured by the search and rescue crews without any results.

“One of the residents claims to have seen both him and the boat as recently as an hour ago. And he wasn’t alone in the boat. I’m going to head out to the island right away.” Anette started for the door.

“How? Are you going to swim? Shouldn’t I come with you?” Jeppe smiled at his partner, who was bouncing from foot to foot in the doorway, flushed and eager.

“No, that’s fine. Let’s spread the work. You deal with Henrik, I’ll sail to Hven with Search and Rescue, and we’ll meet up later.” She waved and vanished out the door.

Jeppe yelled after her, “Hey, Werner! Don’t you want to bring your jacket?”

CHAPTER 9

A scent of fermenting seaweed hit just as Kyrkbacken’s white lighthouse came into view. Nesting swans were tucked in among the concrete and boulders of the little harbor, and behind them towered a one-hundred-foot-tall grass-covered slope with a whitewashed church on top. The dimensions were Danish—small and quaint—but the atmosphere typically Swedish all the same. Maybe it was the string of small black and red wooden buildings with shingle roofs lining the pier, maybe it was the signs in front of the kiosk, advertising hot dogs with crab salad. Anette tasted her childhood memories of blueberry-picking outings on family trips to Sweden and remembered the giddy feeling of running zigzag through the heather so the adders wouldn’t bite her.

The keel of the aluminum boat slid through the surprisingly full marina, where sailboats and motorboats were moored close. Standing at the helm, the crewman maneuvered them safely into an available slip at the innermost end of the marina and deftly tied the fore and aft lines with loops of strong rope.

“I’ll just go find the witness.” Anette hopped onto the wharf and moved through throngs of children eating ice cream, heading toward the harbormaster’s office. Inside, a man in a faded blue T-shirt stood behind the counter watching soccer on his phone.

“Copenhagen Police,” Anette said, showing him her laminated ID badge. “We got a call from a witness here who—”

“Building next door,” the man said, looking up only briefly from his phone screen. “Nicklas, he’s out back.”

Anette appreciated the Swede’s nearly accent-free Danish, sure to make day tourists from Copenhagen feel right at home on the island.

“Ah, thanks.”

“No problem.”