“Are you ready?” Mads reached in behind her and closed the door to the workshop so that she had to take a step back. They were standing so close she could feel his breath. He handed her a heavy flashlight, smiled shyly, and then stepped over to open the front door.

“I could only find one with batteries in it, so we’ll have to share. And we’d better get started.”

Anette walked out and heard the door slam behind them. The air felt crisp and refreshing.

“Let’s start in the rabbit hutch.” Mads walked toward a little grassy hill right next to the building and unlocked the hutch door. Anette shined the light into what clearly served as storage for the island’s summer café with chairs, tables, and brooms.

“What we’re looking for is food wrappers, a sleeping bag, anything he might have left behind,” Anette instructed. “Maybe he wrote something on the wall. You know the place inside and out—keep an eye out for things you haven’t seen before.”

They proceeded across the island, opened every door and shined the light into every corner, inspected the lighthouse and buoys, but didn’t find any sign that Oscar had been there. They moved on into the darkness of the casement building and made their way down to the cellar level. Their footsteps crunched on the porous concrete, the beam from their flashlight lifting dreamlike images out from the shadows. Mads ducked under an arched doorway.

“Maybe we should throw in the towel, huh?” he suggested. “Like I already said, I’ve been over the island thoroughly several times, both with and without the search and rescue crew. If there had been traces left behind, I would have found them.”

Anette’s light hit some colorful drawings on the curved walls. Elements of blue and red formed a bird snatching a pancake in the air, a fat cat by a pile of fish bones, and a sign that showed the way to the Cell of Death.

“What is this?”

He grinned in the darkness.

“In the 1930s, the island was temporarily turned into an amusement park for Copenhageners. The wall paintings are from that era. Here, pass me the flashlight! Over here one could throw balls through the old ventilation duct. Three balls for twenty-five øre.”

He shined the light over the near-hundred-year-old remnants of carefree fun, and Anette felt a pang of that same hopelessness she sometimes felt when holding her sleeping daughter in her arms. What good is it all for when we’re going to die anyway?

“Isn’t there somewhere we haven’t checked? I mean, there must be a trillion corridors and secret rooms—have you really been over the whole thing?”

“Yes. And I still haven’t found anything.” Mads opened a door and shined the light on the floor, showing the way out and up a flight of stairs into a bigger corridor with higher ceilings.