IT SNOWED OVERNIGHT.
It had not been the snowstorm the meteorologists had forewarned of, but there had been a fine, white cotton blanket over all of Copenhagen when Kevin Shinji woke up around five o’clock to check and see if there was any news on the case. Now it was seven thirty, and the morning traffic had gradually transformed Esplanaden into an ice rink of brownish gunk. He could just make out the grass through the freshly made tracks on the Citadel’s sledding hills, but it was still there, the snow.
“Should we go outside, Kalaha? Into the snow?”
Kevin looked over at the caramel-brown cocker spaniel who stood eagerly beneath the brass hook where his leash hung. He scratched the dog behind the ear and broke into a song.
“Do you want to build a snowman? Come on, let’s go and play!”
The dog wagged his tail and danced so his little claws scrabbled loudly against the herringbone parquet flooring.
“Well, come on then!” Kevin said patting his thighs. “Come on!”
He clicked the hook to the collar and left the leash lying on the floor while he put on his coat and tied the laces on his Sorel boots, which were so heavy that it was an effort for him to lift his feet. Then he took the cherry gloss from the dresser and dabbed some pomade onto his puckered lips while he continued humming the Disney song. He sucked in his cheeks, raised one made-up eyebrow, and regarded himself in the front hall mirror.
“How do I look?” he asked the dog, who was sitting with its back to him, trying to push its nose into the gap between the door and the frame, eager to get outside.
Kevin picked up the leash from the floor and undid the chain on the door.
Down on the street they had to wait for an unmarked police car that zoomed past with a light flashing in the windshield, and once again Kevin felt incredibly sad. According to the morning news, the police still hadn’t found Lukas, and Kevin couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. If he had reacted right away when he had discovered that Lukas was gone, maybe the police would have had a better chance of finding him. Every minute counted in a case like this, he knew that, and maybe he had wasted enough of them in the staff restroom that it would have made a difference. He hadn’t been paying attention as he sat there scrolling through Facebook, and before he knew it, twenty minutes had passed from when he had marked the boy absent until he had called the parents.
What if he had called right away? Would that have made a difference?
He crossed the street and let Kalaha off the leash in Churchill Park, where the dog ran in circles chasing some imaginary prey. The dog continued contentedly up to the bunker in the middle of the lawn, sniffing tree trunks and dirty, foul-smelling things in the grass, and then caught up with Kevin, who had crossed the bridge to the Citadel and was heading up the gravel path by King’s Gate.
“Come on, pups, let’s get this over with so we can go home again. It’s way too cold out here today.”
Kevin clicked the leash back onto the dog’s collar. He wiped his running eyes, pulled his jacket tighter at the neck, and headed toward the windmill. They would have to make do with a quick walk today, he decided. Instead of their usual walk down to the marina, he would just turn around by the windmill.
Kevin sped up and felt Kalaha resisting. He gave the leash a loving tug, but the dog wouldn’t budge. He looked back and discovered that its attention was focused on a point down by the foot of the embankment.
He followed the dog’s gaze and stiffened.
There, a boy and a girl were standing on the recently frozen surface of the moat and throwing snowballs at each other. Kevin knew that the ice was too thin to be able to move around safely on it. It was covered in snow and might look like it was frozen solid at the water’s edge, but from Kevin’s position on the top of the bank, he could see that in the middle, not far from where the children were, there was a dark circle of slushy brash ice.
“No, no, no! What are they thinking?” he mumbled without taking his eyes off the children. Then he yelled. “Hey, you can’t go out there. Can you come back off the ice?!”
The kids, whom Kevin estimated to be around ten to twelve, didn’t hear his warning. Instead, the boy pulled the girl farther out onto the ice and tickled her so she squealed in delight and flailed her arms around, not hitting anything. She twisted free of the boy’s grasp and squatted down, where she scraped up enough snow in her slightly oversized mittens to make a snowball. She got up and took a couple of steps farther out toward the dark patch as she hunted for ammunition.
“Hey!” Kevin called again, this time louder, putting a hand on his hip. “The ice is too thin. Come back to shore!”
Still no reaction.
Unmoved, the girl threw the snowball at the boy, who ducked and laughed.
Kevin shook his head, annoyed. “Ugh, I can’t believe this!”
He started moving down the slope and looked back over his shoulder.
“Stay!” he ordered the dog, who politely sat down in the snow, only to then immediately lift his rear end back up again off the cold ground.
Kevin took a couple of cautious steps but halfway down the combination of the slope and his heavy boots forced him into a run. He lost his balance, fell, and slid the rest of the way, so the snow flew up into his face and got up underneath his jacket.
He stood up and smoothed out his clothes, embarrassed. Then he rapidly strode over to the edge of the moat.
“You two!” he yelled, stomping furiously. His shame at having fallen came out as hysterical rage.
The kids looked up in fear.
“Come back here! It’s dangerous out there!”
The kids exchanged skeptical looks and the girl started moving back toward the shore, but the boy wasn’t going to let anyone order him around.
He held his head high and said, “You’re not the boss of us!”
“I’m a grownup, so I decide,” Kevin said. “And I say you can’t be out there.”
“But we’re just playing,” the girl said, trying to smooth things over.
“Yes, sweetie, but it’s not safe out there.” Kevin bent down toward her. “If you fall in, you could drown, because the water is very, very cold. You understand that, don’t you?”
The girl nodded and looked down at her green lined rubber boots.
“Um, hello? There’s ice on the water, you know,” the boy yelled, signaling with a patronizing look that he didn’t acknowledge Kevin’s authority.
Kevin stood back up to his full height and walked right up to the water’s edge.
“Yes, that may well be, but a big, fat boy like you, you’re risking your life out there. The ice is way too thin.”
Kevin made a show of scraping his heavy boot over the ice, removing the thin layer of snow like a windshield wiper.
“See for yourself!” He pointed triumphantly down in front of him, so the boy could see that he was right. “And it is super dangerous to …”
Kevin stopped mid-sentence and squinted. He hesitantly bent over and tried to focus on the thing that had caught his attention under the ice.
It was dangerously thin, the ice layer, just as he had said, and he could see little air bubbles underneath. But there was also something else down there …
“What is it?” the boy asked, sensing that something was up. Curious, he came a couple of steps closer to Kevin.
Kevin didn’t respond.
What the heck was that down there?
He squatted down and reached out with his hand to sweep the last of the snowflakes off the surface. He leaned closer to the ice, trying to decode the pattern he could see down in the dark water.
Then his eyes widened.
For a brief instant he was completely immobile. His body screamed one big, silent scream, as he stared at the face under the ice.
The snow crept in under his collar and the edge of his pants when he fell over backward, scooting himself away from the water’s edge with his feet.
“Back!” he screamed at the kids. “Get back!”
This time the boy obeyed without asking questions. He walked over to the girl in quick, stiff strides and took her by the hand.
Kevin turned over onto all fours and crawled away from the shoreline. He stood up and fumbled for his phone in his pocket. A paralyzing fear grabbed him around the neck and squeezed while he waited for the call to go through.
“Police? I need help!” he sobbed almost soundlessly into the phone. “I found him. I found Lukas.”