The telephone rings, monotone and lifeless. I give up. Hopelessness is a numbness that emanates from your gut. Then someone picks up the phone.

"Yes?"

The voice is close, crystal-clear, but groggy with sleep. It must be about five in the morning in Denmark.

I envision her the way she looked in the photos in Ravn's wallet. White-haired, wearing a wool suit. "May I speak to Ravn?"

As she puts down the receiver, a child starts crying nearby. It must be sleeping in their bedroom. Maybe between them in the bed.

"Ravn here."

"It's me," I say.

"You'll have to call some other time."

Because his voice comes through so clearly, the rejection is quite clear, as well. I don't know what has happened. But now I've gone too far to wonder about it.

"It's too late," I say. "I want to talk about what happened on the roofs. In Singapore and in Christianshavn." He doesn't reply. But he's still listening.

It's impossible to visualize him as a private citizen. What does he wear to bed? How does he look right now, in bed next to his grandchild?

"Let's imagine that it's late afternoon," I say. "The boy is walking home alone from kindergarten. He's the only child who isn't picked up every day. He's walking along the way children do, wandering and skipping, with his eyes on the ground. Only aware of his immediate surroundings. The same way your grandchildren walk, Ravn."

I can hear him breathing as clearly as if he were in the room with us.

The mechanic has pulled the headset away from one ear so that he can follow the conversation and also listen for sounds in the corridor.

"That's why he doesn't see the man until he's right next to him. He was waiting in the car. The buildings have no windows facing the parking lot. It's almost dark. It's the middle of December. The man grabs him. Not by the arm, but by his clothes. By the bib of his rain overalls, which won't tear, and where he won't leave any marks. But he miscalculates. The boy recognizes him at once. They've spent weeks together. But that's not why he remembers him. He remembers him from one of the last days. The day when he saw his father die. Maybe he saw the man force the divers back into the water after one had died. At a time when they didn't know what was wrong. Or maybe it was the experience of death itself which the boy has come to associate with the man. At any rate, he doesn't see a human being in front of him. He sees a threat. The way only children can experience threats. It's overwhelming. At first he freezes up. All children freeze up."

"You're guessing," says Ravn.

The signal is getting worse. For a moment I almost lose my train of thought.

"The child beside you would freeze up, too," I say. "That's where the man miscalculates. The boy looks so small. He bends down toward him. He's like a doll. The man is going to lift him onto the seat. For a moment he lets go. And that's his mistake. He hadn't anticipated the boy's vitality. Suddenly the boy takes off. The ground is covered with packed snow. That's why the man doesn't catch him. He doesn't have the boy's training in running on snow."

Now they're paying attention, the man next to me and the man an infinite distance away. It's not so much me they're listening to. It's fear that binds us, the child's fear we all carry within us.

"The boy runs along the building. The man runs out into the street and blocks his way. The boy reaches the warehouses. The man comes after him, slipping and stumbling. But calmer now. There's no escape. The boy turns toward him. The man relaxes. The boy looks around. He has stopped thinking. But inside him an engine is spinning that will keep on going until all his strength is used up. It's this engine that the man hasn't counted on. Suddenly the boy is on his way up the scaffolding. The man follows. The boy knows what's behind him. It's terror personified. He knows that he's going to die. This feeling is stronger than his fear of heights. He continues up to the roof. And then he runs forward. The man stops. Maybe he wanted this to happen from the very beginning, maybe the idea first occurs to him now, maybe up here he first becomes aware of his own intentions. The possibility of eliminating a threat. To avoid having the boy ever tell anyone what he saw in a cave on a glacier somewhere in Davis Strait."

"You're guessing." Ravn's voice is a whisper.

"The man moves toward the boy. Watches him running along the edge, looking for a way down. Children can't grasp the whole picture, the boy probably doesn't even know where he is; he only sees what's a few yards ahead. At the edge of the snow the man stops. He doesn't want to leave any tracks. He's hoping it won't be necessary."

The signal disappears. The mechanic twists the dials. It comes back.

"The man waits. There seems to be an enormous amount of self-confidence in this waiting. As if he knows that his presence is enough. His silhouette against the sky. Like in Singapore. Was it enough there, Ravn? Or did he push her because she was older and more rational than the boy? Because he could come right up to her? Because there wasn't any snow to leave tracks in?"

The sound is so clear that I think it's coming from the mechanic, but he is silent.

It's there again, tormented. It's coming from Ravn.

I speak softly to him. "Look at the child, Ravn, the child next to you. That's the child on the roof. Tørk is behind him, a silhouette. He could stop the boy, but he doesn't, he drives him onward, like he did to the woman. Who was she? What did he do?"

He disappears and then returns, far away. "I have to know! Her name was Ravn!"

The mechanic puts a hand over my mouth. His palm is cold as ice. I must have screamed.

"… was…" Ravn's voice fades out.

I grab the apparatus and shake it. The mechanic pulls me away. At that moment Ravn's voice comes back, clear, distinct, stripped of all emotion.

"My daughter. He pushed her. Are you satisfied, Miss Smilla?"

"The photo," I say, "did she take that photo of Tørk? Was she with the police?"

He says something. At the same time his voice is carried away through a tunnel of noise and vanishes. The connection is broken.

The mechanic turns off the light in the ceiling. In the glow from the instrument panels his face looks pale and tense. Slowly he takes off the headset and hangs it back in place. I'm sweating as if I'd been running.

"Testimony from a child wouldn't be valid in court, would it?"

"It would have weighed heavily with the jurors," I say. He doesn't continue this line of thought; he doesn't have to. We're both thinking the same thing. There was something about Isaiah's eyes, a wisdom beyond his years, beyond anyone's yea"rs, a deep insight into the adult world. Tørk was familiar with that look. There are other kinds of accusations than the ones presented in court.

"What about the door?" I say.

He puts his hand on the steel frame and carefully bends it back into place.

He accompanies me along the external stairway. At the sick bay he pauses for a moment in the doorway.

I turn away. The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind.

He spreads out his fingers and looks down at his hands. "After we're done," he says, "I'm going to kill him."

Nothing could induce me to spend the night on an examination table-even such a short and bleak night as the one ahead of me. I pull off the sheets, remove the cushions from the chairs, and lie down right in front of the door. If anyone tries to come in, they'll have to push me aside first.

No one tries to get in. I have a few hours of deep sleep; then the hull scrapes against something and the deck is full of footsteps. I think I hear the rattling of the anchor, too; maybe the Kronos has put in at the edge of the ice. I'm too tired to get up. Somewhere close by, out in the darkness, lies Gela Alta.