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bottle on the back seat. Then Tommy put his foot down. He swung the van around the house and out onto the empty village road.
    Henrik looked at his watch—it was almost twelve-thirty.
    “Okay, let’s go to the boathouse,” he said.
    Up by the main highway Tommy stopped obediently at the stop sign, despite the fact that the road was completely clear, then turned south.
    “Turn off here,” said Henrik after ten minutes, when the sign for Enslunda appeared.
    There were no other cars or people around. The gravel track ended at the boathouses, and Tommy backed the van up as close as possible.
    It was as dark as a cave down here by the sea, but up in the north the lighthouse at Eel Point was flashing.
    Henrik opened the van door and heard the rushing of the waves. The sound drifted in from the coal-black sea. It made him think of his grandfather. He had actually died here, six years ago. Algot had been eighty-five years old and suffering from heart disease, but he had still crawled out of bed and taken a cab out here one windy winter’s day. The driver had dropped him off on the road, and soon after that he must have had a major heart attack. But Algot had managed toget to his boathouse, and he had been found dead just by the door.
    “I’ve got an idea,” said Tommy as they were unloading the stolen goods by the beam of the flashlights. “A suggestion. Listen up and tell me what you think.”
    “What?”
    Tommy didn’t reply. He just reached into the van and pulled something out. It looked like a large black woolen cap.
    “We found this in Copenhagen,” he said.
    Then he held the black fabric up to the flashlight, and Henrik could see that it wasn’t a cap. It was the kind of hood robbers wear, a balaclava, with holes for the eyes and the mouth.
    “My suggestion is that we put these on next time,” said Tommy, “and move on from the summer cottages.”
    “Move on? Move on to what?”
    “Houses that aren’t empty.”
    There was silence for a few moments in the shadows by the shore.
    “Sure,” said Freddy.
    Henrik looked at the hood without saying anything. He was thinking.
    “I know … the risks increase,” said Tommy. “But so do the gains. We’ll never find cash or jewelry in the summer cottages … only in houses where people live all year round.” He dropped the hood back in the van and went on: “Of course we need to check with Aleister that everything’s okay. And we need to choose safe houses that are a bit out of the way, with no alarms.”
    “And no dogs,” said Freddy.
    “Correct. No bloody dogs either. And nobody will recognize us with the hoods on,” said Tommy, looking at Henrik. “So what do you think, then?”
    “I don’t know.”
    It wasn’t really about the money—Henrik had a goodtrade these days—it was mostly the excitement he was after. It chased away the tedium of everyday life.
    “Freddy and I will go solo, then,” said Tommy. “It’ll bring in more money, so that’s no problem.”
    Henrik shook his head quickly. There might not be many more outings with Tommy and Freddy, but he wanted to decide for himself when to stop.
    He thought about the ship in the bottle, smashed to pieces on the floor earlier that evening, and said, “I’m in … if we take it easy. And nobody gets hurt.”
    “Who would we hurt?” said Tommy.
    “The house owners.”
    “They’ll be asleep, for fuck’s sake … and if anybody wakes up we’ll just speak English. Then they’ll think we’re foreigners.”
    Henrik nodded, not completely convinced. He pulled the tarpaulin over the stolen items and fastened the padlock on the boathouse door.
    They jumped into the van and set off south across the island, back toward Borgholm.
    After twenty minutes they were in town, where rows of streetlamps drove away the October darkness. But the sidewalks were just as empty as the country roads. Tommy slowed down and pulled in by the apartment block where Henrik lived.
    “Good,” he said. “In a