Chapter 5: The Man Who Counted Boats

Old Teodor Brandt lived in a crooked cottage above the slipway, where he mended nets that no longer caught much. He let Nora in because she brought bread, and because, he said, she walked like someone who had come to ask a real question.

“Your grandfather and I stood on this very wall,” he told her. “Every evening, he counted the boats out and I counted them in. We never once disagreed.” “Until recently?” “Until the trawler,” Teodor said. “A big grey one, no name on the stern. It anchors beyond the shoals after dark. Our boats started going out to look at it. One by one, they stopped coming back to the same harbor.”

He didn’t say they vanished. He said they changed ports, and his face made it plain that he didn’t believe that either. “Elias wrote everything down,” Teodor finished. “Everything. If he left anything, it’s somewhere in that tower. He never trusted a safe.”