The Boy in the Suitcase

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  HE CALLED THE Dane right away. Was fed a truckload of excuses about delays and honest intentions. Could he believe the man? He didn’t know. Anger was still guttering in his stomach as he walked up the steps to the street, past three Russians engaged in a blatant dope deal. Morons. Couldn’t they be just a little discrete? The biggest one, obviously meant to be the muscle, cast a nervous eye over Jučas. It improved his mood a fraction. Look your fill, he thought. I’m bigger than you are, pal.

  Outside in the street, heat surged from the pavement and the sun-warmed bricks. The leather jacket had been a bad choice, but he’d thought Denmark would be colder, and now he didn’t really feel he could take it off. He sweated a lot, people did when they were in good shape, and he didn’t like Barbara to see him with huge underarm stains on his shirt.

  “Andrius?” Barbara called to him through the open car window. “Is it okay?”

  He forced himself to take long deep breaths. Couldn’t quite produce a smile, but he did manage to ease his grip on the car keys.

  “Yes.” Deep breaths. Easy now. “He says it’s a mistake. He is on his way home, and when he gets here, we will get our money.”

  “That’s good.” Barbara was watching him with her head cocked slightly to one side. For some reason, it made her neck look even longer. More elegant. She was the only one who ever called him by his given name. Everyone else just called him Jučas. He didn’t event think of himself as Andrius, and hadn’t since his Granny died and he was sent to Vilnius to live with his father because no one had any idea what else might be done with him. His father rarely called him by name at all, it had been either “boy” or “brat,” according to his mood. Later, in the orphanage, everyone had gone by their last name.

  He let himself drop into the front seat next to her, wincing at the contact with the sun-scorched fabric. The Mitsubishi had a certain lived-in appearance after two days on the road. Paper mugs and sandwich bags from German Raststellen littered the floor, and the food-smeared car seat the boy had been strapped into gave off a sour odor of pee. He really ought to dismantle it and sling it in the back of the van, but right now the fug was too much for him and he didn’t want to spend another minute in the car.

  “Are you hungry?” he said. “We might as well do something while we wait for him to call.”

  Suddenly, Barbara’s face came alive.

  “Tivoli!” she said. “Could we go there? I was looking through the fence earlier, and it all looks so beautiful.”

  He had not the slightest wish to endure the wait surrounded by screaming toddlers, cotton candy, and balloon vendors, but the surge of expectation in her eyes melted his resolve. They paid a day’s wage to get in, and ate a pizza that only set him back about seven or eight times as much as it would have cost him in Vilnius. But Barbara was loving every minute. She smiled more than she had done at any time during the long tense drive here, and his nerves began to settle. Perhaps everything would still be all right in the end. It might be just a misunderstanding. After all, if the Dane was stuck in a plane and couldn’t do much, it wasn’t surprising somebody screwed up. He would pay. He had said so. And if he didn’t, Jučas knew where he lived.

  “There’s a bit of oregano on your chin,” said Barbara. “No, let me… .” She blotted the corner of his mouth gently with the red-and-white-checkered napkin, smiling into his eyes so that the rage curled up inside him and went to sleep.

  Later they walked around a ridiculous little lake in which someone had placed a disproportionate schooner, so large it would hardly be able to turn if anyone had the misguided idea to try to actually sail it. Barbara put two fat Danish coins into an automat and was rewarded with a small bag of fish fodder. As soon as they heard the click from the automat, the fish in the lake surged forward so that the water literally boiled with their huge writhing bodies. The sight turned his gut, he wasn’t quite sure why. At that moment, the phone finally rang.

  “I just got home,” said the man at the other end. “There is no sign of the goods or the money. Nor of the person I sent to do the trade.”

  Bitch. Swine.

  “I delivered,” he said, with as much calm as he could muster. “Now you must pay.”

  The man was silent for a while. Then he said:

  “When you give me what I paid for, you will get the rest of the money.”

  Jučas was struggling both with his temper and his English vocabulary. Only Barbara’s hand on his arm made it possible to win at least one of those battles.

  “You sent the woman. If she don’t do what you say, is not my problem.”

  Again, the silence. Even longer, this time.

  “She took a company car,” the Dane finally said. “We have GPS tracking on all of them. If I tell you where she is, will you go and get her? She must have either the money or the goods, or both. Or she must know where they are. Bring her back to me.”

  “Is not what we agreed,” said Jučas through clenched teeth. He wanted his money, and he wanted to get out of this stinking, stupidly expensive country where even the fish were fat.

  “Ten thousand dollars extra,” said the man promptly. “To get the money and the goods, and bring her back.”

  The screaming from the roller coaster was getting on his nerves. But ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars.

  “Okay,” he said. “You tell me where she is.”

  NINA WRAPPED THE blanket more tightly about the boy, picked him up, and left Allan’s office with the skinny body in her arms. He felt feather light compared to Anton, but of course Anton was no longer a toddler. He went to school. He was a big boy now.

  She was careful to make sure that the lock on the main door of the practice clicked behind her. The parking lot, thank God, was still empty. She levered the body carefully into the back seat and closed the door with a soft push. It was 6:44.

  “What do I do now?” she muttered, then caught herself with some irritation. Talking to herself now. Not cool. She hadn’t done that much since she started secondary school and had had to leave that and other childish habits behind if she wanted to survive socially. But sometimes, under pressure, it came back. It seemed to help her concentrate.

  She started the car and let it roll down the graveled drive. Her hands were shaking again. She noted it with the same detached interest she would have awarded a rare bird at her bird feeder. She had to lock her fingers around the rim of the steering wheel to stop the annoying quiver that spread through her arms, then her palms to the tips of her fingers.

  Karin had not returned any of her calls. Nor had Morten. Nor had there been any sign of police or other authorities. The last would of course have been unlikely, but the sense of being hunted would not leave her. It just didn’t seem right that she could be driving around for hours with a three-year-old boy who wasn’t hers. Somebody had to be missing him—someone other than the furious man at the railway station.

  Nina turned up the volume of the car radio to be ready to catch the news. It was 6:46 according to the display on her mobile. She slowed slightly and regained enough control of her fingers to tap out Karin’s number once more.

  After seven long rings, there was, finally, an answer.

  “Hello?”

  Karin’s voice sounded both hopeful and reserved.

  Nina took a deep breath. It would be so easy for Karin to cut the connection if Nina came on too strongly. She had to be careful. Had to coax Karin into giving the answers she needed.

  “Karin.”

  Nina softened her tone persuasively. Like she did when Anton was in the grip of one of his nightmares—gently, gently.

  “Karin, it’s Nina. I have the boy with me here in the car. He is okay.”

  Silence. Then a long hiccoughing breath and a heavy sigh. Karin was battling to control her voice.

  “Oh, thank God. Nina, thank you so much for getting him out of there.”

  Another long silence. That seemed to be it. Nina cursed inwardly. Thank you for getting him out of there? How
about an explanation? How about a bit of help? Something, anything, that would tell her what to do with her three-year-old burden.

  “I have to know something about him,” she said. “I have no idea what to do with him. Do you want me to take him to the police? Do you know where he comes from?”

  Nina heard the rising shrillness in her own voice, and for a moment she was afraid Karin had gotten spooked and hung up. Then she heard a faint, wet snuffling, as if from a cornered and wounded animal.

  “I really don’t know, Nina. I thought you had contacts … that your network would be able to help him.”

  Nina sighed.

  “I have no one,” she said, and felt the truth of it for the first time, at the very pit of her stomach. “Look, we need to talk properly. Where can I find you?”

  Karin hesitated, and Nina could practically hear the doubts and fears ripping away at her.

  “I’m in a summer cottage.”

  “Where?”

  Nina waited tensely, while Karin fumbled with her phone.

  “I don’t want to be involved in this. I can’t. It wasn’t supposed to be a child.”

  The last word was nearly a wail, a high-pitched hysterical whimper, and Karin could no longer control the violent sobbing that Nina guessed had been coming even before she answered the phone.

  “Where is the cottage?” she repeated, striving for a note of calm authority. “Tell me where you are, Karin, and I will come to you. It will be all right.”

  Karin’s breath came in harsh bursts, and her silence this time was so long that Nina might have ended the call, had she not been so desperate herself.

  “Tisvildeleje.”

  Karin’s voice was so faint that Nina could barely make it out.

  “I’ve borrowed the cottage from my cousin, and it’s… .” There was a crackling sound as Karin fumbled for something, possibly a piece of paper. “Twelve Skovbakken. It’s at the very end, the last house before the woods.”

  There was a click, and this time, she really was gone.

  Nina turned to the sleeping child with the first real smile she had been able to manage during the six hours that had passed since she opened a suitcase and found a boy.

  “I’ve got it covered,” she said, feeling her hands unclench on their own. “Now we will go find out what has happened, and then I will see to it that you get back home where you belong.”

  SIGITA WAS DESPERATE enough to ask him to come.

  Darius’s mobile phone voice became ill at ease.

  “Sigita… . You know I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “My job.”

  He worked for a construction company in Germany. Not as an engineer, as he sometimes told people, but as a plumber.

  “This is Mikas, Darius.”

  “Yes. But….”

  She ought to have known. When had she ever been able to count on him? But Mikas … she hadn’t imagined that Mikas meant so little. Darius liked the boy and often played with him for anything up to an hour at a time. And Mikas worshiped his father, who would always appear at the oddest times, carrying armfuls of cellophanewrapped toys.

  “Are other people’s toilets really more important to you than your son?” she choked.

  “Sigita… .”

  She hung up. She knew it wasn’t his job that was stopping him. If it had been something he really wanted to do, like a football match or something, then he called in sick without worrying about it. He was not a career chaser. His job didn’t mean all that much to him.

  It wasn’t because he couldn’t, it was because he wouldn’t. He wanted to stay in his new life, probably with a new girlfriend, too, and had no wish to be drawn back to Vilnius and Tauragė , to Sigita and her tiresome demands.

  Pling-pliiing. The mobile gave off its tinny “Message received” signal. The text message was from Darius.

  Call me when Mikas comes home, it said.

  As though Mikas were a runaway dog who would appear on her doorstep when it became sufficiently hungry.

  “Are you all right, madam?”

  She looked up. An elderly gentleman in a gray suit stood watching her from a few yards away, supported by a black cane.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s … it was just … it’s over now.”

  He helped her to her feet and began to collect her scattered belongings.

  “It’s important to drink enough when it is this hot,” he said kindly. “Or so my doctor is always telling me. I often forget.”

  “Yes. Yes, you are quite right.”

  He tipped his pale gray Fedora to her as he left.

  “Good afternoon, madam.”

  SHE WENT BACK to the police station in Birželio 23-iosios gatvė. Sergeant Gužas’s face took on a look of resignation when he saw her in his doorway.

  “Mrs. Ramoškienė. I thought you were going home.”

  “It’s not him. Darius didn’t take him” she said. “Don’t you understand that my son has been kidnapped?”

  Resignation gave way to tiredness.

  “Mrs. Ramoškienė, a few hours ago you claimed that your husband had taken the boy. Am I to understand that this isn’t so?”

  “Yes! That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “But your neighbor saw—”

  “She must have made a mistake. She’s old, her eyesight is not very good. And I think she has only met Darius once.”

  Click, click, click. The point of his ballpen appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared. A habit of his, it seemed, when he was trying to think. Sigita could barely stand it. She wanted to tear the pen away from him, and only the need to appear rational and sober held her back. He simply has to believe me, she thought. He has to.

  Finally, he reached for a notepad.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Ramoškienė. Give me your description of the chain of events once more.”

  She complied, doing the best she could to reconstruct what had happened. Described to him the tall, fair-haired woman in the cotton coat. Told him about the chocolate. But then she reached the gap. The black hole in her mind into which nearly twenty-four hours had disappeared.

  “What’s the name of the kindergarden?”

  “Voveraitė. He is in the Chipmunk Group.”

  “Is there a phone number?”

  She gave it to him. Soon he was talking to the director herself, Mrs. Šaraškienė. The compact ladylike form of the director popped into Sigita’s mind’s eye. Always immaculately dressed in jacket and matching skirt, nylons and low-heeled black pumps, as if she were on her way to a board meeting in a company of some size. She was about fifty, with short chestnut hair and a natural air of authority that instantly silenced even the wildest games whenever she entered one of the homerooms. Sigita was just a little bit afraid of her.

  Gužas explained his errand; a child, Mikas Ramoška, had been reported missing. A woman involved in the matter might have made contact with the boy in the kindergarten playgrounds. Was it possible that one or more of the staff had observed this woman, or any other stranger, talking to the children or watching them, perhaps?

  “The chocolate,” said Sigita. “Don’t forget the chocolate.”

  He nodded absently while listening to Mrs. Šaraškienė’s reply.

  Then he asked directly, apparently completely unaffected by Sigita’s presence: “What is your impression of Mikas Ramoška’s mother?”

  Sigita felt heat rush into her face. The nerve! What would Mrs. Šaraškienė think!

  “Thank you. I would like to talk to the group leader in question. Would you ask her to call this number as soon as possible? Thank you very much for your time.”

  He hung up.

  “It seems one of the staff has in fact noticed your fair-haired woman and has told her not to give the children sweets. But Mikas wasn’t the only child she contacted.”

  “Maybe not. But Mikas is the only one who is gone!”

  “Yes.”

  She wasn’t going to ask. She didn’t want
to ask. But she blurted it out anyway:

  “What did she say about me?”

  The tiniest of smiles curled his upper lip, the first sign of humanity she had observed in him.

  “That you were a good mother and a responsible person. One of those who pay. She appreciates your commitment.”

  There was no fee as such to be paid for Mikas’s basic care, but the kindergarten had an optional program funded by parents who paid a certain sum into the program’s account every month. The money was used for maintenance and improvements, and for cultural activities with the children—things for which the city did not provide a budget. It had been a sacrifice, especially the first year after she had bought the flat, but to Sigita it was important to be “one of those who pay.”

  “Do you believe me now?”

  He considered her for a while. Click, click went the damned pen.

  “Your statement has been corroborated on certain points,” he said, seeming almost reluctant.

  “Then will you please do something!” She could no longer contain her despair. “You have to find him!”

  Click, click, click.

  “I’ve taken your statement now, and we will of course send out a missing persons bulletin on Mikas,” he said. “We’ll look for him.”

  At first Sigita felt a vast relief at being believed. She opened her purse and pushed the picture of Mikas out of its plastic pocket. The picture had been taken at the kindergarten’s midsummer celebration, and Mikas was in his Sunday best, with a garland of oak leaves clutched in his hands and an uncertain smile on his face. He had objected to wearing the garland in his hair because he didn’t want to look like a girl, she recalled.