The Boy in the Suitcase

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  He hunched over her, and then slid out. Lay there completely spent for a while, as the buzzing of the insects slowly returned, and the sound of the train on the railway bridge in the distance, and the rustle of the reeds in the wind. For an instant, a dazzling blue dragonfly hovered over his shoulder before zooming away.

  Was that it? thought Sigita. Was that really all?

  He rolled off her. He hadn’t taken off any of his clothes; only his fly was open. She, on the other hand, was suddenly conscious of how inelegant she looked, with her knickers round one ankle and her skirt rucked up so that her entire pelvis was exposed. Somehow, he had also managed to push up both her blouse and her bra to get at her breasts, something she had barely noticed because so much else was going on. She hastily tugged her skirt into place and wanted to pull down her blouse also.

  But this was when he did something that none of the other boys would have done. The thing that was just Darius. He pushed her gently back into the mud. He kissed her, a deep wet kiss that went on till she could hardly breathe. And then he touched her, outside and in, so that she gasped in surprise.

  “Darius… .”

  “Shhh,” he said. “Wait.”

  He used only his hands and his mouth. And he kept at it till the light and the sounds went away. Till she shuddered from head to foot. Till something wild and unfamiliar throbbed inside her, over and over, and she knew for certain that she was no longer any kind of virgin, and never would be again.

  She felt no guilt at that moment, nor did she think of shame, or sin, or consequences. That came later.

  AUGUST TWILIGHT HAD begun to gather over the bay when Nina turned off the former fishing village’s main street and continued up the sparsely paved road that led through the neardeserted holiday cottage park. Tisvildeleje these days was populated mainly by commuters and tourists, and now that the school holidays had ended, most of the visitors had left. There were still a few cars with German license plates outside the biggest and most luxurious of the houses, and a couple of children whacked away at a tetherball, the pole wobbling ominously with each swing. Except for that, the lawns lay deserted and scorched from the unremitting sun of this late, hot summer. Last year had been rainy and dull, but this year the sky had seemed permanently blue since May, and by now leaves, shrubbery, and grass had long since lost any vestige of lushness and formed a dry landscape of burnt yellows and dusty greens. Nina checked her watch. Exactly 8:20.

  She parked in the lane by the mailbox, behind a blue VW Golf with a streamer in the rear window. M-Tech, it said. Solutions That Work. Was it Karin’s? It didn’t seem like the kind of car she would choose, but Nina could see no other, more likely vehicle. She peered up the long winding drive. The cottage looked to be quite old; it was painted a deep dark red, with white frames and tiny romantic window panes from before the age of double glazing. It was set some distance from its neighbors—the last one before the woods, just as Karin had said.

  Nina jammed her keys and her mobile phone into the pockets of her jeans and got out. The boy was watching her covertly, beneath half-closed eyelids. She opened the rear door and touched his wrist gently. He felt warm now, but not fevered, she noted with professional routine. There was no doubt that he was fully conscious, even though he was lying very still, the now somewhat greasy blanket wound around his legs.

  He is trying to disappear, thought Nina. Like the baby hare she had once come across as a child, in the back garden, where it had been desperately trying to hide. When she had picked it up, it hadn’t struggled or resisted. It just crouched in her hands, featherlight and downy. In her six-year-old ignorance, she had thought it liked her. But when she put it on her bed, it had already had the same distant look as the boy in the back seat, and later that night, she found it limp and dead in the shoe box she had provided for it.

  Was the boy giving up in the same way?

  Nina shivered, and not entirely because the day had finally begun to cool. She couldn’t leave the boy in the car, she decided. He was awake, and even though he didn’t know her from Adam, coming with her had to be better than the alternative—being left locked in a car in the gathering darkness, not knowing where or why.

  He hadn’t moved a muscle, but as she reached for him now, he suddenly scooted back with such abruptness that the blanket slipped off him and dropped onto the floor of the car.

  Nina hesitated.

  She didn’t want the child to be afraid of her. She didn’t like that he looked at her as if she might be a monster little different from the man in the railway station, but she had no idea how to win his trust.

  “What on earth have they done to you?” she whispered, sinking down onto her haunches and trying to catch his eyes. “Where do you come from, sweetie?”

  The boy made no answer, only curled himself into a tighter ball at the opposite end of the seat, as far away from her as he could get. She could see a dark stain on the seat where the blanket had slipped, and the boy smelled unpleasantly of body sweat and old urine. Nina felt a surge of tenderness, just as she did when Anton or Ida had a temperature or threw up, back home in the Østerbro flat. She would bring them crushed ice, berry juice, and damp cloths; the urge to be good to them and make them well again was so overpowering it filled her entire being. So simple to be a good mother then, she thought. It was everything else that got to be so complicated.

  She pointed to the house, then put her hands togther like a statue of a praying saint and rested her cheek against them in a parody of sleep.

  “First, we’ll get you something to eat,” she said, trying to smile. “And then we’ll find a bed for you to sleep in. And after that, we’ll see.”

  The boy made no sound, but she had to have done something right after all, because he uncurled and slid an inch or two in her direction.

  “Good boy,” she said. She remembered an article she had read a few years back about children’s ability to survive in even the most brutal of environments. They were like little heat-seeking missiles, it had said, aiming themselves at the nearest source of warmth. If a child lost its mother, it would reach for its father. If the father disappeared, the child would head for the next grown-up in the line, and then the next, seeking any adult who would provide survival, and perhaps even love.

  She showed him the clothes she had bought, and when she began to dress him, he helped. He obediently held out his arms so that she could put them into the sleeves of the new T-shirt, and ducked his head so that it was easier for her to pull it on. A clean pair of underpants followed. That would have to do for now, but even that much suddenly made him seem much more like a normal three-year-old. He came into her arms easily, as she lifted him from the car. Again she was struck by the difference between his weight and Anton’s.

  Now that he was awake, he didn’t allow her to hold him against her shoulder. He sat warily straight on her left hip as she walked up the gravel path to the veranda.

  “Hey, little one,” murmured Nina, softening her voice into a maternal cooing. “No need to be afraid anymore.”

  His warm breath came quickly and carried a sour smell of fear and vomit.

  On the veranda, someone had arranged a row of large pots containing herbs and pansies; their well-watered plumpness looked odd against the aridness of the rest of the garden. By the half-open door, a pair of bright yellow galoshes sat next to a small pet carrier. Nina remembered that Karin had spoken of a cat, at that drunken Christmas party. Mr. Kitty, she had called him. She had acquired this male presence when she’d decided once and for all that she was tired of looking for Mr. Right and the two point one children she was statistically entitled to.

  At the moment, Nina could detect no sign of either kitty or Karin.

  She raised her free hand to knock on the door, but it moved as she touched it, swinging open at her first knock. Unhindered, Nina stepped right into the little darkened hallway. There was a clean detergent-borne scent of citrus and vinegar, and Karin’s shoes and boots were lined up neatly by the
half-open kitchen door.

  It was very quiet.

  “Karin?”

  Nina’s foot came down on something soft, which gave way under her heel with a slight crunch. Startled, she backed up and steadied herself against the wall.

  “Karin?” she called again, but this time with little expectation of an answer. She inched forward, running her hand over the door frame until she felt the sharp plastic contours of a switch. The light came on with a faint click, revealing a half-eaten sandwich on the floor. It was still partially wrapped, and had been acquired from the deli of the local Kvickly, she could see.

  Nina felt a sharp cold jab in her stomach. It was possible that Mr. Kitty had made illegal forays into the groceries and dragged his booty into the hallway, but the house was entirely too silent considering the distraught and loudly sobbing Karin that Nina had been talking to just ninety minutes ago.

  She lowered the boy to the floor of the hallway and stood undecided on the threshold.

  “Stay here,” she whispered, pointing at the floor. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  The boy made no reply, only looked at her with solemn eyes. New cracks of black fear had begun to open in his gaze; he had been frightened to begin with, and her indecision was not improving matters. She had to do something quickly.

  “Karin!”

  Nina walked quickly through the kitchen and into the compact living room. Karin had turned on a small, green lamp above the settee. The television was on, but with the sound turned down. TV2 News. Nina recognized the scarlet banner headlines and the usual respectable suit of the anchor.

  She strode across to the window, which overlooked the garden on the other side of the house. She could see very little, only the tall pines of the plantation behind the cottage, and an unkempt lawn littered with leaves and pine cones. Nina dug into her pocket for her mobile phone, pressed the recall button and waited for the call tone. Immediately, there was an answering trill from a real phone somewhere in the house. The sound seemed to be coming from behind a closed door that probably led to the bedroom, and although the distance couldn’t be great, it sounded oddly muffled, as if someone had dropped it into a bucket. A quick glance assured her that the boy’s small straight form was still standing motionless by the kitchen door. She looked at the phone again. 8:28.

  The numbers on the pale blue display had a calming effect on her. She slid the phone back into her pocket and pushed open the bedroom door.

  Karin lay curled on the bed, with her forehead resting against her knees, as though she had been practicing some advanced form of yoga. But Nina saw it the second the image was processed against her retina.

  Death.

  There was a peculiar quality about dead people. Little things that seemed insignificant on their own, but added up to an umistakable impact, so that Nina was never in any doubt when she encountered it. The slight out-turned wrist. The leg that had slipped limply from its orignal position, and the head resting much too heavily against the mattress.

  Nina felt the first rush from her flight instinct. She forced herself to approach the bed, while new details flooded her senses. Karin’s fair hair spread around her head like a flaxen halo mixed with red and dark brown nuances. The sheet beneath her had soaked up far too much blood, and when Nina carefully turned Karin’s upper body, Karin’s mouth opened, and vomit mixed with blood sloshed over her lower lip and ran down her chin and into the soft folds of her throat. Two of her teeth were missing, and there was red and purple bruising on her face and neck. A lot of the blood seemed to come from a wound above the hairline, at her left temple, and when Nina probed it cautiously, the skull gave beneath her fingers, too soft and flat. Death had not been instantaneous, thought Nina. She had had time to curl up here, like a wounded animal that left the herd to die alone.

  And now. So much blood.

  She didn’t mind blood, she reminded herself soothingly. She was okay with it, had, as a matter of fact, been one of the most steadfast at nursing school when it came to dealing with bodily fluids. (Since that day twenty-three years ago she had become very good at it. She had decided to become good at it, and it had worked.)

  Nina stepped back from the bed and managed to twist to one side before she threw up, in short, painful heaves. She had eaten nothing since this morning, and all that sploshed onto the clean wooden floor was dark yellow gall and grayish water.

  It was then she heard the scream. A shrill, heart-rending note of terror, like the scream you hear in the night when a hare is caught by the fox.

  SIGITA WAS SITTING on the stone steps by the river, waiting for the nausea and headache to subside enough so she could walk on. Her good hand was clenched around her mobile. It had to ring. It had to ring so that she would know Mikas was all right. Or so she knew at least he wasn’t what Gužas called the second category; those who were never found.

  No. Don’t even think it. Don’t think about what strangers might do to the perfect, tiny body, don’t let the thought in even for a second. It would only make it real. It would break her, it would tear her open and rip out her heart so that she wouldn’t be able to breathe, let alone act. She clung to the phone like an exhausted swimmer to a buoy.

  It didn’t ring. In the end she pressed a number herself. Mrs. Mažekienė’s.

  “Mrs. Mažekienė. The man who took Mikas—what did he look like?”

  The old woman’s confusion was obvious, even over the phone.

  “Look like? But it was his father.”

  “No, Mrs. Mažekienė. It wasn’t. Darius is still in Germany.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Mrs. Mažekienė?”

  “Well, I did think that he must have gained some weight. He looked bigger than I remembered.”

  “How big?”

  “I don’t know … big and tall, now that I think about it. And hardly any hair, the way it had been cropped. But that’s all the rage these days, isn’t it?”

  “Why did you think it was Mikas’s father, then?”

  “The car looked like his. And who else would be going off with the boy?”

  Sigita bit down hard on her lip to avoid saying something unforgiveable. She is just an old woman, she told herself. She didn’t do it on purpose. But Mrs. Mažekienė’s mistake had cost them nearly 48 hours, and that was very hard to forget.

  “What kind of car was it?” she asked, once she had regained some self-control.

  “It was gray,” Mrs. Mažekienė answered vaguely.

  “What make of car?” But she knew even as she asked that it was hopeless.

  “I don’t know much about cars,” said Mrs. Mažekienė helplessly. “It was … ordinary, like. Like Mikas’s father’s car.”

  The last time Sigita had seen Darius, he had been driving a darkgray Suzuki Grand Vitara. So presumably it was a gray SUV of some kind, or perhaps a station wagon. Or a van. If Mrs. Mažekienė couldn’t tell Darius’s rather slender form from what sounded like that of a crew-cut doorman’s, then there was no reason to think that she could distinguish between an off-roader and a Peugeot Partner. It wasn’t much to go on.

  “It had a baggage box on the roof,” said Mrs. Mažekienė suddenly. “I remember that!”

  Dobrovolskij’s eldest son, Pavel sometimes drove a silver Porsche Cayenne. It resembled the Vitara about as much as a shetland pony resembles a Shire horse, and she had never seen it with a baggage box on its expensive roof. But it was enough to make her call Algirdas.

  “Hi,” he said. “Are you feeling better?”

  She didn’t reply to that.

  “How did the meeting with Dobrovolskij go?” she asked instead.

  “So-so. He wasn’t happy that you weren’t there.”

  “But there wasn’t any … trouble?”

  “Sigita, what is it you want?”

  She didn’t know how much to say. She had never told Algirdas much about her personal life, and it seemed awkward to start now. But what if? What if Mikas’s disappearance had something to do
with her job?

  “Mikas is gone.”

  He knew, she thought, that she had a son. She had brought Mikas along to the Christmas pantomime last year, when Janus Corporation had suddenly decided it needed to do something for the children of its employees.

  “Mikas? Your little boy?”

  “Yes. Someone has taken him.”

  There was an awkward pause. She could almost hear the gears click inside Algirdas’s mind as he tried to work out whether this would rock his boat in any way. Algirdas was a pleasant enough employer most of the time, friendly, informal, not a bully or a tyrant. But she sometimes thought that he felt the same way about his staff as she did about computers: they were just supposed to work—he didn’t care what was inside.

  And now I don’t work anymore, she thought. And he doesn’t know whom to call in order to get me repaired.

  “Does this have anything to do with your concussion?” he finally asked.

  “Possibly. I don’t remember what happened. I thought Mikas was with Darius, but he isn’t.”

  “But why are you asking about Dobrovolskij?”

  “Pavel Dobrovolskij has a silver Cayenne. And Mikas was taken away in a gray or silver SUV.” She was aware that she was twisting facts to provide more substance for her suspicions than they really warranted. But if it was Dobrovolskij, then Mikas didn’t belong to the second category. If it was Dobrovolskij, one could find out what he wanted, and then do whatever it took to get Mikas back.

  “Sorry, Sigita, but you’re off your head. Why the hell would Dobrovolskij take your boy? Besides, I think Pavel sold the Cayenne. He said it was easier to fit an elephant into a matchbox than to park that monstrosity in downtown Vilnius. Did you tell the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let them deal with it, then.”

  “But they’re not doing anything! There’s just this one pathetic man clicking his bloody ballpoint pen!”

  “What does his pen have to with anything?”

  “And he says they will look for Mikas now, but I don’t think anything is really happening. They’re never found. Not the ones where it’s not personal.” She realized she was being incoherent. Knew, too, that this was entirely the wrong way to be with Algirdas, that it would only make him retreat. She forced herself to breathe more calmly, waiting until the words presented themselves in the proper order. “Algirdas, I have to know if you are involved in something that Dobrovolskij wouldn’t like. Or if any of the payments have been incorrect.”