The Boy in the Suitcase

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  THE DOOR BUZZER let off a snarl, startling Sigita out of a strange sort of absence. Not sleep. Nothing as peaceful as sleep.

  “This is Evaldas Gužas, from the Department of Missing Persons. May we come in?”

  She buzzed them through. Her heart had begun to pound so hard that the material of her shirt was actually quivering with each beat. They have found him, she thought. Holy Virgin, Mother of Christ. Please let it be so. They have found him, and he is all right.

  But as soon as she opened her door to Gužas and his companion, she could tell that he was not the bearer of such good news. She still couldn’t help asking.

  “Have you found him?”

  “No,” said Gužas. “I’m afraid not. But we do have a possible lead. This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Martynas Valionis. When I told him about the case, it rang a few bells.”

  Valionis shook Sigita’s hand.

  “May we sit down for a moment?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Sigita politely, all the while silently screaming get on with it.

  Valionis perched on the edge of the white couch, put his briefcase on the coffee table, aligning it with the edge with unconscious perfectionism, and brought out a plastic folder.

  “I am about to show you some photographs, Mrs. Ramoškienė. Do you recognize any of these women?”

  The photos were not glossy portrait shots, but printed hastily on a none-too-efficient inkjet, it seemed. He held them out to her one at a time.

  “No,” she said, to the first one. And the next.

  The third photograph showed the woman with the chocolate.

  Sigita clenched the paper so hard that she scrunched it.

  “It’s her,” she said. “She’s the one who took Mikas.”

  Valionis nodded in satisfaction.

  “Barbara Woronska,” he said. “From Poland, born in Krakow in 1972. Apparently she has lived in this country for some years, and officially she is working for a company selling alarm and security systems.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “She came to our attention for the first time two years ago when a Belgian businessman made a complaint that she had tried to blackmail him. It would appear that the company uses her as an escort for their clients, particularly the foreign ones, when they visit Vilnius.”

  “She’s a prostitute?” Sigita never would have guessed.

  “That is perhaps a little too simple. Our impression is that she works as what’s known as a honey trap. She certainly seems to have an uncommonly high consumption of prescription eyedrops.”

  Sigita didn’t understand.

  “Eyedrops?”

  “Yes. Medicinally, they are used to relax the muscles of the eyes, which is useful in certain instances. But if they are ingested, in a drink, for instance, they have the rather peculiar side effect of causing unconsciousness and deep sleep within a short time. It’s not uncommon for a hard-partying businessman to wake up in some hotel room, picked clean of his Oyster Rolex, cash, and credit cards. But Miss Woronska and her backers seem to have refined the technique a bit. They arrange so-called compromising photographs while our man is unconscious, and afterwards suggest to him that he agrees to an export deal on, shall we say, very lucrative terms for the Lithuanian companies involved. Only this time, the Belgian got stubborn, told them to publish and be damned, and came to us. Miss Woronska was one of the participants in the arranged photograph. The other was some little girl who could hardly have been more than twelve years old. One quite understands why the police have not heard from their other victims.”

  Hardly more than twelve … Sigita tried to push away the mental images. She couldn’t make it square with the neat and elegant woman in the cotton coat. When people did something like that for a living, shouldn’t it somehow show?

  She stared at the printed page. It was not a classic identification photo of the kind made after arrests. Barbara Woronska was not looking directly at the photographer, her head was turned slightly to the left, bringing out the elegance of her long neck. The quality was grainy, as if the picture had been too much enlarged, and the expression on her face was … peculiar. Her mouth was half open, her eyes stared blankly. Even though only her face and neck were showing in the photo, Sigita suddenly felt convinced that Woronska was not wearing any clothes, and that this was a detail from one of the “compromising photographs.”

  “But why … what made you think that she was the one who took Mikas?”

  “Two things,” explained Valionis. “Item one: the Belgian had an alarming alcohol content in his blood in spite of swearing to us that he had had only one drink in the company of the delectable Miss Woronska. When our doctor examined him, he found lesions in the man’s throat consistent with intubation—in other words, someone could have inserted a tube and poured alcohol directly into his stomach while he was unconscious. It’s a good way of demoralizing and incapacitating someone, if you are willing to take the risk. People have been known to die from it, from acute alcohol poisoning.”

  Sigita’s head came up.

  “But … but that is… .”

  Evaldas Gužas nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry no one believed you. At this stage, unfortunately, we cannot prove that this was what was done to you, as it is not now possible to distinguish any orignal injury from those stemming from the intubation you had to undergo at the hospital. But everyone I have spoken to has characterized you as a sober and responsible person, so… .” He left the conclusion hanging in the air, unsaid.

  Some of Sigita’s general misery eased a little. At least they believed her now. At least they would be serious about looking for Mikas.

  “And … Mikas?”

  “The other thing that rang a bell was the fact that Barbara Woronska had been identified as one of four possible suspects in another case involving the disappearance of a child,” said Valionis, consulting his notebook briefly.

  Sigita’s hands shook.

  “A child?”

  Valionis nodded.

  “A little over a month ago, a desperate mother reported her eight-year-old daughter missing. She had been picked up from the music school where she took piano lessons twice a week by an unknown woman who presented herself as a neighbor. The piano teacher was not suspicious, as the mother works as a nurse and has often sent others to pick up the child when she herself has a late shift. Unfortunately, the piano teacher was not able to give us a very good description and would only say that it might be one of these four women.” He tapped the photographs with one forefinger.

  “But where is she now?” said Sigita. “Haven’t you arrested her?”

  “Unfortunately not,” said Gužas. “Her place of employment tells us that they haven’t seen her since Thursday, and she has apparently not been living at her official address since March.”

  “But how come she is not in jail? With all this, how come she is still out there, stealing other people’s children?”

  Valionis shook his head with a disgusted grimace.

  “Both cases were dropped. The Belgian went home very suddenly, and all we got from him was a letter from his lawyer to the effect that his client was dropping all charges. And the nurse just as suddenly maintained that it had all been a misunderstanding, and the child was home and quite safe.”

  “Isn’t that a little odd?” asked Sigita.

  “Yes. We are convinced that they both gave in to some form of pressure.” Evaldas Gužas’s gaze rested on her with an ungentle emphasis. “Which is why I have to ask you yet again, Mrs. Ramoškienė. Does anyone have any reason to subject you to that kind of pressure?”

  Sigita shook her head numbly. If it hadn’t been Dobrovolskij, she couldn’t imagine anyone else feeling any need to pressure or threaten her.

  “Surely they would say something?” she said. “I haven’t heard a thing.”

  Helplessness gripped her once more. Again, an unbearable image flitted through her mind: Mikas in a basement somewhere, on a dirty mattress, crying, afraid. Ho
w can anyone stand this? she thought. I can’t. It will kill me.

  “I implore you to contact us if you hear anything at all,” said Gužas. “It’s impossible for us to stop people like this if no one will talk to us.”

  She nodded heavily. But she knew that if it became a choice between saving Mikas and telling the police, the police didn’t have a prayer.

  Valionis closed his briefcase with a crisp snap. The two officers got to their feet, Valionis gave her his card, and Gužas shook her hand.

  “There is hope,” he said. “Remember that. Julija Baronienė got her daughter back.”

  Sigita felt a brief spasm in her chest.

  “Who, did you say?”

  “Julija Baronienė. The nurse. Do you know her?”

  Sigita’s heart leaped and fluttered.

  “No,” she said. “Not at all.”

  SHE STOOD ON her balcony and watched the two men cross the parking lot below, get into a black car, and leave. Her right hand had come to rest just under her navel, without any directions from her. Certain things are never entirely forgotten by the body.

  Contrary to everything Sigita had heard about first-time births, it had been quick, and very, very violent. In the beginning she had yelled at everyone in sight, telling them to do something. In the end she just screamed, for four hours straight. It was Julija’s hand she clung to, the nurse who was somehow also Granny; and Julija stayed with her so that she felt at times that this was the only thing that held her to this world: Julija’s strong, square hands, Julija’s voice, and Julija’s face. Her eyes were dark, the color of prunes, and she did not let go, nor did she let Sigita do so.

  “You just keep at it,” she said. “You just keep at it until you finish this.”

  But when the baby did come, Sigita could hold on no longer. She slipped, and something flowed out of her, something wet and dark and warm, so that there was only cold emptiness left.

  “Sigita… .”

  But Julija’s voice was already distant.

  “She’s hemorrhaging,” said one of the other sisters. “Get the doctor, now!”

  Sigita kept on slipping, into the chill and empty dark.

  IT WAS NEARLY a day and a night before she came back. She was in a small, windowless room lit by fluorescent ceiling lights. It was the light that had woken her. Her eyelids felt like rubber mats, her throat was sore. One arm had been tied to the side of the bed, and fluids were slowly dripping into her vein from a bag on a thin metal pole. Her body felt heavy and alien to her.

  “Are you awake, little darling?”

  Her aunt Jolita was by the bedside. The fluorescent lights bleached her skin and dug deep shadowed pits beneath her eyes. She looked like a tired old woman, thought Sigita.

  “Would you like some water?”

  Sigita nodded. She wasn’t certain she could talk, but in the end she tried anyway.

  “Where is Julija?”

  Jolita frowned, her penciled brows nearly meeting in the middle.

  “Your grandmother?”

  “No. The other Julija.”

  “I don’t know who you mean, darling. Here, have a sip. Now all you have to do is rest up and get better, so that we can get you home.”

  That was when it happened. When Jolita said the word home. Something huge and black exploded in her head, her breasts, her belly. Its edges were so sharp and evil that it felt as if something was there, even though she knew that it happened because something was lacking. Because something had been taken out of her.

  “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.

  “Don’t think about it,” said Jolita. “The quicker you forget about the whole thing, the better. It will have a good life. With rich people.”

  Sigita felt tears slide down her nose. They felt scalding hot because the rest of her was so cold.

  “Rich people,” she repeated, testing to see if that might make the Blackness go away.

  Jolita nodded. “From Denmark,” she said brightly, as if this was something special.

  The Blackness was still there.

  TWO DAYS LATER, Sigita was standing next to the bed in a gray sweatshirt and a pair of jeans she hadn’t been able to fit into for months. Standing was tiring, but she still couldn’t sit, and getting out of bed was so painful that she didn’t want to lie down again. Finally Jolita returned, accompanied by a fair-haired woman in a white lab coat. Sigita had never seen the woman before.

  “Goodbye then, Sigita, and good luck,” she said, holding out her hand.

  It felt odd, being called by her first name by someone she didn’t know at all. Sigita nodded awkwardly, but returned the handshake. The woman handed Jolita a brown envelope.

  “There is a small deduction for the extra days,” she said. “Normally, our girls leave us inside a day.”

  Jolita nodded absently. She opened the brown envelope, peeked inside, then closed it again.

  “I’ll need your signature here.”

  Jolita took the pen.

  “Shouldn’t I be the one to sign it?” asked Sigita.

  Jolita hesitated. “If you wish,” she said. “But I can do it too.”

  Sigita looked at the paper. It wasn’t an adoption form. It was a receipt. For payment received on delivery of “Ass. herbs for the production of natural remedies.” The amount signed for was 14.426 litai.

  This is no adoption, thought Sigita suddenly, with glacial clarity. This is a purchase. Strangers have bought my child and paid for it, and this is my share of the loot.

  “Can’t I at least see it?” she asked. “And meet the people who are taking it?” Her breasts were swollen and throbbed painfully. Julija had provided her with a tight elastic bandage that she was to keep wrapped around her torso for at least a week, she had been told, to stop the milk from coming.

  The woman in the white coat shook her head. “They left the clinic yesterday. But in our experience, that’s best for both parties anyway.”

  The Blackness stirred inside her, carving new passages in her body, flowing into her veins. She could feel the chill beneath her skin. It was already done, she thought. Now all that was left was the money. She held out a hand toward Jolita.

  “Give it to me.”

  “Little darling… .” Jolita looked at her in confusion. “You make it sound as if I was about to steal it!”

  Sigita merely waited. In the end, Jolita passed her the envelope. It was thick and heavy with the notes inside it. Sigita clutched it in one hand and waddled for the exit. The stitches stung with every stride.

  “Sigita, wait,” said Jolita. “The receipt!”

  “You sign it,” she said, over her shoulder. “It was all your idea anyway.”

  Jolita scribbled a hasty signature and said goodbye to the woman. Sigita just walked on. Into the corridor, through the waiting room, and out the door.

  Jolita caught up with her on the rain-drenched pavement.

  “Let’s get a taxi,” she said. “Let me take you home.”

  Sigita stopped. She turned and looked at Jolita with all the new coldness she now possessed. “You go home,” she said. “I’m going to a hotel. I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”

  THERE WERE FOUR Baronienės in the Vilnius phone book. Sigita called them all, asking for Julija. No result. Then she tried Baronas, in case the telephone was registered to the husband only. Eight of those. Two didn’t answer, one had an answering machine that made no mention of any Julija, two said they didn’t know anyone of that name. The sixth call was answered by a woman’s voice with a cautious “Yes?”

  Sigita listened intently, but she wasn’t sure whether she recognized the voice.

  “Is this Julija?” she asked.

  “Yes. To whom am I speaking?”

  “Sigita Ramoškienė. I would just like to—”

  She got no further. The connection was severed with an abrupt click.

  JUČAS DROVE THE car all the way down onto the beach.

  It was dark now, and there were no people. Be
hind him, the thicket of pines formed a black wall. He took off all his clothes except his underpants. The sand was still warm beneath the soles of his feet, and the water tepid and so shallow that he had to wade several hundred feet before it became deep enough for him to swim.

  There was no significant surf, no suction. Just this flat, lukewarm water that could not give him the stinging shock he craved. It had to there, he thought, further out—the cold, the undertow, the powers. He considered quite soberly the possiblity of simply continuing until he met something stronger than he was.

  Barbara was waiting at the hotel. He hadn’t told her much, just that he had to help the Dane with something before they could get their money.

  There would be no Krakow now, he thought, digging into the water with furious strokes that did, after all, make his muscles burn a little. In his mind he could still see the smiling family, the mother, the father, the two children, but large brown rats had begun to gnaw at the house so that it was disappearing bite by bite, and now one of the rats had started on the leg of the smallest child, without causing the child or the parents to smile any less.

  He stopped his progress abruptly, treading water. He knew where those rats came from. Could still remember them scuttling away as he had come into the stable with the lantern and had found Gran on the floor next to the feed bin. No one had ever thought it necessary to tell him what she had died from. But dead she was, even a seven-year-old boy could tell as much. And the rats had known it, too.

  He had succeeded in finding waters too deep for him to touch bottom. But he began to swim for the coast, this time with smooth, methodical strokes. He would not let the rats win. And there was still a trail of sorts that he might follow.

  He thought about his clothes. What to do with them. In the end he dipped the sleeve of his shirt into the petrol tank of the car and made a small bonfire on the beach. He had only vague notions of DNA and microscopic fibers, but surely fire would deal with most of that.

  The first thing to go wrong had been the woman herself. It hadn’t been the one he had seen in the railway station—the bony, crew-cut boy-bitch. This one was fair-haired like Barbara and had even bigger breasts. It would have been so much easier if it had only been the other one.