The Boy in the Suitcase

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  Sigita got up. The sun hit her like a hammer, and once she was on her feet, she really had no idea where to go.

  “Leaving so soon?” said Milda. “Oh, I suppose you are in a hurry to go home and book that New York hotel?”

  It was at that moment that he came to her rescue.

  “Sigita? Don’t forget we’re going to Kaliningrad on Saturday, right?”

  Darius. Tanned and fair-haired, with that relaxed and well-trained confidence none of the other boys had. His shirt was left casually open to reveal a crisp white T-shirt underneath, and neither garment had come from Poland.

  “No,” she said. “It’ll be fun. Have you heard that Milda is going to Miami for the holidays?”

  “Oh,” he said. “You must say hello to my uncle, then. He lives there.”

  IT HAD TAKEN her years to see that Darius’s shining armor was eggshell thin. He couldn’t rescue her, had never really been able to. God only knew what he was doing with Mikas right now. Had he brought her little boy with him to some bar where Darius’s party buddies would let him finish their beers? She shuddered. She had to get out of this damned hospital in a hurry.

  THE RAILWAY STATION was crammed with irritable Monday crowds, and there was a nearly visible mist of exhaled breaths and collective sweat in the great central hall. People were tetchy in the heat, with their clothes and their tempers sticking to them, and over the PA came the announcement that the 13:11 to Elsinore was delayed by approximately twenty minutes. Nina felt a tension that made her unwilling to be so physically close to a lot of strangers. She tried to move so that they wouldn’t touch her, but it just wasn’t possible. Finally she reached the stairwell leading down to the left luggage cellar. The sharp smell of cleaning chemicals was weaker here and couldn’t quite mask the stench of well-aged urine. The scratched metal lockers hugged the walls, long white rows with black numbers on them. 56, 55… . She checked the token again. 37-43. Where on earth was section 37?

  She found it at last, in a quiet blind alley leading off the more heavily trafficked main corridor. Right now, there were only two travelers in here—a young couple struggling to fit a large backpack into one of the lockers.

  “It won’t fit,” said the girl. “I told you. It’s too big.”

  By the girl’s accent, Nina took them to be American, or perhaps Canadian. Should she wait until they had left? But other tourists would come, and at least these two were intent on their Battle of the Bulging Rucksack. She pushed the token into the automated system controlling section 37, and there was a crisp metallic click as locker 43 came open.

  Inside was a shiny dark-brown leather suitcase, a little oldfashioned, with a long tear down one side so that the green lining peeked through. Otherwise there was nothing very noticeable about it. No address labels or tags, of course. She knew it would be foolish to open it now. People who pick up their own bags don’t open them to check what is inside. And Karin had said the same thing—don’t open it until you’re out of there. Don’t let anyone see. Oh, Karin. What are you up to? Nina thought. It was difficult to imagine that it might be anything very sinister or serious. Karin was so … “unadventurous” wasn’t quite the word, but still. It was just hard to picture easygoing, hedonistic Karin involved in anything dirty, illegal, or dangerous. But there had been that unwonted panic in her voice: This wasn’t the deal. What had she meant by that?

  Nina dragged the suitcase out of the locker. It was heavier than it looked, at least forty pounds, she guessed. Not easily carried for any length of distance, and the underground parking lot in Nyropsgade, where she had left the Fiat, was a couple of blocks away. But Copenhagen’s Central Station did not provide complimentary trolleys like those in airports, so there was nothing else for it.

  The young couple had begun taking things out of the backpack to slim it sufficiently for the narrow locker. The young man dropped a toilet bag, which hit the floor with a clang and came open. Mascara, eyeliner, hair mousse, and deodorants spilled across the tiles. One of the deodorants curved towards Nina and came to a spinning stop at her feet.

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “Sorry.”

  Nina smiled mechanically. Then she took the suitcase in the firmest grip she could manage and began to walk, trying to look halfway natural. Sweet Jesus, it was heavy. What on earth was in it?

  IT WAS ONLY when she reached the car-park that she opened it. And found the boy.

  He was unconscious. His skin was cool, but not alarmingly cold. Some automated professional part of her noted that his pulse was slow, but again not dangerously so, his respiration deep and also slow, his pupils slightly contracted. There was little doubt that he had been drugged, she thought. He wasn’t about to die on her, but he needed treatment—fluids, and perhaps an antidote, if they could work out what had been used on him. She seized her mobile and pressed the first two emergency digits, then paused before the final one.

  Her eyes fell on the suitcase. So ordinary. Normal. The tear in the leather had made it easier for the boy to breathe, but there was no way to tell whether it had been made intentionally to ensure him a certain supply of oxygen. People who put little children in suitcases do not, Nina thought, care terribly about their wellfare.

  Steps somewhere, and the slamming of car doors, then the growl of an engine starting up. The sounds echoed back from the concrete walls, and she ducked instinctively behind the dumpster so as not to be seen. Why? Why didn’t she get up instead and call for help? But she didn’t. She caught a glimpse of silver metal and shiny hubcaps, then the car was gone.

  She had to get the child to her own car, but how? She could not bear to close the suitcase and carry him like that, as if he were baggage. She ran to the Fiat instead, and got a checkered picnic blanket from the trunk, tucked it around him, and carried him against her shoulder. Mother and child, she thought. If anyone sees me, I’m just a mommy who has just picked up her exhausted toddler from kindergarten.

  He seemed feather light, much less of a weight than he had been in the suitcase. She could feel his breath against the side of her neck, a small warm puffing. Dear sweet Jesus. Who would do this to a child?

  She lowered him onto the back seat and checked his pulse once more. A little faster already, as if he were reacting to his surroundings. She grabbed the plastic water bottle from between the front seats and moistened his lips with a wet finger. His tongue moved. He was not deeply unconscious.

  Hospital, police. Police, hospital. But if it was just a question of calling 911, why hadn’t Karin done it herself? Bloody hell, Karin, Nina cursed silently. Are you mixed up in this? “I can’t do anything, but you can,” Karin had said. But just what the hell was it she was supposed to be doing?

  MONDAY MORNING, SIGITA was finally released. She had called Darius at least a dozen times, but all she got was the stupid answering machine.

  She still didn’t understand what had happened. She really didn’t drink, certainly not to the point of falling down stairs in a state of blind oblivion. And why had she let Darius take Mikas away? That had happened before the stairs, so Mrs. Mažekienė had said. Sigita felt a tiny persistent sting of fear. What if Darius would not give Mikas back to her? And how was it that she had ended up at the foot of the stairs with a broken arm and a concussion? Darius had never hit her, not once, not even during the bitterest of their fights. She couldn’t believe he had done so now. But perhaps some accident … ? If there was one person on God’s green earth who could inspire her to get drunk, it was surely Darius.

  She considered taking a taxi back home to Pašilaičiai, but the habits acquired through years of enforced parsimony were not easily shaken. After all, the trolley bus stopped practically at her doorstep. For the first few stops, inside Vilnius proper, the bus was crowded to sardine-tin capacity; her plaster cast got her the offer of a seat, which she gratefully accepted, but even so, the pressure of other human bodies made nausea rise in her gullet until she was afraid she would not be able to contain it. One more stop, she told herself. If
it doesn’t get better after that, I’ll get off and call for a cab. But the pressure did ease as they left the center of the city and the rush-hour current ran the other way. When she finally got off by Žemynos gatvė, she had to sit on the bus-stop bench and just breathe for a little while before she was able to walk on.

  She rang the bell by Mrs. Mažekienė’s front door before going into her own flat.

  “Oh, it’s you, dearie. Good to see you on your feet again. What a to-do!”

  “Yes. But, Mrs. Mažekienė, exactly when did Darius pick up Mikas?”

  “Saturday. How peculiar that you don’t remember.”

  “When on Saturday?”

  “A little past noon, I think. Yes. I had just had my lunch when I saw them.”

  “Them? Was someone with him?”

  Mrs. Mažekienė bit her lip, looking as if she thought she might have said too much.

  “Well, yes. There was this lady… .”

  It stung, even though Sigita had been the one to kick Darius out, and not the other way around. But of course there was a “lady.” Had she really imagined there wouldn’t be?

  “What did she look like?” she asked, in the unlikely case that it had been Darius’s mother or sister.

  “Very nice. Quite young. Tall and fair-haired, with nice clothes. Not tarted up like some,” said Mrs. Mažekienė.

  Which meant it wasn’t Darius’s sister, for sure.

  Then another thought came to her. A nice-looking, tall, fair-haired young woman. Quite a few of those around, of course, but still… .

  “Can you remember what she was wearing?”

  “A light summer coat. One of those cotton coats, I think. And a scarf.”

  The woman from the playground. The one who wanted a child so badly. Sigita felt a chill go through her. What if Darius had a girlfriend now who longed for children… . Sigita remembered the silver gleam of the chocolate wrapping, Mikas’s chocolate-smeared cheeks. The sly, ingratiating bitch. Watching them, watching Mikas, worming her way into his trust with the forbidden chocolate gift. Suppose it hadn’t been a Russian accent after all, but a German one. Some Irmgard he had picked up where he worked now.

  “Dearie, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” said Sigita through her teeth, though nausea sloshed in her throat like water in a bucket. “But I think I had better go lie down all the same.”

  THE FLAT LOOKED the way it always did. Clean and white and modern, light-years away from the shirt-ridden hell of Tauragė. Even Mikas’s toys were lined up in tidy rows on the shelves. Only one alien object disturbed the symmetry: an empty vodka bottle glared at her from the kitchen worktop, next to the sink.

  She tossed it into the bin with unnecessary force. Did they get her drunk first? She didn’t believe, couldn’t believe, that she had just let Darius and his German slut waltz off with Mikas in tow.

  Her mobile rang.

  “Sigita, where the hell are you? Dobrovolskij will be here in half an hour, and we need those figures!”

  It was Algirdas. Algirdas Janusevičius, one half of Janus Constructions, and her immediate boss.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I just got out of hospital.”

  “Hospital?” Irritation was clear in his voice at first, but he managed a more suitably worried tone when he spoke again. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

  “No,” she said. “I fell down some stairs. But I won’t be in for a few days.”

  His silence was palpable at the other end of the line.

  “Sorry,” she said again.

  “Yes. Well. It can’t be helped. But … the figures?”

  “There’s a green folder in the cabinet behind my desk, under Dobrovolskij. The accounts are almost the first thing you’ll come across.”

  “Sigita, for God’s sake. Not those figures.”

  She knew what he meant, of course. When one worked for Dobrovolskij, there were unwritten accounts as well, numbers and sums that never made it into the official records. The reason Sigita had become indispensable to Algirdas so quickly was that she was able to hold it all in her head. Even old man Dobrovolskij himself, who was not easy to please, had come to trust in Sigita’s accuracy. She knew what had been agreed, down to the last litas.

  Except that right now she would have some trouble remembering her own phone number. The only thing her head held at the moment was a gray fog of nausea and confusion.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’m a little concussed.”

  This time, the silence was even heavier. She could almost hear the panic in Algirdas’s breathing.

  “How long … ?” he asked cautiously.

  “They say most people get their full memory back inside a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks!”

  “Algirdas, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “No … no. Of course not. We will just have to manage somehow. But… .”

  “Yes. As soon as I can.”

  “Take care.” He hung up. She let the hand holding the phone sink into her lap.

  Her head hurt. It was as though some great fist were squeezing it in rhythmic throbs, to match the beating of her pulse. She tapped out Darius’s number again.

  “You have called Darius Ramoška… .”

  She sat for a long time in one of the white wooden chairs by the kitchen table, trying to think.

  Then she called the police.

  THE BOY LAY unconscious on the back seat, with the checkered picnic blanket covering his thin, unmoving body. And Karin wasn’t answering her phone.

  Nina closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. 1:35. It should be 1:35… . Her hands shook slightly as she turned her wrist to check her watch. 1:36, stated the stark, digital numbers. Close enough. Relief flooded through her, making it a bit easier to think.

  Sorry, Karin, she silently told her friend. You ask too much, this time. She pulled the blanket a little higher so that it was not immediately obvious a child was asleep beneath it. Rolled down the window just a notch, so air would get into the car. Locked the Fiat and left, walking with long, quick strides she knew were nearly as fast as running.

  SHE CUT THROUGH the central hall of the railway station, heading for the green and white sign that proclaimed the local police presence. She entered the small office, wondering what one actually said in such a situation. Good afternoon, I’ve just found a child?

  The officer at the reception desk looked tired. Not the easiest job in Copenhagen, probably.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “Err … I have a child in my car—”

  Nina’s hesitant explanation was interrupted by a crackle from the woman’s radio. Nina couldn’t hear what was being said at the other end, but the officer snapped a hasty “Copy that. I’m on my way,” and headed for the door at a run.

  “Please wait here,” she called over her shoulder, but Nina had already followed her back into the central hall. She watched the officer and one of her uniformed colleagues fairly sprint for the stairwell leading down to the left luggage lockers. Following still further, into the basement, was not actually a conscious decision.

  She heard the racket as soon as she started down the stairs. Everyone in the facility had stopped their various baggage maneuvers, and some had already gathered at the entrance to the passage where locker number 37-43 was situated. Nina felt a warning flutter along her spine, like an insect moving over her skin, but she still had to look.

  A man was kicking at the metal doors with frightening ferocity. She caught a brief glimpse of the back of his head, hair clipped so short it looked almost shaved, and of a set of enormous shoulders encased in a shiny brown leather jacket that was surely too hot for this weather. When the officers reached him, he shook off the first one as if she were a child he no longer wanted to play with. Then he seemed to collect himself.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he said, rolling his r’s in a way that almost made them into d’s. He stood quite still, letting the police officers calm down from violence
alert to dialogue mode. “I pay. Is broken, I pay.”

  Then he suddenly turned his head, looking directly at her. She didn’t know what made him pick her out of the crowd, but she saw his muscles bunch tensely as fury tightened his face and narrowed his eyes. He remained still, and didn’t speak, but even so she sensed the violence he was holding in check.

  What had she done to deserve such rage? She had never seen the man before.

  But of course the locker he had been kicking to pieces was not just any locker. It was number 37-43. And she suddenly knew where the rage had come from.

  She had taken something that was his.

  SHE HAD TO employ every shred of self-control she possessed to stop herself from running all the way back to the car. He won’t be able to follow, she told herself, the police are there. She walked as quickly as she could without turning heads.

  But she remembered how he had shaken them off like a dog shakes a flea from its fur, and the only plan she was able to form was that they had to get away, she and the boy, as far away from that man as they could possibly get.

  WHEN THE STOLEN Nokia beeped in his briefcase more than three hours later, Jan’s plane was still sitting on the pavement, and he was still in his business class seat, sweating like a pig. This time no flight attendant swooped down on him when he pulled out his phone. Cabin personnel had long since given up on that particular score, and at least twenty other people around him were engaged in multilingual phone calls, explaining why they would be delayed.

  “Mr. Marquart.” In spite of the hiss and crackle of a bad connection, the man’s fury came through loud and clear, not so much in his words as in his tone of voice.

  “Yes… .”

  “I delivered. As agreed. The woman came and took the goods. But she left no money. You did not pay.”

  What?

  Jan protested. He himself was stuck in a plane, he explained, but he had directed his assistant to go in his stead, and he was sure she had followed his instructions.