The Boy in the Suitcase

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  Julija shook her head wildly.

  “Do you think I can risk that? People don’t stay in jail forever. And besides, I know for a fact that he is not alone.”

  Sigita thought it a miracle that Julija had come at all.

  “I didn’t know he would do that,” whispered Julija, almost as if she could hear Sigita’s unspoken words. “I didn’t know he would take your child.”

  “But you got Zita back,” said Sigita. “How did you do that?”

  Julija was silent for so long that Sigita grew afraid she wouldn’t answer.

  “I gave him you,” she whispered, in the end. “He wanted to know your name, and I told him.”

  Sigita stared at Julija in utter bafflement.

  “He wanted to know my name … ?”

  “Yes. You see, we never register the girls. At the clinic, I mean. Their names aren’t recorded anywhere, because the parents—that is, the new parents—all get a birth certificate that makes it appear that the child is their own.”

  A deep pain burned somewhere in Sigita’s abdomen. I was right, she thought blindly. This is God’s punishment. This is all my fault because I sold my firstborn child. There was a kind of black logic to it that had nothing to do with reason and the light of day.

  “But why … what did he want with me?”

  Julija shook her head. “It’s not really him. He is just the one who actually does things. It has to be the other one. The Dane.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He came to the clinic some months ago. He wanted to know who you were, and he was willing to pay a fortune to find out, but Mrs. Jurkiene couldn’t tell him because nothing was written down. But he recognized me because I had been the one to hand over the baby, back then. Yours, that is. And he asked me if I didn’t remember something, anything, about who you were and where you came from. And of course I did remember, because you nearly died, and I looked after you for so many days. But I told him I didn’t.”

  Julija was crying as she spoke, in a strange noiseless fashion, as if her eyes were merely watering.

  “He didn’t want to believe me, and he kept offering me all this money if only I would tell him something. And all the while the other man stood there in the background with his arms across his chest, and it was so obvious that he was there to look after the Dane and all his money. You know, like a bodyguard. I didn’t understand why he wanted to find you after so many years. And in the end, he went away, and I thought that was the end of it. But it wasn’t.”

  “The Dane.” Sigita tried to bring her wildly straying thoughts into some sort of order. “Was he the one who… .”

  “Yes. He was the one who got your child. The first one, that is.” Julija looked at her with bright, dark eyes. “We thought we were doing a good thing, you understand? For the girls, and for the babies. They were always rich people, because getting a child that way is very expensive. We thought they would be good to them and treat them like they were their own. Why else was it so important that no one should think they were adopted? And the women were always so very happy. They would cry and cry, and hug the babies tight. But with the Dane, it was just the man who picked up the baby, and I never saw the wife. I’ve thought about that afterwards.”

  “You said you thought they would be good to them… . Don’t you think so anymore?”

  “Yes. In most cases, anyway. But I’ve given the clinic my notice. I don’t want to work there anymore. It won’t be easy, because the salary was good, and Aleksas is a schoolteacher and doesn’t make very much. But I don’t want to work there anymore.”

  “But I don’t understand. Was it the Dane who took Zita?”

  “Not directly. It was that bodyguard. I don’t know his name. And it was more than a month later, when I had almost forgotten about the Dane. But the bodyguard didn’t believe I couldn’t remember about you. And he had Zita. So I told him your name was Sigita, but that wasn’t enough. He wanted to know your last name, too, and where you lived. I didn’t know anything about that. That was too bad for Zita, he said, because she really, really wanted to come home to her mama again. So in the end, I searched the files until I found it. The receipt for your money. It wasn’t your name on it, it was your auntie’s. But it must have been enough, because he let Zita come home.”

  Ass. herbs for the production of natural remedies: 14.426 litai.

  Oh yes, Sigita remembered the receipt. But she couldn’t make head or tails of the rest.

  “If you do as they say,” said Julija, “don’t you think they’ll let you have your little boy back? Like Zita?”

  “But I don’t know what they want me to do,” wailed Sigita desperately. “They’ve told me nothing!”

  “Maybe something has gone wrong,” said Julija. “Maybe the bodyguard can’t get hold of the Dane, or something.”

  Sigita just shook her head. “It still makes no sense.” Then she suddenly raised her head. “You said you don’t register the girls. But what about the people who get the babies—does it say anything about them?”

  “Yes, of course. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to register the births.”

  “Good. Then get me his name.”

  “The Dane?”

  “Yes. Julija, you owe me that. And his address, if you can.”

  Julija looked terrified. “I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. You did it to save Zita. Now you must help me save my son. Otherwise.…” Sigita swallowed, not liking it at all. But this was for Mikas. “Otherwise, I may have to go to the police after all. Then they can come and search your files.”

  “You promised! You swore on the body of Christ!”

  “Yes. And I really don’t want to break that promise.”

  Julija sat there, frozen like a trapped animal. It hurt to look at her.

  “I’ll try tomorrow morning,” she finally said, “before the secretary gets there. But what if I can’t find it?”

  “You can,” said Sigita. “You have to.”

  THE PHONE RANG a little before nine the next morning.

  “His name is Jan Marquart,” said Julija. “And this is his address.”

  NINA WOKE BECAUSE someone was beating on the car window, a series of hard rythmic blows. She opened her eyes in time to see a stooping figure reel across the street and continue in the direction of the Central Station. Above Reventlowsgade’s numerous streetlights the sky was brightening to pale gray.

  The back of her neck was sore, and the ache called back a vague memory of struggling with the weight of her own head during the night. It had not been a good way to sleep, but even this lack of comfort had not been enough to keep her awake. Cautiously, she released her knees from their braced position against the back of the seat. Tendons and muscles protested sharply as she opened the door and stretched her legs onto the pavement.

  The boy was still asleep. He had rolled over during the night and his outflung arms rested on the seat, palms upward. He had forgotten where he was, thought Nina with a degree of envy. Even in sleep that mercy had eluded her, and she felt no less tired than the night before.

  She rose slowly and walked a few steps beside the car, trying to ease the pins and needles in her legs. It was still more than six hours before she could meet the girl from Helgolandsgade, and in a little while, the sun would begin the process of turning Vesterbro into a diesel-stinking oven. She had to find some temporary refuge for herself and the boy, preferably somewhere that included the possibility of a shower. She could smell her own body—the sour odor of old sweat assaulted her nostrils every time she moved. She felt sticky and exhausted.

  The boy stirred in the back seat, still half asleep, but surfacing slowly. He stretched, and then lay there for a long moment, eyes open and staring into the gray upholstery of the seat in front of him. Then he turned his head and looked at her. The smooth, soft look given to him by sleep vanished in an instant and was replaced by recognition and disappointment. But there was a change. The sulky resignation was still there, but t
he hostility had gone. Perhaps there was even a hint of familiarity, a sense of belonging inspired by everything they had been through together the day before. Karin’s empty gaze, the nauseating pool of congealing blood beneath her head. The chaotic escape from the cottage, the hookers in Helgolandsgade, and the slices of untoasted white bread.

  He knew whom to stick with right now. He just didn’t know why.

  Nina produced a faint smile. That was all she could manage. It was still only 5:43, and the thought of yet another long and lonely day with the boy on her hands seemed to leech her of all strength. Completely unsurmountable.

  She might go home.

  The idea felt heretical after yesterday’s long flight, but the cold and stilted conversation with Morten seemed so distant now, floating only somewhere at the very back of her mind. Had he really been as angry as she thought? Maybe not. He might even be capable of understanding why she and the boy had had to disappear. If she could only find the right way to tell him. She might say that the story about Karin was only an excuse she had made up, that it had been the network that had called her, and that the boy would only be with them for a few days before being sent on to relatives in … in England, maybe. That might seem sufficiently safe and manageable even for Morten.

  Morten didn’t like that she worked with the illegal residents. In principle, he agreed that something must be done. He was unwavering in his opposition to the government’s policy when it came to refugees and other immigrants, and when yet another story about grotesque deportations and broken families hit the news stream, he would be genuinely upset and outraged. The problem he had with the network and her commitment to it was purely personal. Morten didn’t think it was good for her. He thought she was using it as a form of escape from herself and her own children, from what was supposed to be their family life. When he was in a good mood, he called her his little adrenalin junkie. When he was angry, he didn’t say very much, but his antipathy to the network rose in direct ratio to the number of nights and evenings she spent away from their Østerbro flat.

  Right now, there was nowhere else in the world she would rather be. God, how she wanted it. She wanted to sneak up the stairs with the boy in her arms, put on the kettle to make coffee. Leave the boy in front of the television, perhaps, while she herself slipped into their tiny bathroom and pulled the octopus-patterned shower curtain in front of the door. She would stand under the hot shower for a long luxurious moment with her own bottle of eco-friendly shampoo, without perfume and smelling only of simple cleanliness. Afterwards she might pad out into the kitchen on bare feet and set the table for breakfast with oatmeal, raisins, sugar, and milk. The children would have to leave for school, of course, and the boy might then sleep another few hours in Anton’s bed before they had to head back to Vesterbro to find the girl from Helgolandsgade.

  She would do it. Yes. She would go home. The relief was deep and physical, as if someone had quite literally lifted a weight off her shoulders. She raised her eyes to the mirror and gave the boy a genuine smile as she eased the car away from the curb and headed for Åboulevarden. Everything looked so different in the morning, even on such a morning as this. Morten would help her. Of course he would. Why had she ever doubted it?

  MORTEN MADE COFFEE for the detective sergeant and for himself. The uniformed officer had declined, but accepted a cola instead.

  His hands moved mechanically in a set of practiced routines that needed little guidance from his brain: fill kettle, click switch, rinse pot, open coffee can.

  You don’t know whether she is dead or alive, a cynical voice inside him whispered. And you’re making coffee.

  “Milk or sugar?”

  “Milk, please.”

  He opened the refrigerator and looked vaguely at flat plastic packages of cured ham, mustard bottles, cucumbers, jars of pickled beets. Half past four in the morning. He could smell the bed-sweat on his own body and felt dysfunctional and unhygienic.

  “She said that Karin was ill, or wasn’t feeling very well, I don’t quite recall her exact words. But she had to help her.”

  “And when was this?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. A little past five. She was supposed to pick up Anton. Er, that’s our youngest. She should have picked him up from daycare. But she had forgotten.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  He shook his head vaguely, not exactly in denial; it was more a gesture of uncertainty.

  “She used to be … a little absent sometimes. But not anymore. No. She … I think she was distracted, perhaps because she was worried about Karin. They were at nursing school together, and they used to be close. But it’s been awhile. Since they saw each other last, I mean.”

  He put the bistro pot on the table. Then cups. Milk, in the little Stelton creamer that had been a present to them from his mother and father.

  She could be dead. As dead as Karin.

  “You haven’t seen her at all?” he asked.

  “No. A neighbor heard someone scream, and found the body.”

  “Scream? Karin?”

  “We don’t think so. We think she had already been dead some time by then. We don’t know where the scream came from, but our witness was definite he had heard it. He didn’t see anyone, but he heard a car drive off. We don’t know what kind of car. We don’t know whether it may have been your wife leaving the scene, or someone else. We still have searchers combing the area with dogs. That was how we found your wife’s mobile.”

  Uncertainty was nothing new. He had suffered days and even weeks of it before, when the gaps between her calls had grown too long, and one heard disquieting things on the news. This was worse. More specific. Closer to home. He felt a strange brooding anger. This wasn’t Darfur, dammit. It wasn’t supposed to happen here, not now that she was home again.

  The sergeant drank his coffee.

  “How tall is your wife?” he asked.

  “One meter sixty-nine,” answered Morten automatically. And then froze with the cup halfway to his mouth because he didn’t know whether this was something they needed to know in order to identify her, or her body.

  Then he realized there might be a third purpose behind the question.

  “You don’t think that … that she … that she might have anything to do with the murder?”

  “We are still waiting for the autopsy results. But it would seem that the blows were struck with overwhelming force. We tend to think that the assailant must have been male.”

  The reply did not provide any relief.

  Suddenly, Anton was in the doorway. His hair was damp with sweat, and the too large Spiderman pajama top had slipped off one shoulder.

  “Is Mummy home yet?” he asked, rubbing his face with the back of his hand.

  “Not yet,” said Morten.

  Anton frowned, and it seemed that it was only now that he registered the presence of two strangers in the room. The uniform made his eyes pop still wider. His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything. Morten felt paralyzed, completely unable to come up with an explanation that would make sense in a seven-year-old’s universe.

  “Go on back to bed,” he said, trying to sound casual and everyday normal. Anton gave a brief nod. The sound of his bare feet beat a rapid retreat along the corridor.

  “Will you please ask your wife to contact us immediately if she comes back?” said the sergeant. “She is an important witness.”

  “Of course,” said Morten with a growing feeling of complete helplessness.

  If she comes back.

  TRAFFIC ON JAGTVEJEN was warming up in the gray dawn, but the smaller streets around Fejøgade were still quiet and uncrowded. Perhaps that was why she saw the police car right away. With no blinking blue lights, it looked like a white taxi at first glance, but it was parked in an offhand, slanted manner, as if the driver could not be bothered to do a proper curbside parallel parking. Nina had time to think that this was the kind of sloppy parking Morten hated, and that he would be irritated if the car was still her
e when he came down to take the children to school. Then she realized that the bump on the car’s roof were cop lights, not taxi lights. And that someone was up and about and had the lights on, up there in their third-floor flat.

  Morten would not normally be up this early. He had flexible working hours when he wasn’t out on the rigs, and even though he was alone with the kids today, as long as he had them up and ready for breakfast at 7:30, he would be fine. It was now 5:58. Much too early for normality.

  Nina continued past her own front door at an even speed. It was of course possible that the cops had merely needed somewhere quiet to park while they enjoyed their morning coffee. But why, then, was Morten up? Were they looking for her? And was it because of Karin, or because of the boy?

  She didn’t want to believe it. The thought of having to give up her fantasy of a hot shower and a normal family breakfast caused a wave of exhaustion that dug into her already depleted reserves. She slipped the Fiat into an empty slot further up the street and sat there with her hands on the wheel and her foot on the clutch, trying to make up her mind.

  There was a part of her that wanted it over and done with.

  There would be no need for drama. She could hand over the boy to professional, caring adults in a quiet and orderly manner, without causing him undue anxiety. And if she really put her mind to it, she might even convince herself that she was doing the right thing. That the boy would be safe and cared for at some institution on Amager, and that the man from the railway station from now on would be a single bad memory in an otherwise happy and safe childhood. Immigraton had proper interpreters available to them, they didn’t need to chase after Lithuanian hookers with ponytails and coltish legs. If the boy did have a good and loving mother somewhere, surely they would find her.

  God only knew how she wanted to believe it. Every single day, she practiced her detachment skills, trying not to care about everything that was wrong with the world. Or rather … to care, but in a suitably civilized manner, with an admirable commitment that might still be set aside when she came home to Morten and her family, complete with well-reasoned and coherent opinions of the humanist persuasion. Right now she felt more like one of those manic women from the animal protection societies, with wild hair and even wilder eyes. Desperate. She had her good days, fortunately, but every time she dared to think that this serenity might be permanent, there would be a Natasha and a Rina, or a Zaide or a Li Hua, and her defenses would be blown to shreds, so that once more, reality grated on her naked skin like sandpaper.