Nina turned off the engine. She got out, closing the car door gently, and looked back at her own solid-seeming brown front door, and at the windows up there. She could make the choice. She could do like everyone else would do—take the boy gently by the hand, and go up there to meet the police, safe in the knowledge that she had done everything that could reasonably be expected from a responsible adult. Then she could come clean with Morten, telling him everything in one of those hot confessional rushes that would lead to a familiar, reassuring row about her priorities and his anxiety about her, and finally, finally, to tears and intimacy. Her hands on his face, sliding from his forehead to his cheekbones, then round to the back of his neck, damp under his short brown hair. Infinite relief.
All of that could be hers if only she would let herself believe what no one else seemed to have any trouble believing: that Denmark was a safe haven for the broken human lives that washed up on its shores.
Up there behind the windows, someone was moving, back and forth, jerkily, like a predator in an inadequate cage. Her conscience winced as she recognized Morten’s tall, near-athletic form. Then another man appeared, shorter, rounder, gesturing slowly and soothingly.
A pro, thought Nina, feeling her antagonism increase. Morten was in the hands of one of those policemen who had attended courses in how best to talk to civilians under pressure.
He would be saying things like “We are doing everything possible, and we are very good at what we do” and “We are highly trained professionals, and the best thing you can do for Nina now is to trust us.”
He would be telling her much the same thing as he took the boy away from her. “We will do everything in our power to find out what has happened here.”
Morten suddenly stepped up to the window, looking out. Inadvertantly, she backed a couple of paces. Had he seen her? The last softness had gone from the dawn, and daylight exposed her fully to anyone who cared to see. But she was some distance away, and the Fiat was shielded by other cars. She stood still, conscious that movement attracted attention. But she couldn’t make herself look away. Finally, he turned away from the window, and she dared move again. She leapt into the car, slammed the door, and hurriedly revved the engine. The Fiat practically leapt into the street, and then stalled. She had forgotten about the parking brake. Cursing, she got the engine started once more and engaged the clutch. Flight responses had taken over, coursing through her body, and turning back was no longer an option.
Had Morten seen her? And if he had, would he tell the police?
A sudden flashback washed through her tired mind. About a thousand years ago, when they had made love for the first time, he had raised her face to his and stared into her eyes, and there had been a startling moment of utter intimacy, utter trust. Now, she wasn’t even sure he would let her drive off without setting the cops on her. She could only hope.
A glance at the mirror reassured her that at least the cop car was still unmanned, parked with its lights off by the curb. Then a clumsy gray SUV, complete with tacky roof box, pulled out behind her, blocking her view. Well, at least she was getting away for now, she thought, with the boy safely in the back seat. Then she felt a treacherous little hope that Morten had in fact seen her, but was letting her drive off on purpose. Had he perhaps even given her a discrete, acknowledging wave? Was he even now quietly rooting for her, hoping she would succeed in what she was doing? Trusting her this time, and willing to wait patiently until she returned to him and the flat, to Anton’s crappy little drawings stuck to the refrigerator door, to the bathroom shelves that Ida had begun to fill with styling gels and cheap, glittery lipsticks. And when all this was over, the flat and everything it contained would be enough for her. It would. It had to be.
Nina turned onto Jagtvej just as the lights turned amber. Morning traffic was not yet closely packed in the two-lane part of the road, but behind her, she heard beeping horns and a squeal of brakes. The gray SUV behind her had followed her into the intersection much too late and was stuck untidily crosswise, fender to fender with a similar monster that was now blocking all traffic in the direction of Nørrebro.
Nina couldn’t help feeling a certain unholy glee as she shifted easily into fourth gear and continued unhindered in her small and rather unremarkable vehicle. She hoped those two CO2-offenders had a fun time exchanging insults and phone numbers and moaning about the dents in their ridiculously large fenders. A sort of cosmic justice, she thought—the bigger you get, the more you bump into things.
THE DRIVER OF the Landrover was yelling at Jučas and jabbing an aggressive forefinger at him. Jučas didn’t understand a single word the idiot was saying, nor did he care. He held up both hands disarmingly, and only the acute awareness that there was a police car parked no more than two hundred meters away kept him from punching the guy’s lights out instead. It wasn’t even rage, just frustration. But God, it would have felt good to plant a fist in that self-righteous, arrogant face and feel the cartilage crunch.
He forced himself to smile.
“No damage,” he said, pointing to the Landrover’s intact front. “No damage to you. My car, not so good, but okay. Have nice day.” Milky white shards from the Mitsubishi’s headlights decorated the pavement, but nothing could be done about that now. What he needed was to get away, as quickly as possible, before the boy-bitch managed to disappear again. He ignored the continued protests of the Landrover-man, in English now, got back into the Mitsubishi, reversed, and managed to get free of the other vehicle.
“… driving like an idiot, what do you think the red lights are for, Christmas decorations?”
Jučas just waved, and drove off. Hadn’t she turned right at the next intersection?
“Did you see where she went?” he asked Barbara.
It was some time before she answered.
“No,” she said. Nothing else.
He threw a quick glance at her. She looked oddly distant, as if the whole thing was no longer any of her business. But perhaps the fender-bender had left her a little shocked.
“No harm done,” he said. “It’s just a broken headlight. I can fix it myself, if we can find a garage.”
She didn’t answer. Right now he had no time to coax and cajole and work out what was wrong with her. He signaled a right turn, but of course he had to wait interminably while about a hundred bicycles went past. What the hell was wrong with people in this city? Couldn’t they afford cars? It seemed as if half the population insisted on teetering along on two wheels, endangering the traffic.
Next intersection. He hesitated, causing a chorus of horns behind him. He could see no Fiat. Decided on a left turn, and ended up in a one-way hell full of “enclosed areas” and fucking flower beds that apparently had to be placed in the middle of the street. Reversing aggressively, he tried to get back to the main street, but it was hopeless. Three or four one-way streets later, he had to realize that the battle was lost.
“Fucking hell!”
He hammered both hands against the steering wheel and braked abruptly. Sat there for a moment, fighting his temper.
“She had the boy with her,” said Barbara suddenly.
“Did she?” Jučas glanced at her sharply. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. He was in the back seat. I could see his hair.”
Right now, he would have preferred the money. But the kid was currency in his own way, and better than nothing.
“You said they were going to adopt him,” said Barbara.
“What? Yes. So they are.”
“Then what was he doing in that car? I thought his new parents were picking him up?”
“Yeah, so did I. But this Nina Borg person got in the way.”
“And why was it that you took his clothes off?” she asked. “For the picture?”
He inhaled a mouthful of air and blew it slowly back out. Easy now.
“To make it harder for them to trace him,” he said. “And stop this. You’re only making it worse, asking so many questions.”
“Hell,” he hissed. “I’m not one of those filthy perverts. And if you think that for a moment, then… .”
“No, ” she said, very quickly. “I don’t think that.”
“Good. ’Cause I’m not.”
HE DROVE AROUND for a bit, on the off chance. But the Fiat stayed gone. Finally he went back and parked near her house again.
“Stay in the car,” he told Barbara. “She’ll be back. Call me when the cops leave, or if you see her and the boy.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, looking at him once more, but this time in a different way. He smiled. It was okay. She still wanted him to look after her, and that was just what he planned on doing.
“I have a couple of things to do,” he said. “It won’t take long.”
IT WAS 7:07, and the public swimming pool in Helgasgade had been open for exactly seven minutes. Nina laid down the deposit for two towels at the ticket booth and continued up the wide brown stairs to the the women’s changing rooms on the first floor.
They were almost alone among the many empty lockers, and the three women there were silent and introverted, folding their clothes with their backs to one another, guarding their privacy in a very public space. One was young, Nina noticed, the two others middle aged in the determinedly well-trained way. None of them looked at Nina and the boy, who stood beside her on the damp, smooth tiles, hunched and slightly shivering in the early morning chill.
Nina took the boy to the bathroom, and he peed obediently, with his pelvis thrust forward and his hands folded behind his neck. Anton had done the same thing, remembered Nina, because he could then claim that there was no need for him to wash his hands afterwards. Perhaps that was a brand of logic universal to little boys. Nina smiled at the thought.
When they returned to the changing rooms, the three women had all gone out into the echoing cavern of the swimming pool area, and Nina proceeded to undress, her movements awkward and heavy. There was a stiffness in her muscles, joints and tendons, like the aftermath of the flu, and she took her time. There was no hurry. She parked the boy on one of the wooden benches fixed to the wall with solid-looking brackets, turned on the water, and let the hot spray hit her chest and stomach.
She hadn’t been eating enough lately. She could see it in the way her ribs protruded under the skin. She had always been skinny, too skinny, but since the birth of her children it seemed nothing stuck to her. Her face had become narrow and somewhat hollowcheeked, and she had lost whatever softness she had once possessed around her collarbones, shoulders, and hips. Forgetting to eat was not a smart move. But it happened whenever she worked too much, or when Morten went off to Esbjerg and the rigs. She simply lost her appetite, and fed the children mechanically without bothering to feed herself.
“We’ll get something to eat later,” she promised the boy. “A big English breakfast, how about that?”
He didn’t react to her voice except to sit and watch her, eyes huge and curious, legs dangling. Nina turned her back again and began to lather her body with the liquid soap from the automat on the wall. It had a sweet and perfumed smell that felt almost too extravagant for the gray shower room, and Nina was caught up in a moment’s pleasure, enjoying the heat and the scent of it. Her skin felt warm, soft, and alive, and the steam rose about her and obscured mirrors and glass partitions. She worked up a new helping of frothy lather and washed her hair rather roughly. She had had it cut quite short again not so long ago. Morten didn’t understand why, but he wasn’t the one who had to struggle with the heavy, frizzy burden of it. It had curled nearly to her shoulders before she had it cut, and the relief had been enormous. Not least in her job, where she no longer had to wonder what would be the politically correct way of wearing it today. Many of the male inhabitants of the Coal-House Camp saw the female staff as a combination of prison wardens and service functions. They felt superior and humiliated at the same time, one of the center’s psychologists had once explained. Possibly it was true. Whatever the cause, conflict always lurked just beneath the surface, and Nina had tried to appear as sexless and neutral as possible. When she had her hair cut so short, it was an oddly mutual relief. Some of her provocative femininity seemed to have disappeared along with the hair, and Nina didn’t miss it. Morten did, but she had long ago stopped regulating her appearance in accordance with his opinions.
Nina slid a wet hand down across her navel and the rigidly defined muscles of her abdomen. Despite her two pregnancies, there was nothing much that was ripe and womanly about her body now. Poor Morten.
The boy moved impatiently on the bench. Collecting her drifting thoughts, she turned off the shower and began instead to fill one of the white plastic kiddy bathtubs that were scattered about the shower room. The boy did not resist as she pulled off his new clothes and sat him down in the tub. Crouching next to him, she carefully began to wash his shoulders, chest, back, and feet. Deliberately, she did not touch him elsewhere, but just let him sit in the tub as she used the shower to rinse away the soap. The boy took all this with surprising calm. His fingers trustingly followed the little currents of hot water tricklinging down his chest and belly, and when a frothy bubble almost miraculously released itself from the edge of the tub and fell with a wet pop aganst the tiles of the floor, he sent Nina a gleeful smile of delight and surprise—the first she had ever seen on his face since their common journey had begun yesterday afternoon.
Nina felt a new warm sense of relief spreading in her abdomen. She couldn’t positively know, and she was no expert on responses to pedophilia and child abuse, but it seemed to her that the boy was free of such hideousness. If something like that had happened to him, surely he would have acted differently? More frightened, less trustful?
The relief was almost painful in its ferocity. The boy was still whole. Rescue, in its most complete sense, was still possible.
She turned off the water and dried him gently with one of the towels. Then, silently, they began to dress, and Nina combed his hair with her fingers.
Who was he?
She watched patiently as he insisted on pulling the T-shirt over his head himself. He might have been a child smuggled into Denmark for the purpose of some sort of prostitution or abuse, but would he then be stored like luggage in a central station locker? Nina didn’t know very much about that type of crime. She certainly saw her share of human degradation and brutality in her job, but the motives there were usually unsubtle, and the methods simple enough that even the most moronic of criminals could join in. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to batter the last few pennies out of an Iraqi father who had already paid almost everything he possessed to the traffickers who had arranged his journey to the border. Nor was it especially difficult to lure Eastern Euopean girls into the country and sell them by the hour in places like Skelbækgade. A few beatings, a gang rape or two, and a note bearing the address of her family in some Estonian village—that was usually enough to break even the most obstinate spirit. And the real beauty of it all for the cynical exploiters was that ordinary people didn’t care. Not really. No one had asked the refugees, the prostitutes, the fortune hunters, and the orphans to come knocking on Denmark’s door. No one had invited them, and no one knew how many there were. Crimes committed against them had nothing to do with ordinary people and the usual workings of law and order. It was only dimwit fools like Nina who were unable to achieve the proper sense of detachment.
She felt too much, and she knew it. Especially where the children were concerned, her skin felt tender and brittle, like the thin, pink, parchment-like new growth that spread to cover healing wounds. It had been bad after Ida’s birth, but when Anton arrived, her sensitivity to the children of the Coal-House Camp had taken on monstrous proportions. It was her imagination, of course, but sometimes it felt as if their gazes clung to her, spotting her vulnerablity, tearing through her pitiful defenses and into her soul.
Unacc
ompanied children would usually be older than the boy from the suitcase, thought Nina, from about ten years of age and up. Often, the staff would have time to form only the most fleeting of impressions. Some of them, particularly the Eastern European ones, had been sold by their parents and trained by backers to beg and steal, and they were instructed to escape the refugee centers at the first opportunity if they were picked up on the streets. The moment their mobiles rang, they were off on the next suburban train, disappearing back into the metropolitan underworld they had come from. Other children might continue on to Sweden or England, where relatives awaited. Still others were obviously alone in the world, brought to Denmark for the sole purpose of making money for their owners. All in all, more than seventy percent would disappear from the camps without anyone ever really knowing what became of them.
But the suitcase boy was surely too young to be of use to even the most cynical gang of thieves. Might he be some kind of hostage? Or was he meant to be part of a social security scam? That had happened before, particularly in the UK, she had heard.
He was beautiful, thought Nina suddenly. She didn’t know how much that meant among pedophiles, but somehow it made him seem more vulnerable. It was all too easy to imagine that some pervert bastard somewhere had ordered a small European boy for a night’s pleasure. Or several nights. She looked at the boy standing in front of her with his T-shirt back to front and the new sandals carefully strapped to his small, narrow feet, and the thought of him sharing a bed with some unknown adult man was sickening and utterly unbearable.
The Boy in the Suitcase Page 18