The Boy in the Suitcase

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  (Alas, this world is cold, and all its light is only shadow.)

  Nina shuddered, and without thinking drew the blanket up to cover the boy’s legs, despite the heat of the day. At that moment, she saw her. The girl from Helgolandsgade was peering into the car through the rear window, her face a pale outline. Nina jerked in her seat, then nodded, and leaned across to open the passenger door.

  “I wil pay you,” she said, hastily. “You just tell me how much you need, and where we can go.”

  It was 12:06.

  The girl jackknifed herself into the passenger seat, looking quickly up and down Stenogade before closing the door. She smelled strongly of perfume and something sweet and rather chemical, possibly rinse aid. She fumbled in her bag and produced a stick of gum.

  “It is five hundred kroner an hour, and three thousand for eight hours. How long will it take?” she answered, throwing a calculating look at the boy in the back.

  Then she suddenly smiled at Nina, a crooked and unexpectedly genuine smile.

  “He is so little,” she said. “So cute.”

  She held out her hand, and Nina shook it, somewhat taken aback.

  “Marija,” said the girl slowly and clearly, and Nina nodded.

  “I will pay for the eight hours,” she said, offering up a quiet prayer to the bank. She had been uncomfortably close to the overdraft limit the last time she had checked, but she was uncertain whether this was before or after her latest paycheck had registered. She had never been very good at the money thing.

  Nina turned the key in the ignition, and then sat in indecision, hands locked around the wheel. Where could they go? MacDonald’s? A café?

  No. Suddenly resolute, she turned left onto Vesterbrogade and headed for Amager. They could all do with a bit of fresh air.

  THROUGH THE YELLOWED blinds, there was a view of the road, the parking lot, and the grimy concrete walls of some industrial warehouse or other. Every twenty minutes, a bus went past. Jan knew this because he had been sitting there staring out the window for nearly four hours now.

  He hadn’t considered that boredom would be a factor. But this was like sitting an exam at which one had offered what little one had to say on the subject inside the first ten minutes, and now had to repeat oneself ad infinitum. Even though the context was hideous, and he really shouldn’t be able to be bored when talking about the brutal murder of someone who had been close to him, this was what had begun to happen. It felt as if his lips were growing thicker with each repetition, his mouth drier. The words wore thin. Concentration faltered. All pretense at naturalness had long since vanished.

  “I met Karin Kongsted two and a half years ago, in Bern; she was employed by the clinic that performed my renal surgery. We probably grew more familiar than might otherwise have been the case, due to the fact that we were both Danes on foreign soil; it often works that way. After the operation, I needed fairly frequent check-ups and medical attention, but it was crucial that I didn’t neglect my business any more than I had to. Karin agreed to return to Denmark and work for me in a private capacity, and this proved an excellent solution.”

  At the moment he was telling his story to an older detective, a calm, almost flegmatic man whose Jutland roots could still be heard in his intonation. His name was Anders Kvistgård, and he was more rigidly polite than the others, punctiliously addressing Jan as “Mr. Marquart.” In his white shirt, black tie and slightly threadbare navy blue pullover, he looked like a railroad clerk, thought Jan.

  Mr. Kvistgård was the third detective to interview him. First there had been a younger man who had approached Jan with an air of comradery, as if they both played for the same soccer team. Then a woman, who to Jan seemed far too young and feminine for her job. Each time it had been back to square one, excuse-me-but-would-you-mind-repeating, how-exactly-was-it, could-you-please-tell-us, how-would-you-describe… .

  “A private nurse. Isn’t that a little … extravagant?”

  “My time is the most precious commodity I possess. I simply can’t be stuck in a waiting room for hours every time I need to have a blood sample taken. Believe me, Karin’s paycheck has been a worthwhile investment.”

  “I see. And apart from this, how was your relationship with Ms. Kongsted?”

  “Excellent. She was a very warm and friendly person.”

  “How warm?”

  Jan was jerked from his near-somnolent repetition. This question was new.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Were the two of you having it on? Playing doctor when the missus wasn’t around? I understand you lived under the same roof?”

  Jan could feel his jaw drop. He stared at this sixty-year-old Danish Rails ticket puncher lookalike with a feeling of complete unreality. This was bizarre. The man’s expression of benign interest hadn’t shifted a millimeter.

  “I … no. Bloody hell. I’m married!”

  “Quite a few people are. This doesn’t stop around seventy percent of them from having a bit on the side. But not you and Ms. Kongsted, then?”

  “No, I tell you!”

  “Are you quite certain of that?”

  Jan felt fresh sweat break out on his palms and forehead. Did they know anything? Would it be better to come clean and be casual about it, rather than be caught in a lie? Did they know, or were they just bluffing?

  He realized that his hesitation had already given him away.

  “It was very brief,” he said. “I think I was taken by surprise at… . Oh, I don’t know. Have you ever been through a serious operation?”

  “No,” said the railway clerk.

  “The relief at still being alive can cause a certain … exuberance.”

  “And in this rush of exuberance you began a relationship with Karin Kongsted?”

  “No, I wouldn’t call it that. Not a relationship. I think we both realized that it was a mistake. And neither of us wanted to hurt Anne.”

  “So your wife was ignorant of the affair?”

  “Stop it. It wasn’t an affair. At the most, it was … oh, it sounds so sordid to call it a one-night stand, and it wasn’t, but I think you know what I mean.”

  “Do I, Mr. Marquart? I’m not so sure. What are we talking about? One night? A week? A couple of months? How long did it take you to realize that it was a mistake? And are you certain that Ms. Kongsted understood that just because she was having sex with you, she had better not think this constituted an affair?”

  Jan tried to remain calm, but the man was subjecting him to verbal acupuncture, sticking in his needles with impeccable precision, and observing him blandly all the while.

  “You’re twisting everything,” he said. “Karin is … like I said, Karin was a very warm person, very … womanly. But I am perfectly sure she understood how much my marriage means to me.”

  “How fortunate. Is your wife equally certain?”

  “Of course! Or … no, I didn’t tell Anne about the … episode with Karin. And I would appreciate it if you didn’t either. Anne is easily hurt.”

  “We will just have to hope it doesn’t become necessary, then. Can you tell me why Karin Kongsted left the house so suddenly yesterday?”

  “No. I … I wasn’t there myself. But seeing that she went to the summer cottage, she must have decided to take a few days off.”

  “Am I to believe you haven’t seen this?” Kvistgård fished out a vinyl sleeve and placed it on the table in front of Jan. Inside was Karin’s note, with the brief, bald phrase clearly visible through the plastic: I QUIT.

  “I didn’t take it seriously. I think it was meant as a joke. She had been complaining that it was too hot to work … like I said, I think she was simply taking a few days off and had a slightly … untraditional way of announcing it.”

  “According to your wife, Karin Kongsted appeared upset and off balance when she drove off.”

  “Did she? Well, I can’t really say. I told you, I wasn’t there.”

  “No. But you did make a call to SecuriTrack in order to
locate the car she was driving. Why did you do that, Mr. Marquart?”

  There was a high-pitched whine of pressure in his ears. He was aware that he was still sitting there with a stiff smile glued to his face, but he also knew that any illusion of casual innocence had long since evaporated. There was no way he could make light of this, no way he could pretend it didn’t mean anything, that it was just a routine precaution when a company car went missing. He couldn’t do it. That bloody railway clerk had unbalanced him completely and nailed him in free fall, with no life lines left to clutch.

  “I can see this needs a bit of mature consideration,” said Anders Kvistgård. “Perhaps you wish to call an attorney? I’m afraid that I have to caution you that charges may be brought against you.”

  THE MILE-LONG, SURPRISINGLY natural-looking beach of the Amager Strandpark was only sparsely populated by bathers, despite the dragging heat. Weeks of drought and sunshine had apparently satisfied the city’s hunger for beach life and firstdegree burns, thought Nina. For most people, the holidays were over. In the spot Nina had chosen for them, they were alone except for a couple of students lying on too-small bath towels with open textbooks in front of them, and their only other human encounter had been with a sweat-soaked young man on rollerblades who had narrowly missed ploughing into the boy on the cement path.

  Now here they were, sitting side by side on their brand-new soft towels, staring out across the mirror-smooth sea. Not a breath of wind rippled the surface, and the waves merely lapped the sand in soft, flat, nearly soundless surges. The silence among the three of them was equally noticeable, thought Nina. The boy sat still, with his head lowered, only moving his hand now and then to let the dry sand sift through his fingers in a steady stream. Marija reclined on her towel with half-closed eyes behind new shades bought at a local convenience store. She had taken off her tight jeans, revealing a pair of long, pale legs, as slender as the rest of her T-shirt-clad body. She hadn’t said much in the car. A trip to the seaside would be okay, she agreed, as long as towels, sunscreen, sunglasses and a new bikini were part of the deal. Nina had had a brief flashback to negotiations with her own sulky teenage daughter, and had in the end secured a compromise that left out the bikini. For the boy, she had found a small dusty set of bucket, sieve, rake, and spade in red and yellow, languishing on a rack at the back of the store. Later, she had also bought them all ice cream from the kiosk. Marija had taken the boy by the hand and pointed to the faded pictures of cones and popsicles, and to Nina’s relief the boy had answered her, opting for the biggest of the lot. After that encouraging breakthrough, silence had unfortunately descended, even though Marija had tried to encourage the child with soft, careful questions. Demonstratively, the boy sat with his back to them, working his fingers through the hot, white sand.

  Glancing at Marija, Nina decided to break the silence. She and the girl, at least, could have a conversation. But what did one ask someone like Marija? Her work in Helgolandsgade? Her life before Copenhagen? Her hopes and dreams, if any had survived? The fact that Nina had bought her time and her presence here lay like a vague discomfort between them—it was a little too much like the selling and buying that went on between Marija and the men that sought her out at night.

  “How long have you been in Denmark?”

  Nina had meant to ask how she liked it here, but caught herself in time.

  Raising her head, Marija looked at Nina with a faint smile that was at the same time amiable and distant.

  “Seven weeks,” she said, jerking her head at the city behind them. “It is a beautiful city.”

  Nina looked at Marija’s long slender legs and feet, half buried in the sand. Two small round scars gleamed pinkly on her thigh, just above the knee. Cigarette burns, thought Nina mechanically, and the image of the small muscular man with the serpent tattoo flashed before her eyes. But it might not be him. Marija had, after all, only been here for seven weeks, and the scars had healed as much as such scars ever do.

  Noticing her glance, Marija discretely slid a hand down her thigh, covering the scars. Then she suddenly leapt to her feet in a shower of loose sand.

  “I go swim,” she announced, indicating the mirror sea. “Just a quick one.”

  Nina smiled and nodded agreement, while Marija pulled off her T-shirt to reveal a soft, white cotton bra with wide straps. Another unwelcome image presented itself, this time of Ida and the way she had been standing in front of the mirror in her cramped little room last week.

  She had bought herself a bra. One of the tight, elastic sport models that prevented abrasion and over-bouncing, which of course was quite sensible. It had to happen sometime, and Ida was way ahead of Nina in the bosom department. Nina and Morten had actually joked that Ida now, at thirteen, had bigger breasts than Nina would ever have, barring implants. Yet there was still something overwhelming about the sight of her, standing there with her narrow back turned, her shoulderblades sharply outlined under this new bra that she had to have bought with her own money and without consultation. Without asking Nina’s permission, even.

  Nina shook her head quickly. And just exactly what was it that Ida was supposed to ask permission for? Growing up?

  Marija ran into the water wearing bra and panties, and dived in when it was up to her thighs, her arms describing a perfect curve over her head. She surfaced several meters away and swam back and forth at a practiced crawl for a while before flipping over onto her back. She kicked up a furious cascade with her legs.

  “You come too,” she called, with a grin that reached her eyes for the first time. “Ateik čia!”

  The boy had left off his sand-sifting to look at her, and something was released in his expression, an eagerness, a yearning. He looked questioningly at Nina, causing a melting hot sensation somewhere behind her midriff. He was asking her for permission.

  She nodded briefly and drew him close, so that she could help him out of his T-shirt and underpants. As soon as she let him go, he scurried across the firm damp part of the beach until the first ripples reached his bare feet. When a deeper surge lapped his ankles, he gave an enthusiastic shriek and continued a few steps forward, then stumbled and pitched onto his bottom, a mixture of elation and anxiety visible on his face. Marija reached him in a few long steps and helped him to his feet again, and Nina could hear them talking. Marija said something, and the boy answered her in the characteristic whine children employed when they were in need of help. Marija smiled, ruffling his short white-blond hair so that it stuck wetly in all directions. Then she said something else, taking his hands and towing him gently through the water. The boy was giggling and shrieking so that all his white milk teeth showed, and Marija was laughing too, now, a high-pitched girly laugh. She waved a hand at Nina.

  “Come,” she said. “Very nice.”

  Nina returned the wave but shook her head. She wanted the boy and Marija to be alone together in this. The boy had clearly missed having someone around who could understand him. The same might be true of Marija, thought Nina, watching the tall, skinny girl leaping joyfully about in the water. Hearing her own language spoken might not be an everyday occurrence, certainly not from someone as friendly and unthreatening as this. There was no reason Nina should butt in now. Marija knew what she was supposed to do—win the boy’s confidence and try to find out where he came from. Anything would be useful, thought Nina. His name, the name of a town or a city, or of a street. Anything at all, as long as it helped pull him from the void he was floating in and anchor him somewhere, with someone.

  Marija hadn’t asked why, and Nina guessed that not asking questions had become a survival mechanism. That she had agreed to help, despite the man with the serpent tattoo, was little short of a miracle.

  And another small miracle was taking place before her very eyes.

  Marija said something to the boy, and he struggled free of her embrace with a scream of laughter. He splashed her with water, and then replied to her question, feet firmly planted in the wet sand. Instincti
vely, Nina understood what it was, even before the boy repeated his answer in a louder voice.

  “Mikas!”

  It was his name.

  MARIJA AND THE boy whose name was Mikas stayed in the water until Mikas’s lips were blue from cold and his teeth chattering like little castanets. Marija’s long, dark hair hugged her shoulders wetly, and there was still laughter in her eyes as she let herself drop down onto the towel next to Nina, stretching so that she caught as much as possible of the hot afternoon sun.

  Nina wrapped Mikas in the other towel, rubbing dry the narrow white shoulders, his chest and back, his legs. Then she helped him put on the T-shirt and the pants and liberated the spade-andbucket set from their net bag for him. At once, he ran the few feet to the wet part of the beach and set to with an eager enthusiasm that made Marija and Nina smile at each other tolerantly, as if they were a married couple sharing a moment of pride in their offspring. Then Marija crouched forward, looking at Nina with a small sharp worry-wrinkle between her eyebrows.

  “I know his name now,” she said, in her heavy English. “He is Mikas, and his mother’s last name is Ramoškienė. He remembered that when I asked him what the daycare staff calls his mama.”

  “Preschool?” said Nina, taken aback by the apparent normality of it. She knew precious little about Lithuania, she realized, and her ideas had run along the lines of Soviet concrete ghettos, TB-infected prisons, and a callous mafia. Somehow, preschools had not been part of the picture. “Anything else?”

  Marija asked Mikas another question. He answered readily, without pausing or looking up from his work with the spade and bucket even for a second.

  “He is from Vilnius. I am sure,” said Marija. “I asked him if he liked riding on the trolley buses, and he does. But not in the winter when the floor is all slushy.”