The Boy in the Suitcase (18 page)

That was when he came upon a core of resistance in the middle of all that soft blondness. She wouldn’t tell him. Lied to him, saying she didn’t know. And that was when he became angry.

He had had to leave her for a while, afraid of losing it, afraid that he had already lost it. He’d stood outside on the porch for some minutes, just breathing, listening to the irritating whine of the mosquitoes, as if they all had little miniature engines that were tuned too high. A small gray tabby suddenly appeared from under the bushes on the opposite side of the lawn. It stopped some distance away, meowing with a curious questioning intonation. But it seemed to realize something was wrong, because it came no closer, and immediately afterwards darted back into the shrubbery and was gone.

When he went back in, she had succeeded in crawling onto the bed. Her breathing sounded wrong, too wet and bubbly, and she didn’t react when he came into the room.

“Ni-na,” she gurgled. “Ni-na.”

He wasn’t even sure whether it was in answer to the questions he had asked, or whether she was just calling for someone she imagined might help her. But he took her mobile from the bedside table to check if there was a Nina. There was. He took down both the number and her last name and tossed the phone on the bed.

“Ni-na,” she said once more.

She doesn’t even know I’m here, he thought. Then he saw the pool of blood spreading beneath her head.

THE FLAMES WERE
dying. He kicked some sand over the embers, then decided to bury the remains of the bonfire properly. With a bit of luck they would never be found. Then he got himself a clean dry shirt from his bag in the car.

He tried to view the situation with a clear mind. One had to. At the moment, he didn’t know where the money was. The blonde had said she had given it back to the Dane. The Dane said the blonde had it. Jučas believed the blonde more than he believed the Dane.

And the boy? Perhaps that gurgling “Ni-na” had actually been the answer. Maybe she was called Nina, the dark-haired boy-bitch who had ogled him back at the railway station. What if she had the brat, and this was why the Dane was suddenly so uncooperative about paying? At the price they had set, it wasn’t too surprising if he wanted delivery of the goods before he handed over the cash.

Once Jučas was fully dressed again, he called Barbara. He had checked her into a hotel before leaving the city. More unnecessary expense, but he couldn’t take her with him.

“Is there a phone book in the room?” he asked.

She said there was.

“I need you to find an address for me,” he said. “But don’t call Directory Enquiries, and don’t ask the operator. Is that clear?”

“When will you be back?” she asked, and he could hear the anxiety in her voice.

“Soon. But you have to do as I say, it’s important.”

“Yes. Yes, okay. What is it you want me to do?”

“Look up someone in the phone book. See if there’s a listing for a Nina Borg.”

H
ELGOLANDSGADE.

The street was narrow and a bit claustrophobic. On one side was the newly refurbished Hotel Axel with its brilliant white facade and a big golden dragonfly hovering above the entrance. It had become trendy, thought Nina, to spend the night in Vesterbro, with a view of hookers and pick-pockets.

A group of teenage girls had taken up position directly opposite the hotel’s entrance. They looked like ordinary school girls, thought Nina in surprise. No leather, no fishnet stockings or bleached hair. They looked like regular young people ready for a night on the town. And yet, there was somehow no doubt what they were here for.

The four girls all checked the street regularly, eyeing the passersby. Every little while, one would separate herself from the herd, walk a few steps, perhaps get out her mobile, but without ever calling someone. Then she’d return to lean on the small black motor scooter they were all gathered around. While everyone else moved on, they stayed.

Nina gripped the boy’s hand a little more tightly, then approached them. A couple of phrases in accented English rose above the noisy conversation of a couple of drunks going the other way.

“Nineteen. You owe me.”

One of the girls laughed loudly, and took a couple of tottering steps backwards, on heels that were far too high for her.

They had been betting on her age, thought Nina, but she couldn’t tell whether the others had guessed too high or too low. She shivered. Ida would be fourteen at her next birthday.

“Excuse me?”

Nina deliberately made her voice soft and neutral. These girls wouldn’t want to talk to anyone except for necessary business, her instincts told her.

All the girls turned to regard her, and once more, Nina was struck by their youth. The heavy makeup and pale glittery lip gloss just made them look like little girls disguised as grown-ups. Nina half expected some tinny voice to announce that these were the contestants in some bizarre American Little Miss beauty pageant, so that any minute now, one of them might break into song.

One of the four took up a stance directly in front of her, legs apart and arms crossed over her chest, presumably in an effort to look menacing. She was small and very slim, her dark eyes darting nervously.

“I need some help with this boy,” said Nina. “I need to know if you can understand him.”

The girl cast a glance up the street, then looked at Nina again, her skepticism obvious.

“Atju,” said Nina, pointing at the boy. “Do you know what it means? Do you know which language?”

Something moved in the girl’s sullen face. Nina could practically see her deliberating the pros and cons, and separating them into two untidy piles. Nina quickly stuck her hand into the pockets of her jeans and came up with a crumbled hundred-kroner note. That obviously helped. The girl discreetly transferred the note to her own pocket.

“I’m not sure. I think maybe Lithuanian.”

Nina nodded, smiling as softly as she knew how. She was definitively out of cash now.

“And you are not from Lithuania?”

The answer was self-evident, but Nina wanted to keep the conversation going, to hang on to the slight thread of a chance she had been offered.

“Latvia.” The girl shrugged. “Marija is Lithuanian.”

She stepped aside a little, indicating the tall, gangly girl who had laughed before, and who might or might not be nineteen years old. She had long dark hair, gathered in a ponytail at the back of her head. There was something coltish about her, thought Nina. Her legs seemed too long for her body, the knees wide and bony in comparison, and her movements had all the gawky awkwardness of a growing teenager.

Her face, too, was sullen, and she looked uncertainly at Nina.

“Do you know the word
atju
?” asked Nina.

An involuntary smile flashed across the girl’s face, probably at Nina’s attempt at pronunciation.

“It’s
ačiu
.
Ačiū
.”

Her A was a little longer than Nina’s, and it sounded exactly right in a way Nina’s attempt had not. Something soft and girlish came into the young woman’s face as she repeated the word, and she exposed a row of perfect white teeth still too big and too new, somehow, for the adult makeup.

“That is Lithuanian,” she said, smiling again, and raising a flat hand to her chest. “I am from Lithuania.”

Again, Nina pointed to the boy.

“I need to talk to this boy. I think maybe he is Lithuanian too.”

If the girl would help her, she would be able to get information from the boy. He might even be able to tell her how he had ended up in a suitcase in a baggage locker at the central railway station. If only the girl would agree to go somewhere a little more quiet.

“Could you help me talk to him?”

The girl cast a quick look over her shoulder, and now there was a wary expression on her face. She was having second thoughts, and when a young man in a black T-shirt suddenly crossed Helgolandsgade and headed their way, she started visibly.

“When we talk, we don’t make any money.”

Her eyes were still on the black T-shirt man, who had increased his pace and was clearly homing in on Nina and the girls. The girl with the ponytail stepped back and deliberately turned away from Nina.

“Tomorrow,” she said softly, not looking Nina’s way at all. “After I sleep. Twelve o’clock. Do you know the church?”

Nina shook her head. There had to be thousands of churches in Copenhagen, and she didn’t know any of them.

T-shirt man had almost reached them. He wasn’t much older than the ponytail girl, thought Nina. He wouldn’t have looked out of place, she thought, as a carpenter’s or plumber’s apprentice. Not so tall, but muscular, with short fair hair and a tattooed black snake winding its way up his well-defined biceps.

The girl’s lips were moving silently, as though she was practicing the name before she said it out loud.

“Sacred Heart,” she finally said.

T-shirt man stopped. He seized the girl’s upper arm in a no-nonsense grip, and jerked her along the sidewalk, not even glancing at Nina. A few paces further on, the sound of the first slap rang across the street. The ponytail leaped and fell as the girl’s head snapped back. He hit her three times, all of them hard, flat blows. Then he let go of her.

Nina snatched the boy onto her arm and stalked off in the direction of Istedgade. Anger pounded through her body in a hot red pulse, but there was nothing she could do now. Not while she had the boy with her. Hell, she probably couldn’t have done much even if she had been alone. The thought did not lessen her fury.

Just before she turned the corner, she looked down Helgolandsgade again. The man was already gone, possibly lost somewhere in the shadow of a doorway or a service entrance. The ponytail girl was heading back towards the black motor scooter. She was hunched forward as she walked, her long gangling arms wrapped around her upper body.

One of the other girls touched her shoulder briefly as she rejoined the group, and as Nina turned away, she could hear their high clear voices behind her, already laughing again in a flat, harsh, defiant way. They had another bet going, and the girl with the ponytail was laughing louder than any of them.

NINA CARRIED THE
boy all the way back to the car. He was awake, but the small firm will that she had noticed when they were getting out of the car in Reventlowsgade had left him again. His legs dangled in a ragdoll fashion against her thighs and belly with every step she took. When she reached the car, he wouldn’t even stand on his own while she unlocked the car. She covered the dark, soursmelling stain on the backseat with the checkered blanket, and let the boy slide out of her grasp and onto the seat. Then she got into the back beside him and simply sat there, staring into the neon dark. She was exhausted. It was exactly 11:00, she noted. For some reason, it pleased her when she caught the hour on the hour; perhaps it was the flat precision of the double zeros.

Traffic up on Tietgensgade had become more scattered. In the old Vesterbro apartment buildings on the other side of the street, she could see into the still-lit kitchens. On the ground floor, a young man was making coffee in a bistro coffeepot, calling back his half of a conversation to someone behind him. He put the coffeepot on a tray with a collection of cups and turned away from the window with a smile on his face. Nina couldn’t help wondering if the lives of other people were really as simple as they looked. As simple, and as happy.

Probably not, she thought drily. It was a distortion of a kind she was an expert at providing for herself, or so her therapist had informed her. She was always busy telling herself that she was the only one who didn’t fit in, while everyone else was one big happy community. And she was also an expert at making herself believe that she was the only one who could save the world and put things right, while others were too busy buying flat-screen televisions and redecorating their kitchens and making bistro coffee and being happy. It was this distorted view that had sent her on several panicked flights from Morten and Ida, back before Anton was born, and for some years now, she had actually believed Olav when he told her that she was mistaken, and that such distortions were bad for her and the people around her.

Now, with the boy next to her, it didn’t seem so easy and clear-cut.

Nina leaned her head back against the upholstery and felt her own tiredness beating against the inside of her eyelids.

She wished she could call Morten. Not to talk to him, because that would do no good. But just so that she could hear his voice, and the television news in the background, and remind herself that there was a normal world out there. She touched her pocket where the mobile ought to be, and was no longer.

She locked the doors and turned on the car radio. There might be something on the news about a missing child. Something that proved that the boy existed, that someone was looking for him. She got the bread out of its bag and offered a slice to the boy. He accepted it and took a careful bite, without looking at her. They sat like that, silently eating, the boy with his eyes lowered in quiet reserve, she with her hand cradling the back of his pale, downy neck. When he had finished, he curled up next to her, and Nina carefully folded one end of the blanket over him like a duvet. She let herself slide a little lower, drawing up her knees until they rested against the seat in front of her, and closed her eyes again. Instantly, a flickering wave of sleep threatened to sweep her away. Sleep. God. She really had to, sometime soon. Tomorrow she could find a phone somewhere and call Morten. Perhaps his voice would not be so cold and hostile, then. His mood was always better in the mornings, and she might even be able to tell him about the boy.

She forced her eyes open once more to look at the child. He had fallen asleep with his eyes still slightly open, a soft glitter of wariness beneath the lowered lids, but his breathing was soft and regular, his lips slightly parted. Like Anton’s, when he lay with his head resting limply against the Spiderman web of his pillow.

Nina’s own eyes closed.

F
INALLY, PEACE REIGNED
in the flat. Anton had refused to go to sleep, and had sulked and peeved until nine o’clock so that Morten had missed the news, and Ida had played her music defiantly loud instead of using her headphones the way the house rules dictated. He hadn’t had the energy to call her on it. Apparently, she was now done with that particular outburst of teenage rebellion, and the weird, irregular clop-clop pata-pow sounds from her computer game were muffled enough that he could ignore them.