The Boy in the Suitcase

HELGOLANDSGADE.

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.





FINALLY, 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.

He had opened both the kitchen and the living room windows in the vain hope of catching a breeze, but the air seemed to have congealed, and the long day still stuck to him like the damp back of his shirt. He considered taking a shower, but this was the first time since he had picked Anton up from daycare that he had been able to sit down quietly with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. He would save the shower for later; it might make it easier to fall asleep.

There were days. There were days when he just wanted to pack all this in a time capsule and come back and open it in, say, four years’ time. Imagine being able to do something; God, how he longed to go prospecting for minerals in the tundra, or go to Greenland again, or Svalbard, and return only when he had had his fill of mosquitoes and polar bears, and quite ready to take up family life exactly as it was, with all the pieces in the same positions on the board. Or nearly the same—there were one or two moves he would like to rethink.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want all of this, the children and the flat and the mortgages and the securely salaried job he had. He just wished he could have the other things as well. Once he had imagined that he would be able to do both—go to Greenland for three months, perhaps, while Nina held down the fort at home. But that was before she had run away the first time. Running away was exactly what it was, he had never had any doubts about that. And it had happened just as abruptly as if she had simply left him for good. He would never forget that day. It remained under his skin like a poison capsule, and every once in a while, something would prick a hole in it so some of the poison leaked out.

It had happened five months after Ida was born. They lived in Aarhus then, in an uninspiring but cheap two-bedroom flat near Ringgaden. Nina had just graduated from nursing school, and he was doing a Ph.D. at the Department of Geology. Coming home from the department one day, he had heard Ida crying—no, screaming—the minute he came into the stairwell. He took the terazzo steps three at a time and practically took the door off its hinges. Ida was strapped into her baby chair on the kitchen table, her chubby face swollen and scarlet from prolonged sobbing. She had no clothes on, not even a diaper, and the pale green plastic kiddy tub on the kitchen floor was still full of bathwater. Nina was standing with her whole body pushed up against the door to the back stairs, looking as if something had her cornered. With one look at her he understood talking to her in that state would do no good; expecting any kind of answers or assistance or action from her was futile. He had no idea how long she had been standing like that. Long enough for Ida to have wet herself and the baby chair rather thoroughly, certainly.

The day after, she had called him from a phone booth in Copenhagen Airport. She was on her way to London, and from there to Liberia, as a volunteer nurse for an organization called MercyMedic. This was not a position she had obtained with just a day’s notice, of course. But although the decision had been some time coming, and the preparations had to have been made at least some weeks in advance, she hadn’t bothered to discuss it with him, or even tell him about it. Now that he thought about it, it had actually been Karin who helped her, back then. Some French surgeon she was acquainted with had been willing to overlook Nina’s lack of job experience. And Morten was left alone with a five-month-old little girl.

Only much later had she succeeded in explaining herself to him, at least to some extent. He had noticed that she was finding it harder and harder to sleep, that she was constantly watching Ida, day and night, that she seemed to be afraid of disasters, real or imagined. He had tried to calm her fears, but facts and rationality didn’t seem to have much effect on her conviction that something horrible could happen to the child.

“I was bathing her,” she had told him, not that day, but nearly a year later. “I was bathing her, and suddenly the water turned red. I knew it wasn’t, not really. But every time I looked at her, the water was red all the same.” Only the severest form of self-control had made it possible for her to lift Ida from the bathtub and strap her safely into the chair. And the fact that she had not actually fled from the flat but had waited there until he came home … he knew now that that had been a miracle of impulse control.

He had spoken occasionally to colleagues of hers who had been stationed with her at various global hotspots. They admired her. They said she was nearly inhumanly cool and competent in the middle of the most horrible crises. When rivers washed away bridges, when a light grenade set fire to the infirmary tents, when patients arrived with arms or legs blown away by landmine explosions … then Nina was the one who could always be counted on. She led a remarkably efficient one-woman crusade to save the world. It was only her own family who could reduce her to abject helplessness.

Ida was standing in the doorway before he realized that the patapow sounds from her room had died away.

“Is she coming home?” she asked. She was wearing neon-green shorts and a black T-shirt that read I’m only wearing black until they make something darker. A small silver sphere in one nostril represented his latest defeat in the teenage wars.

She never says “Mom” anymore, he suddenly thought. It was either “she” or sometimes “Nina.”

“Of course she is,” he said. “But she may have to work through the night.” He was aware that the last statement was a fairly transparent piece of arse-covering, but he wasn’t quite sure whose arse. Was it out of some remnant of loyalty to Nina, or was it just that he didn’t like to sound clueless?

“Oh.”

Ida withdrew, showing neither relief nor disapproval.

“Bedtime,” he called after her.

“Yeah, yeah,” she drawled, managing to suggest that she might be going to bed now, but only because she felt like it.

He put down the paper and stared into space, unable to focus his mind on the words. Nina had lied to him. He had heard it clearly in the pauses, in the way she was distancing herself from what she said. That, more than the fact that she had entirely forgotten about Anton, had been what got to him. But he hadn’t had the energy to confront her, just as he hadn’t had the energy to fight Ida over the headphones issue. Lately, he had been in danger of running out of energy altogether.

Things were better. Or so he had thought. No, they really were. Olav had helped her. Helped both of them, in fact. During an otherwise fairly routine debriefing after things had become a little rough in Tbilisi, the Norwegian therapist had somehow made Nina realize that she needed help. Not so much because of Tbilisi, Dadaab, or Zambia, but because of the obsessions that drove her to be in Tbilisi, Dadaab, or Zambia.

Nina had come home. Her hair almost shaved to the skull, her body reminiscent of a stick insect’s, but with a new … well, serenity was perhaps not quite the word. Balance, maybe. A cautiously maintained equilibrium that made him believe they might after all be capable of staying together, of loving each other again. They had moved to Copenhagen. A new beginning. She had begun working for the Red Cross Center at the Coal-House Camp, he had become a “mud logger,” as other geologists somewhat condescendingly described his job—collecting and analyzing bore samples from the North Sea oil rigs and other none-too-exotic locations. They both agreed that family was now the priority, if the torn ligaments that bound them together were to have a chance of healing.

Well. He was still here. She was still here. Except that she had lied to him this afternoon. And he didn’t know, he couldn’t be sure, that he would not get a phone call tomorrow or the next day from Zimbabwe or Sierra Leone or some place equally distant and dangerous.

God damn you, Nina. He set down his mug and got up with an unfocused sense of urgency. He wanted to get away from here. Out of the flat. Just for a few hours. Or a few years. If only everything would still be here when he returned.

A LITTLE AFTER four in the morning, the door buzzer woke him. It wasn’t Nina who had lost her key, as he had half expected. It was the police. One in uniform, one in a suit.

“We would like to talk to Nina Borg,” said the suit, presenting his ID with a motion that had become habit many, many years ago.

Morten felt too much coffee turn into acid in his stomach.

“She’s not here,” he said. “She’s staying with a friend. Is anything wrong?”

“May we come in for a moment? I’m afraid this is a murder inquiry.”





THE BARONAS LIVED in a small wooden house which stood like an island amidst an advancing tide of project developments. The bareness of the grounds between the new apartment buildings made their modest garden seem like a veritable jungle. A small red bicycle was padlocked to the fence with heavy duty chains.

Sigita opened the gate and approached the house. A smell of frying onions greeted her; Julija Baronienė was cooking supper, it appeared. Sigita pressed the bell button on the peeling blue doorframe. Almost at once, a boy of twelve or thirteen answered. He was wearing a white shirt and a tie and looked somehow unnaturally clean and well-groomed.

“Good evening,” said Sigita. “May I speak to your mother?”

“Who may I say is calling?” he said cautiously. It sounded as if he had orders not to let just anybody in.

“Tell her it is Mrs. Mažekienė from the school board,” said Sigita, so that the door would not be slammed in her face with the same precipitous speed that had severed the telephone connection.

The boy stood still for a long moment, and Sigita suddenly realized that he was trying to weigh all the possibilities that this might somehow be to do with him. She smiled reassuringly.

“Er, come on in,” he said. “Mama is making supper, but she’ll be right with you.”

“Thank you.”

He showed her into the living room and disappeared, presumably to report to the kitchen. Sigita stood in the middle of the room, taking in her surroundings. The sofa was large, soft, and pale brown, clearly a recent purchase, but apart from that, everything had been here for a long time. The floor was dark from innumerable coats of shellack, and in front of the couch was an Afghan rug that glowed in strong red, white, and turquoise hues. Three of the walls had beautifully carved bookshelves from floor to ceiling, which by the style of the carpentry looked to be as old as the house itself. The shelves sagged from the weight of books and sheet music, and by the fourth wall, between the two tall windows, was an upright piano in shiny dark mahogany, with keys so old and worn they were slightly concave, the ivory yellow with age.

The door opened, and a small, compact woman entered, with a girl who must be her daughter physically hanging on to her in a manner that seemed too young for the seven or eight years she looked to be. A waft of kitchen smells entered with her, and when they shook hands, Sigita felt a cool dampness that somehow made her think that Mrs. Baronienė had been peeling potatoes.

“Julija Baronienė,” she said. “And this, of course, is my Zita.” Zita stared at her feet and showed no inclination to say hello to the stranger. Her hair was parted into braids, the immaculate partition showing like a straight white line against the darkness of her hair. “You’ll have to excuse her,” said her mother. “Zita is a little shy— and very much her mama’s little girl.”

She hasn’t recognized me, thought Sigita. And why should she? It’s all such a long time ago. But Sigita knew at once, the moment she saw the copper hair and the warm, prune-colored eyes. This was the Julija.

“I suppose that is only natural,” said Sigita. “Considering what’s happened to her.”

Julija Baronienė stiffened.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

No point in beating about this particular bush, thought Sigita.

“I’m not from the school board,” she said. “I’ve come to ask you how you got Zita back. You see—the same people have taken my little boy.” Her voice broke on the last few syllables.

With a small mewling sound that made Sigita think of drowning kittens, Zita turned completely into her mother’s embrace and hid her face against her belly.

For a moment, Julija Baronienė looked as if Sigita had jabbed a knife into her body. Then she made an obvious effort and forced a smile.

“Oh, that silly story,” she said. “No, no, that was all a big misunderstanding. It turned out Zita had been picked up by the mother of one of her friends, right, Zita?” Zita did not reply, nor did she let go of her mother. Her anxiety made her seem far younger than she was.

“It was awfully embarrassing to have wasted police time like that. But … but of course I’m sorry for you and your little boy. Are you sure it’s not a misunderstanding too? He could be with a friend. Or perhaps he may have wandered off somehow?”

“He’s only three. And my neighbor saw them take him. Besides… .” She hesitated, then ploughed on. “There has to be a connection. Don’t you remember me at all?”

Julija’s gaze fluttered around the room before it finally came to rest on Sigita. This time, Sigita saw recognition flare in the prunecolored eyes.

“Oh,” was all she said.

Sigita nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry I lied to you. But after you cut me off on the phone I was afraid you wouldn’t even talk to me if you knew … if you knew who I was.”

Julija Baronienė stood perfectly still, as if the revelation had completely robbed her of the ability to speak or move. In the background, Sigita heard the sound of a door slamming, and voices talking, but she kept her eyes squarely on Julija.

“Just tell me what you had to do,” she said. “I won’t tell the police, I promise. I just want my Mikas back.”

Julija Baronienė still said nothing. The door to the sitting room opened.

“Hello,” said the man entering. “Aleksas Baronas. Marius tells me you are with the school board?” He held out his hand politely. He was somewhat older than Julija, a kind, balding man in a grayishbrown suit that hung a little loosely on his frame. It took a moment before he realized something was wrong.

“What is it?” he asked abruptly, when he noticed how fiercely Zita clung to her mother.

Julija apparently had no idea how to answer him. It was Sigita who had to explain.

“My little son has been abducted by the same people who took Zita,” she said. “I just want to know what I should do to get him back.”

He recovered more quickly than his wife.

“Such stupid nonsense,” he said. “Can’t you see you’re scaring the child? Zita has never been abducted, and she won’t be, ever. Isn’t that right, sweetheart? Give Papa a kiss. Julija, I’m sorry to rush you, but we need to have dinner now, or we’ll be late for Marius’s concert.”

Zita was persuaded to release her leechlike grip on Julija. Her father caught her up and held her on his left arm, and she threw her arms around his neck.

“I don’t wish to be rude,” he said. “But my son is playing in a concert tonight, and it’s quite important to us.”

Sigita shook her head in disbelief.

“How can you … how can you pretend like this? How can you refuse to help me? When you know what it’s like?” She pressed her hand against her lower face as if that might hold back the sobs, but it was no good.

The man’s friendly manner was showing cracks.

“I must ask you to leave,” he said. “Now.”

Sigita shook her head once more. Tears were streaming down her face, and there was nothing she could do to hinder them. Her throat felt thick and tender. She tore a ballpoint pen from her handbag and seized a random sheet of music from the piano. Ignoring Baronas’s involuntary squawk of protest, she wrote her name, address, and phone number in large jagged letters across the page.

“Here,” she said. “I beg you. You have to help me.”

Now it was Julija Baronienė’s turn to cry. With a half-choked sob she turned and fled the room. Zita wriggled free of her father’s embrace to follow, but he stopped her.

“Not now, sweetheart. Mama is busy.”

Zita looked up at her father. Then she suddenly turned and walked with swift steps to the piano seat. She sat, back completely straight, eyes closed. Then she began to play the scales, slowly, methodically, with metronomical precision. Up and down. Da-dada-da-da-da-da-dah, di-da-di-da-di-da-di-dah. Da-da-da-da-da-dada-dah… .

A look of pain flashed across Baronas’s face. Then he, too, went to the piano, and gently stopped the jabbing fingers by grasping the girl’s wrist. He looked at Sigita.

“Otherwise she goes on for hours,” he said, looking completely lost. They had smashed up his family, thought Sigita, smashed it and broken it, and he had no idea how to put it back together.

She looked down at Zita’s hands, still resting on the worn ebony, as if she would go on playing the instant he released her. Sigita shuddered, and in her mind, the unbearable picture show came back, Mikas in a basement, Mikas alone in the dark, Mikas surrounded by threatening figures who wanted to harm him.

“Please,” said Zita’s father. “Please go. Can’t you see we could not help you even if we wanted to?”

ALL THE WAY home Sigita thought about Zita’s hands. Eight-yearold fingers, bent like claws against the yellowed piano keys. All except for the little finger of her left hand, which wasn’t bent like the others, but stuck out from the rest. On that finger, Zita had lost the entire nail.





JAN HAD BEEN prepared for steel tables and striplit ceilings, cold, white tiles or possibly even refrigerated drawers. But the lights in the chapel of the Institute of Forensic Medicine were soft and unglaring, and the still body lay on a simple bier, covered by a white cotton sheet, with a pair of candles lending an unexpected note of grace.

“Thank you for coming,” said the officer who had led him in. Jan had already forgotten her name. “Her parents live in Jutland, so it’s good to have a preliminary identification before we ask them to make the journey.”

“Of course,” said Jan. “It’s the least I can do.”

He felt acid burn at the back of his throat even before they lowered the sheet to show him her face.

She was a thing. That was what caught him most off guard—the degree to which humanity had vanished along with her life. Her skin was wax-like and unliving, and it was in no way possible to imagine that she was merely sleeping.

“It’s Karin,” he said, though it felt like a lie. This was not Karin anymore.

The shock went far beyond anything he had imagined. He felt like one of those cartoon characters hanging in the air above the abyss, foundations shot to hell, kept up only by the lack of the proper realization: that it was time to fall.

“How well did you know Karin Kongsted?” asked the woman officer, covering Karin’s face once more.

“She had become a good friend,” he said. “For the past two years, just about, she had a flat above our garage, and although it is completely separate from the rest of the house, still … it’s different from the way it would have been if she had been merely a nine-tofive employee.”

“I undertstand you hired her as a private nurse. How come you need someone like that?”

“I had to undergo renal surgery a little over two years ago. That was how we met Karin. And since then … well, we came to appreciate both her professional and her personal qualities. It was a major operation, and there are still medical issues. Complications sometimes arise. It’s been very reassuring to have her nearby. She is … she was a very competent person.”

It felt completely absurd to stand here next to Karin’s dead body and talk about her like this. But the woman wasn’t letting him off the hook just yet.

“I hope you understand that I have to ask you where you were tonight? You weren’t at home when we called.”

“No, I was home only briefly, then I had to go to the office. The company I run is not a small one.”

“So we understand.”

“I was probably at the office until seven. Then I went to a flat we keep—the company, that is—and worked from there for a little while. I had intended to spend the night there.”

“Where is this flat?”

“In Laksegade.”

“Can we call on you there later? It will be necessary to hold a formal interview.”

He thought quickly. The Nokia was still in his briefcase. And the briefcase was still in Laksegade.

“I probably should go home to my wife,” he said. “She must be very distraught. If you like, I can come to the local station tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow morning?” Show cooperation, he counseled himself. It might be important later.

“We would appreciate that,” she said politely. “Although the case is now being handled by the homicide department of the North-Zealand Regional Police.” From her own briefcase, she drew a small leaflet with the stirring title “Regional Police Reform: This Is Where to Find Us.” She circled an address in ballpoint pen. “Can you come to this office tomorrow at 11 a.m.?”

HE WONDERED IF they were watching him. The taxi slid through the midnight traffic like a shark through a herring shoal, and he couldn’t tell whether any specific car stayed behind them.

Don’t be paranoid, he told himself. They could barely have established cause of death yet, and they surely hadn’t the manpower to follow everyone connected to Karin. Yet he couldn’t help glancing around as he alighted on the sidewalk outside the Laksegade flat. The taxi drove off, leaving the street empty and deserted. There was a certain time-bubble quality to the place—the cobbled stones, the square-lantern-shaped streetlights, even the fortress-like headquarters of the Danske Bank, which from this angle looked more like a medieval stronghold than a modern corporation domicile.

He let himself in and snatched up the briefcase. There had been no calls to the Nokia while he’d been gone.

Twenty minutes later, he had fetched the car and was on his way home. Now he felt reasonably certain that he wasn’t being followed—the motorway was sparsely trafficked at this hour, and when he turned off at a picnic area between Roskilde and Holbæk, his Audi was the only car in the parking lot.

He got out the Nokia and made the call. It was a long wait before the Lithuanian answered.

“Yes?”

“Our agreement is terminated,” said Jan, as calmly as he was able.

“No,” said the man. Just that: the bare negative.

“You heard me!”

“The money was not there,” said the Lithuanian. “She said she gave it back to you.”

“Don’t lie to me,” said Jan. “She took it.” He had seen the empty case in her bedroom. Empty, that is, except for that nasty little note: I QUIT. “She took it, and now she is dead. Did you kill her?”

“No.”

Jan didn’t believe him.

“Stay away from me and my family,” he said. “I don’t want anything more to do with you. It’s over.”

A brief pause.

“Not until you pay,” said the Lithuanian, and then hung up.

Jan stood for a moment, trying to breathe normally. Then he banged the phone against the pavement a couple of times until he was confident it was thoroughly broken. He went into the foulsmelling bathroom, picked the SIM card from the wreckage of the phone, and flushed it down one of the toilets. He then wiped the phone itself thoroughly with wet paper towels and dumped it into the large garbage bin outside, stirring the contents with a twig until the phone had sunk from sight into the malodorous mix of apple cores, pizza cartons, ashtray contents and other road-trip debris.

What else?

He had to. He absolutely had to.

First the little plastic box. No more than two by two centimeters square, and a few millimeters thick. No larger, really, than the SIM card, but the few drops of blood trapped within contained coded information a thousand times more complex than the electronic DNA of the mobile phone. He ground it beneath his heel and dropped the remains into the garbage bin.

Then the photo. He took it from his wallet and looked at it one last time. Tried to come to terms with losing it, and everything it meant. Clicked his Ronson and let the tiny flame catch one corner and flare, before he let that, too, vanish into the bin, still smouldering.

He got back into the Audi and waited for his hands to stop shaking, at least enough so that it would be safe to drive on.





SIGITA’S MOBILE GAVE a muffled ring inside her purse the minute she opened her own front door. The sound went through her like a shockwave, and she emptied the purse onto the coffee table. Anything less drastic just wouldn’t let her get to it quickly enough.

“Yes?”

But it wasn’t Julija Baronienė, a change of heart. Nor was it an unfamiliar voice telling her what she should do to get Mikas back.

“LTV may be willing to broadcast a Missing Person alert on Mikas,” said Evaldas Gužas. “Particularly if you will come to the studio and make a direct appeal to the kidnappers.”

Sigita stood stock still. A few hours ago, she would have agreed without hesitation. But now … she thought of Julija Baronienė and her family, of their obvious fear. And of Zita, one nail missing.

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous for Mikas?” she asked.

She sensed his deliberation and almost thought she heard the clicking of his ballpoint pen accenting his thoughts.

“Have you heard from his abductors?”

“No.”

“This means that more than forty-eight hours have gone by without a single attempt at contact,” said Gužas. “Is this not so?”

“Yes.”

“This is most unusual. Instructions usually arrive promptly, to prevent the parents from calling the police.”

“Julija Baronienė did call.”

“Yes. Within hours of the girl’s disappearance. But less than twenty-four hours later, she withdrew her allegations.”

“And you think this was because she had been threatened.”

“Yes.”

“But that means it is dangerous.”

“It’s a question of weighing the options,” he said. “We have reported Mikas missing and sent out the description of his presumed kidnappers to every police station in Lithuania. We’ve contacted the police in Germany, where the boy’s father now lives. We have even approached Interpol, although there is no indication that Mikas has left Lithuania; on the contrary, the link to Mrs. Baronienė’s case gives us reason to believe that it is a local crime. All of this to no avail. We are no closer to locating your son, or his abductors. And this is why I’m considering asking the public for help.”

The public. The mere word sent tremors of unease through Sigita’s body.

“I’m really not sure… .”

“LTV would broadcast your appeal in connection with their latenight news show. We know that this usually causes a great many people to call in, and some of these calls have been helpful in the past. As we are able to show a photo of one of the presumed kidnappers this time, we are very hopeful that it will be beneficial to the investigation at this point.”

He always talks as if he has swallowed one of his own reports, thought Sigita. I wonder what he sounds like when he is off duty? She was temporarily distracted by a mental image of Gužas up to his waist in cold water, dressed as the complete angler and sporting a newly caught fish. “The direction of the current gave reason to suspect that trout might be active in the upper left quadrant of the search area,” commented off-duty Gužas in her head.

I’m very, very tired, Sigita told herself. Or else it’s the concussion. It was as if the imagination she normally kept effortlessly locked down was suddenly bubbling up from the nether reaches of her mind like marsh gas. It made her uncomfortable.

“We have asked your husband, and he has agreed that the broadcast should be made. But we would really like for you to make that direct appeal in front of the cameras. In our experience, this has an effect even on people who would not normally contact the police. Especially when children are involved.”

She rubbed her whole face with her good hand. She was exhausted. Too little to eat and drink all day, she thought. Her headache had become so constant she was almost getting used to it.

“I don’t know… . Will it really help?”

“I wouldn’t suggest this to you if there had been any communication from the abductors. Any opening for negotation or coercion. In those circumstances, public uproar might serve only to increase the pressure on the kidnappers and might endanger the life of the child. But there has been no such communication. Is that not so?”

He is testing me, thought Sigita. He still doesn’t believe me.

“No,” she said. “But if it’s dangerous for Mikas, I won’t do it.”

“It’s a question of weighing the options,” he repeated. “I am not saying it is completely without risk, but in our estimation, it is our best chance of finding Mikas right now.”

Sigita could hear her own pulse. How could one decide something so vital when it felt as if one’s head belonged to someone else?

“We can of course make the broadcast without your consent,” he finally said, when the silence had gone on for too long.

Was that a threat? Suddenly, anger roared through her.

“No,” she said. “I won’t do it. And if you go ahead without me, I’ll… .” But there was no way to finish. What threats could she make? He had all the weapons.

She sensed a sigh somewhere at the other end of the connection.

“Mrs. Ramoškienė, I am not the enemy,” he said.

Anger left her as suddenly as it had arrived.

“No,” she said. “I know that.”

But once she had disconnected, she couldn’t help but wonder. What was more important to an ambitious young officer like Gužas? Arresting the criminals, or saving the victims?

Her blouse was sticking to her back, and she decided to wrap a plastic bag around the cast and attempt a shower. She had to squirt the shampoo onto her scalp directly from the bottle, instead of measuring a suitable dollop into her palm, and it was equally impossible to wrap the towel around her head in the usual turbanstyle afterwards. When it was time for the late news, she turned on the television with a fresh attack of nerves. Despite Gužas’s words there was no dramatic report on three-year-old Mikas Ramoska, missing since Saturday. And then of course all her doubts came rushing back. Should she have done it? Was there someone out there who had seen her little boy? Someone who might help?

When the phone rang, she snatched at it with such clumsy haste that it clattered to the floor. She retrieved it with another snatch and pressed “Accept Call” even though she didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Er … who?”

“Tomas.”

She nearly said “Who?” once more before she realized that the caller was her little brother. She had never heard his grown-up voice, only the first hoarse cracks of puberty. He had been twelve when she fled from Tauragė, and they had not spoken since.

“Tomas!”

“Yes.”

A pause. Sigita had no idea what to say. What does one say to a brother one hasn’t talked to in eight years?

“We heard from Darius’s mother that Mikas is … that he has disappeared,” Tomas eventually said.

“Yes.” Her throat tightened, and only that one word escaped.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “And … er … I was just thinking. If there’s anything I can do … ?”

An unexpected wave of tenderness washed through her. It stole what little strength she had in her arms and legs, so that she slumped down onto the couch with the phone in her lap, while tears burned their way down the side of her nose yet again. Normally, she never cried. Today, she had long since lost count.

“Sigita?”

“Yes,” she managed. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I am so glad you called.”

“Er, you’re welcome. I hope they find him.”

She couldn’t say another word, and maybe he realized. There was a soft click as he hung up. But he had called. She had only ever had sporadic news from home, and since she and Darius had separated, her most reliable source of Tauragė information had dried to a trickle. And right now there were a thousand things she wanted to know. What Tomas had been doing since leaving school. If he was still living at home. If he had a girlfriend. How he was.

If he had ever forgiven her.

But perhaps he had. He did call her, after all.

SIGITA WENT TO bed, but sleep was a hopeless enterprise. The hideous sense of imagination she had suddenly developed kept tossing images up inside her eyelids, and she didn’t know how to turn it off.

If you hurt my boy, she thought, I will kill you.

It was not an outburst of anger, as when two drunks yell at each other—“I’ll f*cking kill you!” or the like. It was not like that.

It was a decision.

Somehow, it made her calmer. She could almost believe that the kidnappers would be able to sense her decision and realize what the price of harming Mikas would be. Just because she had determined that it should be so. This was of course hopeless nonsense, as the rational part of her well knew. Nonetheless, it helped: If you hurt him, I will kill you.

In the end, she went out on the balcony and sat in the white plastic chair she kept there. The heat absorbed by the concrete during the day was being released now that the air was cooler, and there was no need to put anything on over her night dress. She thought of Julija Baronienė, who had her child back. She thought of Gužas, and of Valionis. Had they gone home, or were they still at work? Was Mikas important enough? Or were there so many missing children that no one would work twenty-four-hour shifts just because another one had disappeared?

They wanted me to go on television, she thought. That must mean that he is important. She remembered the little English girl who had disappeared, but couldn’t recall her name. It had been all over the news for months, and even the Pope had become involved. And still the girl had not been found.

But Mikas will come back, she told herself firmly. If I believe anything else, I won’t be able to stand it.

A taxi drew up in the parking lot in front of the building. Sigita automatically looked at her watch. It was past 2 a.m.—an unusual time to arrive. A woman got out and glanced around uncertainly. Clearly a visitor, trying to get her bearings. Then she headed for Sigita’s block.

It’s her, thought Sigita suddenly. It’s Julija!

She leapt to her feet so quickly that she stubbed her toe on the doorframe. It hurt, but that was irrelevant. She hopped to the intercom and pressed the lock button the moment the buzzer sounded. She limped out into the stairwell and followed Julija Baronienė with her eyes, all the way up.

Julija stopped when she caught sight of Sigita.

“I had to come,” she said. “Aleksas wouldn’t hear of it, and I had to wait until he was asleep. But I had to come.”

“Come inside,” said Sigita.





HOW PECULIAR THAT one still says things like “Have a seat” and “Would you like some coffee?” even when life and death and heart’s blood is at stake, thought Sigita.

“May I call you Sigita?” asked Julija, twisting the coffee cup nervously in her hands. “I still think of you like that, even though you are a grown woman now.”

“Yes,” said Sigita. She had seated herself in the armchair, or rather, on the edge of it. Her right hand was clenched so hard that the nails bit into her palm, but she knew somehow that trying to rush the woman on the couch would be a bad idea. She suddenly remembered Grandfather’s carrier pigeons. How they sometimes landed on the roof of the coop and wouldn’t come all the way in, so that their recorded flight time would be minutes slower than it might have been.

“No use trying to hurry things,” her grandfather would say. “Sit on the bench beside me, Sigita, they’ll come when they come.”

Grandfather had died in 1991, in the year of the Independence. Granny Julija didn’t care about the races. She sold the best pigeons to a neighbor and left the rest to their own devices until the roof blew off the coop during a winter storm five or six years later.

Sigita looked at Julija and forced herself to sit quietly, waiting.

“You mustn’t tell the police,” said Julija in the end. “Do you promise?”

Sigita promised. It still didn’t seem to be enough.

“He was so angry because we had called them. He said he had had to hurt Zita because we told, and that it was all our fault.” The hand that held the cup was trembling.

“I won’t say anything,” said Sigita.

“Promise.”

“Yes. I promise.”

Julija stared at her unremittingly. Then she suddenly put the coffee cup down. She raised her hands to the back of her neck and bent her head so that she could take off a necklace she was wearing. No. Not just a necklace. It was a crucifix, thought Sigita. A small golden Jesus on a black wooden cross; despite the miniscule size, the pain in the tiny face was evident.

“Do you believe in God?” asked Julija.

“Yes,” said Sigita, because this was not the time to mince the nuances of faith and doubt.

“Then swear on this. Touch it. And promise that you won’t go to the police with anything I tell you.”

Sigita carefully put her hand on the crucifix and repeated her promise. She wasn’t sure that this meant more to her than the assurances she had already given, but it seemed to ease Julija’s mind.

“He gave us an envelope. So that we could see what we had made him do, he said. Inside was one of her nails. An entire nail. I knew it was hers, because I had let her play with my nail polish the day before.” Julija’s voice shook. “He said that if we went to the police later on, he would take Zita again, and this time he would sell her to some men he knew. Men of the kind who enjoy having sex with little girls, he said.”

Sigita swallowed.

“But Julija,” she said. “If he is in prison, he can’t take Zita.”

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.”