The Boy in the Suitcase

GETTING AWAY FROM the center was actually a relief, thought Nina, as she drove up the ramp to Magasin’s parking garage and eased her small Fiat into the none-too-generous space between a concrete pillar and somebody’s wide-arsed Mercedes. Sometimes she got so sick and tired of feeling powerless. What kind of country was this, when young girls like Natasha were compelled to sell themselves to men like the Bastard for the sake of a resident’s permit?

She took the elevator to the top floor of the building. As soon as she stepped out of the narrow steel box, the odor of food overwhelmed her—roasted pork, hot grease from the deep-fryer, and the pervasive aroma of coffee. She scanned the cafeteria and finally caught sight of Karin’s blond head. She was seated at a table by the window, in a sleeveless white dress that struck Nina as an off-duty version of her nurse’s uniform. Instead of one of the chic little handbags she normally sported, one hand rested possessively on the black briefcase on the chair next to her, while the other nervously rotated her coffee cup, back and forth, back and forth.

“Hi,” said Nina. “What is it, then?”

Karin looked up. Her eyes were bright and tense with an emotion Nina couldn’t quite identify.

“You have to fetch something for me,” she said, slapping a small round plastic circle onto the table. A token with a number on it, Nina observed, like the ones used for public lockers.

Nina was starting to feel annoyed.

“Don’t be so damned cryptic. What exactly is it I’m supposed to fetch?”

Karin hesitated.

“A suitcase,” she finally said. “From a locker at the Central Station. Don’t open it until you are out of the place. Don’t let anyone see you when you do open it. And hurry!”

“Bloody hell, Karin, you make it sound as if it’s stuffed full of cocaine, or something!”

Karin shook her head.

“No. It’s not like that. It’s… .” She stopped short, and Nina could see the barely suppressed panic in her. “This wasn’t the deal,” she said feverishly. “I can’t do this. I don’t know how. But you do.”

Karin got to her feet as if she meant to leave. Nina felt like grabbing her and forcing her to stay, much like she had with Natasha. But she didn’t. She looked down at the token on the table between them. 37-43, read the white numbers against the black plastic.

“You’re always so keen on saving people, aren’t you?” said Karin with a bitter twist to her mouth. “Well, here’s your chance. But you have to hurry.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going home to quit my job,” said Karin tightly. “And then I’m going away for a while.”

She zigzagged her way to the exit, skirting the other tables. She clutched the briefcase under her arm rather than carry it by the handle. It looked wrong, somehow.

Nina watched her go. Then she looked at the small shiny token. A suitcase. A locker. You’re always so keen on saving people, aren’t you?

“What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Karin?” she muttered to herself. She had a strong feeling that the wisest thing to do would be to leave number 37-43 there on the sticky cafeteria table and just walk away.

“Oh hell,” she hissed, and picked up the token.





MRS. MAŽEKIENĖ? IT’S Sigita.”

There was a moment’s silence before Mrs. Mažekienė answered.

“Sigita. Thank the Lord. How are you?”

“Much better now. But they won’t let me out of here until tomorrow. Is Mikas with you?”

“Oh no, dear. He is with his father.”

“With Darius?”

“Yes, of course. He picked him up even before your accident. Don’t you remember, dearie?”

“No. They say I’m concussed. There is so much I don’t remember.”

But … Darius was in Germany, working. Or was he? He didn’t always tell her when he came home. Officially, they were still only separated, but the only thing they had in common now was Mikas. Might Darius take Mikas back to Germany with him? Or to his mother’s house in Tauragė? He didn’t have a place of his own in Vilnius, and she very much doubted that the party-crowd friends he occasionally stayed with would welcome a three-yearold boy.

Her head hurt furiously. She couldn’t think things through with any clarity, and she didn’t feel very reassured by the knowledge that Darius had Mikas, but at least she knew where her son was. Or with whom, at any rate.

“It looked so awful, dearie. I thought you were dead! And to think you had been lying on those stairs all night! Now, you just have a good rest at that fine hospital, and let them look after you until you’re better.”

“Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Mažekienė.”

Sigita snapped her mobile shut. Getting hold of it at all had been a challenge, and smuggling it into the loo with her even more difficult. The use of mobile phones was prohibited inside the hospital, except for a certain area in the lobby, which might as well have been the moon as far as she was concerned—she still couldn’t walk without hanging onto the walls.

Awkwardly, she opened the phone again and pressed Darius’s number with the thumb of her right hand. She was unable to hold the phone in her plaster-cased left, or at least not in such a way that she was able to operate it.

His voice was happy and warm and full of his presence even on a stupid voicemail message.

“You have called Darius Ramoška, but, but, but … I’m not here right now. Try again later!”

That was actually completely appropriate, she thought. The story of his life, or at any rate, the story of their relationship. I’m not here right now, try again later.

THEY HAD STARTED going out together the summer she was due to finish elementary school, and he was about to begin his second year of secondary school in Tauragė’s Education Center. The summer had been unusually hot that year. In the schoolyard, only the most energetic of the little kids felt like playing on the heat-softened tarmac. The older students sat with their backs against the gray cement wall, with rolled up sleeves and jeans, chatting lazily in what they felt was a very grown-up manner.

“Are you going away for the holiday, Sigita?”

It was Milda asking. And she knew very well that the answer was no.

“Maybe,” said Sigita. “We haven’t really made plans yet.”

“We’re going to Palanga,” said Daiva. “To a hotel!”

“Really?” drawled Milda. “How cool. We’re just going to Miami.”

All around her, there was a sudden awestruck silence. Envy and respect were almost as visible in the air as the heat shimmer over the asphalt. Miami. Outer space seemed more accessible to most of them. A holiday meant Daiva’s fortnight at a Palanga resort hotel, or perhaps a trip to the Black Sea, if they got really lucky. No one in their grade had ever been further away than that.

“Are you sure?” said Daiva.

“Of course I’m sure. The tickets are already booked.”

No one asked where the money came from. They all knew— Milda’s father and uncle brought used cars home from Germany, fixed them up, and sold them to the Russians. That this was good business had been obvious first from the children’s clothes, and Milda’s new bike, then from the BMWs they drove, and finally from the big new house they built just outside town. But all the same—Miami.

“I’d rather go to New York,” Sigita heard herself say. And immediately wished she could have swallowed every last syllable.

Milda threw back her head and laughed.

“Right, then, you just tell your father that you want to go to New York,” she said. “He’ll buy the ticket right away … just as soon as he sells those shirts.”

Sigita felt the heat rise in her cheeks. Those damned shirts. She would never hear the last of it. They would haunt her to the end of her days, she felt sure.

They were everywhere in the flat. Thousands of them. They came from a closed-down factory in Poland, and her father had bought them for “practically nothing,” as he put it. Practically nothing had still been enough that they had to sell the car. And even though her father kept talking about “top-shelf merchandise” and “classic design,” he had managed to sell fewer than a dozen. For nearly two years they had been hanging there from broomsticks and wires screwed into the ceiling, crackling, plastic-shrouded, and “fresh from the factory,” above the couch, above the beds, even in the loo. She never brought friends home anymore; it was simply too embarrassing. But not nearly as embarrassing as being forced to take “samples” with her to class in the hopes that some of her friends’ parents would feel a sudden urge to buy one.

Her father had been severely out of his depth since the Russians went home. Back then, in the Soviet era, he had been a controller at the canning factory. It did not pay much better than working on the line, but back then it hadn’t been the money that mattered, it had been the connections. No one could just buy what they wanted, it had to be arranged. As often as not, her father had been the man who could arrange it.

Now the factory had closed down. It sat behind its barbed-wire fence, a gray and black hulk with empty window frames, weeds breaking through the concrete paving. The old connections were worthless, or worse than worthless. The people who did well these days were the ones who knew how to trade, fix, and organize—in the black economy as well as in the white.

Sigita got up. The sun hit her like a hammer, and once she was on her feet, she really had no idea where to go.

“Leaving so soon?” said Milda. “Oh, I suppose you are in a hurry to go home and book that New York hotel?”

It was at that moment that he came to her rescue.

“Sigita? Don’t forget we’re going to Kaliningrad on Saturday, right?”

Darius. Tanned and fair-haired, with that relaxed and well-trained confidence none of the other boys had. His shirt was left casually open to reveal a crisp white T-shirt underneath, and neither garment had come from Poland.

“No,” she said. “It’ll be fun. Have you heard that Milda is going to Miami for the holidays?”

“Oh,” he said. “You must say hello to my uncle, then. He lives there.”

IT HAD TAKEN her years to see that Darius’s shining armor was eggshell thin. He couldn’t rescue her, had never really been able to. God only knew what he was doing with Mikas right now. Had he brought her little boy with him to some bar where Darius’s party buddies would let him finish their beers? She shuddered. She had to get out of this damned hospital in a hurry.





THE RAILWAY STATION was crammed with irritable Monday crowds, and there was a nearly visible mist of exhaled breaths and collective sweat in the great central hall. People were tetchy in the heat, with their clothes and their tempers sticking to them, and over the PA came the announcement that the 13:11 to Elsinore was delayed by approximately twenty minutes. Nina felt a tension that made her unwilling to be so physically close to a lot of strangers. She tried to move so that they wouldn’t touch her, but it just wasn’t possible. Finally she reached the stairwell leading down to the left luggage cellar. The sharp smell of cleaning chemicals was weaker here and couldn’t quite mask the stench of well-aged urine. The scratched metal lockers hugged the walls, long white rows with black numbers on them. 56, 55… . She checked the token again. 37-43. Where on earth was section 37?

She found it at last, in a quiet blind alley leading off the more heavily trafficked main corridor. Right now, there were only two travelers in here—a young couple struggling to fit a large backpack into one of the lockers.

“It won’t fit,” said the girl. “I told you. It’s too big.”

By the girl’s accent, Nina took them to be American, or perhaps Canadian. Should she wait until they had left? But other tourists would come, and at least these two were intent on their Battle of the Bulging Rucksack. She pushed the token into the automated system controlling section 37, and there was a crisp metallic click as locker 43 came open.

Inside was a shiny dark-brown leather suitcase, a little oldfashioned, with a long tear down one side so that the green lining peeked through. Otherwise there was nothing very noticeable about it. No address labels or tags, of course. She knew it would be foolish to open it now. People who pick up their own bags don’t open them to check what is inside. And Karin had said the same thing—don’t open it until you’re out of there. Don’t let anyone see. Oh, Karin. What are you up to? Nina thought. It was difficult to imagine that it might be anything very sinister or serious. Karin was so … “unadventurous” wasn’t quite the word, but still. It was just hard to picture easygoing, hedonistic Karin involved in anything dirty, illegal, or dangerous. But there had been that unwonted panic in her voice: This wasn’t the deal. What had she meant by that?

Nina dragged the suitcase out of the locker. It was heavier than it looked, at least forty pounds, she guessed. Not easily carried for any length of distance, and the underground parking lot in Nyropsgade, where she had left the Fiat, was a couple of blocks away. But Copenhagen’s Central Station did not provide complimentary trolleys like those in airports, so there was nothing else for it.

The young couple had begun taking things out of the backpack to slim it sufficiently for the narrow locker. The young man dropped a toilet bag, which hit the floor with a clang and came open. Mascara, eyeliner, hair mousse, and deodorants spilled across the tiles. One of the deodorants curved towards Nina and came to a spinning stop at her feet.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “Sorry.”

Nina smiled mechanically. Then she took the suitcase in the firmest grip she could manage and began to walk, trying to look halfway natural. Sweet Jesus, it was heavy. What on earth was in it?



IT WAS ONLY when she reached the car-park that she opened it. And found the boy.

He was unconscious. His skin was cool, but not alarmingly cold. Some automated professional part of her noted that his pulse was slow, but again not dangerously so, his respiration deep and also slow, his pupils slightly contracted. There was little doubt that he had been drugged, she thought. He wasn’t about to die on her, but he needed treatment—fluids, and perhaps an antidote, if they could work out what had been used on him. She seized her mobile and pressed the first two emergency digits, then paused before the final one.

Her eyes fell on the suitcase. So ordinary. Normal. The tear in the leather had made it easier for the boy to breathe, but there was no way to tell whether it had been made intentionally to ensure him a certain supply of oxygen. People who put little children in suitcases do not, Nina thought, care terribly about their wellfare.

Steps somewhere, and the slamming of car doors, then the growl of an engine starting up. The sounds echoed back from the concrete walls, and she ducked instinctively behind the dumpster so as not to be seen. Why? Why didn’t she get up instead and call for help? But she didn’t. She caught a glimpse of silver metal and shiny hubcaps, then the car was gone.

She had to get the child to her own car, but how? She could not bear to close the suitcase and carry him like that, as if he were baggage. She ran to the Fiat instead, and got a checkered picnic blanket from the trunk, tucked it around him, and carried him against her shoulder. Mother and child, she thought. If anyone sees me, I’m just a mommy who has just picked up her exhausted toddler from kindergarten.

He seemed feather light, much less of a weight than he had been in the suitcase. She could feel his breath against the side of her neck, a small warm puffing. Dear sweet Jesus. Who would do this to a child?

She lowered him onto the back seat and checked his pulse once more. A little faster already, as if he were reacting to his surroundings. She grabbed the plastic water bottle from between the front seats and moistened his lips with a wet finger. His tongue moved. He was not deeply unconscious.

Hospital, police. Police, hospital. But if it was just a question of calling 911, why hadn’t Karin done it herself? Bloody hell, Karin, Nina cursed silently. Are you mixed up in this? “I can’t do anything, but you can,” Karin had said. But just what the hell was it she was supposed to be doing?





MONDAY MORNING, SIGITA was finally released. She had called Darius at least a dozen times, but all she got was the stupid answering machine.

She still didn’t understand what had happened. She really didn’t drink, certainly not to the point of falling down stairs in a state of blind oblivion. And why had she let Darius take Mikas away? That had happened before the stairs, so Mrs. Mažekienė had said. Sigita felt a tiny persistent sting of fear. What if Darius would not give Mikas back to her? And how was it that she had ended up at the foot of the stairs with a broken arm and a concussion? Darius had never hit her, not once, not even during the bitterest of their fights. She couldn’t believe he had done so now. But perhaps some accident … ? If there was one person on God’s green earth who could inspire her to get drunk, it was surely Darius.

She considered taking a taxi back home to Pašilaičiai, but the habits acquired through years of enforced parsimony were not easily shaken. After all, the trolley bus stopped practically at her doorstep. For the first few stops, inside Vilnius proper, the bus was crowded to sardine-tin capacity; her plaster cast got her the offer of a seat, which she gratefully accepted, but even so, the pressure of other human bodies made nausea rise in her gullet until she was afraid she would not be able to contain it. One more stop, she told herself. If it doesn’t get better after that, I’ll get off and call for a cab. But the pressure did ease as they left the center of the city and the rush-hour current ran the other way. When she finally got off by Žemynos gatvė, she had to sit on the bus-stop bench and just breathe for a little while before she was able to walk on.

She rang the bell by Mrs. Mažekienė’s front door before going into her own flat.

“Oh, it’s you, dearie. Good to see you on your feet again. What a to-do!”

“Yes. But, Mrs. Mažekienė, exactly when did Darius pick up Mikas?”

“Saturday. How peculiar that you don’t remember.”

“When on Saturday?”

“A little past noon, I think. Yes. I had just had my lunch when I saw them.”

“Them? Was someone with him?”

Mrs. Mažekienė bit her lip, looking as if she thought she might have said too much.

“Well, yes. There was this lady… .”

It stung, even though Sigita had been the one to kick Darius out, and not the other way around. But of course there was a “lady.” Had she really imagined there wouldn’t be?

“What did she look like?” she asked, in the unlikely case that it had been Darius’s mother or sister.

“Very nice. Quite young. Tall and fair-haired, with nice clothes. Not tarted up like some,” said Mrs. Mažekienė.

Which meant it wasn’t Darius’s sister, for sure.

Then another thought came to her. A nice-looking, tall, fair-haired young woman. Quite a few of those around, of course, but still… .

“Can you remember what she was wearing?”

“A light summer coat. One of those cotton coats, I think. And a scarf.”

The woman from the playground. The one who wanted a child so badly. Sigita felt a chill go through her. What if Darius had a girlfriend now who longed for children… . Sigita remembered the silver gleam of the chocolate wrapping, Mikas’s chocolate-smeared cheeks. The sly, ingratiating bitch. Watching them, watching Mikas, worming her way into his trust with the forbidden chocolate gift. Suppose it hadn’t been a Russian accent after all, but a German one. Some Irmgard he had picked up where he worked now.

“Dearie, are you all right?”

“Yes,” said Sigita through her teeth, though nausea sloshed in her throat like water in a bucket. “But I think I had better go lie down all the same.”

THE FLAT LOOKED the way it always did. Clean and white and modern, light-years away from the shirt-ridden hell of Tauragė. Even Mikas’s toys were lined up in tidy rows on the shelves. Only one alien object disturbed the symmetry: an empty vodka bottle glared at her from the kitchen worktop, next to the sink.

She tossed it into the bin with unnecessary force. Did they get her drunk first? She didn’t believe, couldn’t believe, that she had just let Darius and his German slut waltz off with Mikas in tow.

Her mobile rang.

“Sigita, where the hell are you? Dobrovolskij will be here in half an hour, and we need those figures!”

It was Algirdas. Algirdas Janusevičius, one half of Janus Constructions, and her immediate boss.

“Sorry,” she said. “I just got out of hospital.”

“Hospital?” Irritation was clear in his voice at first, but he managed a more suitably worried tone when he spoke again. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

“No,” she said. “I fell down some stairs. But I won’t be in for a few days.”

His silence was palpable at the other end of the line.

“Sorry,” she said again.

“Yes. Well. It can’t be helped. But … the figures?”

“There’s a green folder in the cabinet behind my desk, under Dobrovolskij. The accounts are almost the first thing you’ll come across.”

“Sigita, for God’s sake. Not those figures.”

She knew what he meant, of course. When one worked for Dobrovolskij, there were unwritten accounts as well, numbers and sums that never made it into the official records. The reason Sigita had become indispensable to Algirdas so quickly was that she was able to hold it all in her head. Even old man Dobrovolskij himself, who was not easy to please, had come to trust in Sigita’s accuracy. She knew what had been agreed, down to the last litas.

Except that right now she would have some trouble remembering her own phone number. The only thing her head held at the moment was a gray fog of nausea and confusion.

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’m a little concussed.”

This time, the silence was even heavier. She could almost hear the panic in Algirdas’s breathing.

“How long … ?” he asked cautiously.

“They say most people get their full memory back inside a few weeks.”

“A few weeks!”

“Algirdas, I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“No … no. Of course not. We will just have to manage somehow. But… .”

“Yes. As soon as I can.”

“Take care.” He hung up. She let the hand holding the phone sink into her lap.

Her head hurt. It was as though some great fist were squeezing it in rhythmic throbs, to match the beating of her pulse. She tapped out Darius’s number again.

“You have called Darius Ramoška… .”

She sat for a long time in one of the white wooden chairs by the kitchen table, trying to think.

Then she called the police.





THE BOY LAY unconscious on the back seat, with the checkered picnic blanket covering his thin, unmoving body. And Karin wasn’t answering her phone.

Nina closed her eyes, trying to concentrate. 1:35. It should be 1:35… . Her hands shook slightly as she turned her wrist to check her watch. 1:36, stated the stark, digital numbers. Close enough. Relief flooded through her, making it a bit easier to think.

Sorry, Karin, she silently told her friend. You ask too much, this time. She pulled the blanket a little higher so that it was not immediately obvious a child was asleep beneath it. Rolled down the window just a notch, so air would get into the car. Locked the Fiat and left, walking with long, quick strides she knew were nearly as fast as running.

SHE CUT THROUGH the central hall of the railway station, heading for the green and white sign that proclaimed the local police presence. She entered the small office, wondering what one actually said in such a situation. Good afternoon, I’ve just found a child?

The officer at the reception desk looked tired. Not the easiest job in Copenhagen, probably.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“Err … I have a child in my car—”

Nina’s hesitant explanation was interrupted by a crackle from the woman’s radio. Nina couldn’t hear what was being said at the other end, but the officer snapped a hasty “Copy that. I’m on my way,” and headed for the door at a run.

“Please wait here,” she called over her shoulder, but Nina had already followed her back into the central hall. She watched the officer and one of her uniformed colleagues fairly sprint for the stairwell leading down to the left luggage lockers. Following still further, into the basement, was not actually a conscious decision.

She heard the racket as soon as she started down the stairs. Everyone in the facility had stopped their various baggage maneuvers, and some had already gathered at the entrance to the passage where locker number 37-43 was situated. Nina felt a warning flutter along her spine, like an insect moving over her skin, but she still had to look.

A man was kicking at the metal doors with frightening ferocity. She caught a brief glimpse of the back of his head, hair clipped so short it looked almost shaved, and of a set of enormous shoulders encased in a shiny brown leather jacket that was surely too hot for this weather. When the officers reached him, he shook off the first one as if she were a child he no longer wanted to play with. Then he seemed to collect himself.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, rolling his r’s in a way that almost made them into d’s. He stood quite still, letting the police officers calm down from violence alert to dialogue mode. “I pay. Is broken, I pay.”

Then he suddenly turned his head, looking directly at her. She didn’t know what made him pick her out of the crowd, but she saw his muscles bunch tensely as fury tightened his face and narrowed his eyes. He remained still, and didn’t speak, but even so she sensed the violence he was holding in check.

What had she done to deserve such rage? She had never seen the man before.

But of course the locker he had been kicking to pieces was not just any locker. It was number 37-43. And she suddenly knew where the rage had come from.

She had taken something that was his.

SHE HAD TO employ every shred of self-control she possessed to stop herself from running all the way back to the car. He won’t be able to follow, she told herself, the police are there. She walked as quickly as she could without turning heads.

But she remembered how he had shaken them off like a dog shakes a flea from its fur, and the only plan she was able to form was that they had to get away, she and the boy, as far away from that man as they could possibly get.