The Boy in the Suitcase

NINA PARKED THE Fiat in the narrow, cobblestoned part of Reventlowsgade, squeezed in between a row of classic Vesterbro tenements on one side and the Tietgensgade embankment on the other. On top of the embankment, the traffic moved past in uneven, noisy jerks.

The boy wriggled as she pulled the shorts up around his skinny waist, but he was apparently pleased with the slightly over-sized sandals. He picked at the velcro straps with his short, soft fingers, and Nina cautiously stroked his hair. She found the water bottles, unscrewed the cap of one of them, and held it out to him.

“Atju.”

The boy accepted the bottle earnestly, and drank with clumsy greed. Some of the water sloshed onto his chin and the new T-shirt, and he silently wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

The motion was so familiar that for a split second, Nina felt as if she might be sitting in a car with an ordinary child on their way home from a long day at the kindergarten. Slowly, she repeated the word to herself. Atju. Wasn’t that the same thing he had said when she gave him the ice cream earlier?

It had to mean thank you.

Nina recognized the slight nod and lowered eyes that most children learn to produce as an automatic reaction. “Thank you” was the first phrase taught by any parents with the slightest ambition to raise a polite child. It couldn’t be a coincidence, thought Nina. Both times, she had been giving him something. The word was clearly designed for such situations. So, thank you. It made her task a little easier, as “Mama” was probably a too universal to be much use.

Nina opened the door and got out of the car. Heat still clung to the pavement and brick walls, and the heavy diesel fumes rising from the central railway station stung her nostrils with every breath. A faint puff of wind whirled a scrunched-up cigarette pack along the curb, until it came to rest against a tuft of yellow grass poking up between the paving stones.

The boy permitted her to lift him from the car only with reluctance, and once out, insisted on walking himself. He became tense and unmanagable in her arms, arching his spine and throwing back his head in silent protest, and when she gave in and let him slide to the sidewalk, she thought she had caught a glint of triumph in his tired eyes. He landed neatly, his new sandals meeting the pavement with a crisp and satisfied smack. Then he reached for her hand as though that was the most natural thing in the world. He was used to walking this way, thought Nina. He was used to holding someone’s hand.

THEY WALKED UP Stampesgade and turned right along Colbjørnsensgade, and then on to Istedgade. The boy’s hand rested in hers, lightly as a butterfly, as they slowly moved past Kakadu Bar and Saga Hotel. There were still quite a few people about in the warm, dark night; outside the cafés, the guests were sipping beers and lattes and colas, barefooted in sandals, and still dressed only in light summer dresses or shorts.

The first prostitutes Nina saw were African. Two of them, both of them rather solidly built, and dressed in high boots and brightly colored skirts stretched tightly over muscular, firm thighs. The women stood less than five yards from each other, yet they didn’t talk. One had propped herself against a wall with a cigarette between pursed lips, and rummaged hectically through her bag at regular intervals. The other did nothing at all except stand there, watching every car that turned the corner.

No one took any notice of Nina and the boy, and it struck her that they must look relatively normal, walking together like this. A little late to be out and about, certainly, considering the usual bedtime of children his age, but nothing that would raise eyebrows. Vesterbro might contain Copenhagen’s red light district, but it was also a neighborhood full of ordinary families, some of them with young children. Vesterbro was becoming hip, and fashionable cafés had sprung up among the topless bars and porn shops.

The boy dragged his feet a little, but she still felt no resistance in the hand resting confidently in hers. In a doorway a little further down the street, two women argued heatedly. They were both blond, with skinny legs and remarkably similar emaciated faces. The argument stopped abruptly, as suddenly as it has begun, and one of them reached into her handbag and handed a can of beer to the other.

Nina paused, and the boy stood obediently quiet at her side while she tried to obtain eye contact with one of the women, the one now holding the beer can. She, in her turn, ignored Nina and looked at the boy instead.

“Hi there, sweetheart.”

Her voice was blurred and bubbly, as though she were talking to them from the bottom of a well. When the boy didn’t react and Nina kept standing there, she finally raised her eyes to Nina’s, with a grimace of confusion on her face.

“Yes?”

Nina took a deep breath. “I’m looking for… .” Nina hesitated, fumbling for the right words. The woman’s gaze was already wandering again. “The Eastern European girls, where are they? Do you know?”

The woman’s pale blue eyes widened in astonishment and distrust. Her pupils moved in tiny rapid jerks, and her mouth tightened. Nina realized she must look like the enemy, that the woman might consider her world to be under attack from the semidetached, permanent-income, husband-toting kind of person who would condescend to and disapprove of people like her. She might suspect Nina of being a journalist, or an outraged wife, or even a tourist vicariously fascinated by the prospect of sleaze and degradation. In any case, the woman clearly did not relish the role of practical guide to Vesterbro’s night life. Her eyes glinted aggressively.

“Why the hell are you asking?”

She moved half a step closer, and Nina felt the heaviness of her breath waver in the air between them.

Truth, she thought. I’ll give her the truth, or a small part of it, at any rate.

“The boy needs his mother,” she said, pulling the child onto her arm. “I have to find her.”

For a few wobbly seconds, the woman maintained her stance, chest pushed forward and eyes glinting. Then the appeal to the maternal instinct had its effect. She slumped, taking another sip of her lager, and studied the boy with renewed interest.

“Poor litte dear,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek with a bony finger.

He jerked his head out of reach and hid his face against Nina’s shoulder, which made the beer-can woman scowl. She teetered off, pulling her friend with her. But she did answer the question as she went.

“They’re everywhere at the moment,” she said. “Some in Skelbæksgade, some at Halmtorvet. There are probably some in Helgolandsgade, too. They’re bloody everywhere, and you have a long night ahead of you if you don’t know her usual spot.”

“Where do they come from, do you know?”

Nina wasn’t sure the woman heard her, but just before they turned the corner, her friend twisted to look at Nina.

“Most of the white girls are from Russia,” she said. “But there are others, too. Prices are way down because of them. The stupid little tarts ruin it for everyone else.”





THE DOOR BUZZER let off a snarl, startling Sigita out of a strange sort of absence. Not sleep. Nothing as peaceful as sleep.

“This is Evaldas Gužas, from the Department of Missing Persons. May we come in?”

She buzzed them through. Her heart had begun to pound so hard that the material of her shirt was actually quivering with each beat. They have found him, she thought. Holy Virgin, Mother of Christ. Please let it be so. They have found him, and he is all right.

But as soon as she opened her door to Gužas and his companion, she could tell that he was not the bearer of such good news. She still couldn’t help asking.

“Have you found him?”

“No,” said Gužas. “I’m afraid not. But we do have a possible lead. This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Martynas Valionis. When I told him about the case, it rang a few bells.”

Valionis shook Sigita’s hand.

“May we sit down for a moment?”

“Yes, of course,” said Sigita politely, all the while silently screaming get on with it.

Valionis perched on the edge of the white couch, put his briefcase on the coffee table, aligning it with the edge with unconscious perfectionism, and brought out a plastic folder.

“I am about to show you some photographs, Mrs. Ramoškienė. Do you recognize any of these women?”

The photos were not glossy portrait shots, but printed hastily on a none-too-efficient inkjet, it seemed. He held them out to her one at a time.

“No,” she said, to the first one. And the next.

The third photograph showed the woman with the chocolate.

Sigita clenched the paper so hard that she scrunched it.

“It’s her,” she said. “She’s the one who took Mikas.”

Valionis nodded in satisfaction.

“Barbara Woronska,” he said. “From Poland, born in Krakow in 1972. Apparently she has lived in this country for some years, and officially she is working for a company selling alarm and security systems.”

“And unofficially?”

“She came to our attention for the first time two years ago when a Belgian businessman made a complaint that she had tried to blackmail him. It would appear that the company uses her as an escort for their clients, particularly the foreign ones, when they visit Vilnius.”

“She’s a prostitute?” Sigita never would have guessed.

“That is perhaps a little too simple. Our impression is that she works as what’s known as a honey trap. She certainly seems to have an uncommonly high consumption of prescription eyedrops.”

Sigita didn’t understand.

“Eyedrops?”

“Yes. Medicinally, they are used to relax the muscles of the eyes, which is useful in certain instances. But if they are ingested, in a drink, for instance, they have the rather peculiar side effect of causing unconsciousness and deep sleep within a short time. It’s not uncommon for a hard-partying businessman to wake up in some hotel room, picked clean of his Oyster Rolex, cash, and credit cards. But Miss Woronska and her backers seem to have refined the technique a bit. They arrange so-called compromising photographs while our man is unconscious, and afterwards suggest to him that he agrees to an export deal on, shall we say, very lucrative terms for the Lithuanian companies involved. Only this time, the Belgian got stubborn, told them to publish and be damned, and came to us. Miss Woronska was one of the participants in the arranged photograph. The other was some little girl who could hardly have been more than twelve years old. One quite understands why the police have not heard from their other victims.”

Hardly more than twelve … Sigita tried to push away the mental images. She couldn’t make it square with the neat and elegant woman in the cotton coat. When people did something like that for a living, shouldn’t it somehow show?

She stared at the printed page. It was not a classic identification photo of the kind made after arrests. Barbara Woronska was not looking directly at the photographer, her head was turned slightly to the left, bringing out the elegance of her long neck. The quality was grainy, as if the picture had been too much enlarged, and the expression on her face was … peculiar. Her mouth was half open, her eyes stared blankly. Even though only her face and neck were showing in the photo, Sigita suddenly felt convinced that Woronska was not wearing any clothes, and that this was a detail from one of the “compromising photographs.”

“But why … what made you think that she was the one who took Mikas?”

“Two things,” explained Valionis. “Item one: the Belgian had an alarming alcohol content in his blood in spite of swearing to us that he had had only one drink in the company of the delectable Miss Woronska. When our doctor examined him, he found lesions in the man’s throat consistent with intubation—in other words, someone could have inserted a tube and poured alcohol directly into his stomach while he was unconscious. It’s a good way of demoralizing and incapacitating someone, if you are willing to take the risk. People have been known to die from it, from acute alcohol poisoning.”

Sigita’s head came up.

“But … but that is… .”

Evaldas Gužas nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry no one believed you. At this stage, unfortunately, we cannot prove that this was what was done to you, as it is not now possible to distinguish any orignal injury from those stemming from the intubation you had to undergo at the hospital. But everyone I have spoken to has characterized you as a sober and responsible person, so… .” He left the conclusion hanging in the air, unsaid.

Some of Sigita’s general misery eased a little. At least they believed her now. At least they would be serious about looking for Mikas.

“And … Mikas?”

“The other thing that rang a bell was the fact that Barbara Woronska had been identified as one of four possible suspects in another case involving the disappearance of a child,” said Valionis, consulting his notebook briefly.

Sigita’s hands shook.

“A child?”

Valionis nodded.

“A little over a month ago, a desperate mother reported her eight-year-old daughter missing. She had been picked up from the music school where she took piano lessons twice a week by an unknown woman who presented herself as a neighbor. The piano teacher was not suspicious, as the mother works as a nurse and has often sent others to pick up the child when she herself has a late shift. Unfortunately, the piano teacher was not able to give us a very good description and would only say that it might be one of these four women.” He tapped the photographs with one forefinger.

“But where is she now?” said Sigita. “Haven’t you arrested her?”

“Unfortunately not,” said Gužas. “Her place of employment tells us that they haven’t seen her since Thursday, and she has apparently not been living at her official address since March.”

“But how come she is not in jail? With all this, how come she is still out there, stealing other people’s children?”

Valionis shook his head with a disgusted grimace.

“Both cases were dropped. The Belgian went home very suddenly, and all we got from him was a letter from his lawyer to the effect that his client was dropping all charges. And the nurse just as suddenly maintained that it had all been a misunderstanding, and the child was home and quite safe.”

“Isn’t that a little odd?” asked Sigita.

“Yes. We are convinced that they both gave in to some form of pressure.” Evaldas Gužas’s gaze rested on her with an ungentle emphasis. “Which is why I have to ask you yet again, Mrs. Ramoškienė. Does anyone have any reason to subject you to that kind of pressure?”

Sigita shook her head numbly. If it hadn’t been Dobrovolskij, she couldn’t imagine anyone else feeling any need to pressure or threaten her.

“Surely they would say something?” she said. “I haven’t heard a thing.”

Helplessness gripped her once more. Again, an unbearable image flitted through her mind: Mikas in a basement somewhere, on a dirty mattress, crying, afraid. How can anyone stand this? she thought. I can’t. It will kill me.

“I implore you to contact us if you hear anything at all,” said Gužas. “It’s impossible for us to stop people like this if no one will talk to us.”

She nodded heavily. But she knew that if it became a choice between saving Mikas and telling the police, the police didn’t have a prayer.

Valionis closed his briefcase with a crisp snap. The two officers got to their feet, Valionis gave her his card, and Gužas shook her hand.

“There is hope,” he said. “Remember that. Julija Baronienė got her daughter back.”

Sigita felt a brief spasm in her chest.

“Who, did you say?”

“Julija Baronienė. The nurse. Do you know her?”

Sigita’s heart leaped and fluttered.

“No,” she said. “Not at all.”

SHE STOOD ON her balcony and watched the two men cross the parking lot below, get into a black car, and leave. Her right hand had come to rest just under her navel, without any directions from her. Certain things are never entirely forgotten by the body.

Contrary to everything Sigita had heard about first-time births, it had been quick, and very, very violent. In the beginning she had yelled at everyone in sight, telling them to do something. In the end she just screamed, for four hours straight. It was Julija’s hand she clung to, the nurse who was somehow also Granny; and Julija stayed with her so that she felt at times that this was the only thing that held her to this world: Julija’s strong, square hands, Julija’s voice, and Julija’s face. Her eyes were dark, the color of prunes, and she did not let go, nor did she let Sigita do so.

“You just keep at it,” she said. “You just keep at it until you finish this.”

But when the baby did come, Sigita could hold on no longer. She slipped, and something flowed out of her, something wet and dark and warm, so that there was only cold emptiness left.

“Sigita… .”

But Julija’s voice was already distant.

“She’s hemorrhaging,” said one of the other sisters. “Get the doctor, now!”

Sigita kept on slipping, into the chill and empty dark.

IT WAS NEARLY a day and a night before she came back. She was in a small, windowless room lit by fluorescent ceiling lights. It was the light that had woken her. Her eyelids felt like rubber mats, her throat was sore. One arm had been tied to the side of the bed, and fluids were slowly dripping into her vein from a bag on a thin metal pole. Her body felt heavy and alien to her.

“Are you awake, little darling?”

Her aunt Jolita was by the bedside. The fluorescent lights bleached her skin and dug deep shadowed pits beneath her eyes. She looked like a tired old woman, thought Sigita.

“Would you like some water?”

Sigita nodded. She wasn’t certain she could talk, but in the end she tried anyway.

“Where is Julija?”

Jolita frowned, her penciled brows nearly meeting in the middle.

“Your grandmother?”

“No. The other Julija.”

“I don’t know who you mean, darling. Here, have a sip. Now all you have to do is rest up and get better, so that we can get you home.”

That was when it happened. When Jolita said the word home. Something huge and black exploded in her head, her breasts, her belly. Its edges were so sharp and evil that it felt as if something was there, even though she knew that it happened because something was lacking. Because something had been taken out of her.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked.

“Don’t think about it,” said Jolita. “The quicker you forget about the whole thing, the better. It will have a good life. With rich people.”

Sigita felt tears slide down her nose. They felt scalding hot because the rest of her was so cold.

“Rich people,” she repeated, testing to see if that might make the Blackness go away.

Jolita nodded. “From Denmark,” she said brightly, as if this was something special.

The Blackness was still there.

TWO DAYS LATER, Sigita was standing next to the bed in a gray sweatshirt and a pair of jeans she hadn’t been able to fit into for months. Standing was tiring, but she still couldn’t sit, and getting out of bed was so painful that she didn’t want to lie down again. Finally Jolita returned, accompanied by a fair-haired woman in a white lab coat. Sigita had never seen the woman before.

“Goodbye then, Sigita, and good luck,” she said, holding out her hand.

It felt odd, being called by her first name by someone she didn’t know at all. Sigita nodded awkwardly, but returned the handshake. The woman handed Jolita a brown envelope.

“There is a small deduction for the extra days,” she said. “Normally, our girls leave us inside a day.”

Jolita nodded absently. She opened the brown envelope, peeked inside, then closed it again.

“I’ll need your signature here.”

Jolita took the pen.

“Shouldn’t I be the one to sign it?” asked Sigita.

Jolita hesitated. “If you wish,” she said. “But I can do it too.”

Sigita looked at the paper. It wasn’t an adoption form. It was a receipt. For payment received on delivery of “Ass. herbs for the production of natural remedies.” The amount signed for was 14.426 litai.

This is no adoption, thought Sigita suddenly, with glacial clarity. This is a purchase. Strangers have bought my child and paid for it, and this is my share of the loot.

“Can’t I at least see it?” she asked. “And meet the people who are taking it?” Her breasts were swollen and throbbed painfully. Julija had provided her with a tight elastic bandage that she was to keep wrapped around her torso for at least a week, she had been told, to stop the milk from coming.

The woman in the white coat shook her head. “They left the clinic yesterday. But in our experience, that’s best for both parties anyway.”

The Blackness stirred inside her, carving new passages in her body, flowing into her veins. She could feel the chill beneath her skin. It was already done, she thought. Now all that was left was the money. She held out a hand toward Jolita.

“Give it to me.”

“Little darling… .” Jolita looked at her in confusion. “You make it sound as if I was about to steal it!”

Sigita merely waited. In the end, Jolita passed her the envelope. It was thick and heavy with the notes inside it. Sigita clutched it in one hand and waddled for the exit. The stitches stung with every stride.

“Sigita, wait,” said Jolita. “The receipt!”

“You sign it,” she said, over her shoulder. “It was all your idea anyway.”

Jolita scribbled a hasty signature and said goodbye to the woman. Sigita just walked on. Into the corridor, through the waiting room, and out the door.

Jolita caught up with her on the rain-drenched pavement.

“Let’s get a taxi,” she said. “Let me take you home.”

Sigita stopped. She turned and looked at Jolita with all the new coldness she now possessed. “You go home,” she said. “I’m going to a hotel. I don’t want to see you again. Ever.”



THERE WERE FOUR Baronienės in the Vilnius phone book. Sigita called them all, asking for Julija. No result. Then she tried Baronas, in case the telephone was registered to the husband only. Eight of those. Two didn’t answer, one had an answering machine that made no mention of any Julija, two said they didn’t know anyone of that name. The sixth call was answered by a woman’s voice with a cautious “Yes?”

Sigita listened intently, but she wasn’t sure whether she recognized the voice.

“Is this Julija?” she asked.

“Yes. To whom am I speaking?”

“Sigita Ramoškienė. I would just like to—”

She got no further. The connection was severed with an abrupt click.





JUČAS DROVE THE car all the way down onto the beach.

It was dark now, and there were no people. Behind him, the thicket of pines formed a black wall. He took off all his clothes except his underpants. The sand was still warm beneath the soles of his feet, and the water tepid and so shallow that he had to wade several hundred feet before it became deep enough for him to swim.

There was no significant surf, no suction. Just this flat, lukewarm water that could not give him the stinging shock he craved. It had to there, he thought, further out—the cold, the undertow, the powers. He considered quite soberly the possiblity of simply continuing until he met something stronger than he was.

Barbara was waiting at the hotel. He hadn’t told her much, just that he had to help the Dane with something before they could get their money.

There would be no Krakow now, he thought, digging into the water with furious strokes that did, after all, make his muscles burn a little. In his mind he could still see the smiling family, the mother, the father, the two children, but large brown rats had begun to gnaw at the house so that it was disappearing bite by bite, and now one of the rats had started on the leg of the smallest child, without causing the child or the parents to smile any less.

He stopped his progress abruptly, treading water. He knew where those rats came from. Could still remember them scuttling away as he had come into the stable with the lantern and had found Gran on the floor next to the feed bin. No one had ever thought it necessary to tell him what she had died from. But dead she was, even a seven-year-old boy could tell as much. And the rats had known it, too.

He had succeeded in finding waters too deep for him to touch bottom. But he began to swim for the coast, this time with smooth, methodical strokes. He would not let the rats win. And there was still a trail of sorts that he might follow.

He thought about his clothes. What to do with them. In the end he dipped the sleeve of his shirt into the petrol tank of the car and made a small bonfire on the beach. He had only vague notions of DNA and microscopic fibers, but surely fire would deal with most of that.

The first thing to go wrong had been the woman herself. It hadn’t been the one he had seen in the railway station—the bony, crew-cut boy-bitch. This one was fair-haired like Barbara and had even bigger breasts. It would have been so much easier if it had only been the other one.

But she tried to run the minute she saw him, and surely she wouldn’t have done that if she had been innocent? His reflexes took over, and he hit her a few times on the arms and legs when he caught her, just to stop her from trying to run again. She was terrified. She gabbled at him in a language that was probably Danish, then seemed to realize that he didn’t understand. She began speaking English instead. Asked him who he was, and what he was doing there? But he could tell from her eyes that she knew precisely why he had come. And she was so scared that a trickle of yellow pee ran down one leg and made a damp spot in the middle of her white dress.

Why wouldn’t the stupid woman just tell him, he thought? What was she thinking? That if she said “no” enough times, he would apologize for the inconvenience and go away?

There always came a point when they knew. Some tried to escape, or scream and beg. Others simply gave up. But the time always came when they knew. Once he had torn away all the things they used for protection—nice clothes, perhaps, or an immaculate home, courtesy and starched curtains, a name, a position, an illusion of power and security: this can’t be happening to us … once he had made them understand that yes, it was happening, it could happen to anybody, and right now it’s happening to you. Once the disbelief had vanished. Then there was only one raw reality left: that he would not stop until they gave him what he had come for.

Despite her terror, it took a long while for the fair-haired Danish woman to get to that point. Much longer than he was used to in Lithuania. Perhaps the layer of security was thicker here, like the layer of fat on the fish in the Tivoli lake. Peeling it off took time. But in the end she was just trying to figure out what he wanted her to say.

He asked about the money. I put it back, she said. Jan has it. She kept saying that, so it might be true.

Then he asked about the boy. Who was the bitch who had collected him? Where was he now? Who had him?

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.”