The Boy in the Suitcase

NINA WOKE BECAUSE someone was beating on the car window, a series of hard rythmic blows. She opened her eyes in time to see a stooping figure reel across the street and continue in the direction of the Central Station. Above Reventlowsgade’s numerous streetlights the sky was brightening to pale gray.

The back of her neck was sore, and the ache called back a vague memory of struggling with the weight of her own head during the night. It had not been a good way to sleep, but even this lack of comfort had not been enough to keep her awake. Cautiously, she released her knees from their braced position against the back of the seat. Tendons and muscles protested sharply as she opened the door and stretched her legs onto the pavement.

The boy was still asleep. He had rolled over during the night and his outflung arms rested on the seat, palms upward. He had forgotten where he was, thought Nina with a degree of envy. Even in sleep that mercy had eluded her, and she felt no less tired than the night before.

She rose slowly and walked a few steps beside the car, trying to ease the pins and needles in her legs. It was still more than six hours before she could meet the girl from Helgolandsgade, and in a little while, the sun would begin the process of turning Vesterbro into a diesel-stinking oven. She had to find some temporary refuge for herself and the boy, preferably somewhere that included the possibility of a shower. She could smell her own body—the sour odor of old sweat assaulted her nostrils every time she moved. She felt sticky and exhausted.

The boy stirred in the back seat, still half asleep, but surfacing slowly. He stretched, and then lay there for a long moment, eyes open and staring into the gray upholstery of the seat in front of him. Then he turned his head and looked at her. The smooth, soft look given to him by sleep vanished in an instant and was replaced by recognition and disappointment. But there was a change. The sulky resignation was still there, but the hostility had gone. Perhaps there was even a hint of familiarity, a sense of belonging inspired by everything they had been through together the day before. Karin’s empty gaze, the nauseating pool of congealing blood beneath her head. The chaotic escape from the cottage, the hookers in Helgolandsgade, and the slices of untoasted white bread.

He knew whom to stick with right now. He just didn’t know why.

Nina produced a faint smile. That was all she could manage. It was still only 5:43, and the thought of yet another long and lonely day with the boy on her hands seemed to leech her of all strength. Completely unsurmountable.

She might go home.

The idea felt heretical after yesterday’s long flight, but the cold and stilted conversation with Morten seemed so distant now, floating only somewhere at the very back of her mind. Had he really been as angry as she thought? Maybe not. He might even be capable of understanding why she and the boy had had to disappear. If she could only find the right way to tell him. She might say that the story about Karin was only an excuse she had made up, that it had been the network that had called her, and that the boy would only be with them for a few days before being sent on to relatives in … in England, maybe. That might seem sufficiently safe and manageable even for Morten.

Morten didn’t like that she worked with the illegal residents. In principle, he agreed that something must be done. He was unwavering in his opposition to the government’s policy when it came to refugees and other immigrants, and when yet another story about grotesque deportations and broken families hit the news stream, he would be genuinely upset and outraged. The problem he had with the network and her commitment to it was purely personal. Morten didn’t think it was good for her. He thought she was using it as a form of escape from herself and her own children, from what was supposed to be their family life. When he was in a good mood, he called her his little adrenalin junkie. When he was angry, he didn’t say very much, but his antipathy to the network rose in direct ratio to the number of nights and evenings she spent away from their Østerbro flat.

Right now, there was nowhere else in the world she would rather be. God, how she wanted it. She wanted to sneak up the stairs with the boy in her arms, put on the kettle to make coffee. Leave the boy in front of the television, perhaps, while she herself slipped into their tiny bathroom and pulled the octopus-patterned shower curtain in front of the door. She would stand under the hot shower for a long luxurious moment with her own bottle of eco-friendly shampoo, without perfume and smelling only of simple cleanliness. Afterwards she might pad out into the kitchen on bare feet and set the table for breakfast with oatmeal, raisins, sugar, and milk. The children would have to leave for school, of course, and the boy might then sleep another few hours in Anton’s bed before they had to head back to Vesterbro to find the girl from Helgolandsgade.

She would do it. Yes. She would go home. The relief was deep and physical, as if someone had quite literally lifted a weight off her shoulders. She raised her eyes to the mirror and gave the boy a genuine smile as she eased the car away from the curb and headed for Åboulevarden. Everything looked so different in the morning, even on such a morning as this. Morten would help her. Of course he would. Why had she ever doubted it?





MORTEN MADE COFFEE for the detective sergeant and for himself. The uniformed officer had declined, but accepted a cola instead.

His hands moved mechanically in a set of practiced routines that needed little guidance from his brain: fill kettle, click switch, rinse pot, open coffee can.

You don’t know whether she is dead or alive, a cynical voice inside him whispered. And you’re making coffee.

“Milk or sugar?”

“Milk, please.”

He opened the refrigerator and looked vaguely at flat plastic packages of cured ham, mustard bottles, cucumbers, jars of pickled beets. Half past four in the morning. He could smell the bed-sweat on his own body and felt dysfunctional and unhygienic.

“She said that Karin was ill, or wasn’t feeling very well, I don’t quite recall her exact words. But she had to help her.”

“And when was this?”

“Yesterday afternoon. A little past five. She was supposed to pick up Anton. Er, that’s our youngest. She should have picked him up from daycare. But she had forgotten.”

“Was that unusual?”

He shook his head vaguely, not exactly in denial; it was more a gesture of uncertainty.

“She used to be … a little absent sometimes. But not anymore. No. She … I think she was distracted, perhaps because she was worried about Karin. They were at nursing school together, and they used to be close. But it’s been awhile. Since they saw each other last, I mean.”

He put the bistro pot on the table. Then cups. Milk, in the little Stelton creamer that had been a present to them from his mother and father.

She could be dead. As dead as Karin.

“You haven’t seen her at all?” he asked.

“No. A neighbor heard someone scream, and found the body.”

“Scream? Karin?”

“We don’t think so. We think she had already been dead some time by then. We don’t know where the scream came from, but our witness was definite he had heard it. He didn’t see anyone, but he heard a car drive off. We don’t know what kind of car. We don’t know whether it may have been your wife leaving the scene, or someone else. We still have searchers combing the area with dogs. That was how we found your wife’s mobile.”

Uncertainty was nothing new. He had suffered days and even weeks of it before, when the gaps between her calls had grown too long, and one heard disquieting things on the news. This was worse. More specific. Closer to home. He felt a strange brooding anger. This wasn’t Darfur, dammit. It wasn’t supposed to happen here, not now that she was home again.

The sergeant drank his coffee.

“How tall is your wife?” he asked.

“One meter sixty-nine,” answered Morten automatically. And then froze with the cup halfway to his mouth because he didn’t know whether this was something they needed to know in order to identify her, or her body.

Then he realized there might be a third purpose behind the question.

“You don’t think that … that she … that she might have anything to do with the murder?”

“We are still waiting for the autopsy results. But it would seem that the blows were struck with overwhelming force. We tend to think that the assailant must have been male.”

The reply did not provide any relief.

Suddenly, Anton was in the doorway. His hair was damp with sweat, and the too large Spiderman pajama top had slipped off one shoulder.

“Is Mummy home yet?” he asked, rubbing his face with the back of his hand.

“Not yet,” said Morten.

Anton frowned, and it seemed that it was only now that he registered the presence of two strangers in the room. The uniform made his eyes pop still wider. His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything. Morten felt paralyzed, completely unable to come up with an explanation that would make sense in a seven-year-old’s universe.

“Go on back to bed,” he said, trying to sound casual and everyday normal. Anton gave a brief nod. The sound of his bare feet beat a rapid retreat along the corridor.

“Will you please ask your wife to contact us immediately if she comes back?” said the sergeant. “She is an important witness.”

“Of course,” said Morten with a growing feeling of complete helplessness.

If she comes back.





TRAFFIC ON JAGTVEJEN was warming up in the gray dawn, but the smaller streets around Fejøgade were still quiet and uncrowded. Perhaps that was why she saw the police car right away. With no blinking blue lights, it looked like a white taxi at first glance, but it was parked in an offhand, slanted manner, as if the driver could not be bothered to do a proper curbside parallel parking. Nina had time to think that this was the kind of sloppy parking Morten hated, and that he would be irritated if the car was still here when he came down to take the children to school. Then she realized that the bump on the car’s roof were cop lights, not taxi lights. And that someone was up and about and had the lights on, up there in their third-floor flat.

Morten would not normally be up this early. He had flexible working hours when he wasn’t out on the rigs, and even though he was alone with the kids today, as long as he had them up and ready for breakfast at 7:30, he would be fine. It was now 5:58. Much too early for normality.

Nina continued past her own front door at an even speed. It was of course possible that the cops had merely needed somewhere quiet to park while they enjoyed their morning coffee. But why, then, was Morten up? Were they looking for her? And was it because of Karin, or because of the boy?

She didn’t want to believe it. The thought of having to give up her fantasy of a hot shower and a normal family breakfast caused a wave of exhaustion that dug into her already depleted reserves. She slipped the Fiat into an empty slot further up the street and sat there with her hands on the wheel and her foot on the clutch, trying to make up her mind.

There was a part of her that wanted it over and done with.

There would be no need for drama. She could hand over the boy to professional, caring adults in a quiet and orderly manner, without causing him undue anxiety. And if she really put her mind to it, she might even convince herself that she was doing the right thing. That the boy would be safe and cared for at some institution on Amager, and that the man from the railway station from now on would be a single bad memory in an otherwise happy and safe childhood. Immigraton had proper interpreters available to them, they didn’t need to chase after Lithuanian hookers with ponytails and coltish legs. If the boy did have a good and loving mother somewhere, surely they would find her.

God only knew how she wanted to believe it. Every single day, she practiced her detachment skills, trying not to care about everything that was wrong with the world. Or rather … to care, but in a suitably civilized manner, with an admirable commitment that might still be set aside when she came home to Morten and her family, complete with well-reasoned and coherent opinions of the humanist persuasion. Right now she felt more like one of those manic women from the animal protection societies, with wild hair and even wilder eyes. Desperate. She had her good days, fortunately, but every time she dared to think that this serenity might be permanent, there would be a Natasha and a Rina, or a Zaide or a Li Hua, and her defenses would be blown to shreds, so that once more, reality grated on her naked skin like sandpaper.

Nina turned off the engine. She got out, closing the car door gently, and looked back at her own solid-seeming brown front door, and at the windows up there. She could make the choice. She could do like everyone else would do—take the boy gently by the hand, and go up there to meet the police, safe in the knowledge that she had done everything that could reasonably be expected from a responsible adult. Then she could come clean with Morten, telling him everything in one of those hot confessional rushes that would lead to a familiar, reassuring row about her priorities and his anxiety about her, and finally, finally, to tears and intimacy. Her hands on his face, sliding from his forehead to his cheekbones, then round to the back of his neck, damp under his short brown hair. Infinite relief.

All of that could be hers if only she would let herself believe what no one else seemed to have any trouble believing: that Denmark was a safe haven for the broken human lives that washed up on its shores.

Up there behind the windows, someone was moving, back and forth, jerkily, like a predator in an inadequate cage. Her conscience winced as she recognized Morten’s tall, near-athletic form. Then another man appeared, shorter, rounder, gesturing slowly and soothingly.

A pro, thought Nina, feeling her antagonism increase. Morten was in the hands of one of those policemen who had attended courses in how best to talk to civilians under pressure.

He would be saying things like “We are doing everything possible, and we are very good at what we do” and “We are highly trained professionals, and the best thing you can do for Nina now is to trust us.”

He would be telling her much the same thing as he took the boy away from her. “We will do everything in our power to find out what has happened here.”

Morten suddenly stepped up to the window, looking out. Inadvertantly, she backed a couple of paces. Had he seen her? The last softness had gone from the dawn, and daylight exposed her fully to anyone who cared to see. But she was some distance away, and the Fiat was shielded by other cars. She stood still, conscious that movement attracted attention. But she couldn’t make herself look away. Finally, he turned away from the window, and she dared move again. She leapt into the car, slammed the door, and hurriedly revved the engine. The Fiat practically leapt into the street, and then stalled. She had forgotten about the parking brake. Cursing, she got the engine started once more and engaged the clutch. Flight responses had taken over, coursing through her body, and turning back was no longer an option.

Had Morten seen her? And if he had, would he tell the police?

A sudden flashback washed through her tired mind. About a thousand years ago, when they had made love for the first time, he had raised her face to his and stared into her eyes, and there had been a startling moment of utter intimacy, utter trust. Now, she wasn’t even sure he would let her drive off without setting the cops on her. She could only hope.

A glance at the mirror reassured her that at least the cop car was still unmanned, parked with its lights off by the curb. Then a clumsy gray SUV, complete with tacky roof box, pulled out behind her, blocking her view. Well, at least she was getting away for now, she thought, with the boy safely in the back seat. Then she felt a treacherous little hope that Morten had in fact seen her, but was letting her drive off on purpose. Had he perhaps even given her a discrete, acknowledging wave? Was he even now quietly rooting for her, hoping she would succeed in what she was doing? Trusting her this time, and willing to wait patiently until she returned to him and the flat, to Anton’s crappy little drawings stuck to the refrigerator door, to the bathroom shelves that Ida had begun to fill with styling gels and cheap, glittery lipsticks. And when all this was over, the flat and everything it contained would be enough for her. It would. It had to be.

Nina turned onto Jagtvej just as the lights turned amber. Morning traffic was not yet closely packed in the two-lane part of the road, but behind her, she heard beeping horns and a squeal of brakes. The gray SUV behind her had followed her into the intersection much too late and was stuck untidily crosswise, fender to fender with a similar monster that was now blocking all traffic in the direction of Nørrebro.

Nina couldn’t help feeling a certain unholy glee as she shifted easily into fourth gear and continued unhindered in her small and rather unremarkable vehicle. She hoped those two CO2-offenders had a fun time exchanging insults and phone numbers and moaning about the dents in their ridiculously large fenders. A sort of cosmic justice, she thought—the bigger you get, the more you bump into things.





THE DRIVER OF the Landrover was yelling at Jučas and jabbing an aggressive forefinger at him. Jučas didn’t understand a single word the idiot was saying, nor did he care. He held up both hands disarmingly, and only the acute awareness that there was a police car parked no more than two hundred meters away kept him from punching the guy’s lights out instead. It wasn’t even rage, just frustration. But God, it would have felt good to plant a fist in that self-righteous, arrogant face and feel the cartilage crunch.

He forced himself to smile.

“No damage,” he said, pointing to the Landrover’s intact front. “No damage to you. My car, not so good, but okay. Have nice day.” Milky white shards from the Mitsubishi’s headlights decorated the pavement, but nothing could be done about that now. What he needed was to get away, as quickly as possible, before the boy-bitch managed to disappear again. He ignored the continued protests of the Landrover-man, in English now, got back into the Mitsubishi, reversed, and managed to get free of the other vehicle.

“… driving like an idiot, what do you think the red lights are for, Christmas decorations?”

Jučas just waved, and drove off. Hadn’t she turned right at the next intersection?

“Did you see where she went?” he asked Barbara.

It was some time before she answered.

“No,” she said. Nothing else.

He threw a quick glance at her. She looked oddly distant, as if the whole thing was no longer any of her business. But perhaps the fender-bender had left her a little shocked.

“No harm done,” he said. “It’s just a broken headlight. I can fix it myself, if we can find a garage.”

She didn’t answer. Right now he had no time to coax and cajole and work out what was wrong with her. He signaled a right turn, but of course he had to wait interminably while about a hundred bicycles went past. What the hell was wrong with people in this city? Couldn’t they afford cars? It seemed as if half the population insisted on teetering along on two wheels, endangering the traffic.

Next intersection. He hesitated, causing a chorus of horns behind him. He could see no Fiat. Decided on a left turn, and ended up in a one-way hell full of “enclosed areas” and f*cking flower beds that apparently had to be placed in the middle of the street. Reversing aggressively, he tried to get back to the main street, but it was hopeless. Three or four one-way streets later, he had to realize that the battle was lost.

“F*cking hell!”

He hammered both hands against the steering wheel and braked abruptly. Sat there for a moment, fighting his temper.

“She had the boy with her,” said Barbara suddenly.

“Did she?” Jučas glanced at her sharply. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. He was in the back seat. I could see his hair.”

Right now, he would have preferred the money. But the kid was currency in his own way, and better than nothing.

“You said they were going to adopt him,” said Barbara.

“What? Yes. So they are.”

“Then what was he doing in that car? I thought his new parents were picking him up?”

“Yeah, so did I. But this Nina Borg person got in the way.”

“And why was it that you took his clothes off?” she asked. “For the picture?”

He inhaled a mouthful of air and blew it slowly back out. Easy now.

“To make it harder for them to trace him,” he said. “And stop this. You’re only making it worse, asking so many questions.”

He hated the way she was looking at him now. As if she didn’t trust him anymore.

“Hell,” he hissed. “I’m not one of those filthy perverts. And if you think that for a moment, then… .”

“No, ” she said, very quickly. “I don’t think that.”

“Good. ’Cause I’m not.”

HE DROVE AROUND for a bit, on the off chance. But the Fiat stayed gone. Finally he went back and parked near her house again.

“Stay in the car,” he told Barbara. “She’ll be back. Call me when the cops leave, or if you see her and the boy.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, looking at him once more, but this time in a different way. He smiled. It was okay. She still wanted him to look after her, and that was just what he planned on doing.

“I have a couple of things to do,” he said. “It won’t take long.”





IT WAS 7:07, and the public swimming pool in Helgasgade had been open for exactly seven minutes. Nina laid down the deposit for two towels at the ticket booth and continued up the wide brown stairs to the the women’s changing rooms on the first floor.

They were almost alone among the many empty lockers, and the three women there were silent and introverted, folding their clothes with their backs to one another, guarding their privacy in a very public space. One was young, Nina noticed, the two others middle aged in the determinedly well-trained way. None of them looked at Nina and the boy, who stood beside her on the damp, smooth tiles, hunched and slightly shivering in the early morning chill.

Nina took the boy to the bathroom, and he peed obediently, with his pelvis thrust forward and his hands folded behind his neck. Anton had done the same thing, remembered Nina, because he could then claim that there was no need for him to wash his hands afterwards. Perhaps that was a brand of logic universal to little boys. Nina smiled at the thought.

When they returned to the changing rooms, the three women had all gone out into the echoing cavern of the swimming pool area, and Nina proceeded to undress, her movements awkward and heavy. There was a stiffness in her muscles, joints and tendons, like the aftermath of the flu, and she took her time. There was no hurry. She parked the boy on one of the wooden benches fixed to the wall with solid-looking brackets, turned on the water, and let the hot spray hit her chest and stomach.

She hadn’t been eating enough lately. She could see it in the way her ribs protruded under the skin. She had always been skinny, too skinny, but since the birth of her children it seemed nothing stuck to her. Her face had become narrow and somewhat hollowcheeked, and she had lost whatever softness she had once possessed around her collarbones, shoulders, and hips. Forgetting to eat was not a smart move. But it happened whenever she worked too much, or when Morten went off to Esbjerg and the rigs. She simply lost her appetite, and fed the children mechanically without bothering to feed herself.

“We’ll get something to eat later,” she promised the boy. “A big English breakfast, how about that?”

He didn’t react to her voice except to sit and watch her, eyes huge and curious, legs dangling. Nina turned her back again and began to lather her body with the liquid soap from the automat on the wall. It had a sweet and perfumed smell that felt almost too extravagant for the gray shower room, and Nina was caught up in a moment’s pleasure, enjoying the heat and the scent of it. Her skin felt warm, soft, and alive, and the steam rose about her and obscured mirrors and glass partitions. She worked up a new helping of frothy lather and washed her hair rather roughly. She had had it cut quite short again not so long ago. Morten didn’t understand why, but he wasn’t the one who had to struggle with the heavy, frizzy burden of it. It had curled nearly to her shoulders before she had it cut, and the relief had been enormous. Not least in her job, where she no longer had to wonder what would be the politically correct way of wearing it today. Many of the male inhabitants of the Coal-House Camp saw the female staff as a combination of prison wardens and service functions. They felt superior and humiliated at the same time, one of the center’s psychologists had once explained. Possibly it was true. Whatever the cause, conflict always lurked just beneath the surface, and Nina had tried to appear as sexless and neutral as possible. When she had her hair cut so short, it was an oddly mutual relief. Some of her provocative femininity seemed to have disappeared along with the hair, and Nina didn’t miss it. Morten did, but she had long ago stopped regulating her appearance in accordance with his opinions.

Nina slid a wet hand down across her navel and the rigidly defined muscles of her abdomen. Despite her two pregnancies, there was nothing much that was ripe and womanly about her body now. Poor Morten.

The boy moved impatiently on the bench. Collecting her drifting thoughts, she turned off the shower and began instead to fill one of the white plastic kiddy bathtubs that were scattered about the shower room. The boy did not resist as she pulled off his new clothes and sat him down in the tub. Crouching next to him, she carefully began to wash his shoulders, chest, back, and feet. Deliberately, she did not touch him elsewhere, but just let him sit in the tub as she used the shower to rinse away the soap. The boy took all this with surprising calm. His fingers trustingly followed the little currents of hot water tricklinging down his chest and belly, and when a frothy bubble almost miraculously released itself from the edge of the tub and fell with a wet pop aganst the tiles of the floor, he sent Nina a gleeful smile of delight and surprise—the first she had ever seen on his face since their common journey had begun yesterday afternoon.

Nina felt a new warm sense of relief spreading in her abdomen. She couldn’t positively know, and she was no expert on responses to pedophilia and child abuse, but it seemed to her that the boy was free of such hideousness. If something like that had happened to him, surely he would have acted differently? More frightened, less trustful?

The relief was almost painful in its ferocity. The boy was still whole. Rescue, in its most complete sense, was still possible.

She turned off the water and dried him gently with one of the towels. Then, silently, they began to dress, and Nina combed his hair with her fingers.

Who was he?

She watched patiently as he insisted on pulling the T-shirt over his head himself. He might have been a child smuggled into Denmark for the purpose of some sort of prostitution or abuse, but would he then be stored like luggage in a central station locker? Nina didn’t know very much about that type of crime. She certainly saw her share of human degradation and brutality in her job, but the motives there were usually unsubtle, and the methods simple enough that even the most moronic of criminals could join in. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to batter the last few pennies out of an Iraqi father who had already paid almost everything he possessed to the traffickers who had arranged his journey to the border. Nor was it especially difficult to lure Eastern Euopean girls into the country and sell them by the hour in places like Skelbækgade. A few beatings, a gang rape or two, and a note bearing the address of her family in some Estonian village—that was usually enough to break even the most obstinate spirit. And the real beauty of it all for the cynical exploiters was that ordinary people didn’t care. Not really. No one had asked the refugees, the prostitutes, the fortune hunters, and the orphans to come knocking on Denmark’s door. No one had invited them, and no one knew how many there were. Crimes committed against them had nothing to do with ordinary people and the usual workings of law and order. It was only dimwit fools like Nina who were unable to achieve the proper sense of detachment.

She felt too much, and she knew it. Especially where the children were concerned, her skin felt tender and brittle, like the thin, pink, parchment-like new growth that spread to cover healing wounds. It had been bad after Ida’s birth, but when Anton arrived, her sensitivity to the children of the Coal-House Camp had taken on monstrous proportions. It was her imagination, of course, but sometimes it felt as if their gazes clung to her, spotting her vulnerablity, tearing through her pitiful defenses and into her soul.

Unaccompanied children would usually be older than the boy from the suitcase, thought Nina, from about ten years of age and up. Often, the staff would have time to form only the most fleeting of impressions. Some of them, particularly the Eastern European ones, had been sold by their parents and trained by backers to beg and steal, and they were instructed to escape the refugee centers at the first opportunity if they were picked up on the streets. The moment their mobiles rang, they were off on the next suburban train, disappearing back into the metropolitan underworld they had come from. Other children might continue on to Sweden or England, where relatives awaited. Still others were obviously alone in the world, brought to Denmark for the sole purpose of making money for their owners. All in all, more than seventy percent would disappear from the camps without anyone ever really knowing what became of them.

But the suitcase boy was surely too young to be of use to even the most cynical gang of thieves. Might he be some kind of hostage? Or was he meant to be part of a social security scam? That had happened before, particularly in the UK, she had heard.

He was beautiful, thought Nina suddenly. She didn’t know how much that meant among pedophiles, but somehow it made him seem more vulnerable. It was all too easy to imagine that some pervert bastard somewhere had ordered a small European boy for a night’s pleasure. Or several nights. She looked at the boy standing in front of her with his T-shirt back to front and the new sandals carefully strapped to his small, narrow feet, and the thought of him sharing a bed with some unknown adult man was sickening and utterly unbearable.

Nina forced herself to smile at him.

Where would he end up if she delivered him to the police? Some orphanage in Lithuania? Or perhaps with a relative who would merely sell him again to the highest bidder? Perhaps with a crewcut, bear-shouldered stepfather, whose huge hands had beaten Karin to death? Nina felt a shudder deep in her abdomen. She had to know more. She had to know.

She pushed open the changing-room door and took the boy’s hand in a firm grip. She must find them some breakfast, and then work out which church might be the one the girl from Helgolandsgade had meant when she talked about the Sacred Heart.





THE ADDRESS WAS in Denmark. Naturally. Sigita didn’t know why she had assumed that the Dane lived in Lithuania. She stared down at the carefully penned block capitals and wondered what to do.

Gužas had called half an hour before Julija did. He wanted to know whether she had changed her mind about the TV appeal, and whether there had been any attempt at contact from the abductors. She had told him no. And she had said nothing about Julija and the Dane.

I’ll have to go to Denmark, she thought. I have to find that man and ask him what I must do to get Mikas back.

But a sickening little thought kept worming its way into her mind. What if there was nothing he wanted her to do? What if he already had what he wanted, and didn’t give a damn about her?

He collects my children, she thought, with a chill of horror. Now he has two.

The other child had come into her dreams during the few hours when sleep had finally claimed her. It had come out of the darkness, large as an adult, but with the face of a fetus, blind and hairless, and a naked, sexless body. It held out its arms to her and opened a toothless, unfinished mouth.

“Mama… ,” it whispered. “Mammaaaaaaah… .” And she drew back from it in horror. But suddenly she saw that it was holding something in its arms. Mikas. The long bluish limbs glistened wetly with embryonic fluid, and Mikas struggled in its grasp like a fish in the tentacles of a sea anemone.

“Mikas!” she screamed, but the fetus child was already distant. It retreated further and further into the dark, taking Mikas with it.

She woke up with her nightgown twisted about her, sticking damply like an extra layer of skin.

Sigita called the airport. There was a flight leaving for Copenhagen at 1:20, and a single ticket would cost her 840 litu. Sigita tried to recall the state of her bank balance. There would be enough for the ticket, just, but what about the rest? It would be difficult to manage in a foreign country with little or no money. And everything cost more abroad, or so she had heard.

Might Algirdas give her an advance on her salary?

Perhaps. But not without asking questions. Sigita bit her lip. I have to go, she thought. With or without money. Unless I call Gužas now and leave it all to him. And if I do that, they may harm Zita. She thought about the small, shattered family, of Zita’s clawlike hands on the piano keys, and Julija’s terror and despair. She couldn’t do anything to make it worse. She mustn’t. And it might not be just Zita, either. It could be Mikas too. She couldn’t stop thinking about the torn-off nail Julija had received in an envelope. And that was nothing. Nothing compared to what people like that were really capable of.

1:20. It would be hours before she could leave for the airport.

She decided to visit her Aunt Jolita for the first time in eight years.

BANG, BANG, BANG, bang. The big yellow pile driver was pounding the foundations of the new building into the earth with resounding thumps, and a little further off, a huge crane was raising yet another prefabricated concrete element into its place. It appeared that someone had decided that there was room for a new apartment building on the green square of grass framed by the old gray and white Soviet-era blocks. Dust and diesel fumes permeated the air, and the pavement was being ground into the mud under the weight of caterpillar vehicles. Sigita felt a pang of pity for the original inhabitants. Pašilaičiai, where she lived, had barely existed ten years ago, and she often felt it was not so much a neighborhood as a constant building site. Only recently had such luxuries as streetlights and sidewalks been reestablished after the latest round of construction mayhem.

Once she was through the door, the appalling noise receded a little. She walked slowly up the stairs to the third floor and rang the bell.

A thin, gray-haired woman answered. It actually took a few moments before Sigita recognized her aunt. Jolita stared at her for several seconds, too.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“Ask away.”

“Can’t we do this inside?”

Jolita considered it for a moment. Then she stepped aside, letting Sigita into the narrow hallway.

“But be quiet,” she said. “I have a tenant who is a bartender. He works until four or five in the morning, and he gets furious if you wake him up before noon.”

The bartender lived in what used to be the sitting room, it turned out. Jolita preceded her into the small, elongated kitchen instead. At the tiny table, an elderly woman was seated, having coffee. A further two unused cups were set on the table in constant readiness, upturned on their saucers to protect them from dust and flies, just like Sigita’s mother always did. The aroma of percolating coffee rose from a brand-new coffee machine, still sitting next to the box it had come in. On the table, too, were a bottle of sherry and a platter full of marzipan-covered cupcakes.

“This is Mrs. Orlovienė,” said Jolita. “Greta, this is my niece, Sigita.”

Mrs. Orlovienė nodded, with a certain degree of reserve.

“Mrs. Orlovienė rents the back bedroom,” Jolita continued her introduction. “So you can’t just move back in, if that’s what you are thinking.”

“No,” said Sigita, somewhat taken aback. “That’s not why I’m here.” Whatever had happened to the Aunt Jolita she remembered? The coal-black hair, the colorful makeup, the jazz music and the professor’s cigarettes? About the only remnant of that Jolita were the golden pirate-style hoops that still dangled against her wrinkled neck. They now looked absurd rather than exotic. How on earth could a person age so much in eight years? It was frightening.

“Perhaps you’ve come to apologize, then?” suggested Jolita.

“What?”

“Oh well, I was just thinking. It wasn’t completely inconceivable that you should finally feel a little guilty about the way you have spat in the face of a family that only ever tried to love you and help you.”

Sigita was so stunned that at first she couldn’t even defend herself.

“You … you … I… .” she sputtered. “I never spat in anyone’s face!”

“Eight years without a single word—if that’s not spitting, what is?”

“But… .”

“At first I felt sorry for you. In trouble like that, at such a young age. I wanted to help you. But you did to me exactly what you did to your parents. Disappearing like that, without ever looking back, without so much as a thank-you.”

Sigita stood there with her mouth open. She suddenly noticed how bright-eyed the little Mrs. Orlovienė had become, watching the drama with parted lips as if it were a soap opera.

“Your Granny Julija died, did you know that?” said Jolita.

“Yes,” Sigita managed. “Mama … Mama sent a letter.” Two weeks after the funeral. That had hurt, badly, but she had no intention of letting her aunt know that.

“Coffee?” offered Mrs. Orlovienė, holding out one of the unused cups. “Is it broken?” She nodded at the plaster cast.

“Yes,” said Sigita automatically. “And no, thanks. Jolita, did someone come here asking about me?”

“Yes,” said Jolita without blinking. “There was a man here, some weeks ago. He wanted to know your last name, and where you lived.”

“And what did you do?”

“I told him,” said Jolita calmly. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“He was quite polite,” nodded Mrs. Orlovienė. “Not entirely what I would call a nice young man, but quite polite.”

“What did he look like?” asked Sigita, although she was fairly certain she already knew.

“Big,” said Mrs. Orlovienė. “Like one of those—what are they called now?” She raised both skinny arms to mime a bodybuilder pose. “And hardly any hair. But quite polite.”

At long last, Sigita’s thoughts began to line up in an orderly fashion instead of tumbling over each other in random chaos. She knew that Aunt Jolita would never have taken in tenants unless she had been forced to. There was obviously no longer any Professor on Mondays and Thursdays. Probably no job, either. And yet here were sherry and cakes and a brand new percolator.

“Did he give you money?” she asked Jolita.

“Is that any of your business?”

That meant yes. Sigita spun and seized the old coffee tin Jolita usually kept noodles in. Noodles, and certain other things.

“Sigita!” Jolita tried to prevent her, but Sigita had moved too quickly. She hugged the tin against her chest with the plaster cast and wrested the lid off with her right hand. When Jolita tried to tear the tin away from her, it clattered to the floor, sending little macaroni stars shooting off in all directions across the worn linoleum. Sigita instantly put her foot down on top of the brown envelope that had also been in the tin.

“What the hell were you thinking?” she screamed, suddenly beside herself with fury.

“Shhhh!” hissed Jolita. “You’ll wake him.”

“A complete stranger wants to give you money to tell him where I am. He looks like a gorilla. What the hell were you thinking? Don’t you realize that he has taken Mikas?”

“That’s hardly my fault!”

“You made it easy.” Sigita’s voice was shaking. “You sold me. Without even warning me. And then they took Mikas!”

Mrs. Orlovienė sat with her mouth open, on the point of dropping her coffee cup. At that moment, the door flew back on its hinges. In the doorway stood a young man, dressed only in black boxers and a foul temper. His hair had been dyed blue and stuck out in odd directions, still coated with several layers of gummy styling gel.

“Stop that f*cking racket,” he snarled. The two older women were instantly silenced. Mrs. Orlovienė slid a little lower in her chair, as if being smaller would help. Jolita stood her ground, but her hands had begun the nervous rubbing movement Sigita knew so well. The young man transferred his furious glare to Sigita.

“Who the f*ck are you?” he asked.

“This is my niece,” said Jolita. “She came for a visit. But she’s leaving now.”

“I f*cking hope so,” said the bartender. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

He withdrew, slamming the door as he went. A few seconds later, the living room door was slammed with even greater force. The walls trembled slightly.

Sigita bent to retrieve the envelope. It contained eight five-hundred-litu bills and a few lesser bills Sigita couldn’t be bothered to count.

“Four thousand litu,” she said. “Was that the price?”

“No,” said Mrs. Orlovienė. “At first he only wanted to pay three thousand, but in the end he agreed to five.”

Jolita made a violent shushing gesture in Mrs. Orlovienė’s direction.

“I don’t quite see the reason for all this high-minded outrage,” she told Sigita. “If some idiot is willing to pay five thousand litu for something you can look up in the phone book, why should I turn down good money?”

“He didn’t know my last name till you told him” said Sigita, fishing three thousand litu from the envelope.

“What are you doing?”

“This is your contribution,” answered Sigita. “I need it in order to get Mikas back.” She let the envelope with the rest of the money fall to the floor. Mrs. Orlovienė was the one who snatched it up, ferret quick. Jolita remained where she was, staring at Sigita. Then she shook her head.

“You feel so put-upon, don’t you?” she said. “Poor little Sigita who has had such a hard life. But did you ever pause to think what it’s been like for your mother? You taking off like that, not even leaving a note? She lost a daughter. Did you ever think about that?”

The accusation hit Sigita like a hardball to the stomach.

“She knew where I was,” said Sigita. “The entire time. They were the ones who turned their backs on me, not the other way around.”

“Did you ever ask?”

“What do you mean?”

“You sit there in your fancy apartment, waiting for them to come to you, isn’t that right? But you were the one who ran away. Perhaps you should be the one to make the first move if you want to come home again.”

Not now, thought Sigita. I can’t deal with this now. She glanced at her watch. Her plane would be leaving in two hours.

“Goodbye,” she said. And stood there, waiting, even though she wasn’t sure what she was waiting for.

Jolita sighed.

“Take the damn money,” she said. “I hope you get your little boy back.”





JESU HJERTE KIRKE, it was called in Danish. The Church of the Sacred Heart lay in Stenogade, squeezed in between a fashion shop and a private school.

Nina had asked an elderly lady in the Istedgade cornershop where she had bought fresh rolls for herself and the boy. They had struggled a bit over the translation; Nina had guessed herself that it might be Catholic, and the old lady’s local knowledge did the rest.

Afterwards, Nina had called Magnus from a small, seedy bar on Halmtorvet. The bartender at The Grotto had let her use both phone and bathroom at no charge, but her conversation with her boss had been brief and unsatisfying.

“Fan i helvete, where are you? The duty roster is shot to hell, and Morten has been ringing us since seven o’clock. The police want to speak to you. Is this anything to do with Natasha?”

Magnus’s tone had become very Swedish, and the words came pouring over her so quickly that she had no time to answer before he interrupted both himself and her.

“No. Don’t. I don’t even want to know. Only … are you okay? Morten wants to know if you’re okay.”

Nina took a deep breath.

“Yeah. I’m fine,” she told him. “Although I won’t be in today. Will you please tell Morten there is no need to worry.”

It was a while before Magnus answered. She could hear him exhale and inhale, big, deep barrel-chested breaths.

“Well, as long as you’re not dead, I was to tell you.…” Magnus hesitated again, and softened his voice so much that Nina could barely hear him.

“I was to tell you that this is the last time. If you come back alive, this is the last time.”

Nina felt a sharp little snap in her chest and held the receiver at some distance, battling to control her voice.

“Alive,” she laughed, too thinly. “How dramatic. There’s really no need for such melodrama. Why shouldn’t I be alive? I’m perfectly fine. It’s just that there is something I need to do.”

Magnus gave a brief grunt, and when his voice came back on the line, for the first time he had begun to sound angry.

“Well, fine. If you don’t want anybody’s help, Nina, you won’t get it. But Morten sounded shit scared, I tell you. He says the police have found your mobile phone.”

Nina felt a clammy chill along her backbone as he said it. She slammed the receiver down so abruptly that The Grotto’s barman raised his eyebrows and grinned knowingly at the two regular patrons ensconced at the far end of the bar. Nina didn’t care. Impatiently, she collected the boy, pulling him away from the old table soccer game he had become engrossed in. He yipped in protest as she half carried, half dragged him back to the car, but at that moment, she was too stressed to care. She started the car, turned the corner at Halmorvet and continued down Stenosgade while she followed the second hand on the dashboard clock: 13, 14, 15… .

Annoyingly, she caught herself moving her lips. She was counting the seconds under her breath. Sweet Jesus. How crazy was that?

Crazy. Insane. Mentally challenged. (Perhaps even so crazy that you did it on purpose?)

She managed to insert the Fiat into the row of cars parked by the curb in front of the church, in a slot too small for most cars. The boy in the back seat was staring out the window, steadfastly refusing to look at her. The sense of trust and familiarity from their morning bath had vanished, and it was clear that he had not forgiven her for the rough and hasty way she had bundled him into the car.

Sunlight made the digits on the dashboard clock blur in front of her. She leaned back, fumbling for the water bottle and a breakfast roll. She wasn’t hungry, but she recognized this particular kind of lethargy from long hot days without appetite in the camps of Dadaab. If she didn’t eat something now, she would soon be unable to form coherent thought.

She took tiny bites, chewing carefully and washing down the bland starchy meal with gulps of lukewarm water from the bottle. The she opened the car door and stepped onto the sizzling sidewalk.

Jesu Hjerte Kirke, Sacred Heart, Sacre Coeur. The English and French translations were posted helpfully below the Danish name of the church in slightly smaller letters. A very Catholic name, she thought to herself, full of dramatic beauty and signifying very little. The Lithuanian girl must be a Catholic, or she wouldn’t have known about this church.

Mass was announced at 17:00 hours, she noted, but right now the doors were closed, and the huge cast-iron gate to the grounds proved unremittingly locked.

Nina got back in the car again, looking at the church with a vague feeling of unease. It looked like many other city churches in Copenhagen. Red-brick solidity and a couple of striving towers, squeezed in among tenement buildings. It looked cramped compared to the Cathedral grounds in Viborg (where they had buried him) and the small whitewashed village churches of the country parishes around it.

(Goest thou thither, and dig my grave.)

She blinked a couple of times, then scanned the street for any sign of the girl. Would she actually show? If she did, Nina was going to try to buy a few hours of her time. She turned her head, but the boy was still refusing to meet her eyes. Sunlight ricocheted off a window somewhere, forcing him to squint.

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

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

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

It was 12:06.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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