The Boy in the Suitcase (29 page)

And so Jučas had played the nanny from the moment the man got off the plane with his ridiculous little trolley that turned out to contain an unreasonable number of U.S. dollars. They had gone directly to some kind of private clinic, where the Dane tried to buy information about some Lithuanian girl or other who had apparently given birth to a baby. When Jučas had seen the sum he had offered the head of the clinic, he had begun to feel jumpy. It was as if the Dane had no idea what it was he was waving in the woman’s face. A tenth would have sufficed; would, actually, have been too much. People had been murdered for less.

He called Klimka to ask for backup. Klimka refused—the Dane had specified one bodyguard. Jučas would just have to handle it for now, but if things looked tricky, he could call, of course.

Yeah right, though Jučas. If the shit really hit the fan, he needed his backup with him, not a couple of phone calls away. He walked around with his senses tuned to max all day, paying precious little attention to whatever the Dane was saying and doing, because he was too busy scanning the surroundings. When the nurse more or less slammed the door in their faces and they had to return to the hotel, Jučas heaved a sigh of relief.

Premature, as it turned out. In a bout of depression, the man downed most of the contents of the minibar, then went for the hotel bar, already so inebriated that the bartender refused to serve him. After which performance the idiot staggered out the door, without the dollar trolley, thank God, but still with enough of a wad in his wallet to get into every kind of trouble. There was nothing Jučas could do except curse and follow.

That proved only the beginning of a very long night. But as the booze went in, the story came out, little by little, mixed with the drinks. And Jučas listened, at first indifferently, but then with growing interest. Fledgling plans formed in his mind. And the next morning, when he poured a sizeable but unbruised hangover onto the small private Danish plane, it was with almost tender feelings that he buckled the guy’s seatbelt for him and made sure a good supply of puke bags were in reach.

It had taken a little while to make the nurse tell him what she knew, but he had, after all, had some experience in making people do things they didn’t really want to do. And when he discovered that Sigita Ramoškienė actually had a second child, everything had fallen brilliantly into place.

He had sent his first package to the Dane, and made him an offer. The price was easy to remember, and non-negotiable: one million U.S. dollars.

HE STILL DIDN’T
understand why things had come apart the way they had. But one thing, at least, was very clear. The Dane was not going to put one over on him now.

“I’ll take him,” he said to Barbara, reaching for the boy.

She hugged the child even closer.

“Can’t we take him with us?” she said. “He is so small. He could easily become ours.”

“Are you insane?”

“He’ll forget all the old stuff quickly. In a year, he will think he has always been with us.”

“Barbara. Let him go.”

“No,” she said. “Andrius. It’s enough now. We can take him and leave for Poland right now. You don’t have to hit anyone anymore. No more violence.”

He shook his head. The woman had gone completely insane. He should never have brought her here. But he thought she might get them into the flat without any fuss, and so she had. Now he wished he had just kicked in the door.

“The money,” he said.

“We don’t need it,” she said. “We can live with my mother, at least to begin with. And then you’ll find a job, and we can get a place of our own.”

He had to breathe very calmly and carefully to keep the rage at bay.

“You may want to live like a sewer rat for the rest of your life,” he said. “But I don’t.”

Resolutely, he seized the boy’s arm and tore him from Barbara’s grasp. Luckily, the kid didn’t scream. He simply went limp, as though he had suddenly lost consciousness. Barbara was the one doing the whining.

“For God’s sake shut up,” he said. “Not all the neighbors are deaf.”

“Andrius,” she begged. She looked as if she were dissolving. Tears and mucus made her look swollen, damp and unattractive. Yet some of the old tenderness returned.

“Hush,” he said. “Stop crying, can’t you? Go back to the hotel, and I will pick you up later. Once we get the money, Dimitri has a new car ready for us. And then we leave for Krakow.”

She nodded, but he couldn’t tell whether she believed him or not.

WHEN HE GOT
back to the car, he saw that the boy-bitch had moved. The blanket had slipped, so that one could see a little of her face and shoulder. Damn it. But it was best just to get out of here, now. He could always stop later and cover her up again. He put the boy into the kid’s car seat still fitted between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat. Just as well he hadn’t removed it yet. He fumbled with the straps and buckles—this had been Barbara’s department until now—but luckily the child made no move to resist him. He turned his head away and wouldn’t look at Jučas, but apart from that he was a life-sized doll, limp arms, limp legs, no more screaming defiance.

Barbara came out just as he was finishing, but he merely slid into his own seat and drove off, steadfastly ignoring her. He couldn’t bring her.

He knew that he would probably have to kill someone. The boybitch at the very least, but perhaps also the Dane. And he didn’t want Barbara to see.

J
UČAS DROVE PAST
the house twice just to get his bearings. There was a wall, but the wrought-iron gates were wide open, so there was really nothing to prevent him from driving straight up to the front door. Was it really that simple? It was hard to believe. In Lithuania, rich people had to guard their money better.

The third time, he turned into the gate and continued up the driveway. He let the car coast to minimize the noise of the engine and didn’t stop in front of the main entrance. Instead, he followed the driveway around the house and into a huge garage at the basement level. Here, too, the doors were wide open. There was space enough for five or six cars, but right now the only occupants were a dark blue Audi stationwagon and a low sportscar silhouette shrouded by dust sheets. He parked next to the stationwagon and turned off his engine.

The kid had stayed quiet during the ride, never looking at Jučas. Every once in a while he cried softly, with barely a sound. No screaming and sobbing, just this timid, hopeless crying, which was worse, in its way. Jučas felt like assuring the boy that he meant him no harm, but he knew it couldn’t be helped. He knew that from now on the monster in that little tyke’s nightmares would be him. And what about Barbara? The look she had given him back in the flat … as though she, too, were becoming scared of him. Hell. I’m not the kind of bastard who would hit a woman or a child, he told himself.

Completely unwelcome, the memory of the other one came back to him. The blonde. Crouched on the bed, with wide unfocused eyes that no longer understood he was in the room. The uncertain, labored voice, calling. “Ni-na. Ni-na.”

He sat motionless for a moment, still with his hands on the wheel. What’s the bloody use, he thought. What’s the use of running from Klimka and his world, where fear is a bludgeon you use to batter people into compliance. What’s the use of dreaming about Krakow and a house with a lawn and Barbara sunbathing on a quilt, when all this shit stays with you.

He got out of the car. Reached for the rage because it was the only thing that might get him through the next bit. He opened the rear door and looked down at the boy-bitch, still huddled in a boneless pile without any spark of consciousness. It was all her fault, he told himself. Her and the filthy swine who was trying to do him out of his money. It was them. They did it, and he was not going to let them get away with it. You don’t fuck with me.

And the rage came. Like a wave of heat, it washed through his body, made hands and feet prickle and shake a little, but in a good way. It was best done now, while she was still just an object. He took the plastic shopping bag and emptied out all the stuff that Barbara had brought—bananas, lukewarm cola, some kind of soap she had liked because it smelled of roses and lily of the valley. Even though he didn’t really feel like touching her, he climbed into the back of the car to the bitch. He grabbed her shoulders and rolled her limp body into his lap. She weighed nothing at all, he thought. No more than a child. He pulled the bag over her head and then realized he had nothing to tie it with. Instead, he tied the handles themselves into a knot under her chin, which would have to do. When he saw the plastic cling closer to her face with each breath she took, he knew it was enough. By the time he came back, it would be over.

He pushed her away with disgust and wiped his hands on his trousers, as if touching her had somehow contaminated him. The bitch got what she deserved, he told himself carefully, clinging to the strength the rage gave him. And as he went to pull down the garage doors, it wasn’t her face that swam before his eyes. In the sudden darkness, other images forced themselves on him, the Pig, the Pig from the orphanage who pushed little boys up against rough, damp basement walls, down in the dim semi-darkness that smelled of pee and petrol and unwashed old man.

Filthy bastard swine, he thought, they were all filthy swine, and he was going to show them that nobody did such things to him. Hell, no. Not to him. He found a light switch and turned on the fluorescent overheads until he had found what he was looking for—the automated gate system that such a filthy rich bastard had to have. He yanked the wiring right out of the box with hardly any effort, leaving the bared copper threads bristling and exposed. So far, so good.

There was a door that had to lead into the house, but it was locked. He considered kicking it down, but decided that it was much simpler to ring the bell and wait for someone to let him in. He glanced back at the car. The boy sat there, still strapped to his little seat, staring at him through the windshield. Jučas slammed his palm against the light switch so that both boy and car disappeared in the garage darkness.

S
IGITA WAS SHAKING
all over.

“You can’t!” she screamed, and for a few moments didn’t register that she was screaming in Lithuanian. She searched desperately for the English words this woman would understand.

“You can’t take a kidney from a three-year-old child! He is too small!”

Anne Marquart looked at her in astonishment.

“But Mrs. Ramoškienė. Of course not. We … we’re not going to.”

“Why did you take him, then? Why did people come to Vilnius and steal him from me, and take him to Denmark?” She didn’t know for certain, but it had to be that way. Didn’t it?

“I don’t know where your little boy is, or why he is gone. But I assure you, we could never ever harm… .” She broke off in the middle of the sentence and stared blankly out at the ocean for a while. Then she said, in a completely different tone of voice: “Would you excuse me? I have to call my husband.”

These people are rich enough to buy anything, thought Sigita. They bought my first child. And now they have paid someone to steal the second.

“He’s only three,” she said helplessly.

Di-di-da-da-di-di-diiih
… . The unsuitably gay little tune from a different doorbell made them both freeze. There was the sound of child-light running feet from the hallway, and Aleksander’s voice called out something in Danish.

“He always wants to get the door,” said Anne Marquart absently. “With him in the house, there’s no need for a butler.”

Then, too quickly for natural speed, the door to the living room slammed back against the wall, and a man stood there, in the middle of the floor. He took up all the space, thought Sigita, and left no room for anybody else. It wasn’t just that he was big. It was his rage that made everything around him shrink. He held on to Aleksander with one hand. In the other was a gun.

“Get down on the floor,” he said. “Now!”

Sigita knew at once who he was, even though she had never seen him before. It was the man who had taken Mikas.

ALEKSANDER STRUGGLED AND
tried to twist free of the man’s grip. The man grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked the boy’s head back, so the child emitted a thin sound of pain and fright and outrage.

“Don’t hurt him,” begged Anne Marquart. “Please.” She said something in rapid Danish to the boy, and he stopped struggling. Then she lay down on the floor, obediently.

Sigita didn’t. She couldn’t. She stood there, stiff as a pillar, with the noise of her own blood crackling in her ears like a bad phone connection.

“Where is he?” she asked.

The man didn’t like that she wouldn’t do as she was told. He took a step forward, then raised the barrel of the gun against Aleksander’s cheek.

“Who?” he said.

“You know damn well. My Mikas!”

“Don’t you care about this one?” he said. “Is the little one the only one that matters?”

No. No, it was no longer only about Mikas. It had never been only about Mikas, she knew that now.