The Boy in the Suitcase - By Lene Kaaberbol Page 0,1

pier that day.

He drew hungrily at his cigarette, looking out across the bay. The water was a sullen dark blue, streaked with foam, and the wind tore at his hair and made his eyes water. He had even persuaded the owner to sell. The papers were there, ready for his signature. But she had said no.

He didn’t get it. It was her family, damn it. Weren’t women supposed to care about such things? The nearness, the roots, the closeknit relations? All that stuff. And with a family like Anne’s, so . . . right. Healthy. Loving. Strong. Keld and Inger, still obviously in love after nearly forty years. Anne’s brothers, who came to the house regularly, sometimes with their own wives and children, other times alone, just dropping in because they both still played tennis at the old club. To become part of that, in such an easy, everyday manner, just next door, on the other side of the hedge . . . how could she turn that down? But she did. Quietly, stubbornly, in true Annefashion, without arguments or reasons why. Just no.

So now here they were. This was where they lived, he and she and Aleksander, on the edge of a cliff. The wind howled around the white walls whenever the direction was northwesterly, and they were alone. Much too far away to just drop in, not part of things, with no share in that easy, warm family communion except by special arrangement now and then, four or five times a year.

He took a last drag and tossed the cigarette away, stepping on the butt to make sure the dry grass didn’t catch fire. He stood for a few minutes, letting the wind whip away the smell from his clothes and hair. Anne didn’t know that he had started smoking again.

He took the photo from his wallet. He kept it there because he knew Anne was much too well raised to go snooping through his pockets. He probably should have gotten rid of it, but he just needed to look at it sometimes, needed to feel the mixture of hope and terror it inspired.

The boy was looking straight into the camera. His bare shoulders were drawn forward, as if he hunched himself against some unseen danger. There were no real clues to where the photo had been taken; the details were lost in the darkness behind him. At the corner of his mouth, one could see traces of something he had just eaten. It might be chocolate.

Jan touched the picture with one forefinger, very gently. Then he carefully put the photo away again. They had sent him a mobile phone, an old Nokia, which he would never himself have bought. Probably stolen, he thought. He dialed the number, and waited for the reply.

“Mr. Marquart.” The voice was polite, but accented. “Hello. Have you decided?”

In spite of having made his decision, he hesitated. Finally the voice had to prod him on.

“Mr. Marquart?”

He cleared his throat.

“Yes. I accept.”

“Good. Here are your instructions.”

He listened to the brief, precise sentences, wrote down numbers and figures. He was polite, like the man on the phone. It was only after the conversation had ended that he could no longer contain his disgust and defiance. Furiously, he flung the phone away; it arced over the fence to bounce and disappear on the heathered slope beneath him.

He got back into his car and drove the rest of the way up to the house.

LESS THAN AN hour later, he was crawling about on the slope, looking for the damn thing. Anne came out onto the terrace in front of the house and leaned over the railing.

“What are you doing?” she shouted.

“I dropped something,” he called back.

“Do you want me to come down and help?”

“No.”

She stayed out there for a while. The wind tore at her peachcolored linen dress, and the updraft blew her fair shoulder-length hair up around her face, so that it looked as if she were falling. In free fall without a parachute, he thought, only to check that chain of thought before it could continue. It would be all right. Anne would never need to know.

It took him nearly an hour and a half to find the stupid phone. And then he had to call the airline. This was one trip he had no wish to let his secretary book for him.

“Where are you going?” asked Anne.

“Just a quick trip to Zürich.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said hastily. Fear had flooded into her eyes instantly,