The Boy in the Suitcase - By Lene Kaaberbol Page 0,102

he could take with him, seeing that Barbara was so keen on it, but the older boy had to go. He had eyes in his head, he would be able to remember and tell others what he had seen. Jučas didn’t want to wake up one morning in Krakow to find the police pounding on his door.

Four or five quick strides brought him to the door. The hallway was empty, the front door still closed and locked. Where had they gone? He opened another door and found a huge kitchen with shiny white cupboards and black marble work tops. But no woman and child. He withdrew to the hall again and wondered whether they had fled down the stairs to the garage. A good thing he had sabotaged the gate; they wouldn’t be able to get out in a hurry.

Then he heard a soft bump overhead. Excellent. Now he knew where to look. He headed up the stairs to the second floor.

The first room was a bedroom, probably the parents’. He switched on the light and looked under the bed. Checked the bathroom. Nothing. He continued along the landing to a sort of feminine office, with a blonde-wood desk and a small chintzy sofa by the window. Also empty.

In quick succession, he opened two more doors. A bathroom and a boy’s bedroom. He had to spend precious time opening wardrobes and knocking over a playhouse shaped like a medieval castle, but still no sign of the woman or the boy. Then he attempted to open the second to last door along the landing.

It was locked.

He raised the Glock and aimed at the lock. The shot rang in his ears but did less damage to the door than he had expected. Despite his temporary deafness he heard a muted cry, but it sounded as if it came from above. Possibly he was shooting at the door to the attic stairs? He fired one more round, and this time the door began to give way when he put his shoulder against the woodwork. One more shot ought to do it.

At that moment, something hit him from behind. Something heavy, sharp-edged and hard. It drew a line of fire across the back of his neck and made him stagger briefly. He was turning as the second blow came, but he was off-balance, and he didn’t even have time to raise his hands. The one shot he did get off went wild, smashing into the banister. Then the bloody toolbox hit him directly in the face.

He was lying on his back staring up at the little one’s mother. Her eyes looked completely wild, and a strip of duct tape still dangled from her plaster cast. She could only hold the toolbox with one hand, but she swung it as though it were a handbag.

This time it smashed into his right arm, and he lost all feeling in his fingers and couldn’t even feel the gun anymore. The crazy bitch dropped the toolbox and went for the Glock.

She’ll bloody kill me, he thought. If she gets hold of it, she’ll kill me.

He grabbed a handful of light brown hair with his left hand and pulled her all the way down to the floor. She wasn’t screaming, but she fought like a woman possessed. She kneed him in the chest, and he still couldn’t use his right hand. Then he felt something punch him in the leg, but it wasn’t till the bang registered that he realized that she had shot him. He had no idea how bad it was. He only knew that if he didn’t finish her right now, anything could happen. He rolled over so that his full weight held her pinned to the floor, and with his left hand—unfortunately more clumsy than his right—reached for her head in order to pull it sharply back and to one side, a swift jerk so that the neck would snap.

He didn’t understand why it didn’t work. He only felt another punch, this time on the side of the neck. From the wet heat he understood that he was bleeding. And from the manic racing of his heart, he understood that it was a lot. Strange. It felt almost like the throbbing pump he loved to feel in his body when he was training.

But the throbbing grew fainter. More distant. As though he was moving away from himself. Suddenly he saw the dream family quite clearly. The mother, the father, the two children. They were sitting