The Boy in the Suitcase - By Lene Kaaberbol Page 0,13

feet.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “Sorry.”

Nina smiled mechanically. Then she took the suitcase in the firmest grip she could manage and began to walk, trying to look halfway natural. Sweet Jesus, it was heavy. What on earth was in it?

IT WAS ONLY when she reached the car-park that she opened it. And found the boy.

He was unconscious. His skin was cool, but not alarmingly cold. Some automated professional part of her noted that his pulse was slow, but again not dangerously so, his respiration deep and also slow, his pupils slightly contracted. There was little doubt that he had been drugged, she thought. He wasn’t about to die on her, but he needed treatment—fluids, and perhaps an antidote, if they could work out what had been used on him. She seized her mobile and pressed the first two emergency digits, then paused before the final one.

Her eyes fell on the suitcase. So ordinary. Normal. The tear in the leather had made it easier for the boy to breathe, but there was no way to tell whether it had been made intentionally to ensure him a certain supply of oxygen. People who put little children in suitcases do not, Nina thought, care terribly about their wellfare.

Steps somewhere, and the slamming of car doors, then the growl of an engine starting up. The sounds echoed back from the concrete walls, and she ducked instinctively behind the dumpster so as not to be seen. Why? Why didn’t she get up instead and call for help? But she didn’t. She caught a glimpse of silver metal and shiny hubcaps, then the car was gone.

She had to get the child to her own car, but how? She could not bear to close the suitcase and carry him like that, as if he were baggage. She ran to the Fiat instead, and got a checkered picnic blanket from the trunk, tucked it around him, and carried him against her shoulder. Mother and child, she thought. If anyone sees me, I’m just a mommy who has just picked up her exhausted toddler from kindergarten.

He seemed feather light, much less of a weight than he had been in the suitcase. She could feel his breath against the side of her neck, a small warm puffing. Dear sweet Jesus. Who would do this to a child?

She lowered him onto the back seat and checked his pulse once more. A little faster already, as if he were reacting to his surroundings. She grabbed the plastic water bottle from between the front seats and moistened his lips with a wet finger. His tongue moved. He was not deeply unconscious.

Hospital, police. Police, hospital. But if it was just a question of calling 911, why hadn’t Karin done it herself? Bloody hell, Karin, Nina cursed silently. Are you mixed up in this? “I can’t do anything, but you can,” Karin had said. But just what the hell was it she was supposed to be doing?

MONDAY MORNING, SIGITA was finally released. She had called Darius at least a dozen times, but all she got was the stupid answering machine.

She still didn’t understand what had happened. She really didn’t drink, certainly not to the point of falling down stairs in a state of blind oblivion. And why had she let Darius take Mikas away? That had happened before the stairs, so Mrs. Mažekienė had said. Sigita felt a tiny persistent sting of fear. What if Darius would not give Mikas back to her? And how was it that she had ended up at the foot of the stairs with a broken arm and a concussion? Darius had never hit her, not once, not even during the bitterest of their fights. She couldn’t believe he had done so now. But perhaps some accident … ? If there was one person on God’s green earth who could inspire her to get drunk, it was surely Darius.

She considered taking a taxi back home to Pašilaičiai, but the habits acquired through years of enforced parsimony were not easily shaken. After all, the trolley bus stopped practically at her doorstep. For the first few stops, inside Vilnius proper, the bus was crowded to sardine-tin capacity; her plaster cast got her the offer of a seat, which she gratefully accepted, but even so, the pressure of other human bodies made nausea rise in her gullet until she was afraid she would not be able to contain it. One more stop, she told herself. If it doesn’t get better after that, I’ll get