at her directly for the first time. His eyes were the color of corroded steel. For God’s sake, thought Nina, the man might have stepped right off the pages of a Harlequin romance, fit and tanned in an affluent kind of way that spoke of tennis courts and long sailing trips in the boat she knew he kept in Vedbæk harbor. A note of casual ease was introduced by the dark blue denim jeans, trendily scuffed at the knees to just the right degree. A handsome, humane suburban GP who did everything right and proper, even running great personal risks by doing his bit for the network. His place in the practice was on the line, she thought. This was so obviously a good man.
And yet she felt a guttering animosity. In a minute, this nice, humane man would tell her that he couldn’t help her anymore. That there was nothing further he could do for the boy.
Allan sighed again, a mere exhalation of breath.
“My professional advice is that you take this boy to Hvidovre Hospital. And if anything goes wrong… .”
Nina knew what he was about to say, but now it didn’t matter, because she also knew she had won the essential victory: he wouldn’t call the police.
“If anything goes wrong, and questions are asked of me and this practice, then that is the advice I have given you. And I want to hear you accept it.”
She nodded quickly.
“I’ll take him to Hvidovre Hospital,” she obediently replied, with a quick glance at her watch.
3:09.
She had been there for more than thirty minutes.
Allan looked at her again with the skeptical expression that reminded her so much of her long, exhausted fights with Morten. Morten, who seemed to think that she could no longer be trusted to handle anything alone. Least of all the children. He didn’t say it outright, but she could hear it in the way he spoke when he gave her detailed instructions on how to make Ida’s lunch box, or how to dress Anton for school. He spoke slowly and clearly, enunciating each syllable, all the while trying to fix her eyes on him as though she were hard of hearing, or mentally defective, or both. More than anything, she could see it in his eyes when he packed his bags for his monthly shifts on the company’s North Sea oil rigs. Leaving her alone with the children had begun to scare him.
He no longer believed her. He no longer believed in anything she said.
Nor did Allan, it would seem. But at least he was not about to stop her. The suitcase boy was not his responsibility, and never would be. Only for that reason was he letting her go.
“Keep the IV going until the unit is empty,” said Allan. “After that, I want you gone. Don’t let anyone see you leave. And Nina… .”
He caught her eyes again, and she could see that his impatient irritation had returned.
“I’m through with this,” he said. “Don’t come back.”
AND IT is your claim that your husband has abducted Mikas?”
“Evaldas Gužas from the Department of Missing Persons looked at Sigita with visible skepticism.
“We are separated,” she said.
“But he is the father of the child?”
She could feel herself blushing. “Of course.”
The office was stifling in the summer heat, and a house fly buzzed desperately in the window overlooking the street, caught between the net curtain and the glass. Gužas’s desk looked to be a scarred veteran of the Soviet era, several years older than Gužas himself was. Sigita would have preferred an older policeman, not this young, black-haired, sharp-featured man of thirty at the most. He had doffed his blue-gray jacket and loosened his burgundy tie, so that he looked for all the world like a café patron on holiday. It didn’t give a serious impression, she thought. She wanted experience, steadfastness, and efficiency, and she wasn’t sure she was getting it.
“And this alleged abduction … you say it happened Saturday?”
“Saturday afternoon. Yes.”
“And you waited two days to come to us because … ?”
He left his unfinished sentence hanging in the humid air.
She nearly lowered her eyes, but resisted the impulse. He would only see it as uncertainty and become even more skeptical than he already was.
“I was in hospital until this morning.”
“I see. Can you relate to me the circumstances of the alleged abduction?” he asked.
“My neighbor saw my husband and a strange young woman take Mikas to a car and drive off with him.”
“Did the child resist?”
“Not … not