won’t tell the police, I promise. I just want my Mikas back.”
Julija Baronienė still said nothing. The door to the sitting room opened.
“Hello,” said the man entering. “Aleksas Baronas. Marius tells me you are with the school board?” He held out his hand politely. He was somewhat older than Julija, a kind, balding man in a grayishbrown suit that hung a little loosely on his frame. It took a moment before he realized something was wrong.
“What is it?” he asked abruptly, when he noticed how fiercely Zita clung to her mother.
Julija apparently had no idea how to answer him. It was Sigita who had to explain.
“My little son has been abducted by the same people who took Zita,” she said. “I just want to know what I should do to get him back.”
He recovered more quickly than his wife.
“Such stupid nonsense,” he said. “Can’t you see you’re scaring the child? Zita has never been abducted, and she won’t be, ever. Isn’t that right, sweetheart? Give Papa a kiss. Julija, I’m sorry to rush you, but we need to have dinner now, or we’ll be late for Marius’s concert.”
Zita was persuaded to release her leechlike grip on Julija. Her father caught her up and held her on his left arm, and she threw her arms around his neck.
“I don’t wish to be rude,” he said. “But my son is playing in a concert tonight, and it’s quite important to us.”
Sigita shook her head in disbelief.
“How can you … how can you pretend like this? How can you refuse to help me? When you know what it’s like?” She pressed her hand against her lower face as if that might hold back the sobs, but it was no good.
The man’s friendly manner was showing cracks.
“I must ask you to leave,” he said. “Now.”
Sigita shook her head once more. Tears were streaming down her face, and there was nothing she could do to hinder them. Her throat felt thick and tender. She tore a ballpoint pen from her handbag and seized a random sheet of music from the piano. Ignoring Baronas’s involuntary squawk of protest, she wrote her name, address, and phone number in large jagged letters across the page.
“Here,” she said. “I beg you. You have to help me.”
Now it was Julija Baronienė’s turn to cry. With a half-choked sob she turned and fled the room. Zita wriggled free of her father’s embrace to follow, but he stopped her.
“Not now, sweetheart. Mama is busy.”
Zita looked up at her father. Then she suddenly turned and walked with swift steps to the piano seat. She sat, back completely straight, eyes closed. Then she began to play the scales, slowly, methodically, with metronomical precision. Up and down. Da-dada-da-da-da-da-dah, di-da-di-da-di-da-di-dah. Da-da-da-da-da-dada-dah… .
A look of pain flashed across Baronas’s face. Then he, too, went to the piano, and gently stopped the jabbing fingers by grasping the girl’s wrist. He looked at Sigita.
“Otherwise she goes on for hours,” he said, looking completely lost. They had smashed up his family, thought Sigita, smashed it and broken it, and he had no idea how to put it back together.
She looked down at Zita’s hands, still resting on the worn ebony, as if she would go on playing the instant he released her. Sigita shuddered, and in her mind, the unbearable picture show came back, Mikas in a basement, Mikas alone in the dark, Mikas surrounded by threatening figures who wanted to harm him.
“Please,” said Zita’s father. “Please go. Can’t you see we could not help you even if we wanted to?”
ALL THE WAY home Sigita thought about Zita’s hands. Eight-yearold fingers, bent like claws against the yellowed piano keys. All except for the little finger of her left hand, which wasn’t bent like the others, but stuck out from the rest. On that finger, Zita had lost the entire nail.
JAN HAD BEEN prepared for steel tables and striplit ceilings, cold, white tiles or possibly even refrigerated drawers. But the lights in the chapel of the Institute of Forensic Medicine were soft and unglaring, and the still body lay on a simple bier, covered by a white cotton sheet, with a pair of candles lending an unexpected note of grace.
“Thank you for coming,” said the officer who had led him in. Jan had already forgotten her name. “Her parents live in Jutland, so it’s good to have a preliminary identification before we ask them to make the journey.”
“Of course,” said Jan. “It’s the least I can do.”
He felt acid burn at