The Boy in the Suitcase - By Lene Kaaberbol Page 0,94

him through the next bit. He opened the rear door and looked down at the boy-bitch, still huddled in a boneless pile without any spark of consciousness. It was all her fault, he told himself. Her and the filthy swine who was trying to do him out of his money. It was them. They did it, and he was not going to let them get away with it. You don’t fuck with me.

And the rage came. Like a wave of heat, it washed through his body, made hands and feet prickle and shake a little, but in a good way. It was best done now, while she was still just an object. He took the plastic shopping bag and emptied out all the stuff that Barbara had brought—bananas, lukewarm cola, some kind of soap she had liked because it smelled of roses and lily of the valley. Even though he didn’t really feel like touching her, he climbed into the back of the car to the bitch. He grabbed her shoulders and rolled her limp body into his lap. She weighed nothing at all, he thought. No more than a child. He pulled the bag over her head and then realized he had nothing to tie it with. Instead, he tied the handles themselves into a knot under her chin, which would have to do. When he saw the plastic cling closer to her face with each breath she took, he knew it was enough. By the time he came back, it would be over.

He pushed her away with disgust and wiped his hands on his trousers, as if touching her had somehow contaminated him. The bitch got what she deserved, he told himself carefully, clinging to the strength the rage gave him. And as he went to pull down the garage doors, it wasn’t her face that swam before his eyes. In the sudden darkness, other images forced themselves on him, the Pig, the Pig from the orphanage who pushed little boys up against rough, damp basement walls, down in the dim semi-darkness that smelled of pee and petrol and unwashed old man.

Filthy bastard swine, he thought, they were all filthy swine, and he was going to show them that nobody did such things to him. Hell, no. Not to him. He found a light switch and turned on the fluorescent overheads until he had found what he was looking for—the automated gate system that such a filthy rich bastard had to have. He yanked the wiring right out of the box with hardly any effort, leaving the bared copper threads bristling and exposed. So far, so good.

There was a door that had to lead into the house, but it was locked. He considered kicking it down, but decided that it was much simpler to ring the bell and wait for someone to let him in. He glanced back at the car. The boy sat there, still strapped to his little seat, staring at him through the windshield. Jučas slammed his palm against the light switch so that both boy and car disappeared in the garage darkness.

SIGITA WAS SHAKING all over.

“You can’t!” she screamed, and for a few moments didn’t register that she was screaming in Lithuanian. She searched desperately for the English words this woman would understand.

“You can’t take a kidney from a three-year-old child! He is too small!”

Anne Marquart looked at her in astonishment.

“But Mrs. Ramoškienė. Of course not. We … we’re not going to.”

“Why did you take him, then? Why did people come to Vilnius and steal him from me, and take him to Denmark?” She didn’t know for certain, but it had to be that way. Didn’t it?

“I don’t know where your little boy is, or why he is gone. But I assure you, we could never ever harm… .” She broke off in the middle of the sentence and stared blankly out at the ocean for a while. Then she said, in a completely different tone of voice: “Would you excuse me? I have to call my husband.”

These people are rich enough to buy anything, thought Sigita. They bought my first child. And now they have paid someone to steal the second.

“He’s only three,” she said helplessly.

Di-di-da-da-di-di-diiih… . The unsuitably gay little tune from a different doorbell made them both freeze. There was the sound of child-light running feet from the hallway, and Aleksander’s voice called out something in Danish.

“He always wants to get the door,” said Anne Marquart absently. “With him in the