The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [111]
Anne took her out of the house, around the corner, to a separate entrance at the back.
“This is it,” said Anne, tapping a code into the digital lock. “Up the stairs. Just go in. I’ll keep an eye on Jan until the ambulance gets here.”
Nina merely nodded. The door to Karin’s flat had been sealed with yellow police tape, but Nina opened it anyway, ducking beneath the seal. The light in the small hallway came on automatically as she entered—there had to be a photo sensor somewhere. She located the switch and turned on the light in the living room as well.
This was Karin’s home. Her coats and shoes in the hallway, her perfume still in the air. Her specific blend of chaos and tidyness. Piles of papers and books were allowed to grow abundantly, because Karin did not consider such things mess. But Nina knew that if she checked the laundry basket in the bedroom, she would find even the dirty clothes neatly folded.
She recognized Karin’s old rocker, an heirloom that had followed her since their dormitory days. But apart from that, it was clear that styles had changed as her bank balance swelled. Conran and Eames rather than Ikea. A genuine Italian espresso maker in the open kitchenette. Original modern art on the walls.
On Karin’s desk was a compact little printer, but no laptop. Presumably, the police had taken it away, along with some of the piled papers—you could tell, somehow, that there were gaps in the arrangement, and one drawer had been left slightly ajar.
Nina dropped into the rocking chair. She hadn’t come to pry. She was here to say goodbye, as best she could.
Karin’s fear. That was what kept coming back to her. It had been obvious that Karin had been terrified during the last hours of her life, even before the Lithuanian found her. Had it been Jan Marquart who scared her? He hadn’t seemed particularly terrifying to Nina, but then, that might be because she hadn’t met him before a nine-millimeter projectile had made a mess of his shoulder and left him shocked and bleeding on his own living room floor.
Karin knew him better. Well enough for her to be shit scared of going against his orders. And it had even been she who had taken the dollar bundles still lying on the stone floor next to Jan Marquart. What had Karin imagined Jan would do? Why had she fled this lovely flat so precipitously, to hide out in an isolated summer cottage?
She was afraid of people who put little children into suitcases, thought Nina suddenly, and of the people who pay them to do it. She thought I might be able to save Mikas. And I suppose I did. But there was no one around to save Karin.
She heard distant sirens now. Time was running out. She got up to turn off the lights and leave, but as she reached for the switch, she noticed the various postcards, Post-its, and photographs that Karin had stuck to her refrigerator door.
There was an entire Nina-section, she realized. Top left was a picture of her and Karin, an ancient one taken at a concert at the Student Union Hall way back in a former century when they had been at nursing school together. Karin’s hair looked huge, teased into a festive post-eighties pile on top of her head; her eye-liner would have done Cleopatra proud, and her earrings almost reached her shoulders. Her eyes were laughing at the camera, with familiar sparkling warmth. Nina, of course, wore black, but for once she had been able to muster a smile for the photographer, albeit somewhat less exuberant.
She has kept this for seventeen years, thought Nina. I wonder how many fridge doors it has been stuck to?
Below it was Nina’s wedding picture, somewhat hastily taken in front of the sow-and-piglets sculpture by the Registry Office. Nina had forgotten who had had that particular flash of artistic inspiration, but both she and Morten looked ridiculously young, eyeing each other with