The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [27]
Suddenly, Barbara’s face came alive.
“Tivoli!” she said. “Could we go there? I was looking through the fence earlier, and it all looks so beautiful.”
He had not the slightest wish to endure the wait surrounded by screaming toddlers, cotton candy, and balloon vendors, but the surge of expectation in her eyes melted his resolve. They paid a day’s wage to get in, and ate a pizza that only set him back about seven or eight times as much as it would have cost him in Vilnius. But Barbara was loving every minute. She smiled more than she had done at any time during the long tense drive here, and his nerves began to settle. Perhaps everything would still be all right in the end. It might be just a misunderstanding. After all, if the Dane was stuck in a plane and couldn’t do much, it wasn’t surprising somebody screwed up. He would pay. He had said so. And if he didn’t, Jučas knew where he lived.
“There’s a bit of oregano on your chin,” said Barbara. “No, let me… .” She blotted the corner of his mouth gently with the red-and-white-checkered napkin, smiling into his eyes so that the rage curled up inside him and went to sleep.
Later they walked around a ridiculous little lake in which someone had placed a disproportionate schooner, so large it would hardly be able to turn if anyone had the misguided idea to try to actually sail it. Barbara put two fat Danish coins into an automat and was rewarded with a small bag of fish fodder. As soon as they heard the click from the automat, the fish in the lake surged forward so that the water literally boiled with their huge writhing bodies. The sight turned his gut, he wasn’t quite sure why. At that moment, the phone finally rang.
“I just got home,” said the man at the other end. “There is no sign of the goods or the money. Nor of the person I sent to do the trade.”
Bitch. Swine.
“I delivered,” he said, with as much calm as he could muster. “Now you must pay.”
The man was silent for a while. Then he said:
“When you give me what I paid for, you will get the rest of the money.”
Jučas was struggling both with his temper and his English vocabulary. Only Barbara’s hand on his arm made it possible to win at least one of those battles.
“You sent the woman. If she don’t do what you say, is not my problem.”
Again, the silence. Even longer, this time.
“She took a company car,” the Dane finally said. “We have GPS tracking on all of them. If I tell you where she is, will you go and get her? She must have either the money or the goods, or both. Or she must know where they are. Bring her back to me.”
“Is not what we agreed,” said Jučas through clenched teeth. He wanted his money, and he wanted to get out of this stinking, stupidly expensive country where even the fish were fat.
“Ten thousand dollars extra,” said the man promptly. “To get the money and the goods, and bring her back.”
The screaming from the roller coaster was getting on his nerves. But ten thousand dollars was ten thousand dollars.
“Okay,” he said. “You tell me where she is.”
NINA WRAPPED THE blanket more tightly about the boy, picked him up, and left Allan’s office with the skinny body in her arms. He felt feather light compared to Anton, but of course Anton was no longer a toddler. He went to school. He was a big boy now.
She was careful to make sure that the lock on the main door of the practice clicked behind her. The parking lot, thank God, was still empty. She levered the body carefully into the back seat and closed the door with a soft push. It was 6:44.
“What do I do now?” she muttered, then caught herself with some irritation. Talking to herself now. Not cool. She hadn’t done that much since she started secondary school and had had to leave that and other childish habits behind if she wanted to survive socially. But sometimes, under pressure, it came back. It seemed to help her concentrate.
She started the car and let it roll down the graveled drive. Her hands were shaking again. She noted it with the same detached interest she would have awarded a rare bird