The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [28]
Karin had not returned any of her calls. Nor had Morten. Nor had there been any sign of police or other authorities. The last would of course have been unlikely, but the sense of being hunted would not leave her. It just didn’t seem right that she could be driving around for hours with a three-year-old boy who wasn’t hers. Somebody had to be missing him—someone other than the furious man at the railway station.
Nina turned up the volume of the car radio to be ready to catch the news. It was 6:46 according to the display on her mobile. She slowed slightly and regained enough control of her fingers to tap out Karin’s number once more.
After seven long rings, there was, finally, an answer.
“Hello?”
Karin’s voice sounded both hopeful and reserved.
Nina took a deep breath. It would be so easy for Karin to cut the connection if Nina came on too strongly. She had to be careful. Had to coax Karin into giving the answers she needed.
“Karin.”
Nina softened her tone persuasively. Like she did when Anton was in the grip of one of his nightmares—gently, gently.
“Karin, it’s Nina. I have the boy with me here in the car. He is okay.”
Silence. Then a long hiccoughing breath and a heavy sigh. Karin was battling to control her voice.
“Oh, thank God. Nina, thank you so much for getting him out of there.”
Another long silence. That seemed to be it. Nina cursed inwardly. Thank you for getting him out of there? How about an explanation? How about a bit of help? Something, anything, that would tell her what to do with her three-year-old burden.
“I have to know something about him,” she said. “I have no idea what to do with him. Do you want me to take him to the police? Do you know where he comes from?”
Nina heard the rising shrillness in her own voice, and for a moment she was afraid Karin had gotten spooked and hung up. Then she heard a faint, wet snuffling, as if from a cornered and wounded animal.
“I really don’t know, Nina. I thought you had contacts … that your network would be able to help him.”
Nina sighed.
“I have no one,” she said, and felt the truth of it for the first time, at the very pit of her stomach. “Look, we need to talk properly. Where can I find you?”
Karin hesitated, and Nina could practically hear the doubts and fears ripping away at her.
“I’m in a summer cottage.”
“Where?”
Nina waited tensely, while Karin fumbled with her phone.
“I don’t want to be involved in this. I can’t. It wasn’t supposed to be a child.”
The last word was nearly a wail, a high-pitched hysterical whimper, and Karin could no longer control the violent sobbing that Nina guessed had been coming even before she answered the phone.
“Where is the cottage?” she repeated, striving for a note of calm authority. “Tell me where you are, Karin, and I will come to you. It will be all right.”
Karin’s breath came in harsh bursts, and her silence this time was so long that Nina might have ended the call, had she not been so desperate herself.
“Tisvildeleje.”
Karin’s voice was so faint that Nina could barely make it out.
“I’ve borrowed the cottage from my cousin, and it’s… .” There was a crackling sound as Karin fumbled for something, possibly a piece of paper. “Twelve Skovbakken. It’s at the very end, the last house before the woods.”
There was a click, and this time, she really was gone.
Nina turned to the sleeping child with the first real smile she had been able to manage during the six hours that had passed since she opened a suitcase and found a boy.
“I’ve got it covered,” she said, feeling her hands unclench on their own. “Now we will go find out what has happened, and then I will see to it that you get back home where you belong.”
SIGITA WAS DESPERATE enough to ask him to come.
Darius’s mobile phone voice became ill at ease.
“Sigita… . You know I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“My job.”
He worked for a construction company in Germany. Not as an engineer,