The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [38]
And now. So much blood.
She didn’t mind blood, she reminded herself soothingly. She was okay with it, had, as a matter of fact, been one of the most steadfast at nursing school when it came to dealing with bodily fluids. (Since that day twenty-three years ago she had become very good at it. She had decided to become good at it, and it had worked.)
Nina stepped back from the bed and managed to twist to one side before she threw up, in short, painful heaves. She had eaten nothing since this morning, and all that sploshed onto the clean wooden floor was dark yellow gall and grayish water.
It was then she heard the scream. A shrill, heart-rending note of terror, like the scream you hear in the night when a hare is caught by the fox.
SIGITA WAS SITTING on the stone steps by the river, waiting for the nausea and headache to subside enough so she could walk on. Her good hand was clenched around her mobile. It had to ring. It had to ring so that she would know Mikas was all right. Or so she knew at least he wasn’t what Gužas called the second category; those who were never found.
No. Don’t even think it. Don’t think about what strangers might do to the perfect, tiny body, don’t let the thought in even for a second. It would only make it real. It would break her, it would tear her open and rip out her heart so that she wouldn’t be able to breathe, let alone act. She clung to the phone like an exhausted swimmer to a buoy.
It didn’t ring. In the end she pressed a number herself. Mrs. Mažekienė’s.
“Mrs. Mažekienė. The man who took Mikas—what did he look like?”
The old woman’s confusion was obvious, even over the phone.
“Look like? But it was his father.”
“No, Mrs. Mažekienė. It wasn’t. Darius is still in Germany.”
There was a long silence.
“Mrs. Mažekienė?”
“Well, I did think that he must have gained some weight. He looked bigger than I remembered.”
“How big?”
“I don’t know … big and tall, now that I think about it. And hardly any hair, the way it had been cropped. But that’s all the rage these days, isn’t it?”
“Why did you think it was Mikas’s father, then?”
“The car looked like his. And who else would be going off with the boy?”
Sigita bit down hard on her lip to avoid saying something unforgiveable. She is just an old woman, she told herself. She didn’t do it on purpose. But Mrs. Mažekienė’s mistake had cost them nearly 48 hours, and that was very hard to forget.
“What kind of car was it?” she asked, once she had regained some self-control.
“It was gray,” Mrs. Mažekienė answered vaguely.
“What make of car?” But she knew even as she asked that it was hopeless.
“I don’t know much about cars,” said Mrs. Mažekienė helplessly. “It was … ordinary, like. Like Mikas’s father’s car.”
The last time Sigita had seen Darius, he had been driving a darkgray Suzuki Grand Vitara. So presumably it was a gray SUV of some kind, or perhaps a station wagon. Or a van. If Mrs. Mažekienė couldn’t tell Darius’s rather slender form from what sounded like that of a crew-cut doorman’s, then there was no reason to think that she could distinguish between an off-roader and a Peugeot Partner. It wasn’t much to go on.
“It had a baggage box on the roof,” said Mrs. Mažekienė suddenly. “I remember that!”
Dobrovolskij’s eldest son, Pavel sometimes drove a silver Porsche Cayenne. It resembled the Vitara about as much as a shetland pony resembles a Shire horse, and she had never seen it with a baggage box