The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [40]
A couple of long strides took her through the door, and then into the kitchen. Out of the window above the sink she saw his flaxen head bobbing past in the darkness; he was running away. She continued her wobbly flight through the hallway and out onto the veranda. In the humid air outside, her face and throat felt flushed and pulsing with heat.
The black pines in the plantation behind the house were blurred by mist; she couldn’t see the boy anywhere, but she heard the snapping of branches as he fled among the trees. Following the sound, she took off at the fastest run she could manage.
Pine boughs whipped against her face, and the tall, dry grass at the forest’s edge was a rustling, prickly barrier, impeding her steps. Fortunately, she could now see the boy’s white hair like a will-o’-the-wisp among the black tree trunks in the gathering darkness. She was closing in on him.
She ducked the low branches as best she could, then had to veer sharply to one side to avoid the bristling remnants of a fallen tree. Her right ankle protested, but she did manage a second burst of speed. She snatched at the boy’s shoulder, but lost her grip again, and he stumbled on. Her next attempt was more succesful. She caught his arm and clung to it, forcing him to stop.
Wordlessly, she pulled him down onto the mossy grass and closed her arms around him. Under the twisted T-shirt, his heart was beating fast and hard against his bared ribs, and his breath was a hot flush against her neck.
Then she heard it.
It might have been a completely insignficant sound. A faint click, as of a door being cautiously closed, somewhere in the summer night. The sound could come from any of the other cottages skirting the forest’s edge, thought Nina, as she inched backwards into deeper cover, pulling the boy with her. She could no longer see Karin’s cousin’s cottage, but at the end of the winding drive her own red Fiat was perfectly visible.
More sounds. Footsteps, this time, and a rustling as if someone was moving through tall, dry grass. Nina saw the man from the railway station in her mind’s eye. The pale, narrowed eyes, the tense jaw, the ferocity of the kicks he aimed at the busted locker.
Had he found Karin and unleashed that fury in her?
Nina looked at her watch.
8:36.
Her watch was usually 29 seconds slower than the more accurate time given by her mobile. For some reason she hadn’t corrected that imprecision. She rather liked having to figure out what time it really was.
She hugged the boy tight against her chest. His little warm body was twitching, small jerks of protest, but he made no sound. Did he understand the need for silence, or was it merely traumatized resignation?
She listened again, but the rustle of the footsteps, if that was what they were, had stopped. Should she call the police? She fumbled at the pockets of her jeans, first on the right, then on the left.
No phone.
She checked again, but knew it was futile. She had dropped it. Where and when, she had no idea.
New little bursts of adrenalin exploded in her head. The phone had been her only line of contact to the real world—to Morten, to the network and her job, and now to the police. She was alone now. Completely alone with the boy.
The crash of a door being slammed rang through the silence.
Her heart gave a wild leap and raced even faster under her sweat-soaked T-shirt. She stumbled to her feet, still with the boy locked in her arms.
And then she ran.
The boy’s body was tense with resistance and difficult to manage, and she felt the extra weight now in her knees and ankles. She was getting older, she thought, too old to be fleeing with a child in her arms.
Seconds later, she reached the Fiat and yanked open the door to the driver’s seat. She glanced up at the cottage through the foliage of the birches flanking the drive. She could see no signs of any human presence up there, and for a moment she began to doubt her senses. Had the footsteps really been footsteps? Or had it really just been the