The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [43]
He discovered he was shaking all over. Stop it, he told himself. In a little while, the Lithuanian will call. He will have found Karin. And there is still time. It will all be fine.
Just before midnight, the phone rang, but it wasn’t the Nokia. It was Anne, on his personal mobile.
“The police have been here,” she said, and he could hear the fragile cracks in her voice. “They say that Karin is dead.”
THE DOBROVOLSKIJS WERE Russian, but not from the Soviet era. The family had lived in Vilnius for more than a hundred years, and old man Dobrovolskij himself, the present patriarch, still inhabited one of the old wooden mansions behind Znamenskaya, the Orthodox Church of the Apparition of the Holy Mother of God. Sigita had been there once before, with Algirdas, and they had been served black Russian tea on the porch, in tall glasses so gilded that they were only barely transparent.
Sigita paused by the garden gate, suddenly indecisive. Now that she was actually here, it was hard to imagine that the Dobrovolskijs could be holding Mikas somewhere in that beautiful, freshly painted house. And there was no silver Cayenne parked by the curb.
If Dobrovolskij had anything to do with this, he wouldn’t do it here. Not in his childhood home, so close to the Church its huge silvery dome could be seen through the treetops. Where others tore down the old wooden houses and built modern brick monstrosities as soon as they came into money, Dobrovolskij had instead carefully renovated. The delicately carved trimmings shone with fresh yellow paint, the intricate window frames and shutters likewise; and though there might still be a well in the garden outside, it was for decorative purposes only. Sigita knew for a fact that there were three shiny new bathrooms in the house—that had been part of the agreement between Janus Construction and the old man.
She had stood there long enough to be noticed. The white lace curtain in one window twitched, and a little later a young darkhaired girl came out onto the porch.
“Mrs. Dobrovolskaja is asking whether there is anything we can do for you?” she said, her Lithuanian heavily accented. Her slim, girlish figure was dressed in a white T-shirt and a pair of black Calvin Kleins, and Sigita guessed her to be some kind of Russian relative, or perhaps an au pair. Or both.
Sigita cleared her throat.
“I’m sorry. This may sound odd. But do you know if Pavel Dobrovolskij still owns a silver Porsche Cayenne?”
“Has something happened?” The girl focused on Sigita’s plaster cast. “An accident? Is he all right?”
“No, nothing has happened … or, not in that way. I had a fall on the stairs.”
“Is it broken?”
“Yes.”
“What a pity. I hope it will soon be new again.” She smiled awkwardly. “Forgive me. My Lithuanian is not yet very good. I am Anna, Pavel’s fiancée. How do you know Pavel?”
“It’s really more my boss who knows him. Algirdas Janusevičius. They do projects together from time to time. My name is Sigita.”
They shook hands.
“The Porsche?” said Sigita. “He still has it?”
Anna smiled.
“He’s trying to sell it. He calls it an elephant. But no one has bought it yet. If you’re interested, you can see it in Super Auto’s showroom in Pusu gatvė. It’s only two blocks from here.”
THE PORCHE CAYENNE stood proudly in the best window at Super Auto, behind bars and armored glass, and without license plates. A price sticker announced that Sigita could become the happy owner of this vehicle if only she were willing to pay six years’ wages for it. Algirdas had been right, thought Sigita miserably. There was absolutely no evidence that Dobrovolskij had taken Mikas, or had anything to do with his disappearance.
Not until she felt that straw break did she realize how hard she had been clinging to it. It had to be Dobrovolskij because Dobrovolskij was someone