The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [45]
One Thursday night in the beginning of December she packed as many clothes as she could fit into her gym bag. It had to be the gym bag, because the suitcases were kept in a locked storage room in the building’s long, windowless attic, and besides, walking down Dariaus ir Girėno gatvė with a suitcase would definitely cause eyebrows to lift. Someone might even try to stop her. It also had to be Thursday, because that was the day when her mother went to visit Granny Julija, and her father always took that opportunity to go play cards with some of his old mates from the canning factory.
She left no letter. She would have had no idea what to say in it. Only her little brother Tomas saw her leave.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Out,” she said, unable to even look at him.
“Mama said you had to mind me.”
“You are twelve years old, Tomas. You can mind yourself by now.”
She caught the last bus to Vilnius. It took nearly five hours to get there, by which time it was past midnight, and the big city of her dreams had closed for the night. There were no trolley busses, and she couldn’t afford a taxi. She asked the busdriver for directions and began to walk through the silent streets, with the freezing snow crunching under the soles of her boots.
Her aunt was astonished to see her. She had to say her name twice before Jolita even recognized her.
“But Sigita. What are you doing here? Why didn’t your mother call me?”
“I wanted to visit you. Mama doesn’t know.”
Jolita was older than her mother, but looked younger. The hair brushing her shoulders was a uniform black, and a pair of huge golden loops dangled from her earlobes. She was wearing a royal blue kimono dressing gown, but despite this, it didn’t seem that she had been in bed when Sigita rang the bell. From the flat behind her came a series of soft jazz notes and the smell of cigarette smoke.
Jolita’s penciled eyebrows shot up.
“You wanted to visit me?” she said.
“Yes,” said Sigita. And then she started crying.
“Little darling… .”
“You have to help me,” sobbed Sigita. “I’m going to have a baby.”
“Oh dear Lord, sweetheart,” said Tante Jolita, drawing her into a silky, tobacco-scented, and very comforting embrace.
KARIN IS DEAD. Karin is dead. Karin is dead.
The thought was pounding away inside Nina’s skull as she turned onto Kildevej and headed back toward Copenhagen. She was nearly certain now that no one had followed her from the cottage. The first harried miles on the narrow road through Tibirke, she had checked her mirror every other second.
Karin is dead, she thought, gripping the steering wheel still harder. She had tried to wipe her hands on a crumbled, jellybeansticky tissue she had found in the glove compartment, but the blood had had time to dry and lay like a thin rust-colored film over her palm and fingertips.
Unbidden, the feel of Karin’s skull came back to her. Like one of those big, luxurious, foil-wrapped Easter eggs Morten’s parents always bought for Ida and Anton, and which always got dropped on the floor somehow. The shell under the foil would feel flattened and frail, just like Karin’s head. She had been able to feel individual fragments of bone moving under the scalp as she probed.
She had been killed. Beaten to death. Someone had hit her until she was dead.
Nina hunched over the steering wheel, trying to control her nausea. Why would anyone want to kill Karin? Karin was one of the least dangerous people Nina had ever met, big-bosomed in a rather maternal way that had always made Nina think of warm milk and homemade bread. Secure. She had always been secure.
Nina wiped her eyes with one hand; she felt her gaze drawn to the unwinding ribbon of the road’s central white line and had to yank it back up with an act of will.
They had always stuck together, back at nursing school. Studied together, gone to parties and Friday drinks together,