The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [52]
The first prostitutes Nina saw were African. Two of them, both of them rather solidly built, and dressed in high boots and brightly colored skirts stretched tightly over muscular, firm thighs. The women stood less than five yards from each other, yet they didn’t talk. One had propped herself against a wall with a cigarette between pursed lips, and rummaged hectically through her bag at regular intervals. The other did nothing at all except stand there, watching every car that turned the corner.
No one took any notice of Nina and the boy, and it struck her that they must look relatively normal, walking together like this. A little late to be out and about, certainly, considering the usual bedtime of children his age, but nothing that would raise eyebrows. Vesterbro might contain Copenhagen’s red light district, but it was also a neighborhood full of ordinary families, some of them with young children. Vesterbro was becoming hip, and fashionable cafés had sprung up among the topless bars and porn shops.
The boy dragged his feet a little, but she still felt no resistance in the hand resting confidently in hers. In a doorway a little further down the street, two women argued heatedly. They were both blond, with skinny legs and remarkably similar emaciated faces. The argument stopped abruptly, as suddenly as it has begun, and one of them reached into her handbag and handed a can of beer to the other.
Nina paused, and the boy stood obediently quiet at her side while she tried to obtain eye contact with one of the women, the one now holding the beer can. She, in her turn, ignored Nina and looked at the boy instead.
“Hi there, sweetheart.”
Her voice was blurred and bubbly, as though she were talking to them from the bottom of a well. When the boy didn’t react and Nina kept standing there, she finally raised her eyes to Nina’s, with a grimace of confusion on her face.
“Yes?”
Nina took a deep breath. “I’m looking for… .” Nina hesitated, fumbling for the right words. The woman’s gaze was already wandering again. “The Eastern European girls, where are they? Do you know?”
The woman’s pale blue eyes widened in astonishment and distrust. Her pupils moved in tiny rapid jerks, and her mouth tightened. Nina realized she must look like the enemy, that the woman might consider her world to be under attack from the semidetached, permanent-income, husband-toting kind of person who would condescend to and disapprove of people like her. She might suspect Nina of being a journalist, or an outraged wife, or even a tourist vicariously fascinated by the prospect of sleaze and degradation. In any case, the woman clearly did not relish the role of practical guide to Vesterbro’s night life. Her eyes glinted aggressively.
“Why the hell are you asking?”
She moved half a step closer, and Nina felt the heaviness of her breath waver in the air between them.
Truth, she thought. I’ll give her the truth, or a small part of it, at any rate.
“The boy needs his mother,” she said, pulling the child onto her arm. “I have to find her.”
For a few wobbly seconds, the woman maintained her stance, chest pushed forward and eyes glinting. Then the appeal to the maternal instinct had its effect. She slumped, taking another sip of her lager, and studied the boy with renewed interest.
“Poor litte dear,” she said, reaching out to touch his cheek with a bony finger.
He jerked his head out of reach and hid his face against Nina’s shoulder, which made the beer-can woman scowl. She teetered off, pulling her friend with her. But she did answer the question as she went.
“They’re everywhere at the moment,” she said. “Some in Skelbæksgade, some at Halmtorvet. There are probably some in Helgolandsgade, too. They’re bloody everywhere, and you have a long night ahead of you if you don’t know her usual spot.”
“Where do they come from, do you know?”
Nina wasn