The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [53]
“Most of the white girls are from Russia,” she said. “But there are others, too. Prices are way down because of them. The stupid little tarts ruin it for everyone else.”
THE DOOR BUZZER let off a snarl, startling Sigita out of a strange sort of absence. Not sleep. Nothing as peaceful as sleep.
“This is Evaldas Gužas, from the Department of Missing Persons. May we come in?”
She buzzed them through. Her heart had begun to pound so hard that the material of her shirt was actually quivering with each beat. They have found him, she thought. Holy Virgin, Mother of Christ. Please let it be so. They have found him, and he is all right.
But as soon as she opened her door to Gužas and his companion, she could tell that he was not the bearer of such good news. She still couldn’t help asking.
“Have you found him?”
“No,” said Gužas. “I’m afraid not. But we do have a possible lead. This is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Martynas Valionis. When I told him about the case, it rang a few bells.”
Valionis shook Sigita’s hand.
“May we sit down for a moment?”
“Yes, of course,” said Sigita politely, all the while silently screaming get on with it.
Valionis perched on the edge of the white couch, put his briefcase on the coffee table, aligning it with the edge with unconscious perfectionism, and brought out a plastic folder.
“I am about to show you some photographs, Mrs. Ramoškienė. Do you recognize any of these women?”
The photos were not glossy portrait shots, but printed hastily on a none-too-efficient inkjet, it seemed. He held them out to her one at a time.
“No,” she said, to the first one. And the next.
The third photograph showed the woman with the chocolate.
Sigita clenched the paper so hard that she scrunched it.
“It’s her,” she said. “She’s the one who took Mikas.”
Valionis nodded in satisfaction.
“Barbara Woronska,” he said. “From Poland, born in Krakow in 1972. Apparently she has lived in this country for some years, and officially she is working for a company selling alarm and security systems.”
“And unofficially?”
“She came to our attention for the first time two years ago when a Belgian businessman made a complaint that she had tried to blackmail him. It would appear that the company uses her as an escort for their clients, particularly the foreign ones, when they visit Vilnius.”
“She’s a prostitute?” Sigita never would have guessed.
“That is perhaps a little too simple. Our impression is that she works as what’s known as a honey trap. She certainly seems to have an uncommonly high consumption of prescription eyedrops.”
Sigita didn’t understand.
“Eyedrops?”
“Yes. Medicinally, they are used to relax the muscles of the eyes, which is useful in certain instances. But if they are ingested, in a drink, for instance, they have the rather peculiar side effect of causing unconsciousness and deep sleep within a short time. It’s not uncommon for a hard-partying businessman to wake up in some hotel room, picked clean of his Oyster Rolex, cash, and credit cards. But Miss Woronska and her backers seem to have refined the technique a bit. They arrange so-called compromising photographs while our man is unconscious, and afterwards suggest to him that he agrees to an export deal on, shall we say, very lucrative terms for the Lithuanian companies involved. Only this time, the Belgian got stubborn, told them to publish and be damned, and came to us. Miss Woronska was one of the participants in the arranged photograph. The other was some little girl who could hardly have been more than twelve years old. One quite understands why the police have not heard from their other victims.”
Hardly more than twelve … Sigita tried to push away the mental images. She couldn’t make it square with the neat and elegant woman in the cotton coat. When people did something like that for a living, shouldn’t it somehow show?
She stared at the printed page. It was not a classic identification photo of the kind made after arrests. Barbara