The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [59]
“Excuse me?”
Nina deliberately made her voice soft and neutral. These girls wouldn’t want to talk to anyone except for necessary business, her instincts told her.
All the girls turned to regard her, and once more, Nina was struck by their youth. The heavy makeup and pale glittery lip gloss just made them look like little girls disguised as grown-ups. Nina half expected some tinny voice to announce that these were the contestants in some bizarre American Little Miss beauty pageant, so that any minute now, one of them might break into song.
One of the four took up a stance directly in front of her, legs apart and arms crossed over her chest, presumably in an effort to look menacing. She was small and very slim, her dark eyes darting nervously.
“I need some help with this boy,” said Nina. “I need to know if you can understand him.”
The girl cast a glance up the street, then looked at Nina again, her skepticism obvious.
“Atju,” said Nina, pointing at the boy. “Do you know what it means? Do you know which language?”
Something moved in the girl’s sullen face. Nina could practically see her deliberating the pros and cons, and separating them into two untidy piles. Nina quickly stuck her hand into the pockets of her jeans and came up with a crumbled hundred-kroner note. That obviously helped. The girl discreetly transferred the note to her own pocket.
“I’m not sure. I think maybe Lithuanian.”
Nina nodded, smiling as softly as she knew how. She was definitively out of cash now.
“And you are not from Lithuania?”
The answer was self-evident, but Nina wanted to keep the conversation going, to hang on to the slight thread of a chance she had been offered.
“Latvia.” The girl shrugged. “Marija is Lithuanian.”
She stepped aside a little, indicating the tall, gangly girl who had laughed before, and who might or might not be nineteen years old. She had long dark hair, gathered in a ponytail at the back of her head. There was something coltish about her, thought Nina. Her legs seemed too long for her body, the knees wide and bony in comparison, and her movements had all the gawky awkwardness of a growing teenager.
Her face, too, was sullen, and she looked uncertainly at Nina.
“Do you know the word atju?” asked Nina.
An involuntary smile flashed across the girl’s face, probably at Nina’s attempt at pronunciation.
“It’s ačiu. Ačiū.”
Her A was a little longer than Nina’s, and it sounded exactly right in a way Nina’s attempt had not. Something soft and girlish came into the young woman’s face as she repeated the word, and she exposed a row of perfect white teeth still too big and too new, somehow, for the adult makeup.
“That is Lithuanian,” she said, smiling again, and raising a flat hand to her chest. “I am from Lithuania.”
Again, Nina pointed to the boy.
“I need to talk to this boy. I think maybe he is Lithuanian too.”
If the girl would help her, she would be able to get information from the boy. He might even be able to tell her how he had ended up in a suitcase in a baggage locker at the central railway station. If only the girl would agree to go somewhere a little more quiet.
“Could you help me talk to him?”
The girl cast a quick look over her shoulder, and now there was a wary expression on her face. She was having second thoughts, and when a young man in a black T-shirt suddenly crossed Helgolandsgade and headed their way, she started visibly.
“When we talk, we don’t make any money.”
Her eyes were still on the black T-shirt man, who had increased his pace and was clearly homing in on Nina and the girls. The girl with the ponytail stepped back and deliberately turned away from Nina.
“Tomorrow,” she said softly, not looking Nina’s way at all. “After I sleep. Twelve o’clock. Do you know the church?”
Nina shook her head. There had to be thousands of churches in Copenhagen, and she didn’t know any of them.
T-shirt man had almost reached them. He wasn’t much older than the ponytail girl, thought Nina. He wouldn’t have looked out of place, she thought, as a carpenter’s or plumber’s apprentice. Not so tall,