The Boy in the Suitcase - Lene Kaaberbol [74]
The sergeant drank his coffee.
“How tall is your wife?” he asked.
“One meter sixty-nine,” answered Morten automatically. And then froze with the cup halfway to his mouth because he didn’t know whether this was something they needed to know in order to identify her, or her body.
Then he realized there might be a third purpose behind the question.
“You don’t think that … that she … that she might have anything to do with the murder?”
“We are still waiting for the autopsy results. But it would seem that the blows were struck with overwhelming force. We tend to think that the assailant must have been male.”
The reply did not provide any relief.
Suddenly, Anton was in the doorway. His hair was damp with sweat, and the too large Spiderman pajama top had slipped off one shoulder.
“Is Mummy home yet?” he asked, rubbing his face with the back of his hand.
“Not yet,” said Morten.
Anton frowned, and it seemed that it was only now that he registered the presence of two strangers in the room. The uniform made his eyes pop still wider. His mouth opened, but he didn’t say anything. Morten felt paralyzed, completely unable to come up with an explanation that would make sense in a seven-year-old’s universe.
“Go on back to bed,” he said, trying to sound casual and everyday normal. Anton gave a brief nod. The sound of his bare feet beat a rapid retreat along the corridor.
“Will you please ask your wife to contact us immediately if she comes back?” said the sergeant. “She is an important witness.”
“Of course,” said Morten with a growing feeling of complete helplessness.
If she comes back.
TRAFFIC ON JAGTVEJEN was warming up in the gray dawn, but the smaller streets around Fejøgade were still quiet and uncrowded. Perhaps that was why she saw the police car right away. With no blinking blue lights, it looked like a white taxi at first glance, but it was parked in an offhand, slanted manner, as if the driver could not be bothered to do a proper curbside parallel parking. Nina had time to think that this was the kind of sloppy parking Morten hated, and that he would be irritated if the car was still here when he came down to take the children to school. Then she realized that the bump on the car’s roof were cop lights, not taxi lights. And that someone was up and about and had the lights on, up there in their third-floor flat.
Morten would not normally be up this early. He had flexible working hours when he wasn’t out on the rigs, and even though he was alone with the kids today, as long as he had them up and ready for breakfast at 7:30, he would be fine. It was now 5:58. Much too early for normality.
Nina continued past her own front door at an even speed. It was of course possible that the cops had merely needed somewhere quiet to park while they enjoyed their morning coffee. But why, then, was Morten up? Were they looking for her? And was it because of Karin, or because of the boy?
She didn’t want to believe it. The thought of having to give up her fantasy of a hot shower and a normal family breakfast caused a wave of exhaustion that dug into her already depleted reserves. She slipped the Fiat into an empty slot further up the street and sat there with her hands on the wheel and her foot on the clutch, trying to make up her mind.
There was a part of her that wanted it over and done with.
There would be no need for drama. She could hand over the boy to professional, caring adults in a quiet and orderly manner, without causing him undue anxiety. And if she really put her mind to it, she might even convince herself that she was doing the right thing. That the boy would be safe and cared for at some institution on Amager, and that the man from the railway station from now on would be a single bad memory in an otherwise happy and safe childhood. Immigraton had proper interpreters available to them, they didn’t