The tiniest of smiles curled his upper lip, the first sign of humanity she had observed in him.
“That you were a good mother and a responsible person. One of those who pay. She appreciates your commitment.”
There was no fee as such to be paid for Mikas’s basic care, but the kindergarten had an optional program funded by parents who paid a certain sum into the program’s account every month. The money was used for maintenance and improvements, and for cultural activities with the children—things for which the city did not provide a budget. It had been a sacrifice, especially the first year after she had bought the flat, but to Sigita it was important to be “one of those who pay.”
“Do you believe me now?”
He considered her for a while. Click, click went the damned pen.
“Your statement has been corroborated on certain points,” he said, seeming almost reluctant.
“Then will you please
do
something!” She could no longer contain her despair. “You have to find him!”
Click, click, click.
“I’ve taken your statement now, and we will of course send out a missing persons bulletin on Mikas,” he said. “We’ll look for him.”
At first Sigita felt a vast relief at being
believed
. She opened her purse and pushed the picture of Mikas out of its plastic pocket. The picture had been taken at the kindergarten’s midsummer celebration, and Mikas was in his Sunday best, with a garland of oak leaves clutched in his hands and an uncertain smile on his face. He had objected to wearing the garland in his hair because he didn’t want to look like a girl, she recalled.
“Thank you,” she said. “Will this do? It’s a good likeness.”
She put it on the desk in front of Gužas. He took it, but there was something in the way he did it, a certain hesitation, as if he wasn’t sure how much use it was going to be. It was then she realized that it was much too soon to feel any kind of relief.
“Mrs. Ramoškienė … is there any chance that the couple who took the boy are someone you know, or perhaps someone you are related to?”
“No, I … don’t think so. I certainly didn’t know the woman. But I didn’t really ask Mrs. Mažekienė about the man because I thought it was Darius.”
“We will try to get a description from your neighbor. Have the kidnappers tried to contact you in any way? Any demands, or threats? And can you think of anyone who might want to pressure you for any reason?”
She shook her head silently. The only thing she could think of was that it might be something to do with Janus Construction, with Dobrovolskij and other clients like him, and the figures she kept only in her head. But how? It didn’t make sense. And in any case, no one had said a thing. No threats. No demands.
She realized that he was watching her intently, and that the clicking of the pen had finally ceased.
“What do they want with him?” she said softly, hardly daring to say it out loud, because it made it that much more real. “Why do people steal someone else’s child?”
“When a child is taken, it is often personal—aimed at a specific child, for specific reasons that might be to do with custody rights, or with something the kidnappers want from the parents. But there is a second category. One where the motives are less personal, and in those cases… .” He hesitated, and she had to prod him on.
“What then?”
“In those cases, the perpetrators just take a child. Any child.”
He didn’t come right out and say it, but she knew immediately what he meant. She knew that children were sold in the same way some people sold women. A crushed and wordless whimper forced itself out of her. Esu kaltas, esu kaltas, esu labai kaltas. It’s all my fault. Desperately, she tried to stop the images that flickered through her head. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t think of Mikas in the hands of people like that. It would destroy her.
“Please. Please, will you find him for me?” she begged, through a hot flood of tears that blurred the room and made intelligible speech almost impossible.
“We will try,” he said. “But let us hope that Mikas belongs to the first category. They are often found, sooner or later.”
Again he didn’t say it, but she could hear the unspoken words all the same: we never find the others.
S
HE DIDN’T REALLY
have the time.
Nina’s sense of urgency made it feel all wrong to contemplate a mundane shopping expedition, but the devil did, after all, reside in the details, and at a minimum she needed one set of T-shirt, shorts, and sandals sized for a three-year-old if she and the boy were to remain relatively secure and invisible for a while.
She scanned the storefronts on Stationsvej and cursed softly to herself at the lack of choice. There weren’t all that many shops to begin with, and most of them now had closed doors and dead, unlit windows. But as she approached the end of the street, more appeared, and two of them, amazingly enough, sold children’s clothes. Both clearly saw themselves as up-market; one even had a French name—La Maison Des Petites. Outside, the racks sported brightly colored rompers in a trendy retro ’70s style, and when she peered through the window, she spotted a mannequin that looked to be about the right size.
And
the shop was still open. A big retail chain like Kvickly would have been better, not to mention cheaper, but so far all she had seen along the way had been a co-op with nothing much but food products. She was running out of time. The boy was lying on the back seat like a small, ticking bomb; traveling discretely with a screaming three-year-old in tow was difficult enough in itself—if the child was naked, it would be plain impossible. First rule of survival: don’t draw attention to yourself.
She turned into Olgasvej and squeezed the antiquated little Fiat into a space between two larger cars parked along the curb. She twisted in her seat to draw the blanket more thoroughly over the boy, who already seemed too close to the surface. One small arm came up to tug reflexively at the woolly material, pulling it off his face again.
Nina got out of the car, quickly scanning her surroundings. On a day as hot as this, presumably most of the inhabitants of Vedbæk would have retired to the beach, or to shady gardens and barbecued patio meals. But there were still people in the streets. On the opposite sidewalk, a suburban family sauntered past, the father thin-legged in shorts that were
too
short, the mother in a white summery top exposing her sunburnt, peeling shoulders. Their two young daughters both held giant ice cream cones, and the parents were engaged in heated conversation. A little further up the street on Nina’s side, a senior citizen was walking a heavy-set basset hound, and a tight little group of long-haired teenagers had just turned the corner from Stationsvej and were headed Nina’s way.
“All right,” said Nina, deliberately leaning across the back seat through the open door. “I’ll get you an ice cream, but that’s it, okay? No more pestering.” She paused artistically, covertly eying the dog walker, who was now within easy hearing, but moving at a draggingly slow pace. “Mama will be back in a jiffy.”
She locked the doors quickly, then trotted resolutely back towards Stationsvej. The teenagers seemed not to have noticed her, or the little show she had provided. They moved only enough for her to edge past them and forge on. Behind her she heard their odd mix of conversation and intense texting. Good, she thought. Much too self-absorbed to be a problem.
LA MAISON DES PETITES
seemed to think that what every parent really wanted was to dress their offspring like small replicas of the children they themselves had been in the ’70s. The colors were bright and loud, the fabrics mostly linen and organically produced cotton, so that the little ones were not exposed to unwanted chemicals. All very well-intentioned, but Nina winced at the thought of what it would do to her bank balance.
A discretely perfumed young mother, hair tucked back by the big dark fashionable sunglasses riding on top of her head, glided past with a fat baby on her hip. Again, Nina became conscious of her sticky T-shirt and the far from fragrant odor of sweat she projected. And of fear, probably. Right now she fitted into this affluent suburban idyll about as well as a Saint Bernard in a two-room flat.
She dug out five pairs of underpants from a jumble box of Summer Sale offers in the middle of the shop. Then she rifled through the piles of jeans and T-shirts. How many days should she plan for? How long would he have to stay with her?
She had no idea, but decided to err on the side of optimism. One pair of jeans, one pair of shorts, and two light long-sleeved cotton shirts… . That would have to do for now. Biting her lip, Nina eyed the footwear shelves. A pair of sandals were really a necessity. She piled the goods onto the counter and tried to look as little as possible at the salesperson as she ran the scanner over the brightly colored price tags.
“That’ll be two thousand four hundred fifty-eight kroner,” said the young woman behind the counter, smiling with superficial courtesy. Nina forced herself to return the smile. Overcoming her reluctance, she tapped her credit card pin-code into the register and received the big white carrier bag with a measured nod.
Outside, the heat was unremitting. Nina checked her watch. 7:02. She had been gone from the car for twelve minutes. She crossed to the corner of Stationsvej and Olgasvej and looked toward the Fiat. No signs of unusual activity. No collection of worried onlookers, no curious faces. An elderly man in an oversized T-shirt shuffled past the car without giving it a second glance. The boy must still be alseep, thought Nina in relief. There was a supermarket just across the street. If she hurried, she might have time to pick up a few groceries. She wasn’t exactly hungry, but she had had nothing since breakfast, and she knew she would have to eat something soon.
It didn’t take her long to grab a loaf of white bread, a bag of apples, and two bottles of water. That was all she could think of, until she was approaching the exit and her eyes fell on the ice cream freezer next to the toiletry section. Cold, she thought. Sweet. Plenty of calories. Just the thing. She transferred a foil-wrapped ice cream cone from the freezer to her basket and began to load her purchases onto the conveyor belt. The pimply teenage girl at the register was the only living, breathing human in sight. For some reason Nina couldn’t take her eyes off the girl’s unusually long, square nails as they clicked against the display.
Nina piled her purchases into a yellow plastic bag and hurried back into the brightness of the sunlight. She had been gone for sixteen minutes now, and she suddenly knew sixteen minutes was too long. She had the horrible sensation that time, vitally important time, had once again slipped through her fingers, and she headed for the Fiat at a near-run.
The car was where she had left it, of course, but something was wrong all the same. A woman with a thumb-sucking toddler in a stroller had taken up position a few feet from the car and was anxiously scouting up and down Olgasvej. Nina’s stomach dropped, but she still managed to slow to a speed she thought more appropriate for her role as a slightly frazzled but responsible mother.
“Is that your car? Is that your boy in there?”
The woman’s voice rose into an indignant descant the moment she caught sight of Nina.
Nina only nodded. The distance to the car seemed to stretch into infinity, and now that the woman had found someone to focus her outrage on, her temper was visibly rising like the tide. Close up, she was older than she had appeared at a distance, one of those thirtysomething women who took such infinite care with their appeareance that only faint lines at the corner of their eyes betrayed their age when they smiled or frowned. Now indignant anger narrowed her eyes and added years to her face. It didn’t become her, thought Nina, and felt her own muscles tense in response.
The stroller was parked so that it blocked the entire sidewalk, and the woman had her hands set on her hips in a confident stance.
“I’ve stood here waiting for you for nearly twenty minutes,” she announced, pointing demonstratively at her watch. “You don’t just leave a child in a car like this. And in this heat! He might die of heat stroke. It’s completely irresponsible, and frankly dangerous.”
Nina considered her strategy. The woman had not been there for twenty minutes, and Nina had made sure the Fiat was shaded by one of the big chestnut trees along the road, and had left all the windows ajar. The boy was in no danger of dying from the heat in such a short time, and nobody knew it better than Nina. She had seen children lie for days without proper shelter in 120° weather and still live long enough to die from malnutrition. The outraged mother was clearly one of those overzealous idiots who enjoyed showing others what a wonderful parent she herself happened to be. But knowing this was of little use. The main objective was to get away without drawing any more attention to herself or the boy. Nina lowered her eyes and forced a contrite smile.
“I had promised him an ice cream cone, and there was a line at the check-out,” she said, trying to edge past the aggressively parked stroller.
“Oh? And I suppose the Maison Des Petites was terribly busy too?” countered the woman, and Nina cursed under her breath. The big white carrier bag from the fashion boutique was hard to explain away, and she decided not to try. Instead, she turned her back firmly on the indignant woman, unlocked the car—and came close to knocking down both woman and stroller as she took a startled pace backwards.
The boy was sitting up.
The blanket was still wrapped about his legs, and he was staring at her through the half-open window with huge dark blue eyes.
Nina forced herself to stand still while possiblities and halfformed plans flitted feverishly through her head. Should she simply get into the car and drive away? Should she speak to him? And if she did, what would happen if he answered?
Then she recalled the ice cream cone.
She tore her attention away from the confused, fearful gaze of the boy for as long as it took to rummage through the yellow plastic bag and fish it out. She peeled off the shiny blue wrapper and held out the cone to him through the open window, hardly daring to meet his eyes again. Apparently, she didn’t have to. She saw instead how a small pale hand slowly moved toward the rim of the rolleddown window and took hold of the ice cream.