“What is it?” he asked abruptly, when he noticed how fiercely Zita clung to her mother.
Julija apparently had no idea how to answer him. It was Sigita who had to explain.
“My little son has been abducted by the same people who took Zita,” she said. “I just want to know what I should do to get him back.”
He recovered more quickly than his wife.
“Such stupid nonsense,” he said. “Can’t you see you’re scaring the child? Zita has never been abducted, and she won’t be, ever. Isn’t that right, sweetheart? Give Papa a kiss. Julija, I’m sorry to rush you, but we need to have dinner now, or we’ll be late for Marius’s concert.”
Zita was persuaded to release her leechlike grip on Julija. Her father caught her up and held her on his left arm, and she threw her arms around his neck.
“I don’t wish to be rude,” he said. “But my son is playing in a concert tonight, and it’s quite important to us.”
Sigita shook her head in disbelief.
“How can you … how can you pretend like this? How can you refuse to help me? When you know what it’s like?” She pressed her hand against her lower face as if that might hold back the sobs, but it was no good.
The man’s friendly manner was showing cracks.
“I must ask you to leave,” he said. “Now.”
Sigita shook her head once more. Tears were streaming down her face, and there was nothing she could do to hinder them. Her throat felt thick and tender. She tore a ballpoint pen from her handbag and seized a random sheet of music from the piano. Ignoring Baronas’s involuntary squawk of protest, she wrote her name, address, and phone number in large jagged letters across the page.
“Here,” she said. “I beg you. You have to help me.”
Now it was Julija Baronienė’s turn to cry. With a half-choked sob she turned and fled the room. Zita wriggled free of her father’s embrace to follow, but he stopped her.
“Not now, sweetheart. Mama is busy.”
Zita looked up at her father. Then she suddenly turned and walked with swift steps to the piano seat. She sat, back completely straight, eyes closed. Then she began to play the scales, slowly, methodically, with metronomical precision. Up and down. Da-dada-da-da-da-da-dah, di-da-di-da-di-da-di-dah. Da-da-da-da-da-dada-dah… .
A look of pain flashed across Baronas’s face. Then he, too, went to the piano, and gently stopped the jabbing fingers by grasping the girl’s wrist. He looked at Sigita.
“Otherwise she goes on for hours,” he said, looking completely lost. They had smashed up his family, thought Sigita, smashed it and broken it, and he had no idea how to put it back together.
She looked down at Zita’s hands, still resting on the worn ebony, as if she would go on playing the instant he released her. Sigita shuddered, and in her mind, the unbearable picture show came back, Mikas in a basement, Mikas alone in the dark, Mikas surrounded by threatening figures who wanted to harm him.
“Please,” said Zita’s father. “Please go. Can’t you see we could not help you even if we wanted to?”
ALL THE WAY
home Sigita thought about Zita’s hands. Eight-yearold fingers, bent like claws against the yellowed piano keys. All except for the little finger of her left hand, which wasn’t bent like the others, but stuck out from the rest. On that finger, Zita had lost the entire nail.
J
AN HAD BEEN
prepared for steel tables and striplit ceilings, cold, white tiles or possibly even refrigerated drawers. But the lights in the chapel of the Institute of Forensic Medicine were soft and unglaring, and the still body lay on a simple bier, covered by a white cotton sheet, with a pair of candles lending an unexpected note of grace.
“Thank you for coming,” said the officer who had led him in. Jan had already forgotten her name. “Her parents live in Jutland, so it’s good to have a preliminary identification before we ask them to make the journey.”
“Of course,” said Jan. “It’s the least I can do.”
He felt acid burn at the back of his throat even before they lowered the sheet to show him her face.
She was a thing. That was what caught him most off guard—the degree to which humanity had vanished along with her life. Her skin was wax-like and unliving, and it was in no way possible to imagine that she was merely sleeping.
“It’s Karin,” he said, though it felt like a lie. This was not Karin anymore.
The shock went far beyond anything he had imagined. He felt like one of those cartoon characters hanging in the air above the abyss, foundations shot to hell, kept up only by the lack of the proper realization: that it was time to fall.
“How well did you know Karin Kongsted?” asked the woman officer, covering Karin’s face once more.
“She had become a good friend,” he said. “For the past two years, just about, she had a flat above our garage, and although it is completely separate from the rest of the house, still … it’s different from the way it would have been if she had been merely a nine-tofive employee.”
“I undertstand you hired her as a private nurse. How come you need someone like that?”
“I had to undergo renal surgery a little over two years ago. That was how we met Karin. And since then … well, we came to appreciate both her professional and her personal qualities. It was a major operation, and there are still medical issues. Complications sometimes arise. It’s been very reassuring to have her nearby. She is … she was a very competent person.”
It felt completely absurd to stand here next to Karin’s dead body and talk about her like this. But the woman wasn’t letting him off the hook just yet.
“I hope you understand that I have to ask you where you were tonight? You weren’t at home when we called.”
“No, I was home only briefly, then I had to go to the office. The company I run is not a small one.”
“So we understand.”
“I was probably at the office until seven. Then I went to a flat we keep—the company, that is—and worked from there for a little while. I had intended to spend the night there.”
“Where is this flat?”
“In Laksegade.”
“Can we call on you there later? It will be necessary to hold a formal interview.”
He thought quickly. The Nokia was still in his briefcase. And the briefcase was still in Laksegade.
“I probably should go home to my wife,” he said. “She must be very distraught. If you like, I can come to the local station tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow morning?” Show cooperation, he counseled himself. It might be important later.
“We would appreciate that,” she said politely. “Although the case is now being handled by the homicide department of the North-Zealand Regional Police.” From her own briefcase, she drew a small leaflet with the stirring title “Regional Police Reform: This Is Where to Find Us.” She circled an address in ballpoint pen. “Can you come to this office tomorrow at 11 a.m.?”
HE WONDERED IF
they were watching him. The taxi slid through the midnight traffic like a shark through a herring shoal, and he couldn’t tell whether any specific car stayed behind them.
Don’t be paranoid, he told himself. They could barely have established cause of death yet, and they surely hadn’t the manpower to follow everyone connected to Karin. Yet he couldn’t help glancing around as he alighted on the sidewalk outside the Laksegade flat. The taxi drove off, leaving the street empty and deserted. There was a certain time-bubble quality to the place—the cobbled stones, the square-lantern-shaped streetlights, even the fortress-like headquarters of the Danske Bank, which from this angle looked more like a medieval stronghold than a modern corporation domicile.
He let himself in and snatched up the briefcase. There had been no calls to the Nokia while he’d been gone.
Twenty minutes later, he had fetched the car and was on his way home. Now he felt reasonably certain that he wasn’t being followed—the motorway was sparsely trafficked at this hour, and when he turned off at a picnic area between Roskilde and Holbæk, his Audi was the only car in the parking lot.
He got out the Nokia and made the call. It was a long wait before the Lithuanian answered.
“Yes?”
“Our agreement is terminated,” said Jan, as calmly as he was able.
“No,” said the man. Just that: the bare negative.
“You heard me!”
“The money was not there,” said the Lithuanian. “She said she gave it back to you.”
“Don’t lie to me,” said Jan. “She took it.” He had seen the empty case in her bedroom. Empty, that is, except for that nasty little note: I QUIT. “She took it, and now she is dead. Did you kill her?”
“No.”
Jan didn’t believe him.
“Stay away from me and my family,” he said. “I don’t want anything more to do with you. It’s over.”
A brief pause.
“Not until you pay,” said the Lithuanian, and then hung up.
Jan stood for a moment, trying to breathe normally. Then he banged the phone against the pavement a couple of times until he was confident it was thoroughly broken. He went into the foulsmelling bathroom, picked the SIM card from the wreckage of the phone, and flushed it down one of the toilets. He then wiped the phone itself thoroughly with wet paper towels and dumped it into the large garbage bin outside, stirring the contents with a twig until the phone had sunk from sight into the malodorous mix of apple cores, pizza cartons, ashtray contents and other road-trip debris.
What else?
He had to. He absolutely had to.
First the little plastic box. No more than two by two centimeters square, and a few millimeters thick. No larger, really, than the SIM card, but the few drops of blood trapped within contained coded information a thousand times more complex than the electronic DNA of the mobile phone. He ground it beneath his heel and dropped the remains into the garbage bin.
Then the photo. He took it from his wallet and looked at it one last time. Tried to come to terms with losing it, and everything it meant. Clicked his Ronson and let the tiny flame catch one corner and flare, before he let that, too, vanish into the bin, still smouldering.
He got back into the Audi and waited for his hands to stop shaking, at least enough so that it would be safe to drive on.
S
IGITA’S MOBILE GAVE
a muffled ring inside her purse the minute she opened her own front door. The sound went through her like a shockwave, and she emptied the purse onto the coffee table. Anything less drastic just wouldn’t let her get to it quickly enough.
“Yes?”
But it wasn’t Julija Baronienė, a change of heart. Nor was it an unfamiliar voice telling her what she should do to get Mikas back.
“LTV may be willing to broadcast a Missing Person alert on Mikas,” said Evaldas Gužas. “Particularly if you will come to the studio and make a direct appeal to the kidnappers.”
Sigita stood stock still. A few hours ago, she would have agreed without hesitation. But now … she thought of Julija Baronienė and her family, of their obvious fear. And of Zita, one nail missing.
“Wouldn’t that be dangerous for Mikas?” she asked.
She sensed his deliberation and almost thought she heard the clicking of his ballpoint pen accenting his thoughts.
“Have you heard from his abductors?”
“No.”
“This means that more than forty-eight hours have gone by without a single attempt at contact,” said Gužas. “Is this not so?”
“Yes.”
“This is most unusual. Instructions usually arrive promptly, to prevent the parents from calling the police.”
“Julija Baronienė did call.”
“Yes. Within hours of the girl’s disappearance. But less than twenty-four hours later, she withdrew her allegations.”
“And you think this was because she had been threatened.”
“Yes.”
“But that means it
is
dangerous.”
“It’s a question of weighing the options,” he said. “We have reported Mikas missing and sent out the description of his presumed kidnappers to every police station in Lithuania. We’ve contacted the police in Germany, where the boy’s father now lives. We have even approached Interpol, although there is no indication that Mikas has left Lithuania; on the contrary, the link to Mrs. Baronienė’s case gives us reason to believe that it is a local crime. All of this to no avail. We are no closer to locating your son, or his abductors. And this is why I’m considering asking the public for help.”
The public. The mere word sent tremors of unease through Sigita’s body.
“I’m really not sure… .”
“LTV would broadcast your appeal in connection with their latenight news show. We know that this usually causes a great many people to call in, and some of these calls have been helpful in the past. As we are able to show a photo of one of the presumed kidnappers this time, we are very hopeful that it will be beneficial to the investigation at this point.”
He always talks as if he has swallowed one of his own reports, thought Sigita. I wonder what he sounds like when he is off duty? She was temporarily distracted by a mental image of Gužas up to his waist in cold water, dressed as the complete angler and sporting a newly caught fish. “The direction of the current gave reason to suspect that trout might be active in the upper left quadrant of the search area,” commented off-duty Gužas in her head.
I’m very, very tired, Sigita told herself. Or else it’s the concussion. It was as if the imagination she normally kept effortlessly locked down was suddenly bubbling up from the nether reaches of her mind like marsh gas. It made her uncomfortable.
“We have asked your husband, and he has agreed that the broadcast should be made. But we would really like for you to make that direct appeal in front of the cameras. In our experience, this has an effect even on people who would not normally contact the police. Especially when children are involved.”
She rubbed her whole face with her good hand. She was exhausted. Too little to eat and drink all day, she thought. Her headache had become so constant she was almost getting used to it.
“I don’t know… . Will it really help?”
“I wouldn’t suggest this to you if there had been any communication from the abductors. Any opening for negotation or coercion. In those circumstances, public uproar might serve only to increase the pressure on the kidnappers and might endanger the life of the child. But there has been no such communication. Is that not so?”