The Boy in the Suitcase Read Online Free PDF

hurry!”
    “Bloody hell, Karin, you make it sound as if it’s stuffed full of cocaine, or something!”
    Karin shook her head.
    “No. It’s not like that. It’s… .” She stopped short, and Nina could see the barely suppressed panic in her. “This wasn’t the deal,” she said feverishly. “I can’t do this. I don’t know how. But you do.”
    Karin got to her feet as if she meant to leave. Nina felt like grabbing her and forcing her to stay, much like she had with Natasha. But she didn’t. She looked down at the token on the table between them. 37-43, read the white numbers against the black plastic.
    “You’re always so keen on saving people, aren’t you?” said Karin with a bitter twist to her mouth. “Well, here’s your chance. But you have to hurry.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “I’m going home to quit my job,” said Karin tightly. “And then I’m going away for a while.”
    She zigzagged her way to the exit, skirting the other tables. She clutched the briefcase under her arm rather than carry it by the handle. It looked wrong, somehow.
    Nina watched her go. Then she looked at the small shiny token. A suitcase. A locker. You’re always so keen on saving people, aren’t you?
    “What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Karin?” she muttered to herself. She had a strong feeling that the wisest thing to do would be to leave number 37-43 there on the sticky cafeteria table and just walk away.
    “Oh hell,” she hissed, and picked up the token.

M RS . M AŽEKIENĖ ? I T’S Sigita.”
    There was a moment’s silence before Mrs. Mažekienė answered.
    “Sigita. Thank the Lord. How are you?”
    “Much better now. But they won’t let me out of here until tomorrow. Is Mikas with you?”
    “Oh no, dear. He is with his father.”
    “With Darius ?”
    “Yes, of course. He picked him up even before your accident. Don’t you remember, dearie?”
    “No. They say I’m concussed. There is so much I don’t remember.”
    But … Darius was in Germany, working. Or was he? He didn’t always tell her when he came home. Officially, they were still only separated, but the only thing they had in common now was Mikas. Might Darius take Mikas back to Germany with him? Or to his mother’s house in Tauragė? He didn’t have a place of his own in Vilnius, and she very much doubted that the party-crowd friends he occasionally stayed with would welcome a three-yearold boy.
    Her head hurt furiously. She couldn’t think things through with any clarity, and she didn’t feel very reassured by the knowledge that Darius had Mikas, but at least she knew where her son was. Or with whom, at any rate.
    “It looked so awful, dearie. I thought you were dead! And to think you had been lying on those stairs all night! Now, you just have a good rest at that fine hospital, and let them look after you until you’re better.”
    “Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Mažekienė.”
    Sigita snapped her mobile shut. Getting hold of it at all had been a challenge, and smuggling it into the loo with her even more difficult. The use of mobile phones was prohibited inside the hospital, except for a certain area in the lobby, which might as well have been the moon as far as she was concerned—she still couldn’t walk without hanging onto the walls.
    Awkwardly, she opened the phone again and pressed Darius’s number with the thumb of her right hand. She was unable to hold the phone in her plaster-cased left, or at least not in such a way that she was able to operate it.
    His voice was happy and warm and full of his presence even on a stupid voicemail message.
    “You have called Darius Ramoška, but, but, but … I’m not here right now. Try again later!”
    That was actually completely appropriate, she thought. The story of his life, or at any rate, the story of their relationship. I’m not here right now, try again later.
    THEY HAD STARTED going out together the summer she was due to finish elementary school, and he was about to