The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl Read Free Book Online Page B

had neither ocean view nor idyllic woods in the background, but for privacy it couldn’t be matched. Neatly clipped hedges screened the sprawling redbrick and the graveled parking lot from prying eyes, and the surrounding well-to-do family homes oozed respectability. Whether that had been at the front of Allan’s mind when he chose to buy his way into this particular general practice in the northern suburbs was dubious, as it had never really been part of his plan to moonlight as a medical resource for illegal immigrants; but it suited Nina’s purpose beautifully.
    She checked the rearview mirror. The boy hadn’t moved in all the time she had had him in the car, nor made a sound. The blanket was undisturbed, and only a few wisps of blond hair poked from its folds.
    Tock, tock.
    A measured rapping against the window glass made Nina jerk. It was Allan. His tall, gangly form cut off the sun as he bent to peer into the car. Then he rapped on the glass once more, but before she had time to react, he moved on, and was now trying to open the rear door, in vain. She must have locked it without thinking. She realized she was still gripping the steering wheel, fingers locked whitely around the rim, and it took her a second to make her hands unclench. She reached back and unlocked the rear door with stiff fingers, then got out of the car herself.
    Allan had already lifted the boy gently out of the car, the blanket still wrapped around him. He held the child against his shoulder.
    “What do you know?”
    He was headed for the house, and Nina had to lengthen her stride to keep up.
    “Nothing. Or almost nothing. Someone left him in a suitcase!”
    Nina closed the door behind them and followed Allan as he strode towards his office. Jolly children’s drawings decorated the walls, and behind his computer sat a small gnome-like clown doll, obviously intended for the cheering up of young patients.
    The clown would not serve them now. The suitcase boy hung limply in Allan’s arms, like one of Ida’s cast-off Raggedy Anns, thought Nina, with a familiar taste of metal in her mouth. It was her personal taste of fear. It always came to her when adrenalin rushed through her body, into every last cell of it, reminding her of the camps at Dadaab and Zwangheli and other hellholes in which she had lived and looked after the children of others. (And it reminded her of the day he died.)
    Nina pushed away the thought as soon as it entered her mind and instead locked her focus on Allan and the boy. Allan had rolled the small, soft body gently onto the couch, his middle and index finger resting against the side of his neck. His face was alight with concentration, and she saw a single bead of sweat trickle down his throat and into the open neck of his white shirt. This was not the time to talk to him.
    The sphygmomanometer sat on Alan’s desk, within handy reach, but the cuff was much too big for the boy’s thin arm. She found a smaller one and attached it. The child did not react to the highpitched whine, or to the pressure from the inflating cuff. 90/52. She turned the display so that the digital numbers were visible to Allan.
    Allan frowned and slid his hand across the boy’s chest, setting the stethoscope against the smooth, white skin of the chest, and then, in a quick precise move, to the abdominal cavity. He then rolled the boy onto his side with a gentleness that, for a moment, caused a strange tender warmth in Nina’s own chest. He listened again, and finally let the boy slip down to his original position, resting on his back with his arms spread wide.
    Still this disturbing lack of life, thought Nina. As if he were caught in some limbo, neither dead nor alive, simply a thing. Allan cautiously lifted one eyelid and shone his pen-sized flashlight at the boy’s pupil.
    “He has been drugged,” he said. “I don’t know with what, but it doesn’t seem to be exactly life-threatening.”
    “Should we give him naloxone?” asked