The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel (18 page)

Carl stared at Assad. What the hell was he on about?

“And why didn’t I want to do that, Assad?”

“Because then you would have had to do a different job, Carl.” He smiled. “You don’t want to end up a commissioner in northern Jutland, do you?”

Assad was right. God forbid that ever happening.

“So you reckon he was afraid of being booted upstairs if he got his PhD. Did Malene Kristoffersen tell you that?”

“She said he was happy where he was and that he was not the kind to bloast.”

“I think you mean
boast
, Assad. But then why the hell did he go to all the bother of writing that thesis?”

“Malene Kristoffersen said his mother wanted him to, because his father had a PhD. But when she died, he changed his mind.”

Carl nodded. His picture of William Stark was slowly taking shape. He found himself liking the man more and more.

“And do we know what this thesis was about?”

Assad flicked through the pages. Malene Kristoffersen couldn’t remember exactly, but something about setting up foundations in international contexts.”

“Sounds like a barrel of laughs.”

He got down on his haunches and peered into the safe. Like they said, it was empty.

Then they went downstairs into the basement, finding nothing of immediate interest.

As they were getting ready to leave, Carl scanned the ceilings and walls for anything irregular, but everything seemed nice and orderly. Almost too nice for his taste.

“Anything in the loft?” he asked, as Rose’s backside appeared in the hatch at the top of the ladder.

She brushed her hands across her face, then shook her head. “Nothing but a load of cobwebs. I
hate
cobwebs.”

Carl nodded. Getting to the substance of a case was never easy such a long time after the event. Maybe Malene Kristoffersen had been too thorough with her cleaning. Maybe something important had gone into the trash, or into the pockets of a pair of thieves. There may once have been traces of evidence that time had now erased.

“OK, I’d say we are done here. Not that it’s told us much. But let’s go next door and ask about these jokers who did the break-in. She’s out in the front garden now, I see.”

He looked out at the woman on her knees with her box of plants at her side, and as he did so he noticed the boy standing on the opposite pavement looking up toward the window. It wasn’t so much the appearance of him that made Carl frown, though he seemed both sad and neglected. Rather, it was the way he looked at him in the split second their eyes met. Like a defendant meeting the judge. The kind of look that sometimes appeared in a person’s eyes when they realized they had just encountered an enemy.

The boy quickly looked down and turned his head away, making off faster than Carl could manage to step closer to the window.

Clearly, he didn’t want to be discovered. It was all very strange.

“Did you see that lad there?” Carl asked. Both Assad and Rose shook their heads.

“Whoever he was, he didn’t look pleased to see us here, that’s for sure.”

Marco waited an hour
before cautiously sneaking back to find both the woman in the garden and the police car gone.

He walked calmly up the drive, his eyes fixed on the front door. As far as he could see, there was no sticker saying the place had an alarm, so he carried on round to the back of the house, where he discovered a basement window without hasps, thirty centimeters high at most, the frame screwed tight to the jamb from inside.

Marco smiled now. He was on familiar ground. He placed his elbow against the center of the pane, applying pressure to the glass, then striking his clenched fist sharply with his free hand, turning the bone of his elbow into a chisel. The sound as the pane splintered into a star was almost imperceptible, and Marco began to pick away the shards one by one, leaning them neatly up against the wall.

The opening of the window was a black hole into the dark basement. He lay down on his back, arms tight against his sides, then wriggled forward, legs first. Even a much smaller window would have provided space enough for a guy like him.

The basement was no more than a single room, about two-thirds the width of the house. Lime-washed walls and a fusty smell of damp and washing powder. A combined laundry, workshop, and storeroom for pickled cucumbers, obviously unused for some time. There was a carton of Tide on top of the washing machine. Marco upturned it, noting with satisfaction that the contents had long since congealed. He was certain now. No one came down here anymore.

His eyes passed quickly over tins of old paint and neglected tools as
he stepped toward the door into the passage, unlocking it and opening it wide, his first emergency exit now secured.

Then he went up the stairs to the ground floor, found the patio door and opened it, too. Second exit secured. He paused and scanned the room for sensors, listening for the faintest hum, anything that might reveal the presence of a more sophisticated alarm system, a hook-up to a mobile phone or a neighbor’s landline.

Finding nothing, he set to work systematically. His eyes ate their way through room after room. During a normal burglary they would have routinely skipped anything that might make him think of those who lived there. Sympathy for the people from whom he stole was the worst of all evils, Zola always said. “Pretend all the possessions belong to you, and the people you see in the picture frames there are insignificant strangers. The toys you see belong to your own small brothers and sisters and have nothing to do with the children of the house. Remember this.”

The last part was especially hard to think about.

But Marco was a thief no longer. He wasn’t here to steal these people’s possessions but to take in their history, the tiny indications of who they might be and why.

So he started with the drawers and their contents of personal papers.

It was clear William Stark was a man who set store by order. Marco determined this immediately as he pored through cabinets and cupboards in the living room and dining room. Most people’s drawers were a mess: a Ronson lighter from days gone by, discarded mobiles, toothpicks in plastic containers, half-empty packets of tissues. Tablecloths here, birthday decorations there. Marco had rifled through the like at least a hundred times, but here it was different. William Stark didn’t keep such things. Even the walls and the shelves were devoid of anything reminiscent of times past. No photo of the young William standing between proud parents at his confirmation, a grinning face beneath a graduation cap; no Christmas cards saved in a box. Nothing in the way of nostalgia. Instead, Marco found handwritten tax reports and insurance documents in separate folders, a bowl of foreign coins in small plastic bags, receipts, boarding passes in bundles, travel brochures, and handwritten
descriptions of hotels at various destinations, arranged in alphabetical order and held together by rotting elastic bands.

He nodded pensively. He had never met a man such as this in real life.

He found girls’ things in the adjoining rooms. The scent was different there. The objects that had been left in the daughter’s small, yellow-painted bedroom were most likely ones in which she had lost interest. The aquarium was dry, the birdcage empty, the drawing paraphernalia laid aside, the boy bands on the wall presumably superseded by new idols. By contrast, the mother’s room seemed more up-to-date, more representative of the person she had been and almost certainly still was. An array of books on shelves, a pile of handbags and summer hats stacked on top of the wardrobe. Boots of all kinds arranged neatly on the floor, and colorful scarves hanging from a hook next to the mirror.

Marco frowned and began to wonder. It almost seemed like the woman still lived here. But why the musty smell of absence? Why the congealed laundry detergent? Why the empty fridge, its door ajar?

And if the two of them really lived elsewhere, as was likely the case, why had the girl’s mother not taken her things with her? Didn’t she want them anymore? Or was she planning on moving in again? Marco had no idea, but then he had never been close to any female. Not even his mother.

Perhaps the woman believed William Stark was still alive and would show up someday. Perhaps all these things were just waiting to be put into use again. Perhaps life with Stark was simply on stand-by.

Marco stood quite still. It pained him to stand in that room knowing none of it would ever happen, that Stark was irrevocably dead. Maybe that was why he went back into the living room and began to study the few private photos there were. Right away he recognized the one the girl had used for her notice. Stark between the girl and her mother, smiling. She’d cropped it and blown it up, but it was the same image.

It was a family situation that would never be replicated.

Marco turned round, noticing for the first time the sharp incisions in the sofa and all its scatter cushions.

He stepped forward, sensing the desperate action to which the room had been witness. How else could he describe it? What did this act of
vandalism indicate if not desperation? Was it Stark, who’d lost his mind? Was that why the woman’s boots and all her things were still in her room? Had she and her daughter simply taken to their heels? Was that it? Maybe they’d been really afraid of him. Marco knew the feeling.

He shook his head, unable to get a handle on the situation. Why would his stepdaughter then want Stark back? It didn’t make sense. There had to be some other explanation.

He began to poke at the slits in the cushions. They were dusty, suggesting it had been a while since it had happened. Clean, decisive incisions, probably made with a Stanley knife. Marco shook his head. He felt certain a man of Stark’s orderliness would never have done such a thing unless he’d simply lost his marbles.

Was it jealousy? Had the woman done something she oughtn’t? Had this man, whose life was arranged so neatly, gone berserk because his partner had been unfaithful? Had such a devastating event made him wrench away, from himself and those around him?

Or was it something else altogether?

Again, Marco studied the photo the girl had used. Here was William Stark wearing his African necklace—the one Marco himself now wore—beaming at the camera, the garden in the background in full bloom. So carefree they seemed, so happy. Even the girl, despite her sickly appearance, with dark shadows under her eyes and pale sunken cheeks.

No, Marco had never quite been able to grasp the fluctuations of ordinary people’s lives, and this instance was no exception. The slits in the sofa and the cushions, Stark’s disappearance, the woman’s clothes in her room. He didn’t get it.

Normally, he wouldn’t have cared, but this time was different. He needed to understand, it was why he was here. It was imperative for him to find out why Stark had to disappear, why his and Zola’s paths had crossed. Perhaps the answer lay somewhere here.

Looking around once more, it struck him that the cuts in the sofa could be Zola’s work. Had Stark possessed something Zola was looking for? Had he found it?

Marco turned to the largest of the chest of drawers, automatically doing what thieves do. Feeling all the surfaces, searching for anything that
might be concealed, inserted in a secret place, affixed with tape somewhere inaccessible to view. Then he looked behind all the paintings, lifted the rugs and then the tattered mattresses on the beds. As though searching for wads of banknotes or precious jewelry, he worked his way systematically through the house, room by room, nook by nook, but found nothing.

He wondered about the open safe in the little office with the teakwood bookcases next to the front door. It was empty, but since all else had proved fruitless he got down on his knees and ran the nail of an index finger along all its joints. This too was without result, much as he had anticipated. It wasn’t the kind of safe with secret compartments and minute locking systems. It was the regular, old-fashioned sort, tall as a table, with one single interior and a dial lock on the front.

And yet, to make sure, he stuck his head completely inside the safe, examining for cracks, turning his gaze this way and that. Nothing. Not a thing. Until he twisted onto his back and lay outstretched on the carpet in front of the safe. Only then did he see the sequence of black letters and figures written in felt-tip on the red metal wall above the upper frame of the door. They read:
A4C4C6F67
.

He repeated the sequence out loud four or five times until he felt sure he could remember. It had to be significant. Why else would a person write such a thing there? The question now was when it was written, why it was written, and more specifically: what did it mean?

He pulled himself out of the safe and got to his feet. He took one of the folders marked
TAX
from the desk drawer, flicking through its contents at random, searching for the numbers four and seven. They weren’t hard to find, for the pages were covered in them, sums done by hand, and Marco saw it immediately: the same curling fours, the same angular sevens as those in the safe. If William Stark had written these figures in his tax files, then his was the hand that had written them in the safe.

Marco sat down on a chair and buried his face in his hands.
A4C4C6F67
. What could it mean?

The sequence was progressive, figures and letters alike. No leaping back and forth. Only ACCF and 44667, mixed together. But why wasn’t there a letter between the last 6 and 7? Was it because the two last figures
were actually one: 67? Or was the correct interpretation rather F6 and F7? What was the system?

The Internet abounded with tests and puzzles claiming to yield a person’s IQ. Marco found exercises like these easy to solve, but this was harder. It could be a system for archiving data. It could be a code that might be rearranged in numerous combinations and deal with countless subjects. It could be a computer password, or something to do with secret societies. In fact, it could be anything at all, and to compound the problem the sequence might even be incomplete, written in random order, or perhaps simply in reverse.

Marco’s most immediate and logical thought was that it was a password, or the combination of some other safe in some other location. The question was whether the series of letters and numbers were still relevant. It could, of course, be old and outdated.

He stood up, went over to an old Hewlett-Packard computer and switched it on. The hard drive whirred and groaned for a minute or so until a gray-green image appeared on the bulky screen. No password. Nothing but old games for kids. He turned it off again.

Finding no other computers in the house, he tried to put the thought from his mind, descending again into the basement in the hope of uncovering clues that might give him something to go on.

He was deeply absorbed, eyes once more scanning the room, when he heard voices outside in the garden.

He froze and held his breath.

It was two dark voices. Voices he knew all too well. A mix of English and Italian as only Pico and Romeo were capable of.

“Someone got here before us,” Pico whispered from outside. They had already noticed the broken window. This wasn’t good.

“Look at the glass, the way it’s all leaned up neat against the wall. And look, the door’s ajar, and the patio door’s wide-open.”

“Goddammit, you’re right, Pico.” It was Romeo now. How many times had the three of them done break-ins together? It made the next sentence inevitable:

“Marco’s been here.”

Marco retreated a single step up the stairs toward the ground floor. If
they discovered he was still here, he would be trapped like a spider in its own web. Knowing Pico and Romeo, one of them would be slipping in through the basement door any second now, the other keeping watch by the patio door in the garden. And it seemed just as certain that a third clan member would be posted outside in the street. No doubt he was standing there now, leaning against a willow, pretending to look out over the marsh and lake. But he wasn’t positioned there to enjoy the scenery. The instant anything untoward occurred, a bird cry would go out, louder and shriller than the residents here were used to. And Pico and Romeo would be gone before anyone knew. They were fast, those two. Surely the only ones in the clan who could catch up with Marco. And in a moment, the hunt would be on.

Marco held his arms tight to his chest, breathing deeply to calm his pulse.

His only way out was through the front door, and he would have to run like the wind.

Silently, he backed up the stairs, conscious that they would know Marco’s preferred escape route was always a door that opened onto a garden, and therefore Pico would come from below while Romeo would be waiting at the door to the veranda. Had there been a second floor he would have sought refuge there immediately. A roof had on occasion likewise proved to be a good solution for a thief disturbed during a break-in, but there
was
no second floor and the roof was as flat as a pancake with no place to hide.

Maybe he could cry for help? Fling open the window facing the neighbor’s house and scream at the top of his lungs, as heartrendingly as he was able while clinging to the window frame, in the hope someone would appear and frighten the hell out of Pico, Romeo, and their man in the road.