The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel (43 page)

He couldn’t see the vehicle yet, but what he saw instead were men with alert eyes on two of the adjacent street corners.

He didn’t like these guys. Not only because they all seemed to be looking his way, but also because he couldn’t recall having seen men like them standing like that, and in such numbers.

Were
they
after him, too?

He strained his eyes to see, waiting for one of them to make a move, but none of them did. If they were plainclothes police, then some telltale signs were lacking. The intense gaze, the posture, the hands in pockets, the bulge of the holster. But he was just too far away to tell.

And then he caught sight of Miryam limping toward the square from Farvergade, and a couple of other clan members appearing from the Strøget. As they crossed Rådhuspladsen, the men stationed on the corners turned slightly in their direction. Marco nodded. They were police, no doubt about it.

He shook his head. So now it was the clan’s turn. He had seen to it himself with the note he had written on the parking ticket and dropped into that policewoman’s bag, but now it felt very wrong. Did he seriously believe he could get at Zola by making life hard on his slaves? It wouldn’t work. Zola would go free, and all the others would bear the brunt.

He wanted to call out to Miryam and the others and warn them, but all at once the yellow van turned the corner of Vesterbrogade and steered directly toward the waiting flock.

He had expected them to slide the side door open as usual and climb
in, but instead Chris jumped out from the passenger seat with a black satchel in his hand and began discussing something with them. But why? Why didn’t they just drive off? And who was behind the wheel?

Then he saw his old friends depositing the day’s haul in Chris’s bag, and then abruptly scattering like frightened birds as men rushed them from all sides.

In the split second where Chris turned toward the open passenger door, obviously in doubt as to what to do, Marco realized that the man behind the wheel was Zola.

Instinctively and driven by hatred, he picked up the slab of concrete on which he had been seated and raised it aloft as the van revved up and the screech of its spinning wheels echoed between the buildings.

And then he hurled it with all his might, without a thought for the danger in which he had suddenly put the innocent people below.

An eternity passed as the slab descended, and the smoking rubber of the van’s wheel spin seemed to propel the vehicle forward. Marco held his breath. So bound together were this plummeting chunk of masonry and Marco’s bated breath, that if it had gone on falling forever, he would have forgotten to breathe.

And when finally it smashed through the windshield and was gone, the world came to a standstill. Only the van remained in motion, veering diagonally across the street and colliding head-on with an oncoming truck in a sickening crunch of metal against metal. The outcome was inevitable, and a wave of shock stunned onlookers as the van overturned in the collision and was squashed beneath the enormous truck. This time Goliath had proven stronger than David.

Marco drew back, then darted ten meters to another spot by the wall from which he could observe events undetected.

Most eyes were directed on the scene of the accident, and were horror-struck.

A few looked up.

And Marco realized he was on the run again.

“This is no easy
case, Carl,” grumbled Assad. “I would not like to be in the shoes of those South Zealand and Lolland-Falster police right now.”

“You said it, Assad. Snap’s killing was a nasty business indeed,” Carl replied. “His wife’s neck was broken, and Snap had his larynx crushed before being strangled to death. What kind of person’s capable of that? Do we know if Eriksen has any kind of background in the Danish commando forces or anything like that?” he asked, overtaking a car that was hogging the middle lane at eighty kilometers an hour.

Assad shook his head. “No, he doesn’t. The army rejected him. It was something to do with his back.”

“Well, now we’ve got a warrant out on him. We’ll have to see what happens.”

An alert came over the police GPS. There was only twenty minutes until the pickup at Rådhuspladsen. They’d have a job making it on time.

“Has Rose gathered the troops?” he asked.

Assad gave him a thumbs-up. Of course she had.

He stomped on the accelerator and turned on the blue light and siren.

—

They skidded to a halt in front of Tivoli Gardens’ main entrance, leaving the car halfway on the pavement so it couldn’t be seen from Rådhuspladsen. They hurried toward the square, arriving at the same instant as a van careered across the road and smashed into a truck that was headed for the building site, heavily laden with construction iron.

All was chaos. On their side of the road a pair of plainclothes officers took off in pursuit of fleeing men in dark suits while others surrounded a couple of young women who had remained behind. Out on the street cars slammed into the back of one another in a pileup as the van was crushed flat against the asphalt, sparks flying in all directions. Onlookers screamed or stood paralyzed by shock. Some yelled at the police that it was their fault.

Lars Bjørn was hardly going to pat them on the back for this.

—

“What’s your name?”

“Miryam Delaporte.”

“Profession?”

“I don’t have one. I beg on the streets.”

Carl nodded. She was the first to say it like it was. Respect.

“You’re one of Zola’s clan?”

She nodded. Some of the other women trembled at the mention of Zola’s name, but not this one.

“Where do you come from, Miryam?” asked Rose.

“From Kregme, up in north Zealand.”

“I see. Is that where you were born?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never seen my birth certificate.”

OK, so it was like that.

“What do your parents say?”

“I don’t know for certain who they are. That’s how it is with many of us. We’re one big family.”

Rose and Carl exchanged glances. Surprising, how dispassionate she was.

“And that’s all I’m saying,” she added.

Carl drew his chair closer. She had good eyes, not just beautiful, but alive and alert. She had noted how Assad sat impatiently behind her, constantly shifting things around on his desk, and she had sussed that behind Rose’s friendly facade was a determination to keep at it as long as necessary.

She was also well aware that the room she was in was not the path to freedom.

“I can tell you that Zola was killed in that accident,” Rose continued. “You saw for yourself how bad it was. Might that not loosen your tongue?”

She turned her head away. There wasn’t a trace of reaction in her face.

“Earlier today, another man was killed out in Østerbro. He died under a heavy vehicle, too. All of a sudden he just flew out in front of a bus. We don’t know who he is, but we think he may be one of your people. We’ve got a photo here of the man’s face. May I show it to you?”

Miryam remained silent, so Rose shoved it across the table toward her.

It took thirty seconds or so before curiosity got the better of her and she turned to look at it.

Both Carl and Rose saw her reaction. She didn’t give a start, nor were there any facial contortions. It was something more profound, something deeper, like a sudden, sickening pain in her diaphragm. She drew in her stomach a bit, leaned slightly forward and adjusted the position of her legs.

“Who is he?” Carl asked. “Someone you cared for?”

She said nothing.

“OK, we’ll find out soon enough. You’re not the only one here at police headquarters. There are others from your group we can ask,” said Rose. “The guys are the ones who talk the most, in case you’d like to know. But why is that so, Miryam? Is it because you women are afraid of being beaten if you talk too much? Is that how you got that bad leg of yours, Miryam? I can tell it didn’t happen by itself.”

Still no answer.

Now Assad stepped forward and pulled a chair up to her side, almost as though he were her solicitor, a kindly disposed person who would answer on her behalf.

“As you can see, she is saying nothing, so ask me instead,” he said calmly, looking at Rose.

She frowned, but Carl nodded. Why not?

“Is it because she’s afraid of getting beaten, Assad?”

“No. She is afraid of not belonging anywhere, that’s why.”

The girl turned her head toward him. Perhaps she wondered what he was getting at, or maybe she just didn’t understand.

“And then she is afraid of herself,” Assad went on. “Afraid she cannot be anything else than what she is. A simple thief and a beggar no one wants anything to do with besides her so-called family. And she is afraid they will think she has a looser tongue than they do, and that in a moment I will beat her until she bleeds.”

Carl was about to protest, but noticed how the skin around her eyes tightened and her gaze grew more intense.

“That’s enough, Assad,” Rose cut in, but Carl put his hand on her shoulder.

“Assad’s right. That’s exactly what she’s afraid of. Not to mention the risk of our booting her into the asylum center where she’d be together with those who’d know she’d been talking. I understand her better now, Assad.”

He turned to the girl, who sat with her fists clenched in her lap.

“You know who Marco is, don’t you?”

“I told you, I’m not saying more,” she replied, almost in a whisper.

So she was softening up.

“Rose, can you tell me what we can do for Miryam if she helps us find out what Marco’s got himself into?” asked Carl.

Rose’s eyes narrowed. “As long as she’s not cooperating, I’m not saying,” she answered. “But I will say to Assad that if she doesn’t help us, I think Marco’s going to be hunted to death.”

“How do you mean, Rose?” Carl asked.

“I think Miryam knows very well who Marco is and that she feels attached to him. Which I understand, because Marco’s a good boy.”

Carl weighed the situation for a moment. Interviews were an art form mastered only by a select few, and right now they’d obviously run into problems. But apart from that, he found Rose and Assad’s interaction quite interesting. He didn’t know quite where Assad was heading, but
somewhere inside her Miryam certainly realized by now that she wasn’t going to get away with keeping her mouth shut.

“You lived with Marco, we know that already,” Rose went on. “Zola told us the boy grew up with the rest of you. Why not just say it’s true? Or could it be you hated him?”

“She did not hate him,” replied Assad.

“Why won’t she answer, then?” Rose rejoined.

“Because she . . .” Assad leaned quickly forward and clasped his hands around her face. “Because she is ashamed. That is why.”

Time to step in before he really gets started, Carl told himself.

But then Assad surprised him again. “You do not need to be ashamed, Miryam. Leave that to the others,” he said, and let his hands fall to her shoulders.

Before she could wriggle free, he drew her toward him and held her tight. “There, there,” he said, laying one hand gently behind her neck. “You are free now. There is no need for you to answer to anyone anymore. You are really free, Miryam. No more begging, no more stealing. If you help us, everything will be all right, do you understand?”

Some sort of reaction was to be expected, but not that she would be sitting there, fighting back the tears as her body relaxed.

Then she extricated herself from his embrace and looked him straight in the eye.

“The other day, I saw Marco outside a cinema, and I hit him in the face.” She swallowed a couple of times, stemming her tears. “I didn’t want to believe him. I didn’t want to. But then I saw the despair in his eyes.”

“Believe what, Miryam?” Rose took her hand and held it tight. “What was it you didn’t want to believe?”

“I didn’t want to believe something that could take my home away from me, just like that other man said before.”

“Explain what you mean.”

She raised her head. “I only knew for sure it would happen anyway when you showed me the photo of Marco’s father.” She pointed at the police photo of the dead man’s face. “Oh, God, I knew it then, but only then.”

“So the man there is Marco’s father?”

She nodded. “One of the others told me Zola had pushed someone under a bus. I didn’t know who it was. I thought it was Marco and that he deserved it.”

“No one deserves that.”

She nodded and lowered her head. “I know.”

Carl indicated it was time for Rose to let go of her hand. He drew his chair up close.

“Tell us then, Miryam. What is it you now know?”

“I know it was all true what Marco said. I know it was Zola who pushed me into the road the time my leg was crushed, and that he was the one who killed his brother. I know that if Marco says Zola has killed others, too, then it must be true. I know that now. But I just don’t understand.”

He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Go on, Miryam. Let’s hear it all.”

She nodded again. “Two of the boys called Pico and Romeo came back one day and gave Zola a photo they’d taken from a house. They talked about the African necklace and about the man who was wearing it in the picture. I saw the photo later that day and recognized it.”

“You recognized the necklace?”

“Yes. I remember I thought it was pretty. I’d seen it on a man they brought in with them one night. He was unconscious, so I thought he’d been drinking. But that was all I saw, because they sent me next door to the other house. I thought maybe he’d had an accident up on the main road and that they were helping him.”

“And what did they do with this man?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think it was anything good.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I heard Zola’s car drive away later the same night, and Zola never did that if he didn’t really have to. At night he liked to be in bed with one of his women.”

“Does that prove anything?”

“No, but the next day there was a muddy spade leaned up against the bins, and Chris’s and Zola’s brother’s boots were covered in mud, too.”

“So you think they killed the man?”

“I don’t know, but I think he died.” She stared pensively into space. “That has to be what Marco found out, too.”

“What makes you think so?”

“The spade, I guess.”

“How quickly did they come back?”

“After about half an hour.”

“So if they’d buried the body, it could have been in the woods at the top of the hill?”

She nodded.

“We can confirm all this, Miryam. The man’s name was William Stark and his body is no longer in the grave up there. Have you any idea where they might have moved it?”

She wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand. “There was a gravel pit close by. They went there sometimes for target practice.”

Carl nodded. “OK, Miryam, thanks. We’re in possession of some of the man’s belongings and we also have a dog with a good sense of smell, so there’s a good chance we’ll find him.”

“What’s going to happen to me now?” she asked.

Assad got to his feet and quickly left the room while Rose remained seated.

Resolving situations was mostly her field.

—

“The motive, Assad, what is it? If you see the connection, then speak up,” said Carl. “In any case we’ve got a fair amount to go on now, like Miryam’s and Romeo’s statements, and what Marco’s been going around saying. We’ve got two missing persons, Stark and René E. Eriksen. We’ve got a link between Eriksen and Teis Snap, now deceased, as well as between Snap’s bank and once again, strangely enough, our Eriksen. We’ve got a person who disappeared in Africa and a development project in the middle of nowhere that never materialized. Basically, a long chain of individuals and circumstances all connected in some way to René E. Eriksen.”

Assad rasped a hand across the stubble of his chin. “The question is how this chain is then joined together, is it not? What came to the desert first, the camel or the dromedary? Do you understand, Carl?”

“Here we say the chicken or the egg, Assad. But I think we’ve got to assume that since Eriksen is at the center of all the links, the whole story begins in his ministry, and therefore he’s still the one we need to concentrate on getting hold of.”

“And Marco?”

Carl nodded. Yeah, where was Marco?

There was a sound of footsteps in the corridor. Unmistakably Gordon’s big flat feet.

“Rose isn’t here,” said Carl, without looking up.

“Oh, really? Actually, it’s you I wanted to see, Carl.”

What now? Was the dork about to sound off again with more of his dubious bright ideas, or was it just some excuse for not having got his ass into gear with the job Carl had given him?

“I did as you told me. I checked up on Eriksen’s financial affairs and discovered he recently sold off shares in Karrebæk Bank to the tune of ten million kroner.”

“So you said two hours ago.”

“I know, but we were interrupted. I really would have preferred to discuss it some more with you, but then I decided to pursue the matter myself.”

“And what matter would that be?”

“Well, I ran a check on Karrebæk Bank and found out the name of the chairman of the board is Brage-Schmidt.”

“Chairmen are always called something like that. A little hyphen now and again. Anything less would never do. So where are you going with this, Gordon?”

“Here comes the odd bit.”

“Well, come on, man, before we turn to dust.”