The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel (45 page)

“Are you planning to show her all this?” he asked, as she tossed the items back in their respective containers and gathered them together.

She shook her head. “Will you put them back in the ground, and the flagstones, too, while I go out to her? I’ll call for you when I’ve told her you’re here. Then you can tell her everything you’ve told me, because I don’t think I can do it myself, OK?”

Marco nodded, though he was afraid of how her mother might react.

He hurried to do as she’d requested, and when he’d finished he leaned the spade back up against the shed. Everything had to be as it was before. He stood looking at the patio and nodded to himself. He had scuffed away Tilde’s chalk marks as best he could. They weren’t completely gone, but it was good enough. No one would know what they’d been up to.

Hearing the car horn sound insistently a couple of times in the road, he wondered if it meant Tilde wanted him to come out front.

He brushed the dirt from his hands and walked cautiously round the side of the house toward the drive, not wishing to give anyone a start.

He saw the rear end of the car, but didn’t recognize it as Tilde’s mother’s. Maybe he just hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe it
had
been two-toned. A lot of old cars were.

He heard Tilde’s scream from the street at the same instant as he sensed a movement at the corner of the house, but before he could react, a black figure leaped at him with such force that they both stumbled backward, slamming their heads against the rough planks of the bike shed and landing in a heap on the ground. He saw something flash in the air above him, but didn’t realize it was a knife until his assailant lunged at his arm and raised the weapon once more.

“Help!” he screamed, hammering his knee up into the man’s groin and rolling to the side. “Help me!”

But apart from the noise of their heavy breathing, there wasn’t a sound to be heard in the neighborhood. No one reacted. And now Marco recognized the man. These wild eyes, this white scar, the shiny blade. He was the one who had confronted him at the building site, the one who’d got stuck in the rubble chute. And the savagery of his expression made it plain that this time he would not fail.

“Help!” Marco yelled again, jumping toward the shed as his adversary
lunged at him again, twisting his ankle in the process and almost losing his footing.

His loss of balance now proved costly as Marco grasped the handle of the spade and swung it through the air, its sharp edge leaving a deep gash in the man’s left shoulder.

He dropped the knife in a roar of pain, clutching the gaping wound as blood pumped out of him.

For a split second he stared at Marco with his yellow eyes, then fled back to the car that was waiting in the road.

Marco ran after him and saw Tilde in the back of the car, being held down by a huge corpulent black woman. A woman he had seen before.

Then, as he sprinted toward the car, he was stopped abruptly in his tracks by the crack of a gun and a bullet that slammed into the house wall behind him.

There was another shot, and the sound of a second projectile whistling past his ear.

He ducked back round the side of the house and stood for a moment, hyperventilating. It was because of him they had caught Tilde, and now the situation was hopeless. If he approached the car, they would kill him. But what else could he do?

Then he shut his eyes and shouted at the top of his voice in English: “Let her go. I’ll come instead.”

He peeked round the corner and saw the man he’d taken out with the spade screaming inside the car. Judging by the blood on the pavement, he was in bad shape.

Then he saw the woman in the backseat slap the driver—the one who’d done the shooting—on the back of the head, and the car took off down the street.

Marco ran after it, trying to pick out the number plate, but it had been covered up. A hundred meters farther down the road the vehicle suddenly stopped and a small item was dropped out of the side window onto the asphalt.

Then the car disappeared.

Marco was stunned. Was he now to blame for more misfortune
befalling this little family? Was it to be Tilde and her mother’s curse that he, his father, and the tyrant, Zola, had ever existed?

He proceeded cautiously toward the object in the road, full of dread. What could it be? A hand grenade? Or worse still: a body part they had cut off her?

Then he heard it ring. It was a mobile phone.

He picked it up and answered: “Yes?”

“We’ll kill her unless you give yourself up,” the woman said in English.

Marco felt a shiver run down his spine. “Zola’s dead. Why are you still hunting me?”

“He’s not the one who’s paying us.”

His shoulders sagged. “I was going to surrender myself to you. Why didn’t you let me?”

“We’ve got other things to think about now, thanks to you.”

“Let me speak to Tilde.”

“You’ll see her when we do the exchange. We’ll call and tell you where. If you go to the police, we’ll kill her. If we sense something is wrong when we exchange you two, we’ll kill her.”

“But I—”

“We’ll be in touch,” the woman snapped, and hung up.

Marco rang back immediately, but the line was already dead.

When the world collapses into tiny pieces, one is able to comprehend the individual elements of the catastrophe as it unfolds. Thus it must have been for the hapless souls in the Twin Towers on 9/11, as well as for the stunned onlookers who witnessed it all from the ground. For Marco, that moment where he stood in the middle of the road, totally impotent, was but one of a chain of misfortunes leading to the definitive finale: his own demise.

He knew now that he had to make a sacrifice. There was no time to acquire a firearm, for where would he get one, and who would sell him such a thing? And even if he tried to fight back, he ran the risk of not only losing his own life, but of Tilde losing hers as well.

Then he saw a car turn the corner and head in his direction. He stepped aside reluctantly as the vehicle braked.

“What’s the matter with you, kid?” the woman shouted.

It was Tilde’s mother.

The last person in the world he wanted to speak to at the moment, yet in reality the most important of all.

“They’ve taken Tilde,” were the first words he said.

The rest he told her as she stared at him, her eyes wild, and insisted they drive to police HQ.

Immediately!

“Can you pop up
to the interview room, Carl?” Assad asked over the phone. “I have something exciting for you.”

“I’m not sure I can cope with more excitement today,” he replied, shoving aside Rose’s stack of printouts on Brage-Schmidt’s financial transactions and career movements. “But give me a couple of minutes, I’ll be right up.” He hung up and called Rose again.

Where the hell was she?

Even though she hadn’t yet got hold of all the documents he’d asked for, it was becoming clearer and clearer to him what lay behind the events of the past few days. The exact whys and wherefores were unknowns, but nonetheless he felt he was beginning to see the perspectives involved in large-scale misappropriation of development funds and their subsequent siphoning off into the accounts of the individuals who had lost their lives over the past few days. The way things were shaping up, this was clearly a case for the fraud squad and other experts in economic crime. They’d have plenty to dig into.

The murders of Snap and his wife down in Karrebæksminde and the apparent arson attack in Rungsted that had cost a further two lives weren’t strictly speaking a matter for Department Q, but it was hard not to suspect that in some way or another they were connected to what had happened to William Stark.

As Carl saw it, Stark had either known too much, or else he was deeply involved in what Snap and the others were up to. But Stark was dead, they knew that now, and whatever criminal activity he might or might not have been engaged in was academic at this point.

Now his role in the Stark case was closed. At some point a presumption-of-death verdict would be pronounced, and maybe one day a dog or a Boy Scout would come across the remains of some bones that Malene Kristoffersen could properly consign to the earth with a regular headstone. Then everyone could get on with their lives. Everyone but Stark himself.

Carl stared at the two phone numbers on the slip of paper before him. One was Mona’s consultancy, the other was Lisbeth’s.

The way he was feeling at the moment, he hadn’t a clue which to choose.

“Have you seen the time, Carl?”

He looked up at Rose, standing in the doorway, then at his watch.

Almost seven.

“I’m just popping out before the shops close. Anything you need?”

“No, thanks. I’m on my way upstairs to Assad. He’s got the last of Zola’s boys in interview. He claims he’s got something interesting for us. After that, I’m off home.”

“OK, but come down here again before you go. I’ve got something for you guys, too.”

Carl sighed as Rose’s footsteps faded down the corridor. You’d better take care of this now, the phone numbers in front of him seemed to be insisting.

He looked at them again.

These were two women, each with her own qualities. No doubt about it.

—

“This here is Hector, Carl. Say hi to Carl, Hector,” said Assad.

Carl nodded. No need to be hostile. The guy seemed softened up already.

Hector put out his hand, but shaking it would be a bit much, Carl reckoned.

“Well, now,” he said, plonking himself down on a chair by the desk. “No handcuffs, I see, so you’ve been a good boy, haven’t you, Hector?”

He nodded.

“Hector is the oldest in his generation of Zola’s children,” Assad explained, clapping him on the shoulder. “Everyone saw him as Zola’s successor when the time came, and now he is sitting here telling me that all his life he has dreamed of getting away.”

Carl looked at Assad and gave a wry smile. “So therefore you’ve told Hector that he could be in line for a permanent residence permit, is that right, Assad?”

He raised a thumb. “Exactly, Carl.”

Christ on a bike!

“Tell Carl then what you told me, Hector.” Assad turned to face his boss. “Now the interesting part is coming.”

The guy looked dapper in his black suit. If Assad had been able to fulfil his promise, his appearance certainly wouldn’t be a hindrance to his assimilation into Danish society. If only a tenth of Denmark’s sartorially challenged citizenry—himself included—dressed like Hector, the nation would take possession of haute couture’s yellow jersey from the Italians and the French.

“I said there were two things that went terribly wrong today,” he said in fluent English. “One was that Zola killed his brother out in Østerbro. If he could do a thing like that, it meant none of us was safe. Until then, I thought I was, at least. The second thing was the Africans. I saw them beat a couple of guys to a pulp. I think they were from Estonia, and they were plenty nasty, too. But the blacks scared me because they were so young, and their eyes were so cold. And now they’re out on the streets, looking for Marco.”

Carl frowned. Here were two important pieces of information he’d need to follow up on, and then he was finished with the case.

“Why are they still hunting Marco, now that Zola’s dead?”

“They’re contract killers. People like them do what they’ve been paid for. Their reputation depends on it.”

Contract killers? In Copenhagen?

“Have you any idea where Marco is now?”

Hector shrugged. “Marco’s good at playing hide-and-seek,” he replied.

“You heard where they were from, didn’t you, Carl?” said Assad.

“Yeah.” It wasn’t what concerned him most at the moment.

“People like them don’t talk,” said Hector, taking a gulp of the water Assad had placed in front of him, the only luxury in this cramped and barren room. “So none of us knows who hired them. All I can say is it wasn’t Zola. He kept well away from blacks.”

Carl looked at Assad. “What are you thinking, Assad?”

“I’m thinking about a lot of things, Carl. I’m thinking about a consul for African countries, a man who is chairman of the board of the same bank that the deceased Snap was the manager of. And a second man who disappears after visiting Africa. Then a third, who goes missing in Africa. And a fourth, a mysterious African who has vanished from the consul’s house. Then there’s the swindle involving development funds for a project in Africa, and a man who works professionally with aid to Africa whom we find dead, together with the consul. And now these Africans, running around Copenhagen and scaring macho types like Hector here.”

Carl nodded. “You’re right, there’s a connection with Africa in all of this. But unfortunately the man most likely able to provide us with answers to all our questions is now little more than a charred lump in a very small body bag over at the Forensic Medicine Institute. A bit of a problem, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, I sure would.”

—

“Listen, Assad. That’s the second time today. You can’t go promising streets paved with gold to everyone you interview, you know.”

Carl sat down at his desk, shaking his head as he turned on TV2’s news channel. Maybe they’d be able to catch something about the arrests they’d made during the day.

“But why not, Carl? It’s so much better than thumbscrews, I’d say. Carrots are always better then whips.”

“So are you suggesting that if you couldn’t trick them with your promises, you’d torture them?”

“Torture, Carl, what is torture, exactly? Can it not be many things?”

They stared at each other for a moment, but neither of them took the initiative to carry on the discussion. It was too volatile an issue.

“I had a word with the guys in the violent crime section,” said Carl. “They’ve heard nothing involving Africans the last few days, apart from the usual pusher problems on Istedgade. So what are we supposed to do? We can’t just go running up to Lars Bjørn with vague accusations about two Africans whose identities we don’t know, saying they pose a threat to a lad whose whereabouts are unknown, can we? I don’t know about you, but I reckon we’re done with this case.”

“Say, do you know what, Carl? You will not find the camel if the sand is lying in dunes, but . . . erm, how does it go, now?” Assad stared at him, perplexed. It must have been the first time his camels had let him down.

Carl tapped a cigarette from his pack. The two phone numbers were still sitting there in front of him, and soon he’d be heading home. What to do?

“What I mean is, if the sand is lying in large . . .”

Objectively, Mona probably wouldn’t show that much interest, but if he rang Lisbeth instead, wouldn’t that mean Mona was out of his life for good? Was that he wanted?”

“Now I have it, Carl. If the sand piles up into dunes, you will not find the camel. But if the wind begins blowing hard, you can easily see the humps. Ha-ha. That was a good one, don’t you think?”

Carl looked up at him wearily.

“And?”

“It means we cannot know the whole truth until the wind begins to blow a little. I mean, how can we know we are done with this case if we don’t poke around in it some more?”

“Well, to begin with there’s no wind blowing, and besides that we haven’t the manpower at our disposal to work up a gale out there, have we? So don’t you think we should give those camels a break and let them have a little rest in the dunes?”

“You understand the moral of the story, Carl, that’s the main thing. But then we’ll just have to wait until the wind starts blowing by itself, won’t we?”

Carl nodded. This was a moral he liked. If nothing else, it meant he could allow himself to throw his feet up on his desk and do sod all.

“OK. Now I’m going to have a smoke and watch the news. And if Rose isn’t back in ten minutes, I’m gone.”

He wedged the cigarette between his lips, already sensing the assuaging effect of the nicotine his body craved. He’d been waiting all day for it, and now . . .

“Forget about that cigarette, Carl,” came a voice from the doorway.

And there stood Rose, with the heartiest smile he’d ever seen her wearing, holding up a paper bag from the bakery.

“Warm wheat buns, lads. I’ll bet you forgot today’s supposed to be a holiday. It’s the fourth Friday after Easter.”

She opened the bag and a wonderful aroma filled the room, bestowing upon their gloomy surroundings an undeserved aura of everyday coziness as well as dim recollections of candles, radio dramas, and end-of-season balls at the Hotel Phønix.

“Delicious,” Carl conceded, already salivating.

And then the phone rang.

“We’ve got two people standing at the desk here, asking for Carl Mørck. Do you want us to send them down?”

—

Marco was scared. Much more than he had been out on the streets. There, at least, he’d had a chance, but now he felt like he was throwing himself directly to the lions.

His breathing grew heavier as he passed through the corridors, feeling hemmed in by the cold, unforgiving walls of Copenhagen police headquarters. From the outside, the place looked like a fortress, but inside it felt even worse, and at this moment they were leading him down into a basement from which the only way a person could get out seemed to be the same way as he got in. All of a sudden he was a cornered rat surrounded by a pack of club-wielding boys, out to kill him for the fun of it.

And Tilde’s mother, who had not loosened her grip on him since parking her car, wasn’t making things any better. All the way to headquarters
she’d screamed and yelled at him in desperation. That she’d been able to find her way with the shock and adrenaline coursing through her body was a small miracle.

But Marco understood her, for now he had told her all about Tilde and the black men and their threats, and what had happened to William Stark. She had reacted fiercely, attacking him verbally, then crying, her entire body trembling. So much pain and anxiety all at once was too much for her to manage. And suddenly she had struck him, only to regret it immediately and apologize in a shaky voice. And now, as they hurried down the stairs to meet the police officers with whom he’d been playing cat-and-mouse for the past few days, it seemed like she was about to undergo a total meltdown.

Marco knew this was to be his final hour as a free person in a free country. If he survived what the evening had in store for him, he was sure he would be thrown out of the country, but to where?

With all that had befallen him in life, he feared the worst.

Therefore the sight that confronted him was completely unexpected.

Mørck and his two assistants were seated around an untidy desk, munching bread rolls that crunched noisily as the TV news blathered in the background. A sweet, reassuring aroma hung in the air, and the faces that turned toward them were friendly enough, but also profoundly astonished.

Once they realized who their visitors were, all three rose to their feet abruptly, as though witnessing nothing less than a miracle.

“You’re Marco, aren’t you?” said Mørck, stepping toward him. He towered above the boy as he reached out with his long arms.

Marco’s heart was pounding. The man from whom he had fled had stopped smiling now. His lips were pressed tight, his eyes much too intense.

And then he grasped him and lifted him up, as though he were about to crush his every bone.

“Thank God,” he said quietly, clutching him to his chest for a moment. “You’re OK.”

He set him down again and bent forward to look into his face.

“There’s a lot we want to ask you about. Do you want to talk to us now?”

Marco nodded, holding his breath. The man had put his arms around him. He seemed accommodating and glad to see him. It was just too overwhelming. If he didn’t watch out, he’d start to cry. This was the last thing he’d been expecting.

“Good boy,” said the one called Assad, and patted him on the head. Even the girl with the black makeup smiled at him.

“Thank you for bringing him in, Malene,” said Mørck.

She nodded, and then it burst out of her: “Something terrible’s happened. Please help us!”

Mørck caught her gaze. Now they could all see the desperation in her eyes. “What happened, Malene?”

It was a simple question, but it triggered a burst of tears, beseeching, and rampant alarm. Marco could see how hard it was for the three police officers to follow her disjointed, staccato narrative.

But when she said two Africans who were pursuing Marco had taken Tilde, they stiffened.