The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Carl’s eyes widened in disbelief: Friday was only three days away!

  It had to be some kind of fucking joke.

  —

  A plume of thundering invective came out of Carl’s mouth as he descended the stairs. The homicide department without Marcus Jacobsen was inconceivable. What was more, Lars Bjørn was now in position to take over the reins. It was completely untenable. He would rather cycle through the forests of Norway while being consumed by mosquitoes. A devastating double whammy, and it was only Tuesday.

  “What’s up with you? You look like a pickled cucumber,” said a dry voice from farther down the stairwell. It was Børge Bak, on his way up the stairs in his usual slothful fashion with stolen goods from the basement depot for some investigator who reckoned he’d had a good idea.

  “That makes two of us, then,” Carl riposted, more than ready to take two steps at a time to get rid of him.

  “I hear your trip to Holland wasn’t much of a success. That must have suited you.”

  Carl stopped abruptly. “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, that case was getting out of hand, wasn’t it? You could have ended up in hot water.”

  “Hot water?”

  “There’s rumors going round.”

  Carl frowned. If this fat-assed fool didn’t make himself scarce and take his ridiculous comb-over with him in the next two seconds, he was going to unbury the hatchet with ceremony, and nothing would please him more.

  Bak could see where this was going.

  “Anyway, best be getting off upstairs with this lot here. Be seeing you, Carl!”

  He managed to lift his foot about three centimeters toward the next step before Carl’s fist twisted his collar tight around his throat.

  “What rumors, Bak?”

  “Let go,” Bak wheezed. “Otherwise I’ll make sure those disciplinary proceedings you managed to avoid after the Amager incident are reinstated.”

  Disciplinary proceedings? What the hell was he going on about? Carl tightened his grip around Bak’s double chins. “Let me tell you something, Bak. From now on . . .”

  He paused at the sound of footsteps, releasing his clutch as one of HQ’s new intake tried to squeeze past unnoticed, a sheepish grin on his face. Carl recognized him. The newcomer was a pain in the neck, and of all the possible names he could have been equipped with, his parents had chosen the highly un-Danish moniker “Gordon.” A beanstalk of a lad with legs like ski poles, swinging arms more appropriate to a gibbon, the neatly parted hairstyle of an English public schoolboy, and not least of all a mouth on him that never knew when to shut up. Not exactly a boost for criminal investigation in Copenhagen.

  Carl nodded reluctantly to the lanky lighthouse before returning his attention to the now gasping Børge Bak.

  “I’m afraid I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Bak. But if you ever happen to find the courage to tell me what you’re insinuating, you’ll be more than welcome to come and see me in the basement and tell me to my face. Until then, I advise you to stay in your stolen-goods cage and save yourself the indignity of listening to any more unverified gossip. It makes you such a horrible little man.”

  And with that he shoved him aside and continued on down the stairs. Aside from the little silk pouch he had in his jacket pocket, Mona’s reaction to which he could hardly wait for, his day had been crap. The flight home had almost made him throw up even before they had taken off from Schiphol, Marcus had decided to abandon ship, Lars Bjørn was already settling in on the throne, and now this. He should never have bothered coming in today.

  Effing Børge Bak and his ilk. No matter what they all thought about the Amager shooting and his part in the investigation of that damned nail-gun killing, it was their fucking duty to respect a colleague’s right to defend himself against all accusations, not least those left unsaid. He’d had it up to here with all their shit.

  —

  Amid the noise of builders on the job somewhere at the far end of the corridor and the dense fumes of incense sticks and tea made from candied fruit, he found Assad rolling up his prayer mat.

  Apart from his lopsided face and an unusually pale version of his Middle Eastern complexion, the man was looking OK.

  “Great to see you back, Assad,” Carl said, doing his best not to glance at the time. Assad still had a couple of weeks of treatment left to go, so hauling him over the coals for being late would have to wait. “How are you doing?” he asked almost automatically.

  “As a matter of fact I am doing splendidly.”

  Carl raised his head. He needed to hear it again.

  “Did you say splendidly?”

  Assad turned to face him with drooping eyelids. “Don’t you worry, Carl. It will soon pass.”

  He leaned the prayer mat against the shelves and reached out for some of his caramel substance, keeping hold of the table for support. Who wouldn’t need steadying, faced with the prospect of putting that sticky goo in their mouth?

  Carl gave his assistant a pat on the back. He had made a marvelous recovery since the assault in December. The doctors had been in no doubt: without Assad’s armor-plated skull and his iron constitution, the blow he had received to the back of his head would have turned him into a vegetable if it hadn’t killed him outright. A few more burst capillaries in his brain and that would have been it. Apart from a tendency to depression, headaches, a rather crab-like gait and the slight sagging of the right side of his face, plus a host of other more minor things, the man was on his way to full recovery. It was close to a miracle, or whatever you wanted to call it.

  “I have been thinking about Hardy, Carl. How is he doing now?”

  Carl took a deep breath. It was a hard one to answer. Since Morten had started kissing and cuddling with his new physiotherapist friend, Mika, and since this Mika had begun to apply his considerable professional insights and equally firm muscle mass to Hardy’s paralyzed limbs, things had been happening to Hardy that in many ways were unfathomable.

  A couple of years ago the doctors at the spinal clinics had basically condemned Hardy to a lifetime of lying on his back in bed. But now Carl no longer felt quite so convinced that their conclusions were accurate.

  “It’s strange. Before, he used to have these kind of phantom pains, but now it’s something else. I just don’t know what.”

  Assad scratched his neck. “I wasn’t thinking about if he can move now, Carl. I was thinking more about his frame of mind.”

  There were new posters on Assad’s wall. Maybe it was because he’d been forced to take things easier and had more time on his hands, or perhaps the world situation had been having an influence. Whatever the reason, the exotic scenes bordered with fluttering Arabic letters had now made way for a small poster of Einstein sticking out his tongue and a slightly larger one showing a slim young man with an electric guitar whose name Carl was unable to pronounce. MAHMOUD RADAIDEH AND KAZAMADA PERFORM IN BEIRUT, it read.

  “New decorations,” said Carl, with a nod to the posters. It was a comment that should have been followed by a polite inquiry as to its subject matter, but somehow he never got that far.

  It was as if Assad wasn’t really all there. His usual keen and expressive face seemed extinguished, and his shoulders sagged pathetically under his checked shirt. But he was like that sometimes.

  “I’ve got a CD. Would you like to listen?” Assad asked absently, without waiting for Carl’s deliberations. He pressed a button on his CD player and before Carl had time to react, the microscopic office space was subjected to an auditory blitzkrieg.

  “My God,” Carl spluttered, his eyes darting longingly in the direction of the door.

  Talk about a wall of sound.

  “This is Kazamada. They play with all sorts of musicians from the Arab world,” Assad shouted back.

  Carl nodded. He didn’t doubt t
he man. The only thing was, it sounded like Kazamada were playing with all of them at once.

  He cautiously pressed the stop button.

  “You asked about Hardy’s frame of mind,” Carl said in the earsplitting silence that ensued. “Mika gets him to laugh a lot, but I don’t think he’s doing that well. He says his thoughts are all over the place. All the things he’s missing out on in life. The things he was planning to do when the time came. He’s helpless now, Assad. Sometimes we’ll hear him crying in the night, but he won’t share his pain with any of us. It can be pretty agonizing to listen to.”

  “‘The things he was planning to do when the time came,’” Assad repeated with a pensive nod. “I think I understand. Perhaps better than most.”

  Carl’s eyes traced the fine lines of anguish that crisscrossed Assad’s face. “OK, you may be a bit depressed, Assad, but it’s hardly surprising after what happened to you. In my own case I, too, have—”

  “No, Carl. I am not thinking of the assault now. It is something else. Something else entirely.”

  And with that his mind turned inward again.

  If that was the mood he was in, Carl might just as well throw in his hand grenade now. “I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news, Assad. Marcus Jacobsen’s quitting.”

  Assad turned his head slowly. “Quitting?”

  “Yeah, on Friday.”

  “This Friday?”

  Carl nodded. Had the man gone into slo-mo or had a couple of chips in his cerebral cortex lost a component or two?

  Come back, Assad, wherever you are, he thought as he related his conversation with Marcus. “So unfortunately it looks like we’re saddled with Lars Bjørn.”

  “How odd,” Assad replied, staring emptily into space.

  It was hardly the reaction Carl would have expected.

  “How do you mean, odd? Disastrous, yes. Horrifying, certainly. But odd? What are you getting at?”

  For a moment Assad sat chewing on his lip, seemingly once more on another planet. “Odd because he did not tell me,” he said eventually.

  Carl frowned. “And why should he do that, Assad?”

  “I’ve just been looking after his house while he and his wife were away, so I was there when they came back last night.”

  Carl reeled. He what?

  Assad’s head jolted suddenly and he gasped as though he had just nodded off and a reflex had snapped him back to reality. His eyes were wide-open, the expression on his face inscrutable. He appeared startled, his mouth half agape.

  “You’ve been looking after Lars Bjørn’s house for two months? How come? And why wasn’t I informed? Why would he think he knows you well enough to ask you a favor like that? And what was his wife doing in Kabul? Is she a nurse or something?”

  Assad pressed his lips together, his gaze dancing across the floor as though he were trying to cook up a plausible answer. What the hell was going on?

  Then his nostrils flared, a sharp intake of breath, and he straightened up in his chair. “I had no place to live and Bjørn helped me. We know each other from the Middle East, that’s all. Nothing special. And yes, his wife is a nurse.”

  Nothing special. Who the hell did he think he was he kidding?

  “You know each other from the Middle East?”

  “Yes. We met by chance, before I came to Denmark. I think he was the one who advised me to seek asylum here.”

  Carl nodded. It was quite understandable for Assad to have his secrets, and considering the state he was in, inadvertently expose his vulnerabilities. But it hurt, dammit, that Assad could use words like “by chance” and reckon that Carl’s professional interest and curiosity would thereby be eliminated.

  And just as Carl was about to let rip with all his least appealing personality traits, his furious eyes suddenly met Assad’s.

  Seldom had he seen his assistant look so attentive, his gaze so piercing and intense. All of a sudden, after months of being apart, the two of them now sat divided by mistrust and all that remained unuttered between them. A moment’s silence where all discussion and evaluation took place without words.

  Will you please leave me in peace, Carl? I am back on the job now, Assad’s eyes seemed to plead.

  Carl gave him a pat on his thigh and got to his feet. “It’ll work itself out, you old bugger, you’ll see.”

  “‘Bugger’?” came the despondent reply.

  “Yes, well. For once, Assad, I’ll pass on that one.”

  The poor sod needs cheering up, Carl mused, as he headed for Rose’s office. A dose of her unorthodox personality could usually get Assad laughing.

  Though her door was half-shut and the builders had just launched a pneumatic assault on a wall somewhere in the vicinity of the stolen-goods depot, it was hard not to overhear the exchange of voices from within.

  “Knock it off, Gordon. There’s nothing doing, OK?”

  “All I’m trying to say is . . .”

  Carl shook his head. The place was almost falling down around them, and yet here was this young fettuccine trying to get it on with Carl’s next-most trusty colleague, and on his turf to boot.

  He reached out and was about to fling open the door with a roar of outrage, only to pause abruptly as Rose’s philanderer upped the ante.

  “I’ll do anything for you, Rose, absolutely anything. Just tell me and I’ll do it.”

  “In that case, you can go and sit down in the middle of the motorway, or donate your services as a pontoon bridge over Lake Titicaca.”

  Nice one, Rose! He could picture her exactly, no messing about. Department Q in your face, mate!

  A brief silence ensued, the testicle brain seemingly awestruck.

  Then he cleared his throat, trying to sound as macho as he could. “OK, then. But no matter what you say, Rose, you’re still so divinely ravishing that you make me tingly inside.”

  Carl didn’t know whether to feel incensed or crack up laughing. What was it he said? Divinely ravishing? Tingly inside?

  Had police headquarters gone entirely round the bend, or was it just him?

  5

  Autumn 2010

  As the night progressed, Marco realized the necessity of finding somewhere to sleep, a pair of shoes, and some dry clothes. The people who were after him had called off the search, so the question now was whether they still had a man posted at the edge of the woods or somewhere else.

  On the opposite side of the road, away from the trees, it was a good way up to the closest smallholdings and farms, but how was he to cross the road without being seen if someone was keeping watch? It would be just like Zola to make sure.

  Marco knew the next few hours would be decisive. If he failed to get far enough away from Zola and the rest of the clan, they would track him down. Walking through the woods on bare and battered feet was out of the question, so there was no alternative: he had to cross the road.

  In Italy the children’s favorite game had been a version of hide-and-seek. The objective was to run from one’s hiding place back to base unseen and kick over a tin can. Marco had always been best, so he tried to imagine himself back in Umbria on a carefree sun-drenched day, lying in the bushes, waiting for his chance to kick the can.

  He imagined that the base was across the fields, behind the farms whose lights he could see in the distance. All he had to do now was stay low, emerge at the top of the ridge, and then leg it like a ferret after its prey.

  Think of it as a game, Marco, then it will work, he told himself.

  He waited until the beam of an approaching car’s headlights swept across the landscape, allowing him to see whether the coast was clear. He saw the silhouette of a figure some fifty meters farther down the hill. Marco couldn’t tell who it was, but the way he stood huddled it was obvious the sentry was struggling to keep warm, just like him.

  This wasn’t good.

&n
bsp; He’d have to crawl flat across the road. If he got to his feet and ran, he would be discovered.

  He lifted his head and peered into the darkness across the fields. Not only would he have to crawl over the tarmac in pajamas as luminous as a magnesium bomb, but afterward he would need to continue in the same way at least two hundred meters across the black furrows of the field. And what then? Who could tell what awaited him if he made it to one of the dwellings? Perhaps Zola had someone over there, too?

  He hesitated, waiting until the moon slid behind denser clouds. If he was lucky, he would need ten seconds at most, and then he would be over in the opposite ditch.

  He wormed his way forward, easily at first, but farther out the wet road surface glistened in the moonlight, drawing everything into relief, so he turned his head toward the figure and studied its movements before pulling himself up. He would have to be ready to run if he was discovered.

  The two of them heard the heavy vehicle at the same time, coming toward them from the other side of the hill. The figure drew back instinctively, turning in the direction of the sound, directly toward the place where Marco lay.

  Marco lay still as a mouse in the middle of the road. The hard tarmac felt like ice, his heart pumping like a threshing machine inside his chest.

  In a moment, headlights would bathe the road surface in light and he would be exposed. Seconds later the vehicle would be upon him, crushing him flat if he didn’t move, but the man keeping watch still stood with his eyes turned in Marco’s direction.

  He felt the road tremble beneath him. It was as if the gates of hell were slowly being opened with the sole purpose of dragging him down into the depths.

  And maybe that was what was about to happen.

  Marco closed his eyes. It would all be over in an instant. Perhaps the world after this one would be better.

  The rumble of the approaching diesel motor gathered intensity and as Marco submitted to his fate, he filled his last seconds with thoughts of his mother, of where she might be now and how things might have been if they had fled together when they’d had the chance. Then he thought of how he was about to be killed and the next morning, when birds would peck at what was left of him.