The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “I thought she was a groupie when she called,” the Swede added, in something that apparently was supposed to resemble Danish.

  “I did sound a bit eager, didn’t I?” Rose sniggered.

  Carl responded with a frown. When they were done here they would have to have a word with her about the inappropriateness of calling up murder suspects wanted by Interpol and making appointments to meet. There was only one procedure in a situation like this, and that was to go out and arrest the bloke.

  “Rose filled me in on the situation, and to be honest I was appalled. I didn’t even know about it,” the human leftover went on. “Tragic thing to happen, but I can assure you I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

  Quite articulate for a Swede.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to say anything different,” replied Carl.

  “I know, but I’ve been off traveling all this time, so I had no idea. I haven’t been in Sydhavnen since I sold the houseboat, but I was actually thinking of stopping by the new owner to see if everything was all right once I got the time.”

  “I can confirm we’ve seen evidence to suggest you’ve been away, but how do we know for sure?” asked Carl.

  “Well, I’ve got all kinds of stuff I brought back with me. Receipts, photos and all sorts of things. It’s all in the apartment in Malmö. All you had to do was ask.”

  Carl nodded. “OK, if what you’re saying here is really true, then it makes you a little less of a suspect. So far so good. But perhaps you can tell me what might have been on that houseboat that could have caused such a huge explosion? A bit hard to account for, isn’t it?”

  Anweiler turned something in his hand. It looked like some tubes from an old radio, or maybe something that belonged to one of the amplifiers in the back of the van. It was the morning after the night before, and the Swede’s dull eyes were underscored by heavy shadows. There was something melancholic about the expression on his face and the hard-boiled accessories he’d decorated himself with, the pierced ears, the tattoos crawling up his neck, his shaved head.

  “I don’t think it is, actually,” he replied matter-of-factly.

  A peculiar feeling of relief and clarification spread through the van and its clutter of studded black leather and polished boots.

  “I did the boat up ready for her. Varnished the floors a few times, treated all the woodwork. There was a bit of leftover varnish and teak oil down below in the old engine room. I told her I still needed a day to put everything in order, but she said she’d be sure to do it herself and remember to air the place out, too. It suited me fine.”

  “So what you’re saying is that she forgot and all that stuff ignited itself? But if that was really what happened, the fire investigation would have reached the same conclusion. Plus they’d have found remnants of the containers at the bottom of the harbor.”

  “No, because the varnish and wood oil were in plastic buckets.” He looked distressed about it. “It was probably a combination of that and something else. I should have thought about it when I was showing her around the boat. She did seem a bit preoccupied. Just kept saying yeah to everything I was explaining, without looking like any of it was really sinking in.”

  “What about the gas stove?”

  “No,” he said, with a sad look. “I was thinking more about the generator.”

  “Down in the engine room, was it?”

  Anweiler nodded slowly.

  “Tell you what, Anweiler, why don’t you and I pop over the road and explain to my boss what you’ve just told us?”

  He gave a shrug, reminding them he’d already said he was in a hurry and had to catch a ferry.

  But Carl knew better. The unwillingness to cooperate that he saw was an ex-con’s implicit mistrust, the ingrained doubt that he would be listened to with an open mind.

  They hadn’t been born yesterday.

  —

  It was a heavy trudge to the third floor, and the Chivas Regal in Carl’s hand felt anything but sufficient.

  Farewell reception, read a note on the door of the cafeteria. They might just as well have written Department A’s demise or Dangerous criminals’ victory celebration.

  Nothing would ever be the same as it had been under Marcus Jacobsen. Why the flaming hell did he have to go and retire now? Couldn’t he at least have waited until Carl threw in the towel, too?

  Ms. Sørensen, the formidable Department A secretary, had risen to the occasion and baked cakes of such leaden substance that only those truly ravaged by hunger would dare set their teeth into them. Lis had inserted little Danish flags into the icing. And underneath all the disposable tumblers with hardly anything to fill them up with—it was during working hours, after all—someone had gone to the trouble of using his best handwriting to decorate the tablecloth with the sorely inappropriate words: “Enjoy your retirement, boss. Thanks and farewell. Long live Department A.”

  The commissioner’s speech was brief and avoided all the pitfalls her long and often acrimonious association with the homicide chief might otherwise have caused her to stumble into. For that reason, too, it was surprisingly devoid of content. Lars Bjørn, on the other hand, spoke almost exclusively of what he was planning to carry over from Marcus’s leadership, and, more to the point, what he wasn’t.

  When he had finished, only Gordon went up and shook the idiot by the hand. In return, Bjørn beamed at him and slapped him on the back, an unexpectedly accommodating gesture.

  They put their heads together and exchanged some words. The rookie and the homicide chief to-be. What on earth did they have to talk about in such confidence? Wasn’t Gordon just an annoying law student who’d been given the chance to get a whiff of what life was like at the sharp end of the legal system?

  Or was he simply Bjørn’s man?

  If he was, then maybe he was more than just a horny idiot with a penchant for loopy women with kohl around their eyes.

  “I’m watching you, you lanky bugger,” he said under his breath, turning to send his boss of many years a comforting smile. If Marcus Jacobsen were to change his mind now, Carl hoped he would kick Bjørn’s ass back to Afghanistan, from where it had just returned.

  “You deserved a better send-off than the speeches you got there, Marcus. I’m really sorry,” Carl proffered, self-consciously handing him the whisky bottle in its crappy cardboard box. “No one could ever wish for a better or more competent boss than you’ve been,” he said in a clear, resounding voice, so not a single person present, including the commissioner and Lars Bjørn, could be in any doubt.

  For a moment Marcus Jacobsen stared blankly at Carl, then, mustering a smile, he put the gift down on the table and gave Carl an exceedingly warm embrace.

  No doubt it would be the only one all day.

  Thus came twenty years of service at police HQ to an end. There was no big fuss. One day they were here, the next they were gone. It all went a little too smoothly.

  Carl for one wasn’t expecting fanfares when his turn came. It suited him fine.

  —

  With a heavy heart Carl issued a couple of directives to Rose and Assad before slumping down at his desk to wrap up the Anweiler case with the obligatory report.

  Their conclusion was that the fire was an accident and that the worst that could happen to Sverre Anweiler was a minor fine for having neglected to properly dispose of inflammable materials before handing on the boat to the new owner.

  It was a sad and not particularly exciting or prestigious case for Bjørn to present to the press, but a good one for Marcus Jacobsen to bow out on. Last case solved, thank you and good night. There were no doubt other investigations during his long career that had been far from successfully concluded, which he would look back on without satisfaction. Like any other investigator in the homicide division he would just have to live with it.

  An unconcluded murder case would k
eep gnawing away until death itself intervened.

  Carl printed out his report and wrote CONCLUDED across the front page in block letters.

  He stared at the word and began involuntarily to think of Mona again. Would it ever stop?

  —

  Carl and Assad stood in front of the array of cases covering the notice boards on their basement’s corridor wall. Though some had been cleared away during the last few months, more had unfortunately taken their place. In the latter period, under Marcus Jacobsen, Department A’s success rate had touched ninety percent, but in the rest of the country the picture was rather less flattering, a fact amply illustrated by the seeming disorder at which they now stared. Moreover, the past ten years had left its mark in other ways equally tragic. Inexplicable disappearances and deaths, most likely genuine suicides, also added to the clutter of documents on the boards, crisscrossed by Assad’s system of red and blue strings.

  The blue strings joined cases that may have been related, however tenuously. The red strings joined those that seemed more obviously connected.

  A colorful spiderweb of death and disaster. And then all the cases that were hanging there on their own.

  “Plenty to get started on, Assad,” said Carl.

  “My words exactly, Carl. Like minds think greatly.”

  “It’s the opposite, Assad. Great minds think alike, OK? But, yeah, I reckon we’re thinking the same thing: Can we really be bothered with yet another dubious case? A missing person from ages ago?”

  “But still, Carl. I think Rose deserves it. She has just cleared up a case on her own.”

  “Yeah, but that one never even made it up on the wall here, remember?”

  “Nevertheless, then, I think we should put this one up, Carl.” He smiled wearily but roguishly, just like the Assad of old. A bit more peppermint-tea soup, a touch more bone-penetrating Middle Eastern caterwauling on the CD player, a few more twinkles in his eye and daily doses of linguistic befuddlement, and the man would be back in business.

  “You reckon so, do you?” Carl gave a deep sigh. This wasn’t a day where his defenses were fully functioning, Mona being at the end of his every train of thought. “In that case, you can give her the news yourself, OK?” The overpowering manner in which Rose sometimes responded to such gestures made him heedful. She wasn’t necessarily the one he needed a close encounter with just now.

  He tumbled onto his chair and tried to pull himself together. A couple of deep hits on his first ciggie of the day.

  Why couldn’t he stop thinking about Mona? Goddamn it!

  In no time at all his cigarette became ash, and uneasiness seemed to take a firmer hold with every drag. And then, out of nowhere, Rose was standing in front of him, coughing and wafting away the smoke with the missing persons notice in hand.

  “Thanks, Carl,” was all she said, pointing at her little poster. No exuberant gush of elation that would knock him off his feet. Just a simple “thanks.” Coming from Rose, it spoke volumes.

  She ignored his pained expression and sat down on one of the horrendous chairs she had once managed to sneak into his office.

  “I’ve been looking into what might have happened to our missing person here, but that won’t surprise you, I’m sure.” She jabbed a finger at the photo of the red-haired William Stark. “The phone number on the notice is no longer in operation, of course, but I’ve found a new one, so we can get in touch with the girl who put it out.”

  “OK. What is it exactly that’s got you so turned on about this case?” he asked.

  “Assad, come in here a minute, will you?” she hollered.

  A moment later he shuffled in, hungry for something new to sink his teeth into, ready for action with his hand-chased metal tray and three tiny cups of steaming, sticky goo. “I think this calls for some Turkish delight,” he announced, with a nod toward the colored blobs of sugar on the tray as if they were the contents of the Holy Grail.

  “Assad’s done a background check, and I’ve been researching the situation as it stands now,” Rose explained, as if this were just a matter of course.

  Carl shook his head. The two of them together were like a herd of stampeding gnu on the plains of Africa. Heads down and full steam ahead, and if he wasn’t going to join in, he’d better get out of the way.

  Assad deposited his saccharine shock on the table and sat down next to Rose, notepad at the ready.

  “A clever guy, this William Stark. Top of his year at law school. Very strange, in fact, that he then did not rise higher in the hierarchy before he disappeared.” Assad laid some papers in front of him. “Forty-two years old and fifteen years as a ministerial civil servant. Before that, a legal clerk and consultant for a number of lobby groups. Unmarried, but has been living six years with a Malene Kristoffersen and her daughter, Tilde. Malene is forty-seven now, Tilde is sixteen, and they live out in Valby.”

  “What about Stark’s personal finances?”

  Assad nodded. “Twenty years of careful saving up. Mortgage paid off and more than eight million kroner in securities. Mostly inherited from his mother, who died just before he went missing. He was an only child, and there were no other close family members.”

  “Eight million? Wow!” Carl whistled. If he had that kind of money he’d buy two tickets to Cuba and force Mona into coming with him. A month under the palm trees and a bit of rumba to loosen the loins and ruffle the sheets, and she was bound to soften up.

  He shook the thought out of his head. “OK, have we got any statements from people who knew him? Anything that might give us a hint as to why he disappeared?”

  Rose took over. “No, nothing. His colleagues at work describe him as the quiet type, but at ease with himself. The report says that nothing at work or on the domestic front gave cause to suspect he was depressed or anything like that.”

  Lucky bastard.

  “But again, Rose, why are you so interested in this case? Other than feeling sorry for the young girl, which I completely understand. What else is there?”

  “The circumstances, Carl. I can understand going to Africa and disappearing there. Of course it could have been against his will, with all the dangers there must be in a place like that, but intentionally vanishing in a region with no rule of law could be a possibility, too. It could have been a lust for adventure, or he might have just been sick and tired of the daily routine back home. Sick and tired of his work and his colleagues. Fed up with the cold and dark of winter and the political climate in Denmark. Or maybe he needed more sex. Maybe he had a preference for young, dark-skinned girls. He wouldn’t be the first, would he?” She paused to give weight to what followed. “Or young, dark-skinned boys, for that matter. He might have had secrets. We all have them, you know.”

  Carl nodded. If anyone would know, she would.

  He turned to Assad. He, too, nodded, though rather more hesitantly. Like a seasoned criminal, realizing his story had to be as close to the truth as possible, and yet holding back on just the right details.

  It was a very odd kind of nod.

  “Did Stark have secrets, do you think?”

  Rose shrugged. “Who knows? The fact is, he didn’t disappear in Africa, and that’s what’s so damn puzzling. He comes back to Denmark, Carl, right? He’s been in Cameroon only a few hours before canceling his return flight and booking another. And he lands here at Kastrup just like he’s supposed to. We’ve got the passenger list from the airline as well as some CCTV footage of him trundling his suitcase along. And then all of a sudden he’s gone. Maybe for good.”

  Carl tried to picture the situation. “Perhaps he was clever. Our eyes are on Denmark because this is where he disappeared. But he might have driven straight over the bridge to Sweden, just like Sverre Anweiler, and wandered off in some forest. Or maybe he turned round and went back to Africa with false papers, or went somewhere else entirely.”

 
“Rose and I have talked about this, Carl,” said Assad. “Did Stark have enemies? Did he like gambling? Had he embezzled funds? Was there a pickup of some money? Had he forgotten something in Denmark, something he had to come back for? Could there have been another woman who was supposed to come along? We have talked about it all, and yet none of it seems very plausible.”

  Carl thrust out his lower lip. The two of them were certainly getting involved in the case, but it didn’t look like they’d got much of a handle.

  “Not a lot to go on, really, is there? What does the report say? Is there anything else at all that might point in some specific direction the earlier investigation could have missed?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “So where does that leave us? Have we anything at all?” If it were up to him, it would be a short investigation.

  “William Stark has never been declared dead,” Rose said, bowing her head with a dark look in her eyes.

  “No, of course he hasn’t, Rose. It’s not been five years yet.”

  “And his house is still pretty much the way it was when he went missing,” Rose continued. “What’s even better is that I got hold of a set of keys from Bellahøj station. They had sealed the place off.”

  Carl frowned. The bloodhound wags its tail when it picks up the scent and with a single sentence, Rose had got him going.

  Dammit.

  “OK,” he said, reaching behind his chair for his jacket. “Let’s go and have a look.”

  14

  It wasn’t a good day for Marco. Shadows made him jump and even the slightest sounds were fatiguing.