The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

The house was bigger than he had expected. Yellow, with an odd, almost vertical section of roof where a normal one would come to an end. It was the kind of neighborhood the clan steered well clear of when out making their break-ins. Though there were gardens all round and no shortage of places in which to hide or routes by which to steal away, the houses were so close together that the neighbors could see most of what went on behind the windows next door. Accordingly he proceeded with caution as he sneaked through the parting in the hedge and up to the names on the two mailboxes hanging next to the red-painted door.

  It meant two families shared the place. On the uppermost box was a weather-worn label, which read TILDE & MALENE KRISTOFFERSEN.

  Marco took a deep breath and stared at the windows above. So this was where she lived, and since it was Sunday she might even be home.

  Did he have the courage to ring the bell? What would he say to them?

  He stood for a moment, a trembling finger raised toward the bell, when he heard two female voices and the rustle of shopping bags coming from the street.

  Someone was coming, he realized, ducking reflexively behind a bush. Then he heard laughter and two figures appeared, walking their bikes through the opening in the hedge.

  He couldn’t see their faces in his awkward position, but his eyes followed them as they went round the side of the house, where it sounded like they were parking their bikes.

  Tilde’s mother was the first to appear again. Dark-haired and rather good-looking, with a bulging shopping bag under her arm.

  “Have you got your key, Tilde? Mine’s underneath all this flea-market junk we hadn’t the sense to ignore.”

  There was more laughter. It made Marco feel warm inside.

  And when at last he set eyes on Tilde, he couldn’t help smiling from behind the foliage of his hiding place. She was so lovely. A bit thin and gangly with big feet, yet she seemed almost to glide across the flagstones like a ballerina, dangling her key in the air in front of her.

  “You’re a treasure,” said her mother as Tilde opened the door.

  “Takes one to know one,” she riposted. And then they were gone.

  Marco froze the image in his mind. He wanted to remember her features. He wanted to remember them for having just made him feel so warm inside. Even the sound of her voice moved him.

  Don’t forget your father killed her stepfather, he told himself. How would he ever be able to approach her, especially now, after he’d seen what she was like? Now, when that inexpressible tenderness he had previously felt for her on account of William Stark and her appeal to find him had materialized in flesh and blood, with light and luminous laughter to boot?

  How could he approach her with the feelings he had, knowing he had done nothing in spite of what he knew?

  Marco extracted himself from the bushes and wandered farther up the road, past gaudily painted homes that only made him feel dirtier inside.

  He had to do something. Even though it would hurt her a lot to learn the truth, she needed to know. He felt he owed it to her. Which was why it had become necessary to go to the police, even if it meant sacrificing his father.

  —

  The next morning he rummaged through the wardrobe of women’s clothes and found a checkered shirt better than the one he had, and more or less his size. He took a Windbreaker from the hall and went down into the basement, where he pulled his clean underwear and socks out of the drier.

  He considered himself in the bathroom mirror and nodded. He looked so decent all of a sudden, certainly tidy enough for what he had to do. All he needed now was a little cash, and that was the hard part.

  If only he could sell off the clothes that Stark would definitely no longer be needing, his financial problems would be somewhat alleviated. But he knew no one who bought secondhand clothes or everyday china and furniture. No one wanted analog TV sets anymore, or computer towers or hi-fi systems, and nobody would ever buy the other knickknacks. So while it may have resembled a perfectly average Danish home, it contained absolutely nothing that could be sold for money. Danes simply adored spending money, so anything that was more than a few years old quickly became worthless.

  Maybe it was better this way. The only things he had stolen in a long time were a few clothes and half a jar of pickled gherkins, and he wanted it to stay that way.

  He walked round the house for five minutes in his bare feet just to savor the soft, ticklish feeling of plush carpets and imagine what it would be like to have a home of his own, surrounded by things he owned and was fond of.

  When he came to the safe, the uneasiness rose up inside him again. He got down on his knees and peered inside to see if he could still remember the code.

  He could. A4C4C6F67.

  The enigma of it made him smile briefly, and then he suddenly realized the letters and the figures were not all written in the same way, but in different pairs of black and gray. The way the morning light slanted into the room made it obvious now. A4 was bold and black. C4 was lighter and rather more fuzzy, as though the pen had almost run out. Looking closer, he could see that C6 and F6 and 7 had apparently also been added at different times. So the code had gradually been extended. He sat down on the floor, leaning against the safe as he pondered the problem. Behind the sequence lay perhaps a series of separate actions rather than just one.

  He let himself out through the back door, standing for a moment on the patio to take stock.

  If there wasn’t a bike he could borrow in the shed, he would have to walk the whole way.

  But there was.

  —

  His first stop was a library in Brønshøj, the closest to his route. He sat there reading for some time, close to the counter where he could keep an eye on who came in. Some went straight to the adults’ or children’s section, others first returning books they had borrowed. The latter were the ones he was waiting for because part of the process of returning books entailed scanning their national identity cards.

  He picked out a boy his own age. Like most other young Danes, he lacked respect for the value of material things and was careless with his possessions. Marco watched as the boy slipped his ID back into his wallet, which he then casually stuffed into the open front pocket of his shoulder bag. Before long, the bag was lying on the floor at his feet while he surfed the Internet on one of the computers.

  Marco approached slowly, and when the adjoining computer was vacated he sat down, silent as a cat, and typed in a Web address off the top of his head.

  An hour later he parked the bike a couple of streets from his destination. Strictly speaking it was stolen, even though he was intending to return it.

  Bellahøj police station on Borups Allé was rather bigger than he had anticipated, monumentally menacing and loathsome to the eye. Gray concrete surfaces, people endlessly coming and going. Marco couldn’t help feeling defenseless as he went inside.

  Considering he had spent his entire life in the shadow of criminal activity, it felt more than a little strange that the first time he ever entered a police station, or even came in contact with the law, was something he was doing voluntarily. No one so much as looked at him as the automatic doors opened, and he walked in almost sideways in order not to expose his face to the cameras above the entrance. He gazed around the place in wonder. The duty desk was a study in streamline procedure and surprisingly devoid of drama. Neat sky-blue shirts and black ties all round, and most of the officers he saw were young.

  Apart from Marco, only two women sat on the benches, waiting for their turn. As far as he could make out, one of them had had her bag snatched while the two were cycling together. Its contents had obviously been important to her, since she was sobbing and seemed to be in a state of shock.

  It didn’t make Marco feel any better as he sat on the edge of the bench, trying to memorize what he was going to say when his turn came.

  When eventually
he was called forward, he placed Stark’s African necklace on the counter together with one of his missing persons notices.

  The duty officer stared at them, slightly disoriented.

  “The necklace belonged to the man in the picture,” Marco began, keeping an eye on the two officers who sat farther back behind the counter, typing away at their computers.

  At this point he’d intended to say he had been given the necklace by a friend of his, and that this friend knew the man was dead and where he was buried. That this friend had told him who might have killed him and disposed of the body. And then he was going to say that his friend was too afraid to come in person, whereupon he would hand the officer the ID he had stolen from the boy at the library to “prove” that his friend existed. The boy would of course be unable to help the police if they contacted him, but at least they would have this to go on. And Marco they would never see again.

  Only things turned out differently.

  “Do you have any ID, son?” the officer asked.

  It was a development Marco had not anticipated. Had he known, he would have stolen two cards, not one.

  “You understand what I’m asking you for, don’t you?” the officer added.

  Marco nodded and placed the ID on the counter.

  The officer studied it for a moment.

  “Thank you, Søren,” he said. “The way things work here, we’re going to have to speak to your parents because legally you’re what’s called a minor. So if you give me their mobile number, I’ll give them a quick call before we do anything else. Then they can be present while you tell us about it, all right?”

  Marco’s brain went into overdrive. “I’m sorry,” he said, clutching at straws. “I can’t remember their phone numbers ’cause they’re always changing them. My mobile has their numbers, but it’s being repaired.”

  The officer smiled. “That’s OK, Søren, I know what you mean. I’ll just look them up from your address here.” He indicated the ID card and rolled his chair over to a computer.

  A second later he raised a finger in the air. He’d found them.

  Marco backed away toward the entrance as the cop picked up the phone. It was all going wrong.

  And as the duty officer waited for the reply, he looked up at Marco again and immediately sensed something was amiss.

  “Hey, where you going, kid?” he asked, raising his voice.

  At that moment Marco heard footsteps from the corridor behind the duty desk and a plainclothes policeman appeared, greeting a uniformed colleague and sending a shiver down Marco’s spine. It was the policeman he had seen through the window of Stark’s house only three days before, and this time their eyes met.

  “All right, Carl, good to see you, too,” the officer said in return.

  This was when Marco made a run for it, through the glass doors and away.

  A cry went up behind him, commanding him to stop, and as he legged it past the parking lot two officers stopped in their tracks and stared open-mouthed. Before they had a chance to realize what was happening he was over the fence that ran alongside the building, tearing across a lawn and over another fence. A hundred meters farther on by the next road, Stark’s bike was parked outside a kindergarten, and seconds later he was pedaling hell for leather toward the city, choosing the narrowest, most inaccessible side streets he could find.

  It had all gone wrong. He hadn’t been able to tell them where Stark’s body was buried or who had killed him. Almost even worse: he had been seen by the policeman who had spotted him outside Stark’s home.

  Marco swore in as many languages as he knew.

  Knowing the police as he did, they would not stop there. Before he realized it, they, too, would be after him. He only hoped that for all his caution he had not been caught on their CCTV.

  Now you’ve got to find a place in the city to hide out where they won’t find you, and where you can keep an eye on them all, he told himself. Once he had found the place he would have to wait and see what happened before trying to retrieve his money from Kaj and Eivind.

  Reaching the junction of Jagtvej and Åboulevard, he paused to consider his options, none of which were without peril. The issue was where he could best keep an eye on them in relative safety. Østerbro or the city center?

  He stood for a moment straddling the bike and then made his decision. At four o’clock Miryam and the others would be picked up by the van at Rådhuspladsen. If he kept his distance he would be able to see who had been sent out to steal and who’d been sent out searching for him.

  At Rådhuspladsen he looked around the square for a place to leave the unlocked bike without the risk of someone taking off with it. It was a tall order, considering this was perhaps the busiest place in all of Denmark.

  And then, right next to the Tivoli Gardens, an enormous renovation project loomed up in front of him. He had seen it countless times before without ever properly having registered what it was.

  Not until now.

  His housing problem was solved.

  18

  Carl had been feeling lousy all weekend. Mika and Morten had thrown a party Saturday evening, partly to celebrate their publicly confirmed cohabitation, partly to blow a portion of the outrageous sum of money Morten’s Playmobil collection had fetched on eBay.

  “He got sixty-two grand!” Jesper had exclaimed at least a dozen times, while they busied themselves putting little umbrellas into cocktail glasses. He was already wondering if he could make an earner out of his retired Action Men in the attic.

  Sixty-two grand. Christ on a bike!

  It was for this reason that the wine and beer, not to mention the contents of a large number of glitzy-looking bottles of spirits, flowed more copiously than Carl could remember ever having occurred at his end of Rønneholtparken. By ten o’clock the neighbors from number 56 were definitively down for the count, and the only ones besides Carl who kept afloat until after midnight were Morten and Mika and a pair of their rat-arsed, dance-crazed gay friends.

  Finally, when Carl was dragged to his feet to dance for the umpteenth time by a forty-year-old bloke in tight trousers and a leather hat coquettishly angled on his head, he staggered resolutely past a ruddy-faced, heavily sleeping Hardy and made for his bed.

  The host couple were engaged in a slow and intimate dance at the foot of the stairs.

  “Damn shame about Mona,” Mika slurred, giving him a pat on the shoulder.

  “Yeah,” Morten added. “We’re gonna miss her.”

  How many times had he ever even seen her? Twice?

  Were they expecting him to thank them for cheering him up?

  —

  He awoke on Sunday with a taste in his mouth like dead rodent. His head was ablaze with both a hangover and qualms of conscience, but worse than that was a more than latent feeling of being at odds with himself.

  “Goddammit, you’re not going to lie here feeling sorry for yourself, Carl Mørck,” he growled to himself, though to little avail. The more his head pounded, the more certain he became that people such as Lars Bjørn and especially Mona Ibsen had to be direct descendants of Tycho Brahe or others who always brought only bad luck.

  A couple of hours passed during which he lay packed inside his duvet, shivering and sweating in turn, now full of wrath, now meek as a mouse.

  You’re not going to get over this until you speak to her, he told himself over and over again. But his mobile remained untouched as those downstairs began to stir, then spill outdoors into the blessings of the month of May.

  And then he fell asleep again, staying in his bed until another Monday morning threatened.

  —

  “Assad,” he yelled. “Get in here a minute, will you?”

  No reaction.

  Was he splayed out on that prayer mat again with his head turned to Mecca? Carl looked at his watch. No, he couldn’t be, not ye
t.

  “ASSAD!” he tried again, at full volume.

  “He’s not come back yet. Don’t you listen to anything, or has that hangover of yours made you deaf?”

  Carl looked up at Rose, who stood in the doorway scratching the last of the peeling skin off her nose. “Back? From where?”

  “Stark’s bank.”

  “What the hell’s he doing there?”

  “He’s been in touch with the probate court, too, and the tax authorities.”

  Why the hell couldn’t she ever just answer a question? Was it a rule now that he had to drag every little piece of information out of her?

  “What are you two up to this time? You’re hiding something from me, Rose, I can tell.”

  She gave a shrug. “I’ve been on the phone with Malene Kristoffersen. As luck would have it, she and her daughter just got home from a vacation in Turkey a couple of days ago.”

  “OK. Can you get her in here, do you think?”

  “I reckon so. Sometime tomorrow, maybe.”

  Carl shook his head. “Hallelujah. Not exactly keen, then, or what?”

  “Sure she is. She could have been here in a couple of hours, but Tilde’s at the hospital all day for a check-up, so I thought we should give them a bit of breathing space till tomorrow.”

  “All right, then. But what’s it got to do with what you and Assad are up to?”

  “You’ll find out when he gets back.”

  He turned up five minutes later, his hair looking like an explosion in a mattress factory, a sure indicator of his level of activity.

  “Carl,” he began, breathlessly. “After Rose and I spoke to Stark’s girlfriend, she and I both felt something was not quite right.”

  Really? Why wasn’t Carl surprised?

  “Rose said Stark had helped her daughter, Tilde, with some very expensive treatment over the course of about five years before he disappeared. In fact, he spent a lot more money on it than he had.”

  “But there was Stark’s inheritance, remember?”

  “Yes, Carl. But that was not until 2008, the year he went missing. This was a hundred years before, as far back as 2003. At the bank we could see he spent nearly two million kroner more than he had saved up. At first I thought he must have borrowed the money and paid back the loan with the money he inherited, but not so.”