The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  His curly-haired assistant’s eyes narrowed the way they did only when a new meaty case tickled his fancy. Carl gave a sigh. What a way to start the week.

  “OK, so tell me about Tilde’s treatment and this money, Rose.”

  She unfurled her tightly folded arms, the prelude to what was bound to be a longer briefing than necessary.

  “Tilde suffers from a nasty inflammatory disease of the bowel called Crohn’s disease. It means her intestines are in a chronic state of infection. Malene explained to me that William Stark took an enormous interest in her illness and spent loads of money on alternative treatment when the usual methods like surgical removal of infected sections of the bowel or cortisone treatments didn’t have the intended effect.”

  “Thanks, but you’re avoiding the question, Rose. Where does the two million enter into it, and how? It’s a lot of money, I’d say, even for medical treatment.”

  “Malene told me Stark was obsessed with finding the ultimate treatment for the disease, even though it can’t be cured. Tilde’s been treated at private clinics in Copenhagen and in Jacksonville, Florida. On top of that she’s had homeopathy in Germany and acupuncture in China. He even paid to have her infected by living parasites from the intestines of pigs. Everything imaginable to the tune of two million kroner, according to Malene’s estimate, over the five or six years they were together before Stark went missing.”

  “Two million. If she’s telling the truth, which we don’t know.”

  “Oh, yes, Carl.” Assad dropped a pile of transaction slips onto the desk in front of him. “It’s all there. Stark had his bank transfer the amounts from his account.”

  “OK. So what am I supposed to deduce from this?”

  Rose smiled. “That Stark was a wizard at poker, or got exceptionally lucky at the casino. What else?”

  Carl frowned. “I detect some sarcasm, Rose. But can you actually prove he didn’t get the money like that?”

  “Let’s just say that Stark raised a lot of capital that he channeled on without accounting for where he got it,” Rose replied.

  Carl turned to Assad. “What about the tax authorities? Rose says you’ve been in touch with them. They must have known about all this income.”

  Assad shook his head. “Negative, Carl. They had nothing registered in the way of increased income during the period in question, and Stark was never called to explain. So it seems they knew nothing about these transactions because the deposits were only in his account for a few days before the exact amount was paid out again. The balance at the end of the year was never higher than at the end of the year before.”

  “And because he was a regular wage earner he was never picked out for a routine spot check, I imagine. Am I right?”

  Assad nodded. “There was something else that bothered me, too. The safe-deposit box he rented. I began to wonder why he canceled it. Malene Kristoffersen told me he took home some jewelry from it, his parents’ wedding rings and some other items. But then Rose asked her what had become of these things.”

  “Yeah, I asked her if she had them in her possession. But she said she’d never actually seen them, and I believe her. That was why the items were never reported stolen when they had the break-in. She was simply unable to describe them. She wasn’t sure they even existed, let alone had been stolen.”

  “Stark could have rented a safe-deposit box in another bank and stored them there.”

  Assad shook his head deliberately. “I think not, Carl. Malene believed that the jewelry existed, and if it wasn’t stolen, he must have found a really good spot to hide it in the house. She said she was still hoping he would come back and retrieve them.”

  Carl noted the first wrinkle of a frown being born between Assad’s eyebrows. His assistant had never been one for blind optimism.

  “Can you see what we’re getting at, Carl?” said Rose. “The whole thing stinks!”

  Was she gloating, or was it commitment that made her face light up like that? Carl had never quite been able to tell the difference.

  “This case is like a spiderweb,” she went on. “Malene loved William Stark, and he certainly loved her and her daughter. He’d have done anything for them. Then all of a sudden he disappears just like that, and Malene says he hadn’t the slightest reason for doing so.”

  “Then what makes her think he might come back? If he really had no reason to vanish, then most probably he’s dead, in which case he’s hardly likely to come back, is he?” said Carl. “Maybe she’s got a screw loose, or else the opposite. Maybe she’s the one who made him disappear. We don’t know for certain if he actually made it all the way home the day he came back from Africa. Are we quite sure of her movements leading up to his disappearance?”

  Assad sat fidgeting and looked like he was miles away, so it was Rose who answered.

  “Forensics went through the house with a fine-toothed comb. Dog units were out and everything. The garden hadn’t been dug up for ages and there was no sign of recent home improvements or DIY jobs. So if his body was there, or still is, it means something must have really gone wrong for them two and a half years back.”

  “Y’know what?” said Assad suddenly. “Unless he had ten million lying around in a cardboard box and Malene nicked it all, he’d be worth more to her alive. As far as I can see, this is about something else entirely. This is about a man who should have been in Africa for several days, but then he changes his plane ticket and flies back to Denmark ahead of time. Why did he do this? Did he have something to sell? Did his money come from illegal diamond trafficking and he was supposed to meet someone here in Denmark who then did away with him? Or was it an accident? Did he take ill and fall in the marsh? This I do not believe, because it was trawled thoroughly.” He shook his head. “There are too many possibilities here, I think. Another thing is that he was afraid of water, it says so in the report, so he wouldn’t have ventured too close under any circumstances. So what happened after he left the airport? If only we could find out where he went.”

  Carl nodded. “Rose, next time you speak to Malene I want to be there, OK? Until then I want you to check out her background. Talk to her colleagues. Ask around at the hospital where Tilde was being treated when Stark went missing. What were these people’s impression of Malene? Stark, too, for that matter.”

  He turned to Assad. “And, Assad, I want you to go through those bank slips and check if the dates when Danske Bank transferred large sums for Stark can be connected with any criminal activities that occurred just before the withdrawals, that can’t otherwise be linked to Stark. I’m talking about all kinds of things: narcotics, robberies, smuggling, whatever.

  “Any other piffling, little jobs we can assist you with?” asked Rose. “How about we sort out Kennedy’s assassination or maybe square the circle while we’re at it?”

  Assad smiled and dug his elbow into Rose’s side. Pair of effing comedians.

  “There is actually one more thing I’d like to say before I ride out to Bellahøj and have a chat with the lads who investigated the break-in at Stark’s place.”

  Rose gave Carl a look of resignation. What now?

  “Dear friends. This is a festering boil of a case you’ve got your teeth into. Well done, both of you.”

  One could have heard a pin drop.

  —

  “Rattlesnake” was what they called Deputy Chief Inspector Hansen. He received Carl with a pair of piercing, slanting eyes and a characteristic whistle of air issuing from between his front teeth. Totally without enthusiasm. They had patrolled together for two weeks back in the days of yore and it was two weeks too many.

  Now Hansen was the man they sent out when ten cars had had their paint jobs scratched on some quiet residential street, or at best when someone had done a couple of decent break-ins in the district. “Decent” was hardly the word to describe the job that was done on Stark’s place, but s
ince the house had been sealed at the time in connection with an ongoing investigation, Hansen had been instructed to be meticulous so any indications of the burglary and Stark’s disappearance being linked could be properly uncovered.

  “Why didn’t you just use the phone?” Hansen asked, without taking his eyes off the report he was reading.

  “If I’d known it was you who was working this case, I’d have sent a telegram.”

  A smile of microscopic dimensions creased Hansen’s lips. “My name’s on the damn report, or haven’t you read it?”

  “There are a whole lot of nice people who are called Hansen. Who could have suspected it was you?”

  Hansen looked up. “Still the charmer, eh, Carl?”

  “Joking aside, Hansen, I’ve got the report here from the first search of the house after Stark’s disappearance. Comparing it to yours, it strikes me there apparently wasn’t so much as a butter knife taken in the later break-in. But that can’t be right, can it? Straight up, just how thorough were you when you went through the place after that break-in? Are you sure there was nothing missing? A shoebox, a sheet of paper off a notice board, a basket from the shed?”

  “As you can see in the report, I brought along William Stark’s lady friend and one of the lads from HQ who’d been there the first time. We went through the place together, yes, quite thoroughly I’d call it. The attic, all the drawers, the basement, the garden, all over. There wasn’t a thing missing. They could have nicked a decent pair of speakers and some silver cutlery and the lawnmower, too, but it was all left untouched.”

  “What about fingerprints?”

  “There weren’t any.”

  “Professional job, then?”

  “So we reckon. Like I said, it’s all in the report,” Hansen replied drily. “The neighbor’s description of the perpetrators wasn’t worth much, I’m afraid. It was anything but precise. One of them was a bit darker than the other, she said, but not as dark as Africans or Pakistanis, and not like Turks or Arabs either. So basically, it could have been anyone.”

  OK. That was what the neighbor had said to Hansen. The question now was whether Carl could get anything more precise out of the woman.

  “And what exactly does this report of yours conclude regarding the nature of the break-in and its motivation? As far as I can see, it doesn’t say a thing.”

  “I only write facts, Carl. We can’t all go around telling fairy tales like you.”

  “Right now you’re not writing anything, you’re talking to me, so give it a try. What’s your conclusion, Hansen? I need the opinion of a burglary expert.”

  Hansen sat up a bit straighter in his chair and stuffed his sky-blue shirt into his trousers. Clearly, he wasn’t a man used to dealing with compliments.

  “Could just have been someone who read about the case in the papers and saw an easy job in an empty house. Pretty common these days. Funeral notices in newspapers are a case in point. Might as well just tell people there’s no one in. Then you’ve got all the morons who post their vacation plans on Facebook and other places. When the cat’s away the mice will play, as the saying goes.”

  “Any other ideas?”

  “The alternative is someone looking for something in particular. To be honest, I think that’s your best bet.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “Because the thieves concentrated only on certain places in the house even though they were there more than an hour. It was as if they’d been there before.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because otherwise, dear Carl, everything in the drawers would have been scattered all over the place. Instead, they immediately started slashing mattresses and sofa cushions and pulling the furniture out from the walls to see if there was anything behind. Makes one think they were already familiar with the place, as though for example they’d been there before.”

  This was just what Carl wanted to hear. He thanked Hansen and headed for the duty desk. Next stop would be Stark’s neighbor. He wanted a description of the thieves from the horse’s mouth.

  But then something happened instead.

  The moment he stepped into the desk area, exchanging brief hellos with a former colleague, he saw a boy standing by the entrance.

  Carl realized it wasn’t the first time he’d looked into those eyes.

  What the . . . was all he managed to think before the lad made a break for it, through the entrance doors and away, the duty officer calling out after him.

  Carl began running, too, and just managed to see him disappear over the perimeter fence and head off toward Hulgårdsvej.

  His cries to stop were in vain.

  “Who was he?” he asked the duty officer.

  The policeman gave a shrug and handed him an ID card.

  “Søren Smith.” Carl tilted his head. “Hmm, he didn’t look much like a Søren to me.”

  “No, he didn’t. Trace of an accent, too, I’d say. He could have been a late adoption, of course. I’m about to give his folks a call. Maybe they know what was bothering him. Oh, and he just managed to dump these things on the counter. Not sure they’re his, though. Might belong to someone who did something he wanted to report to the police.”

  He pointed toward a necklace and a poster of some kind.

  Carl felt his jaw drop.

  “Well, fuck me,” he almost whispered.

  He put a hand on the duty officer’s shoulder. “No need to make that call. I’ll get over to the family straightaway. And I’ll take these with me, OK?”

  —

  The house was unusually neat compared to most others in Copenhagen’s Nordvest district. Who would have thought that behind the rose hedge in this industrial-looking area with its urban planner’s nightmare of heterogeneous blocks of apartments and anarchistic lattice of plots of land would be found such an idyllic little thatched cottage?

  The woman who opened the door, however, looked rather less idyllic and was certainly not used to strangers ringing her doorbell.

  “Yes?” she inquired hesitantly, eyes scanning Carl as if he were carrying bubonic plague.

  He pulled his badge out of his back pocket. As could be expected, the effect it had wasn’t comforting.

  “It’s about Søren. Is he in?” he asked, knowing full well he probably wasn’t, seeing as he’d only just left the police station.

  “He is, yes,” the woman replied anxiously. “What’s this about?”

  Jesus! The lad must have had a bike parked nearby, otherwise there was no way he could have gotten home so fast. “It’s nothing serious. I’d just like to have a word with him, if you don’t mind.”

  She ushered him inside into the front room, wringing her hands and calling for the boy a couple of times before eventually darting up to his room and dragging him away from his computer and downstairs again under vociferous protest. Separating a teenager from his favorite toy wasn’t easy, Carl knew the problem all too well from back home.

  A run-of-the-mill Danish youngster with hair the color of liver paste wriggled free of her grip. It was not the boy he was looking for, not by a long shot.

  “I think you lost something,” Carl said, handing him his national identity card.

  The boy took it reluctantly. “Yeah, I did. Where’d you find it?”

  “I’d rather ask you why you don’t have it yourself. Did you lend it to someone?”

  He shook his head.

  “And you’re sure about that? There was a lad at Bellahøj police station half an hour ago using it for ID, saying he wanted to report something on behalf of a friend. That wouldn’t be you by any chance?”

  “No way. The card was in my wallet that got nicked out of my bag at the library in Brønshøj. And I’m pretty sure who took it. Have you got my wallet as well? There was twenty-five kroner in it.”

  “I’m afraid n
ot. What were you doing there, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be in school at that time of day?”

  The boy looked affronted. “We’re doing a project, if you know what that is.”

  Carl looked at his mother, whose shoulders had gradually relaxed. He wondered if she took an interest in his school project.

  “What did this thief look like, Søren? Can you describe him to me?”

  “He had on a checkered shirt and didn’t look Danish. Not black, more brownish, like he came from southern Europe. I’ve been to Portugal and he looked like a lot of the people there.”

  Carl was certain. It was the same boy he’d seen at the police station and outside Stark’s house a couple of days before. So far, so good.

  “How old do you reckon he was?”

  “I dunno. I didn’t really look at him. He was just sitting at the computer next to me. Fourteen or fifteen, maybe.”

  —

  It wasn’t the first time Carl had been inside the building that housed the public library on Brønshøj Square. He recalled the time his patrol car was sent out there to detain a drunk who had been playing Frisbee with the library’s LP collection. And though it had been some years ago and the building had since been freshened up a bit, it still looked like the old Bella cinema that, like so many others around Copenhagen, had given up the ghost and been superseded by supermarkets and, in this case, a bank and local library.

  “I think you’ll need to ask Lisbeth. She stands in for our section leader sometimes,” said the librarian at the counter. “She was on duty at the time you mention.”

  Ten minutes passed before she arrived, but it was worth the wait.

  Lisbeth sent sparks tingling down his spine. The kind of woman who recharged a man’s batteries at a glance. Mature and self-aware, with an astonishing forthright gaze. If Mona’s silly capriciousness turned out to be serious—and he most definitely hoped it wasn’t, even though the way he felt about her at the moment she could kiss a certain part of his anatomy—he knew it would not be the last time he paid a visit to this library.