The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “We’re a bit short-staffed at the moment due to illness, so we’re all taking turns to lend a hand. I’ve only been assisting here for a month, so you want to show your colleagues you’re not afraid to give it a go.”

  He was in no doubt she was able.

  “Yes, I do remember the boy you mention. In fact, I know him better than you might think. It’s actually quite odd to see him all the way out here in Brønshøj.”

  “You mean you’d seen him before, somewhere else?”

  “Yes. Normally I’m deputy head of the Østerbro branch on Dag Hammarskjölds Allé. He’s been coming there every single day for months.”

  Carl smiled, partly because of what he’d just been told and partly because of Lisbeth herself, in equal portions. “Excellent. Perhaps you also remember what his name is.”

  She shook her head. “He always came at different times each day and immediately sat down in one of the chairs to read, or else he’d go over to the computers. He never borrowed anything, so we never needed to see his ID.”

  Carl stood completely still for a moment, trying to gauge what lay behind those candid blue eyes. Was she flirting with him or just surprised by the singularity of the coincidence?

  “He seems to be quite a fantastic boy. All of us at the Østerbro branch agreed we’d never seen someone his age so eager to learn. It became a kind of a sport for one of my colleagues to check what he’d been reading after he put the books back on the shelves.”

  OK, so it must have been the boy she fancied.

  “What was he doing here in Brønshøj, then?”

  “He just turned up one day. Sat over there reading magazines, technical stuff, then he went over to the computers. I don’t know how long he was there, because I swapped duties with one of the other librarians.”

  “Did things go missing from people’s bags a lot when you were at Østerbro?”

  She baulked at the question. “Why do you ask? Do you suspect him of stealing? I’d have a hard time believing it, I can tell you.”

  It was all Carl needed to know. If she couldn’t believe it, he certainly wasn’t going to destroy her image of the lad.

  He shook his head. “This colleague at the Østerbro branch who was curious about what the boy was reading, I’d like to speak to her. Do you know where I can get in touch with her? Would she be at work now, do you think?”

  “Liselotte’s on maternity leave. But I can check and see where she lives if you want to call her. Just a minute.”

  His eyes followed the gentle sway of her hips in her tight skirt all the way to the office. Christ, if only Mona would call tonight and tell him how sorry she was.

  —

  Liselotte Brix was most certainly pregnant. In fact, she was so pregnant he would have been unable to describe her body’s proportions without making a chauvinistic reference to her condition.

  She received him with arms extended over her midriff, looking clearly dismayed in a home already fully equipped for the baby’s arrival. Packs of disposable diapers lined the shelf. The cradle, complete with canopy and battery-driven mobile, ready and waiting in the corner. Apparently she wasn’t superstitious.

  “I do hope the boy hasn’t got himself into trouble. He was just so cute.” She patted her distended navel. “If I knew what he was called I’d name this little terror here after him!”

  Carl smiled. “No, we’re looking for him because we think he may have some important information in connection with a missing persons case.”

  “God, how exciting.”

  “Your colleague, Lisbeth, told me you used to check up on what he’d been reading.”

  “Yes, it was because he seemed to devour almost anything. And also because he never noticed how fascinated we were by him. It was really funny.”

  “Can you give me a couple of examples of things he read?”

  “Like I said, it was everything, really. At one point he was heavily into career choices and forms of education. Everything from ‘What Do I Want to be When I Grow Up?’ pamphlets to university admissions criteria or brochures on preparatory courses. All pretty advanced for a boy his age. Other times he’d be reading about Denmark and Danish society. Sociology, domestic politics, contemporary Danish history. Books on the Danish language, dictionaries. I remember once he spent time studying a handbook on Danish opera. There were books on Gypsies, on the legal system, biology, and math. There were really no limits to his curiosity. He read novels, too, even the old Danish classics. And yet he never once borrowed anything to take home with him. Strange, don’t you think?”

  “What was the reason for that, do you reckon?”

  “I have no idea. But he was different, you see. A bit like an immigrant, but not like the other immigrant boys. I thought he might be a Gypsy, in which case his being so bookish was probably frowned upon at home.”

  “A Gypsy?”

  “Yeah, you know. That lovely brown skin color, and all those black curls. But he could also have been Spanish or Greek. His accent was different, though, more American sounding, but he definitely wasn’t mulatto.”

  “OK.”

  “The odd thing was, his accent seemed to dwindle away. His Danish kept improving by the week and his vocabulary expanded all the time. It seemed totally autistic, the way he just soaked everything up.”

  “If I understand you right, there were never any adults with him. Was there anything else that might indicate where he belonged?”

  “Not really, no.” Liselotte’s eyebrows gave a slight twitch. Most likely due to a kick from her baby. “He was just so cute, that’s all.”

  “Do you know if he still uses the branch on Dag Hammarskjölds Allé?”

  “Yes, he does. I talk every day with one of the girls who works there. Just this past week he hasn’t been coming much, but I suppose you can ask them yourself.”

  19

  “That’s correct, Bjørn. I took those effects with me from Bellahøj and now we’ve taken on the William Stark case.”

  Marcus Jacobsen’s acting replacement nodded, though it seemed clear to Carl he would have preferred to have shaken his head instead. Again, it was Bjørn in a nutshell, never the one to let a person know what he was really thinking. But Carl had him sussed.

  “Good,” Bjørn replied, again meaning something else. “Hansen out in Bellahøj says you swiped those items straight off their counter without their consent. I presume you know you’re out of order there, Carl, seeing as how the effects are connected with a break-in on their turf.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Hansen says a lot of things when he ought to keep his mouth shut. This is about a missing person, which is not exactly Rattlesnake’s specialty. But if he thinks he’d enjoy having a gawp at the necklace and that poster, he can drop by and I’ll show them to him. The bottom line is that I’ve taken over the case.”

  “Taken over? Pretty big words, coming from you, Carl.” Bjørn smiled, mouth half-open. It didn’t suit him, though no doubt he thought it did. “You say you saw this boy outside Stark’s house and then again at Bellahøj station, and both times he got away? Yes, Carl, that’s definitely what I’d call taking over.”

  “Listen here, Bjørn! I’ll get hold of him, don’t you worry. You’re not talking to one of your own dickheads now. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Bjørn straightened up in his chair behind Marcus Jacobsen’s desk. Wrong man, wrong desk. It couldn’t have been more obvious.

  “Temper, temper, Carl. Just a little misstep, I’m sure, but let’s move on. It is my impression the time has come to make a few changes in Department Q. You will remain as leader of the department, of course, but during the last couple of years our work seems to have overlapped somewhat, which both Marcus and I have found disruptive.”

  Carl shifted forward in his chair.

  What the fuck was this?

  —


  Carl’s hands still trembled with rage as he accepted Assad’s intricately decorated little cup of pungent spiced tea. He stared dejectedly into the slimy substance. It looked poisonous, but that was nothing compared to its smell.

  “Take it easy, Carl,” said his assistant. “We just carry on as normal. No one is going up to the third floor, and I will not work for Bjørn. That I will take care of.”

  Carl raised his head. “And you reckon you’ve the clout for that, do you? May I ask what makes you think that? Was it part of the deal for looking after his house?”

  Assad’s eyes wavered for a second like those of a criminal who stops himself from confessing at the last moment, or those of a boy loath to reveal his true feelings for a girl.

  “I don’t know what this ‘clout’ means, but I will take care of it, Carl. Lars Bjørn will listen to me.” He tried to smile his way out of his predicament, well knowing the issue was still open.

  But then his face lit up with a sly look. This was going to be about camels, Carl could tell.

  “Just remember the story about the camel who thought he was an ostrich but got sand in his eyes when he was frightened and stuck his head into the dunes.”

  Carl shook his head wearily. If he added up how many camels Assad had driveled on about, the Sahara wouldn’t have room for them all.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean, Assad?”

  “You see, Carl, if only we stick to our true nature we will never get sand in our eyes.”

  “Thanks for the advice. The fact of the matter, however, is that I am not a camel. Remember that, Assad. Besides, I haven’t a clue as to that animal’s intellectual capacity, but I can tell you that to me it looks like you’re the one sticking his head into the sand. Don’t you reckon it’s about time you came clean and told me how come Bjørn suddenly out of nowhere, and despite your apparent inexperience, places you down here with me, whereupon you begin to demonstrate skills and abilities normally associated with years of policing experience? If I want an answer to that, do I go to you or Bjørn?”

  Assad frowned, and deep in his trouser pockets Carl sensed a pair of clenched fists.

  “What’s going on here?” came Rose’s blowtorch voice from the doorway. “There’s enough sparks flying around in here to light a bonfire.”

  Carl turned his head reluctantly toward her. “That arsehole Lars Bjørn has decreed that Assad is going to be working for him and that you and me, Rose, are being moved up to the third floor. And now Assad claims he can talk him out of it. Naturally I asked him what the hell made him think he had the clout.”

  Rose nodded pensively. “And what did you say to that, Assad?”

  The bulges in Assad’s pockets smoothed out. The sparkle in his dark eyes returned. He’d extracted himself from Carl’s web. Shit!

  “Bjørn and I go back some time and he owes me a favor. We know each other from some work in the Middle East. I cannot tell you more. I’m bound hand and foot.”

  “Can’t, or won’t, Assad?”

  “Yes” was all he said.

  Fifteen minutes later Carl’s phone rang and Lis informed him that Assad was now sitting in Bjørn’s office and if it wasn’t too much to ask, might the esteemed Detective Inspector Mørck care to join them immediately and bring Rose with him?

  “I’m not keen on Assad and Bjørn chumming up like this, Carl,” said Rose, as they trudged up the stairs. “What’s your feeling about it? Any idea what’s going on with those two?”

  Carl raised an eyebrow. Had she really just asked him for his opinion? There was a first time for everything.

  “I—” was all he managed to say before she cut him off. Back to normal.

  “Personally, I don’t like it one bit.”

  And that was all she had to say on the matter.

  —

  Bjørn’s office had undergone a transformation during the last two hours. Lis and an army of workers had raided the shelves and cupboards, leaving them all but empty, and now a service technician was busy screwing an enormous whiteboard on to the wall just where Marcus Jacobsen used to have photos from crime scenes.

  Assad was seated in a chair that had doubtless been removed from the commissioner’s office. Hopefully without her consent, Carl thought, imagining the repercussions with glee.

  “Assad and I have been discussing matters a bit,” said Bjørn. “It seems he’s declining the offer I’ve made him.”

  Assad nodded emphatically. Couldn’t have been much of an offer, Carl mused, feeling increasingly like for the time being he couldn’t be bothered with anything or anyone on top of the hangover he was still nursing after the weekend’s exploits.

  “Far be it from me to spoil his plans, or your routines, for that matter. I just want the three of you to know that the administration of Department Q belongs under me, for which reason it is imperative I maintain the necessary control over what’s going on down there.”

  Carl looked over at Rose. She was already about to blow.

  “I’m sure you know that all private businesses of a certain size use so-called controllers whose job it is to keep an eye on the viability of the organization’s various operational sections. In our case we can say that viability is determined on the basis of two main factors. One factor is our success rate in clearing up individual cases, and in this respect your department scores reasonably well, thank God.”

  Fucking prick, I’m going to get him for this, Carl promised himself. He deserved to be skewered on a stick and toasted in boiling oil, he did. Reasonably well! Was understatement the new leadership strategy?

  But Rose beat him to it. “Now you listen to me, Mister So-called Boss of Department A. I’d give my right arm to head up Department Q’s investigations and do it half as well as Carl.” Then she turned to Assad and bellowed into his face: “And you, Assad! What’s the matter with you? Have you gone soft in the head, since you can’t give up your seat for a lady when she’s standing up?”

  The shock almost launched his eyebrows into orbit.

  “Right,” she continued, having sat down in the vacated chair. “Now we’re at eye-level, Bjørn. Get used to it.”

  “On the other hand,” Bjørn went on, unmoved, “your level of expenditure is unsatisfactory. In terms of man-hours against budget, Department Q is nearly twice as costly as Department A. That needs to be rectified. For that reason, I’ve taken on a new man to keep an eye on costs. I believe you’ve already met Gordon Taylor.”

  Carl was gobsmacked. Gordon? Bjørn had hired Gordon to control Department Q?

  “No way am I having that gangly scaffold snooping around in my basement. He’s still wet behind the ears, for Chrissake! Is he even out of secondary school yet?”

  “He’s in his final year of law school and getting top marks to boot. He’ll be joining us full-time before long.”

  “Like hell he will!” Carl threw up his hands as though in self-protection and made ready to back out of Bjørn’s office. “You can send him back where he came from, we simply haven’t the time to waste on him.”

  Then the situation took a turn that Carl never, in his wildest imagination, could have predicted.

  “We can give it a try, can’t we, Carl?” said Assad.

  “C’mon, he’s not that bad,” Rose pitched in.

  Checkmate. Thanks for nothing.

  —

  Carl watched the fizz in his glass and tried to remember how many headache tablets he’d actually taken since their meeting with Bjørn.

  Soluble relief in large amounts invariably wrecked your stomach, he knew that, but on the other hand it got his brain working again and now he felt sufficiently speedy to make sure Rose and Assad both got his message.

  “Not a word about Bjørn or Gordon, do you understand? It’s got me on a short fuse and we’ve got other things to do, OK? You start, Rose. Please make it b
rief and to the point.”

  Rose nodded. She looked completely unfazed by the morning’s pandemonium.

  “OK, this is the CCTV footage, Carl. You can see the boy going into the police station, but he’s got his face partially covered, so it’s hard to see him properly.” Rose paused the video, freezing a gray image of a glass door and a figure seen from above.

  Assad and Carl stepped closer to the screen.

  “He doesn’t look like an Arab, Carl. His ears are set rather high on his head, so most likely he is not from the Balkans either.”

  Funny observation. Were the ears of people from the Balkans really lower-set than others?

  Rose leaned forward. “Dark, curly hair, almost like a Latino, and not very old. What’s his age do you reckon, Carl?”

  “Fourteen or fifteen. That’s what I’ve heard others say, too. Could be younger, though. They mature quicker in those parts. What about his clothing?”

  Assad smiled. “His shirt looks like something my uncle would wear.”

  Carl nodded. “Exactly. Just the sort of thing a junior office slave would have worn fifteen years ago. Where the hell did he get a thing like that?”

  “A secondhand shop?” Assad ventured.

  “He’d have chosen something else, surely?”

  “Perhaps he swiped it from one of those charity drop boxes. Maybe it just happened to be at the top of the pile.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Carl put his finger to the screen. “Why do you think he’s covering his face like that? And while we’re at it, why would he need to steal someone else’s ID?”

  “Very simple,” said Assad. “He hasn’t got one of his own.”

  Carl nodded. Assad definitely had a point there; the thought had crossed his mind as well. “Either that or he hasn’t kept his nose clean.”

  Assad frowned. “What does his nose have to do with it? You can’t even see it here.”