He would survive by his animosity toward them. He would no longer steal from ordinary people, but the clan were not ordinary people, so from them he would snatch anything he wanted. And when he had harassed them long enough and filled his pockets and stomach, he would move on in life.
—
He found Romeo and Samuel down in Nyhavn, working over throngs of boisterous, ruddy-cheeked Swedes. So Samuel had been promoted from beggar despite his being a poor earner.
He kept his distance for a while, watching them in their work. The seemingly accidental bumping into people, the swift dips into pockets and bags, the spoils then deftly passed into the other’s hand. They were skillful, and seldom needed to apologize for their clumsiness.
Marco knew their behavior patterns, knew when they would glance to the side or over their shoulders and the exact moment they would home in.
Samuel was the receiver, ambling along behind until Romeo struck. And then he would quickly step forward, sticking his hand through his pocket lining to receive the goods. His large inside pocket was already bulging visibly, so it had been a good day. Before long Samuel would signal to Romeo that it was time for a break so he could stash the spoils. And then Marco would strike.
He followed Samuel to one of the last remaining places in the city besides the central station where a person could leave a bag without being suspected of terrorism. By the revolving entrance doors on the ground floor of the Black Diamond, the modern extension to the Royal Danish Library, were locker areas adjacent to the restrooms, allowing people like Samuel to transfer the contents of their secret pockets into a shopping bag and hide them away in a locker without fear of being discovered.
Marco kept watch from the bookshop in the foyer until Samuel emerged from the restroom, shopping bag in hand. He would wait to see which locker Samuel used, then duck back out of sight. Once Samuel had gone, he would go back and work the lock.
Samuel fumbled in his jacket pocket before finding the key. Most probably he kept it on him at all times, ensuring there would always be a locker at his disposal.
He walked into the locker area, went over to the right-hand wall, bent down to one of the lower boxes, and put his key in the lock.
“Got it,” Marco said to himself, withdrawing into a corner.
A minute later, Samuel was on his way back to Nyhavn.
Romeo and new victims awaited.
—
For students it was study time leading up to exams and the library café was packed with young people hunched over laptops. Outside, beyond the glass walls, people lounged about, enjoying the sun and the harbor. No one here would worry themselves about a boy like Marco in a setting like this.
For a moment he stared at the wall of lockers. As far as he could work out, Samuel’s was number 163. The lock was simple, but he knew from experience that if he tried to force it with an incorrect key, the key would almost certainly snap in two. He had no tools with him by which he could break the lock either, nor did he possess the courage to ask for assistance at the information desk and spin them a tale about having lost his key.
He tapped his knuckles against the locker door. It wasn’t solid, but a kick would merely result in a dent and make a hell of a racket to boot.
So he needed the key.
—
He caught up with Samuel at Kongens Nytorv and figured that if he was to steal the key without the boy noticing, he would have to create a diversion. He chose an extravagantly tattooed hulk of a man walking a couple of steps behind and to the side of Samuel who was heading purposely for the tourist traps and wilting dives of Nyhavn. He was undoubtedly planning on staying there until the day was done and the well-larded wallet protruding tantalizingly from his back pocket was empty. Provided, of course, that he hadn’t the misfortune to run into Romeo first.
Marco slipped silently behind his unsuspecting mark like a heat-seeking missile, flexing the fingers of his left hand to make certain he had full control over them. Then with the ease of a cat he struck, lifting the wallet from the man’s pocket, using his body to shield the move from the pedestrians behind. It was elementary.
He stopped and waited until the man was a few steps ahead before bending down and pretending to pick the wallet up off the pavement, then catching up with him and giving his sleeve a tug.
“Here,” he said, pressing the wallet into the man’s hand. “It was that guy over there who took it off you. He was about to hand it to someone else behind you, but I got it first.”
The big man frowned, then his eyes followed the direction in which Marco was pointing, and within a second he had knocked Samuel to his knees.
Marco didn’t hear what his old friend screamed, but it clearly had little effect because his punishment was meted out so promptly and emphatically that Samuel was forced to crouch down and protect his face with his hands.
It would not be the first time Marco stole from someone lying prone on the ground, often the last dregs of the night’s drunks. This was easy enough, but here he was forced to wait until members of the hooting crowd that had gathered pulled the flailing mastodon away from his hapless victim. It gave Samuel a few seconds to get to his feet and stagger toward safety.
The tattooed roughneck bellowed that the little thief ought to be arrested and thrown in jail, but the onlookers showed mercy and Marco moved in and slipped his hand into Samuel’s jacket pocket as the kid pushed through the throng to get away. Even if he noticed anything, his instinct to flee would overrule all else.
All he wanted was to get away.
The big man was still ranting and raving, and Marco didn’t hang around to be thanked or accept a reward.
The contents of the locker at the Black Diamond were reward enough.
—
Back in his hideout at the House of Industry he emptied the shopping bags onto the concrete floor. For a moment he sat staring at the many items. They seemed so alive in the bleak surroundings, shades of color against the cold, gray concrete. He triumphantly removed the banknotes from the wallets without so much as glancing at credit cards or IDs. A quick count came to more than nine thousand kroner in five different currencies.
The sudden rush he felt sparked a brief outburst of laughter, an expression of relief that echoed gaily against the bare walls until his eyes once again settled on the pile of wallets, mobile phones, and watches in front of him.
Then all at once he became still inside. The dark concrete contours around him towered accusingly above his head. The many lit-up windows of the Palace Hotel and the countless diodes streaming Politiken’s news headlines on the facade across the square felt like reproachful eyes, like stabbing searchlights. Here lay the property of all these people. Leather wallets and purses, mobile phones with greasy finger marks that weren’t his, and no matter who in the first instance had stolen them, he knew at that moment he would be unable to capitalize on Romeo’s and Samuel’s thieving without becoming an accomplice.
It was an ugly feeling, as repulsive as dog mess on the sole of his shoe. At that moment he was a nobody. Just a simple lowdown thief like the rest of them, and though nine thousand kroner was a lot of money and would get him by for a long time, the day would inevitably come when it all ran out and he would have to become a thief again.
Who was he kidding?
Only then did he realize how impossible his life had become.
The hatred that had been latent within him from the first day Zola forced him to steal on the streets now flared up inside, kindling a thirst for vengeance that felt stronger than ever before.
He was a thief and would always be as long as the clan existed. Zola would still have his hooks in him wherever he went.
Marco clenched his fists and stared up at the concrete above his head as he imagined Stark’s corpse with its empty eye sockets, Tilde and her gentle voice, and the policeman called Carl who no doubt wanted
to get in touch with him. All these shadows lingering above him and all the nasty ones lurking behind his back could vanish at once if he now did the right thing.
There was no longer any doubt. Zola and his clan had to be eliminated.
23
“I suppose the two of you were expecting to be received with a fanfare,” said Rose, skewering Assad in the gut with a rolled-up sheet of paper. “With Carl you never know what he’ll do, but I’d never have thought it of you, Assad. You knew perfectly well Malene was mine, and now here she is phoning me up while I’m at the ministry, telling me how you came barging in and put the screws on the two of them. What do you think you’re playing at?”
“That’s not quite how it happened, Rose,” Assad ventured, clearly poised to get the hell out with his prayer mat before her next sentence detonated.
Carl caught himself smirking, regardless of how unfair it was. “I’m the one you should be giving a tongue-lashing,” he pointed out. “Assad said we ought to have taken you with us, but it just didn’t turn out.”
Rose snorted. “What good’s a tongue-lashing ever done you, Carl Mørck? You’ve got skin thick as a rhinoceros.” She took hold of his hand and slapped her sheet of paper into his palm. “But if you can do without me there, you can do without me here, too, because that’s me, off. Then you can sit and have a think about what I’ve dug up in the meantime.”
“Ha, ha, that’s it, Rosie, you give ’em what for,” came a voice from the other end of the corridor.
Rose’s hands dropped to her sides as Gordon appeared. It was clear as day she didn’t need his assistance just now, but he carried on anyway.
“I’d say it borders on harassment when your superior doesn’t allow you to interview your own contact.”
A crease appeared on Rose’s brow. Not the kind that expressed perplexity, rather a line of demarcation, and woe betide any man who overstepped it.
“Stop, Gordon,” she snapped authoritatively, but the idiot was seemingly only capable of grasping a message in extremely small portions.
“But I suppose it’s typical of the older generation of criminal investigators,” he went on, undaunted. “A bit pubescently chauvinistic, the two of them, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Ooh, you’re a bunch of imbeciles, the lot of you!” Rose burst out, not waiting for their protests before disappearing into her office and slamming the door behind her. A bomb-proof postlude to her symphony of self-righteousness.
Carl turned to the culprit. “I’ve got broad shoulders, so this time I’m going to ignore that you’re audacious enough to call me pubescent and a male chauvinist, not to mention lumping me in with the older generation, but you don’t want to be talking to me like that again, do you hear me?”
The moron stared blankly at Carl. Was he brain-dead or just looking for trouble?
“I think perhaps you ought nod at this point, Gordon,” Assad suggested drily.
So he nodded, though barely perceptibly.
“Next, let me ask you to think back to yesterday. Didn’t you understand you were not only way out of line in someone else’s domain but also that we’d rather have a pack of ravenous hyenas on the loose than have you running around down here?”
Gordon didn’t answer. He probably had his own recollections of what had occurred, and they were undoubtedly rather more pleasant.
“OK, in that case I suggest that after Assad and I have knocked you about a bit, you get your ass upstairs to Lars Bjørn and tell him how unreasonable we are down here.”
Carl tapped a cigarette from his pack and lit up in one seamless movement. Seeing the kid abruptly shy away, his gormless mug momentarily obliterated by smoke, was almost enough to save the day.
Gordon was about to protest, until he saw Assad begin to roll up his shirtsleeves. Though he seemed to get the message and immediately retreated out the door like a cowed dog, he didn’t abstain from turning around at a safe distance farther up the corridor to hurl back a string of six-syllable words of Latin origin.
If that boy didn’t start toeing the line soon, it wouldn’t be long before he got hurt.
Carl unrolled the sheet of paper Rose had shoved at him. THE BAKA PROJECT it read at the top in ultra-bold thirty-point Times New Roman. In case anyone should fail to notice.
“Sit down and listen to what she’s written here, Assad, and put another expression on your face while you’re at it. Rose’ll come round, just you wait and see. She knows perfectly well we can’t all charge in like the Light Brigade every time we’re out interviewing people.”
“What is this Light Brigade, Carl?”
Carl jabbed a finger at the sheet in front of him. “Never you mind. It says here that Rose was encouraged to phone this civil servant in Yaoundé. That’s the capital of Cameroon, for your information.” He hadn’t known himself until two minutes ago.
“The gentleman in question is one Mbomo Ziem, and according to our people down there he was in charge of liaising with the Danish international development office in connection with this Baka project and a couple of other aid initiatives in the area. However, he seems to have left the project, so Rose got hold of one Fabrice Pouka instead, who was able to tell her that the Baka project is still running, though it’s now in its final year. According to him it had all proceeded according to plan, apart from someone called Louis Fon coming close to sabotaging the whole effort at one point. Rose writes that the project was set up to help an endangered tribe of pygmies in the Dja jungle in southern Cameroon to sow banana plantations and cultivate the soil with the aim of growing new kinds of crops. Apparently all this had become necessary because poaching and things generally going to pot over the years had ruined their traditional ways of supporting themselves.”
Carl put the paper down on the desk in front of him.
“Is that all, then?” Assad asked. Carl knew what he meant. It sure wasn’t much she’d dug up during all that time she’d been away.
“Oh, hang on a minute. There’s something on the back here that she’s written by hand. LFon9876. I wonder what that means?”
“It looks like a Skype address.”
“Go in and ask her, will you?”
“Who? Me?”
Carl didn’t answer, which was reply enough in itself.
Five minutes later Assad stood before him once more, sweating.
“Ouch, Carl. She dipped me right in the acid bath again. But yes, she said it was a Skype address. Finding it out is what took her most of that time, but I won’t bother you with telling you how. She says she assumes the call will be answered at Louis Fon’s home address in the north of Cameroon. She has tried, but there was no one who answered.”
“So maybe it’s not in use anymore.”
“One can hear then that this is not your strong point, Carl. You can only call up a Skype number if the person you are calling has switched on their computer. And not only that, they have to be on hand to answer the call.”
“Yes, yes, I knew that. What I meant was . . .”
Assad beamed. “That’s a good one, Carl, but you can’t fool me. Let me show you. Come into my office and we’ll call from my computer. It’s all set up.”
In the cubbyhole, on top of the desk amid tea urns, glazed green incense stick holders, stacks of files, and a whole lot of other rubbish stood police HQ’s biggest computer screen, showing an image of the kind of gray-brown mud-built abode of which there were millions in the Middle East. Definitely not a place Carl would like spending his retirement. Nothing colorful, no plants, no veranda where a man could throw his feet up on the rail. Just a window and a door, and everything the color of shit.
“That your place, Assad?” he asked, pointing.
Assad smiled, shook his head and pressed a key. The image was gone.
“First we turn on the speakers, Carl. You sit down in front of the screen, then we open our Skyp
e account. I’ll show you how. If they have a camera at the other end like we have, we should also be able to see each other.”
Half a minute passed and then they heard the blooping ringtone, an infuriating sound if ever there was one, Carl thought.
Assad just managed to say, “Give it a little time,” before sounds indicated something was happening at the other end.
Carl adjusted his headset, Assad gesticulating frantically to make sure he was ready. How ready did you have to be, for Chrissake?
And then the image of a young African woman’s face appeared in front of him, far too close, issuing a stream of words, none of which he understood. He said hello with the kind of British accent only an English teacher like the one he had up in his native north-Jutland peat bog near Brønderslev thirty years ago could imagine was grand.
“Allo?” the woman said in reply. Hardly much progress.
“Do they speak French in Cameroon?” he whispered to Assad.
Assad nodded.
“Do you?”
Assad shook his head.
Carl hung up.
—
It took half an hour before they managed to coax Rose into admitting that she actually spoke the language quite well. Moreover, she accepted their apologies in return for a certain amount of as yet unspecified favors.
In less than twenty seconds she had introduced herself. The woman at the other end drew back from the screen, revealing a room into which the sun poured from every angle.
“I’ll translate as we go along,” Rose explained, both to the woman and the two standing behind her.
It was clear that Louis Fon’s wife bore grief. She explained how difficult her situation had become during the five months since her husband disappeared, how she broke down in tears at the slightest thing.
“Everything was going so well for us. Louis had plenty of work, we wanted for nothing, and he was happy in his job. Beside me and our children, there was nothing he wanted more dearly than for the Baka to thrive and be prosperous.”
The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel Page 29
