The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  René shook his head instinctively. Nothing was going to help anyway.

  “Nothing, that’s what! But who were they, René?” she asked coldly. “I know you know, because they knew my name.”

  “I can assure you I’ve no idea. I’m as shocked as you are. All of a sudden they were just there.”

  “I think you do know. If the second one hadn’t been such a hard case and managed to drag his friend away with him even though his face was still burning from the iron, I’d have gotten to the bottom of this, believe me.”

  She tiptoed over the shards of glass in her slippers and picked up the phone.

  “I can describe them, I pulled their hoods off.” She cackled. “Ugly little Gyppos, I’ll make sure they get what’s coming to them.”

  But René was having none of it. No way was he going to risk being brought down by his wife’s big mouth and poorly supported assumptions while the police were here, so he forbade her, simple as that. He couldn’t have the authorities poking their noses in, a mere twenty-four hours before his voluntary and permanent exile. If she was going to phone anyone, she could phone a glazier, and then a powerful dose of sedatives would be needed for this bitch who was already complaining again, now he’d put the phone back down, as well as heaping scorn on him for his laxity, his cowardice, his ugly dentures, and his bad breath.

  After she’d finished spewing the better part of her glossary of foul-mouthed invective he went up the stairs to the spare room. Not to sleep, because he couldn’t, though this would be his second night without, but in order to call Snap in private and confront him with what had happened.

  He looked at his watch. As far as he could work out it was just about three in the afternoon in Willemstad. Still half an hour before Curaçao’s banks closed for the day.

  He accessed the phone’s call log and quickly found the number of the hotel.

  “I’m afraid Mr. and Mrs. Snap checked out a couple of hours ago,” the front desk informed him. “They needed to catch a flight back to Denmark.”

  “A flight?”

  “Yes, the KLM flight via Amsterdam leaves at three thirty.”

  He thanked the man, rubbed his face for a moment, and then phoned the bank in Willemstad to inquire about his shares.

  “Goedemiddag, Mr. Eriksen. Yes, everything proceeded according to plan. We received your power of attorney after which the contents of your safe-deposit box were transferred to Mr. Snap.”

  So everything was in order, said the bank manager.

  Only that wasn’t how Eriksen saw it.

  26

  Boy had been hiding in the dug-out tree trunk for more than sixty hours before Mammy’s boys found him.

  They gave him a choice. It was simple. Either they chopped off his arms and split him open, or else he joined them and became one of Mammy’s boys.

  Some choice. The corpses of his entire family lay bloated in the underbrush. Everything he knew had been razed to the ground.

  Within four weeks Boy was a child soldier like the others. Primitive and callous, afraid of nothing apart from being stabbed in the back by one of their own.

  Their own! Boys like the ones who had murdered his beloved family, cut the throat of his dog, and deprived him of all his humanity.

  And while Hutus and Tutsis, Mobuto, Kabila, and sundry bloodsuckers from half the continent did their utmost to wipe out national boundaries and one another, Boy learned to sleep with a Kalashnikov in his arms and dream about all the blood he had unhesitatingly drained from his so-called enemies.

  Had it not been for Mammy and her personal project, the day would undoubtedly have come when the knife would have been used against him as well.

  She selected her elite with great care, the boys who formed a ring around her and protected her from the outside world. No one could turn a situation to their own advantage like Mammy, and once she had the advantage, so did her bodyguards. It was how she kept them on her side.

  When what was supposed to resemble peace finally came to Congo in 1999, Mammy had more than thirty full-fledged killers in her service, and with that kind of raw material, peace was not exactly what she wished for most. What on earth could she use these wanton boys for if killing were no longer part of the agenda?

  But Mammy was not easily discouraged. In the wake of Africa’s conflicts, interesting people always appeared who believed peace had not given them what they’d been expecting. People who’d once enjoyed considerable incomes they had now lost. It was in relations with people like these that she saw a future for herself and her boys.

  So Mammy was the one to approach when someone had to be killed, and that was how Boy came to meet Brage-Schmidt.

  No one had told Boy why Brage-Schmidt wanted to be rid of five French businessmen from Bois de Boqueteau, but he didn’t need to know. Without asking questions he tracked the Frenchmen to the border of Namibia, where he cut off their heads one by one as they slept.

  Brage-Schmidt was satisfied and paid Mammy a bonus of a hundred thousand dollars, then asked if he could take on Boy as his permanent problem solver for a further hundred thousand. Mammy hesitated, for Boy was her favorite. But when the man promised to treat him as his own son, make sure he received dental treatment to replace the teeth he’d had knocked out in combat, and furthermore provide him with an education and make sure he learned new languages, plus all kinds of other benefits, she eventually acceded after yet another round of negotiations.

  For that, Boy was forever grateful to the both of them, and since then he had not taken a single life.

  At least, not personally.

  —

  Boy had torn Zola apart on the phone after the failed break-in at Eriksen’s home. Now he sat for a moment, considering the entire situation.

  Mammy and two of her best boys were on their way. She would be phoning within minutes, provided their flight had landed on time in Copenhagen. Mammy always kept her appointments.

  He’d only just looked at his watch when his mobile rang.

  “Brief me, honey,” she said, her voice husky and deep.

  “How much time can you and your boys spend here, have you decided?” he asked.

  “Around fifty-eight hours. We need to be in Brussels by Saturday morning at the latest for another job.”

  “OK. I know how good you and the boys are, so that ought to be time enough. I should warn you, though, that the kid we’re looking for is a cunning one. Finding him won’t be easy.”

  “I’ve got the description and his photo here. What makes him so special?”

  “If you didn’t know better, you’d think he’d been brought up in the bush. I hid in a hollow log as a last resort, but this one thinks ahead, otherwise his family would have tracked him down long ago. He is the rat in the sewer, Mammy. The bird on the roof.”

  She laughed. “But you we found, Boy. Both his clan and a lot of Eastern Europeans are out searching for him, you say?”

  “Yes, and they’ve spotted him on a couple of occasions.”

  “OK. In half an hour we’ll be at the Square Hotel. Come in an hour and show us what you’ve got.”

  —

  The room was on the small side, but the view was good. Mammy was reclining on a patterned sofa, filling up most of its space. Her reserves were greater than ever before, she liked to say of herself with a certain kind of pride.

  Boy nodded to the two jet-black Africans in basketball jerseys who were lounging on the bed watching the NBC news. He took them to be in their twenties, and yet their faces seemed in glimpses to be ancient and lined, their eyes filled with skepticism as to all the things normal people coveted. Boy knew what it was like. For them, happiness was a good, long night’s sleep and fucking their brains out. And, of course, the hunt itself.

  “We went for a little walk outside this evening,” Mammy said. “You were right in what you wrote ab
out the Danes. They don’t even see us. As long as we don’t walk together they won’t condescend to look at us. This is good, Boy.”

  She patted him on the thigh. Long time no see.

  “You’re looking good, Boy. Almost thirty years of age now. How many of your old comrades have got that far?” She leaned back and looked across at her two bloodhounds on the bed. “Hey, you two. Take a look at this one. You can be like him too if you make Mammy happy, OK?”

  “OK, Mammy,” they replied in unison. And then slipped back into limbo again.

  Boy smiled, handing her maps of the areas in Copenhagen where Marco had been seen, where they reckoned he’d previously been hiding out, and where they thought he could be now.

  Mammy nodded. Her time-worn, shrewd eyes glided over the maps’ main thoroughfares, the side streets, the S-train stations, and all the small, open green areas. It was astonishing once more to see how quickly she could absorb unfamiliar topography.

  When they had finished she assured him the boy was already as good as dead, and that it had always been a pleasure working for him and Brage-Schmidt.

  Boy nodded. Thanks that came seldom were the best.

  “Catch the boy and everyone’s happy,” he said, turning to the young men on the bed. “He’s a snake, but you can spear him, I know you can.”

  They sat up on their elbows. Like all soldiers, they took their briefing seriously. Sometimes it was their only defense against ambush and sudden death. Here in Copenhagen it was imprisonment and unfamiliar reaction patterns they were up against.

  So they listened intently.

  “Stay close to Zola’s men and those working with him.”

  He tossed two sheets of paper with photos of Zola’s people on the bed. The snakelike eyes of Mammy’s boys began processing them immediately. There was no doubt these boys had been carefully selected.

  “Once Zola or some of the others have encircled the boy, be ready to take over. Don’t take it for granted that they will inform you, so stay close and keep your eyes open.”

  They nodded.

  A net too widely meshed never caught a bird.

  27

  An unfamiliar feeling of sun wakened Carl to the sweet smell of perfume and sex.

  His nostrils flared as he inhaled recollections of wantonness and no-nonsense shagging. Good Lord, he thought, eyes tight shut as he stuck his hand under the duvet and sensed how incredibly naked he felt with his half-erect member and his rump pressed close against soft female skin.

  Opening his eyes tentatively to the world, he found himself staring up at a ceiling with two-tone stucco and a lamp that glowed faintly through a silk scarf.

  My God, he mused, immediately aware of the sticky situation he’d got himself into.

  “Are you awake, Carl?” Lisbeth purred, beneath the covers.

  Did he dare say yes?

  She turned over, snuggling her downy face up close as featherlight fingers drew circles around his belly button and twirled the hairs of his chest.

  “It’s not going to be a one-night stand, is it, Carl?” she whispered, moving the inside of her thigh against his nether regions.

  Oh, wow, was all he could think, trying not to let out a sigh.

  The fact of the matter was that he was confused as hell. She’d been absolutely amazing to make love to. Utterly uninhibited despite being out of training, as she’d called it. He thought himself lucky she hadn’t been completely match-fit, otherwise he’d have been down for the count.

  “I thought we were great last night. How about you?” she asked, rubbing her nose against his. It felt nice. Not the kind of tenderness he was used to.

  “You were gorgeous, Lisbeth, and still are,” he said, and meant it.

  He avoided her searching gaze and closed his eyes again, racked by feelings of guilt. What the hell was he playing at?

  “Do you know what time it is?” he asked, as though he was ready to sleep a couple of hours more.

  “It’s eight, but you don’t really need to go to work this early, do you?”

  She giggled as her hand crept downward. Her breathing grew heavy almost immediately.

  “Did you say eight?” he cried, extracting himself from her arms. “I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes at headquarters. Shit! Today of all days! I’m really sorry, Lisbeth, but I’ve got to go.”

  He jumped out of bed without looking at her, pulled on his trousers, and wriggled his bare feet into his shoes.

  “Forgive me, forgive me,” he said, pecking her quickly on the cheek and then dashing off before she had a chance to ask the obligatory question of when they’d see each other again.

  Who could answer that one?

  “What a predicament,” he muttered as he tried to work out where he’d left the car the evening before. As far as he remembered, they’d stood and had a grope by a blossoming cherry tree that was fairly close to the scene of a murder he’d investigated some years back in the vicinity of the Syvstjernehusene housing development. It was there they had been making out like a pair of teenagers, hands all over each other. Arousing as hell, but which cherry tree, and where, for Chrissake?

  “Let’s park at a distance from my house,” she’d said. “The neighbors are still friends with my ex.”

  Now, feeling like a fool as he trawled the Højlundshusene neighborhood, the thought of Mona kept coming back to him, seriously weighing on his conscience. Why did he still have these feelings for her, anyway, after she’d kicked him to the curb like that? And how come he felt so sullied, so ridden by guilt? Lisbeth wasn’t just some casual one-nighter. She was so sweet and bright and warm.

  Maybe that was precisely why.

  He crossed another couple of streets, noting as he went that blossoming cherry trees were damn popular in these parts. What would Mona say if she saw him now, wandering about in search of his car like a confused adolescent? How would she feel if she sniffed his body?

  And how would he feel if she had done the same thing?

  He flinched at the thought. Of course, goddammit. It was an act of preemptive rationalization on his part.

  For who was to say she hadn’t?

  Carl looked up and glanced around him as he realized he was basically back where he started. There they were, the green bedroom curtains behind which only a few hours ago he had cast to the wind all thought of what Mona might think about him and what he was doing with another woman.

  And there was his car. Less than fifty meters from Lisbeth’s house. How the hell did it take them so long to walk such a short distance?

  He fumbled in his pockets for the keys and felt a lump that wasn’t supposed to be there.

  His wallet.

  Carl frowned. Had he really been in such a state yesterday that he hadn’t checked all his pockets properly when he’d discovered it was gone?

  But he had, he knew he had. So how could it possibly be there now? Had Lisbeth played a trick on him? Did she want him to feel indebted? Did she somehow think it would aid the nocturnal cause? That it would help her believe she had him hooked?

  He shook his head. If that was it, then she must be crazy.

  He opened the wallet, convinced he was going to find a note containing something like: Sorry, darling, your turn to pay next time.

  Or just: I’m wild about you. Call me, Here’s my number.

  He smiled as he found an unfamiliar piece of paper folded among his receipts. Good coppering, mate, he congratulated himself. Can’t fool me, ha-ha.

  But the note wasn’t what he was expecting. Nowhere near.

  It was a printout of a satellite photo of Kregme, marked with a cross in the middle.

  HERE IS STARK’S BODY, someone had scrawled in irregular block letters. ZOLA KILLED HIM.

  And at the bottom was an address. Likewise in Kregme.

  —

  Mo
re than an hour passed before Carl had picked up Assad and they finally got to the patch of woods between the lake and the road on the one side and hedgerows and fields on the other.

  “Sure doesn’t smell good here, Carl,” Assad mumbled, looking askance at a muck spreader trundling its way over the landscape. But Carl wasn’t bothered. He was from north Jutland, where the delectable fragrance of shit was the smell of money. Any farmer with great ambitions needed shit, tons of the stuff.

  “It’s pretty open here,” he said, scanning the terrain ahead where the road dipped out of sight.

  He glanced at the map he’d found in his wallet. “How far do we have to go into these woods, do you reckon?”

  Assad rasped his hand across the stubble of his chin. “Seventy-five meters, max. A hundred, maybe.”

  How could seventy-five meters, max, be a hundred?

  “OK, let’s pull in at that gap in the trees over there.” Carl nodded toward farther up the road to the right, locating the same point on the satellite photo. “Seems like a logical place to go into the woods if you’re dragging a body away from the road. A car could park here with the trunk facing the top of the hill and nobody would be able to see what you were doing unless they were doing thirty kilometers an hour. And no one drives that slowly here, believe me. This is hillbilly country.”

  “Hill Billy? Who’s he? Does he own the land here?”

  “Yeah, precisely,” Carl replied, shaking his head. Hill Billy? Where did the guy think they were, anyway?

  They stepped cautiously through the vegetation, noting snapped branches as well as stones trampled into the earth. There were a surprising number of the latter, as though someone had been here only recently.

  “It looks like a whole herd was here,” said Assad, indicating a pile of leaves pressed flat.

  Carl nodded and looked up at the ominous black clouds that were gathering overhead. Was it really going to rain now? Brilliant timing, after so many days of scorching sunshine.