The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Looking at it like that, his situation was perhaps not so bad that something positive couldn’t come of it anyway. He only hoped that Marco, who had forced him into this situation, got what he deserved. That the Africans would succeed in tracking him down, and the sooner the better.

  Zola looked at his watch.

  Another half hour to wait and he would drive in to Rådhuspladsen and harvest the spoils of the day. He would need some cash to tide him over on the journey. Credit cards could be traced just like mobile phones, so if he was going to make a safe and orderly exit he would have to exhibit the greatest of caution.

  As Chris gazed absently out of his side window, he opened the glove compartment and took out his false passport and the couple of thousand kroner that always lay there, ready and waiting, and slipped it all surreptitiously into his pocket. He didn’t need questions from Chris. Who could tell what he might do if he caught wind of what was going on?

  “Let me do the driving, Chris,” he said, indicating that they swap places.

  His helper looked at him with surprise, but he had learned not to question the validity of his master’s commands.

  Zola slapped him on the back.

  “Listen to me now, Chris. There’s something we have to do.” And then he explained to him what it was.

  As soon as they reached Rådhuspladsen, Chris was to tell the waiting clan members to take the train home from Vesterport station instead. That he and Chris had important business to attend to so they could get Romeo and Samuel out of custody fast. And as an extra safety measure, they would ask the group to turn over the day’s haul to Chris in case the police were waiting for them at home. Afterward Chris was to tell them that he and Chris were going to pay a visit to the best solicitor in the entire kingdom of Denmark. Zola happened to know precisely which one. He was never unprepared, not even in a rotten situation such as this.

  It was plain that Chris was moved by this display of concern for the members of the clan. Had it not been for the black bag on the seat between them, he would have grabbed Zola’s hand and kissed it.

  —

  They reached the square two minutes before five, and nothing turned out as Zola had planned.

  Chris managed to get out of the van and begin collecting their haul as the clan members stood about uneasily, listening to him tell about what had happened during the day.

  But as he was about to lift the satchel of booty onto the driver’s seat, a cry went up and at once Zola’s people scattered. Only Miryam and another girl remained when the police charged in from all sides.

  Zola didn’t have time to think before he floored the accelerator, causing the entire square to reverberate with the screech of the van’s spinning wheels.

  He did, however, have time to assure himself that the money he’d taken from the glove compartment was enough for a plane ticket, and that it was odd the police hadn’t stationed patrol cars to thwart an escape attempt such as this.

  And he even managed a brief laugh before the windshield suddenly shattered in a thousand pieces and something heavy struck his knee.

  What he didn’t manage, however, was to see the truck heading straight at him from the opposite direction.

  —

  Marco’s taxi driver turned out to be more than worth his two hundred kroner. He swerved into the cycle lane and deposited Marco right outside the Hereford Beefstouw where he could jump out unobserved and scale the construction site fence in seconds, ending up at the rear of the site as the building workers were leaving by the main entrance.

  He knew he had to be doubly on his guard this time, and he knew that if the Africans or someone like them came back, he would not be unarmed.

  He found a claw hammer on the first floor and weighed it in his hand. One side of the head was heavy and blunt, the other, used to extract nails, curved down into two prongs as sharp as awls. Not quite as good as a gun, but at least as good as a knife.

  Marco was no longer afraid. Rational emotions such as fear and anxiety occur primarily in those who love life, who believe in the future and the people they hold dear, and don’t want to lose any of these things. But when hatred takes over, love is forced aside, and with it, fear.

  The way he felt at the moment, only the hate remained.

  Zola had murdered his father before his very eyes, and if Marco hadn’t been there it would never have happened, he knew that. Indirectly it was his fault his father had been killed, because his actions and presence had prompted his father to abandon his loyalty to Zola and warn his son instead.

  Marco stared vacantly into the distance. “His father”! If only he could caress those words, he would. They gave rise to such deep emotion, and now, like the word “son,” they were no longer a part of his world. A cold-blooded push from the man Marco hated most in all the world had deleted these words from his vocabulary, and this was something he was ready to avenge at any price—along with the murder of William Stark, Tilde’s stepfather. Not until he had had his revenge would he again be able to look forward.

  He crept on all fours across the concrete floor to check the rubble chute through which he had escaped the day before.

  It was empty now, of course, so the African must have extricated himself. Marco couldn’t help smile at the thought of how he had managed it.

  Only when he reached the fourth floor did he begin to feel safe. All was quiet except for one or two workmen lingering around the huts below.

  If he laid low until darkness came he could spend another night here in his den. There was always the risk that someone, against all common sense, might figure out he’d come back here, but in that case he felt ready for them. And if no one came, he would try to get close as possible to the house in Kregme and do away with Zola for good.

  He frowned at the thought. It would not be easy, and he wasn’t sure he could do it. He wasn’t sure at all.

  He found a slab of concrete, dragged it across the floor to the very edge of building’s low wall facing Rådhuspladsen, and used it for a chair. Resting his forearms on the wall, he gazed out over his entire kingdom.

  It was almost five o’clock. Soon Chris would arrive in the yellow van to pick them all up.

  He couldn’t see the vehicle yet, but what he saw instead were men with alert eyes on two of the adjacent street corners.

  He didn’t like these guys. Not only because they all seemed to be looking his way, but also because he couldn’t recall having seen men like them standing like that, and in such numbers.

  Were they after him, too?

  He strained his eyes to see, waiting for one of them to make a move, but none of them did. If they were plainclothes police, then some telltale signs were lacking. The intense gaze, the posture, the hands in pockets, the bulge of the holster. But he was just too far away to tell.

  And then he caught sight of Miryam limping toward the square from Farvergade, and a couple of other clan members appearing from the Strøget. As they crossed Rådhuspladsen, the men stationed on the corners turned slightly in their direction. Marco nodded. They were police, no doubt about it.

  He shook his head. So now it was the clan’s turn. He had seen to it himself with the note he had written on the parking ticket and dropped into that policewoman’s bag, but now it felt very wrong. Did he seriously believe he could get at Zola by making life hard on his slaves? It wouldn’t work. Zola would go free, and all the others would bear the brunt.

  He wanted to call out to Miryam and the others and warn them, but all at once the yellow van turned the corner of Vesterbrogade and steered directly toward the waiting flock.

  He had expected them to slide the side door open as usual and climb in, but instead Chris jumped out from the passenger seat with a black satchel in his hand and began discussing something with them. But why? Why didn’t they just drive off? And who was behind the wheel?

  Then he saw his
old friends depositing the day’s haul in Chris’s bag, and then abruptly scattering like frightened birds as men rushed them from all sides.

  In the split second where Chris turned toward the open passenger door, obviously in doubt as to what to do, Marco realized that the man behind the wheel was Zola.

  Instinctively and driven by hatred, he picked up the slab of concrete on which he had been seated and raised it aloft as the van revved up and the screech of its spinning wheels echoed between the buildings.

  And then he hurled it with all his might, without a thought for the danger in which he had suddenly put the innocent people below.

  An eternity passed as the slab descended, and the smoking rubber of the van’s wheel spin seemed to propel the vehicle forward. Marco held his breath. So bound together were this plummeting chunk of masonry and Marco’s bated breath, that if it had gone on falling forever, he would have forgotten to breathe.

  And when finally it smashed through the windshield and was gone, the world came to a standstill. Only the van remained in motion, veering diagonally across the street and colliding head-on with an oncoming truck in a sickening crunch of metal against metal. The outcome was inevitable, and a wave of shock stunned onlookers as the van overturned in the collision and was squashed beneath the enormous truck. This time Goliath had proven stronger than David.

  Marco drew back, then darted ten meters to another spot by the wall from which he could observe events undetected.

  Most eyes were directed on the scene of the accident, and were horror-struck.

  A few looked up.

  And Marco realized he was on the run again.

  39

  “This is no easy case, Carl,” grumbled Assad. “I would not like to be in the shoes of those South Zealand and Lolland-Falster police right now.”

  “You said it, Assad. Snap’s killing was a nasty business indeed,” Carl replied. “His wife’s neck was broken, and Snap had his larynx crushed before being strangled to death. What kind of person’s capable of that? Do we know if Eriksen has any kind of background in the Danish commando forces or anything like that?” he asked, overtaking a car that was hogging the middle lane at eighty kilometers an hour.

  Assad shook his head. “No, he doesn’t. The army rejected him. It was something to do with his back.”

  “Well, now we’ve got a warrant out on him. We’ll have to see what happens.”

  An alert came over the police GPS. There was only twenty minutes until the pickup at Rådhuspladsen. They’d have a job making it on time.

  “Has Rose gathered the troops?” he asked.

  Assad gave him a thumbs-up. Of course she had.

  He stomped on the accelerator and turned on the blue light and siren.

  —

  They skidded to a halt in front of Tivoli Gardens’ main entrance, leaving the car halfway on the pavement so it couldn’t be seen from Rådhuspladsen. They hurried toward the square, arriving at the same instant as a van careered across the road and smashed into a truck that was headed for the building site, heavily laden with construction iron.

  All was chaos. On their side of the road a pair of plainclothes officers took off in pursuit of fleeing men in dark suits while others surrounded a couple of young women who had remained behind. Out on the street cars slammed into the back of one another in a pileup as the van was crushed flat against the asphalt, sparks flying in all directions. Onlookers screamed or stood paralyzed by shock. Some yelled at the police that it was their fault.

  Lars Bjørn was hardly going to pat them on the back for this.

  —

  “What’s your name?”

  “Miryam Delaporte.”

  “Profession?”

  “I don’t have one. I beg on the streets.”

  Carl nodded. She was the first to say it like it was. Respect.

  “You’re one of Zola’s clan?”

  She nodded. Some of the other women trembled at the mention of Zola’s name, but not this one.

  “Where do you come from, Miryam?” asked Rose.

  “From Kregme, up in north Zealand.”

  “I see. Is that where you were born?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve never seen my birth certificate.”

  OK, so it was like that.

  “What do your parents say?”

  “I don’t know for certain who they are. That’s how it is with many of us. We’re one big family.”

  Rose and Carl exchanged glances. Surprising, how dispassionate she was.

  “And that’s all I’m saying,” she added.

  Carl drew his chair closer. She had good eyes, not just beautiful, but alive and alert. She had noted how Assad sat impatiently behind her, constantly shifting things around on his desk, and she had sussed that behind Rose’s friendly facade was a determination to keep at it as long as necessary.

  She was also well aware that the room she was in was not the path to freedom.

  “I can tell you that Zola was killed in that accident,” Rose continued. “You saw for yourself how bad it was. Might that not loosen your tongue?”

  She turned her head away. There wasn’t a trace of reaction in her face.

  “Earlier today, another man was killed out in Østerbro. He died under a heavy vehicle, too. All of a sudden he just flew out in front of a bus. We don’t know who he is, but we think he may be one of your people. We’ve got a photo here of the man’s face. May I show it to you?”

  Miryam remained silent, so Rose shoved it across the table toward her.

  It took thirty seconds or so before curiosity got the better of her and she turned to look at it.

  Both Carl and Rose saw her reaction. She didn’t give a start, nor were there any facial contortions. It was something more profound, something deeper, like a sudden, sickening pain in her diaphragm. She drew in her stomach a bit, leaned slightly forward and adjusted the position of her legs.

  “Who is he?” Carl asked. “Someone you cared for?”

  She said nothing.

  “OK, we’ll find out soon enough. You’re not the only one here at police headquarters. There are others from your group we can ask,” said Rose. “The guys are the ones who talk the most, in case you’d like to know. But why is that so, Miryam? Is it because you women are afraid of being beaten if you talk too much? Is that how you got that bad leg of yours, Miryam? I can tell it didn’t happen by itself.”

  Still no answer.

  Now Assad stepped forward and pulled a chair up to her side, almost as though he were her solicitor, a kindly disposed person who would answer on her behalf.

  “As you can see, she is saying nothing, so ask me instead,” he said calmly, looking at Rose.

  She frowned, but Carl nodded. Why not?

  “Is it because she’s afraid of getting beaten, Assad?”

  “No. She is afraid of not belonging anywhere, that’s why.”

  The girl turned her head toward him. Perhaps she wondered what he was getting at, or maybe she just didn’t understand.

  “And then she is afraid of herself,” Assad went on. “Afraid she cannot be anything else than what she is. A simple thief and a beggar no one wants anything to do with besides her so-called family. And she is afraid they will think she has a looser tongue than they do, and that in a moment I will beat her until she bleeds.”

  Carl was about to protest, but noticed how the skin around her eyes tightened and her gaze grew more intense.

  “That’s enough, Assad,” Rose cut in, but Carl put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Assad’s right. That’s exactly what she’s afraid of. Not to mention the risk of our booting her into the asylum center where she’d be together with those who’d know she’d been talking. I understand her better now, Assad.”

  He turned to the girl, who sat with her fists clenched in her lap.r />
  “You know who Marco is, don’t you?”

  “I told you, I’m not saying more,” she replied, almost in a whisper.

  So she was softening up.

  “Rose, can you tell me what we can do for Miryam if she helps us find out what Marco’s got himself into?” asked Carl.

  Rose’s eyes narrowed. “As long as she’s not cooperating, I’m not saying,” she answered. “But I will say to Assad that if she doesn’t help us, I think Marco’s going to be hunted to death.”

  “How do you mean, Rose?” Carl asked.

  “I think Miryam knows very well who Marco is and that she feels attached to him. Which I understand, because Marco’s a good boy.”

  Carl weighed the situation for a moment. Interviews were an art form mastered only by a select few, and right now they’d obviously run into problems. But apart from that, he found Rose and Assad’s interaction quite interesting. He didn’t know quite where Assad was heading, but somewhere inside her Miryam certainly realized by now that she wasn’t going to get away with keeping her mouth shut.

  “You lived with Marco, we know that already,” Rose went on. “Zola told us the boy grew up with the rest of you. Why not just say it’s true? Or could it be you hated him?”

  “She did not hate him,” replied Assad.

  “Why won’t she answer, then?” Rose rejoined.

  “Because she . . .” Assad leaned quickly forward and clasped his hands around her face. “Because she is ashamed. That is why.”

  Time to step in before he really gets started, Carl told himself.

  But then Assad surprised him again. “You do not need to be ashamed, Miryam. Leave that to the others,” he said, and let his hands fall to her shoulders.

  Before she could wriggle free, he drew her toward him and held her tight. “There, there,” he said, laying one hand gently behind her neck. “You are free now. There is no need for you to answer to anyone anymore. You are really free, Miryam. No more begging, no more stealing. If you help us, everything will be all right, do you understand?”