The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  Then, with a sharp tug accompanied by the protests of the two men, the baseboard gave way.

  The relief that passed through Marco’s body was clearly visible to all.

  He stuck his fingers into the hole and pulled out a clear plastic bag.

  “Look,” he said, holding it up in front of them. “Now I have sixty-five thousand kroner to make a start. So you needn’t worry about me living in a Dumpster, Rose.”

  43

  Summer 2011

  Carl looked at the two notes on the desk in front of him. They’d been there for a month and a half now, staring at him every time he’d tried to tidy up. Wasn’t it about time he chucked them out?

  He tipped back on the rear legs of his chair and tried to picture the two women in his mind’s eye. Strange, how quickly faces from the past were erased.

  The past. Had it really come to that? Had his passivity in the wake of Lisbeth’s phone call and the wreckage of his relationship to Mona, with whom he’d been together for a number of years, now been consigned to the file marked THE PAST? He wasn’t sure he approved of the idea.

  He picked up the two notes and for a moment considered crumpling them up and lobbing them into the waste-paper basket with a well-aimed overhand toss.

  It was sure as hell no easy decision.

  “It’s come, Carl,” said Rose, suddenly materializing in front of him.

  “What’s come?” He looked at her without much enthusiasm. It had been a rough week in which nothing had gone right. And now something had arrived that most probably wasn’t good.

  “The presumption-of-death verdict in the William Stark case. They’ve accepted the circumstantial evidence, so despite no body being found yet, they’ve decided to terminate Stark’s life on the basis of DNA samples.”

  Carl nodded and put both slips of paper in his breast pocket. In a way, it was good news. At least the probate court could now begin to get the estate sorted.

  This is great for Tilde and Malene, he thought, once he was alone again.

  He took a look at TV2’s news channel where the reports on the tremendous monsoon-like downpour on this second day of July described a near-catastrophic scenario. Had it not been for the unfortunate fact that sewers everywhere were so hopelessly overburdened that at this moment shit was literally erupting from drains in hundreds of basements, including their own toilets at the end of the corridor, he would have been delighted by some of the consequences.

  As if by an act of divine retribution, Pusher Street was completely flooded and laid to waste. The makeshift stalls were deserted, and not a single gram of hash was to be seen. Turnover must have dropped by millions of kroner in a matter of hours. Easy come, easy go. And the water had inundated Istedgade, too, closing down basement massage parlors and leaving the whores and pimps totally idle.

  Sodom and Gomorrah had got what was coming to them.

  “Jesus, what a stench down here,” Laursen said as he poked his head into Carl’s office. “How about coming upstairs and getting the smell of fresh-baked bread in your nostrils instead? Not everyone has left yet. Hell of a cozy place for a birthday party when all you’ve got is a one-and-a-half-room apartment.”

  He chuckled and plonked his increasingly expansive backside onto the chair opposite Carl. “Anyway, listen. I haven’t had time to tell you this yet, what with that pork to roast and all,” he said. “Word came in today about that unidentified body from the fire up in Rungsted. You think you’re ready for this?”

  “Go on.”

  “They found out who made the dentures Assad fished out of the mouth of the corpse.”

  “Yeah? Who was it, then?”

  “One Torben Jørgensen, a dental technician up in north Zealand. They belonged to René E. Eriksen, just as you guys assumed.”

  “Course they did,” Carl groused. “We said we recognized them, so they could have saved themselves the bother.”

  “Yes, possibly. The only thing is, the DNA analysis of bone marrow from the corpse shows that the bloke wearing the dentures wasn’t of Caucasian descent. Turns out he was Negroid.”

  Carl frowned.

  “Assad and Rose! In here, please!” he hollered.

  Both he and Laursen were a bit shaken at the sight of Rose as she appeared in the doorway with the pinkest hair this side of a luxury retirement home in Florida.

  “Hey, Laursen, whassup?” said Assad, still with his trousers rolled up above his knees after a go on the prayer mat.

  “The corpse with Eriksen’s teeth in its mouth was that of a black man,” Carl stated. “How about that!”

  Assad’s eyebrows did a little somersault. “What?”

  “The dentures were Eriksen’s,” Carl went on. “Forensics located the mold at a dental technician’s up in north Zealand.”

  Assad flopped down on a chair.

  “But this means Eriksen ran off and got away with everything,” he said dully.

  Carl nodded. This conclusion had dawned on him, too. What a crock of shit.

  “I reckon we can now assume we know who killed Brage-Schmidt and our unidentified black man,” he said. “And if he could do that, then most likely he’s also our perp in the murders of Teis Snap and his wife, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Yes,” Assad added. “Not to mention all the others.”

  Rose bobbed up her new hairdo. As if they hadn’t already noticed it.

  “Listen to you, talking out of a certain part of your posteriors. Can’t we agree that in reality we know fuck all? These are all just assumptions so that at least we can talk ourselves into believing we’ve got just a little bit of all this sorted. When it comes to assumptions, I couldn’t care less.”

  Carl made a mental note to remind her of this last little statement when the time came. It would surely be only a question of days.

  “One more thing,” said Laursen. “You probably already know, if you’ve checked your emails. They found Eriksen’s car. It’s standing, covered in dust, in a side street in Palermo.”

  “Palermo?” Carl spluttered. “That’s effing Sicily!”

  Laursen nodded.

  “Yeah, looks like he just took off in his old car and managed to drive all the way through Europe without getting stopped.”

  “Hurrah for the Schengen open-border agreement,” Rose grumbled.

  “Yeah, it’s a bit of a trek,” said Carl. “But you’ve got to admit Palermo sounds like the perfect place for someone needing a new ID and maybe a new appearance.”

  “Interpol is already on the case, so I’ve heard,” said Laursen.

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Carl replied with a sigh. “And Interpol covers a hundred and ninety countries, so there just might be a chance he’s decided to go somewhere else, don’t you think?”

  Assad shook his head. “You never know, Carl. It’s not for sure.”

  “True, but as far as I can see we’re never going to find out where René E. Eriksen, or whatever he’s calling himself now, has gone into hiding. And with all that money he apparently took with him, I’d say we’re never going to find him. That’s been my experience in these kinds of situations. End of story.”

  —

  The windshield wipers were going flat out as Carl approached the motorway. He’d already seen several vehicles abandoned in the deluge.

  Only a lunatic would want to chance a thirty-kilometer trip in weather like this. If only he had somewhere to crash until morning.

  Then he remembered the notes in his pocket. If he turned left, it’d be to Lisbeth. If he took a right, he’d be headed for Mona.

  He smiled fleetingly at the thought, then the smile was gone.

  What the hell made him think that these two women, who more than likely already had a new rooster in the barnyard, would want anything to do with him?

  And with that, he took the notes from his pock
et, rolled down the side window and cast them to the wind. See if he cared!

  After an hour and a quarter, a Venetian version of Rønneholtparken loomed in front of him.

  Christ! he thought. There wouldn’t be many cars able to start in the morning without the help of a hair drier, his own included.

  “Is the basement OK?” was the first thing he called out, as he stepped through the front door.

  No answer. So most probably it was all a mess.

  He glanced into the living room, finding the place unusually dark. Had they left Hardy alone with no lights on? What the hell were they playing at?

  “Hardy?” he ventured quietly, so as not to give him a fright, and at the same moment all the lights went on.

  “Ta-daaah!” howled Mika and Morten, and Carl nearly jumped out of his skin.

  They stepped aside to reveal Hardy sitting upright in a colossal high-tech wheelchair equipped with all manner of joysticks and whatnots in front of his face.

  “This is it, Hardy. Show Carl what you can do!” cried Morten.

  —

  Carl was still giddy with joy. The sight of Hardy propelling himself forward with a broad smile had reduced them all to tears.

  The hugs and the heartfelt words of congratulation seemed like they would go on forever. As of today, a new era had announced its arrival at Carl’s house. Nothing less could describe it. Carl laid his head back on his pillow and tried to fall asleep, but couldn’t. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Hardy’s happy face and the empty bed in the living room. He sighed at the thought of all the things they could do together now, if only he could live up to it.

  After another half hour spent musing about Hardy and the future, he reached out for the stack of junk mail he’d brought upstairs and tossed on to the duvet beside him.

  A bit of consumer surfing and he’d be asleep in no time.

  Much better than counting sheep, at any rate, he thought, sifting through the offers.

  Then suddenly, in among the supermarket ads, there was a postcard.

  Who in the world would ever send them a postcard? It had to be to Mika or Morten, surely. Maybe one of their friends who’d been at the party and just wanted to say thanks.

  He looked at the name and saw it was his own. Only then did he notice that, besides the name and address, there was nothing written on the card. Instead, there was a little snippet of a text stuck on with glue:

  The special exhibition of African jewelry was quite remarkable. The selection of handmade rings, bracelets and necklaces . . .

  That was all. The rest was snipped off.

  A wry smile appeared on Carl’s lips.

  “Well, I’ll be . . . ,” he said to himself, conjuring up the image of a boy with nut-brown skin.

  He turned the card over and stared at the motif for a long time.

  Aalborg Tower—more than just a view, read the caption.

  EPILOGUE

  Autumn 2012

  “You’re not leaving already, are you, Richard?”

  She turned herself over on the sheet, displaying her body from every angle as the hair under her arms quivered in the breeze stirred up by the fan on the ceiling.

  “Look. Wouldn’t you like to put your tongue in here?” she coaxed, drawing the tip of her finger around her navel and arching her back.

  He smiled and tossed two hundred-dollar bills onto the sheet beside her. She’d been one of the better ones, but once was enough. There were other fish in the sea, as they said. Plenty of them.

  “Oh, Richard, two hundred! You’re so good to me!” she purred, fluttering the banknotes across her nipples. “Come again. Soon!”

  The air outside was exceptionally dry, and the heat rose from the street in waves. Even the street vendors were dabbing their brows with greasy kerchiefs.

  But René wasn’t bothered by the heat. A year and a half spent in ten different South American countries had taught him how to cope with a climate where most people from northern latitudes were forced to give up.

  It was all a matter of listening to one’s body. Plenty of liquids, pauses in air-conditioned bars, elegant, airy clothing, helicopter journeys where others went by car, horseback rides where others were forced to trek. Throughout South America these amenities were there for the taking. Paraguay, Bolivia, Guyana. Wherever he traveled, there wasn’t a country where status and money couldn’t provide him with whatever he wanted.

  René stretched and squinted up at the sun. It was still too early for his siesta; time for a quick manicure and perhaps a bit of shopping to see if anything caught his fancy. It usually did him a world of good.

  A woman smiled to him from the sidewalk and waited a moment to see if he would take her up on the offer, but René was sated.

  Since getting his dental implants and chestnut-brown hair transplant and having the bags removed from under his eyes, he looked like a million dollars, all set off by a deep copper tan. All those years of passionless embraces and dutiful sex were now definitively a thing of the past.

  Maracay wasn’t among the most beautiful towns in Venezuela to hang out in, but it was here the women gave him the most value for money.

  He nodded to himself. By now he’d become so accustomed to his new status that he had to sit and concentrate for a long time to recall how it had all come about.

  He knew that theoretically there could be a warrant out for his arrest, but it didn’t worry him. If all traces of him had not been entirely erased by the blaze at Brage-Schmidt’s place, which he felt sure they had, he could always relocate. He never spent too long in one place, anyway. His next stop would be Uruguay, where it was said the women were absolutely stunning. Once he’d been to all the South American countries whose infrastructure seemed least forbidding, he would move on to Asia.

  René intended to age in style. Slowly, and for a long, long time. All he had to do was look after himself.

  He certainly had the means. The Curaçao stocks were worth a lot more than he had ever envisaged, so regardless of how extravagant his lifestyle was, he had more than enough money to keep him going for the rest of his days and then some.

  He turned a corner onto one of the main thoroughfares, inhaling the scent of wealth and suitable company in the comfortable certainty that it was here he belonged.

  A shop with a marble facade and armored glass prompted him to stop. It wasn’t the first time he’d walked past it, but this time he decided to go in. The Elephant Automatic watch by Fabien Cacheux was exactly what he was looking for. This subtle combination of simplicity and daring and the exceedingly brazen design of the strap appealed to him, as did the sign in the window that discreetly but firmly drew the attention of inquisitive souls to the fact that only eleven of this model existed in the entire world. For the modest sum of $47,300, René decided it was now time to become a member of this very exclusive club.

  He smiled indulgently as he watched the reflections in the window of those less fortunate who could only stare at the timepiece. He turned around toward them and nodded to a man across the street who stood waiting for a bus, wearing an abundant overcoat that seemed completely out of place in all the heat.

  There was a time when he’d been like that himself.

  When he came out with the watch on his wrist and his old Tag Heuer in a little box in a plastic bag, he felt wealthier and better equipped than ever before. Tomorrow, when he drove the two hours to Choroní Beach for a loving farewell with Yosibell, a woman capable of more than most, he would allow her slender, red fingernails to stroke his watch strap.

  And then it would be good-bye, Venezuela.

  He noted that the man was still waiting at the bus stop as he strolled by the next shops along the street. But South America was like that. Sometimes everything functioned to excess and buses came hard on each other’s heels like stampeding animals. Other times one might just as w
ell forget about it and walk.

  Which apparently was what the man finally decided to do. But it was strange that he should choose to walk off in the opposite direction from that in which the bus ran, René thought as he turned down a side street that last time he was here had smelled so delightfully of perfume mixed with hibiscus, freesia and pitahaya that he had almost swooned.

  By now the afternoon siesta had descended heavily upon the narrow street. Shutters were closed, behind which folks were in the process of eating or napping.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that he and the man in the overcoat were the only ones left on the street, and at the moment the man was gaining on him.

  Easy now, René told himself, and then recalled how the waiter at the hotel the evening before last had suddenly asked him if the accent that flavored his English was Scandinavian, possibly Danish, because he’d once had a girlfriend from over there and she spoke the same way. And when René had said no, he’d done so rather harshly. After that, the waiter had had his eye on him.

  Of course he had switched hotels, but not his name. So what good had it done?

  Now the man in the coat was walking a mere twenty or thirty meters behind him, so René walked faster. Ahead lay another three or four narrow streets that led up to one of the wide avenidas, so all he had to do was keep up a good pace.

  Then all of a sudden he had the impression he’d seen this man before. Was he the one who’d been standing at the counter in the police station when he had given a statement about a minor traffic accident on Calle Marino? Were they starting to catch on, in spite of everything? The thought sent a shudder down his spine.

  Now he began to run, and despite his age and years of total physical inactivity, a personal trainer and a routine of early-morning jogging on the beaches had given his legs new life, enabling him to dart around corners and down a narrow alley without his pursuer being able to keep up.

  Feeling victorious and quite pleased with himself, he hid behind a stack of cardboard boxes and promised himself he would forget about Yosibell at Choroní Beach and grab a flight south that very evening.