The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel (19 page)

He rocked on his heels for a moment, his brain churning in search of a solution.

It wouldn’t work. They would be inside any minute and find something hard to hit him on the head with. Pico wasn’t afraid to use violence, and if they knocked him unconscious he would never wake up again, or else wake up without legs.

What do they want here? he asked himself. The image of the slashed
sofa and the tattered mattresses suddenly made more sense. They had been here before. They were the ones responsible, and now they were back. But why? What were they looking for?

They couldn’t have known beforehand that he was here now because they’d sounded surprised when they found the glass splinters. All they knew was that he had been here at some point. Which meant
they
had to be here for some other reason.

What could it be?

Come on, Marco, think! he urged himself.

He looked around him. The basement offered no hiding place, he knew that, and the ground floor contained no built-in wardrobe or cubbyhole. Just some shelves in the bedroom with a curtain in front.

If they had been here before, as he felt certain they had, then they had come for something they had failed to find last time, or else something they now needed on account of the situation Marco had imposed upon them.

A creaking noise came from the basement. Marco held his breath and listened. Someone was already inside. It was difficult to hear what was going on because the sounds were drowned out by Romeo’s voice from the back garden ordering the man in front of the house to keep a good eye on the main door.

Another exit strategy foiled.

Mind Romeo doesn’t see you through the window, Marco admonished himself, scuttling to the wall underneath the windows of the living room. There was nowhere to conceal himself here, no place they would fail to look. The dining room was the same. Only the bedrooms remained. Marco darted into the hall and stared into the small rooms one by one. It was hopeless. Beds and shelves, that was it. Nothing in which to vanish.

And then his eyes fixed on the safe in the little office, its door ajar.

It was his only chance, because if Zola’s crew were sure of anything, it was that the safe was empty, having undoubtedly checked it the first time they were here.

They’ll look everywhere but there, he tried to convince himself, crawling inside and pulling the door closer.

His eyes narrowed as he assessed the situation and its three possible outcomes. They might find him and beat the daylights out of him, or he might remain undiscovered and get away. But there was a third terrifying possibility: that they would find him and lock him inside the safe.

He noticed he’d begun breathing more deeply. If they shut the door on him he would suffocate and never be found until the house was again inhabited.

Marco pressed his lips together. And when that time came they would find him because of the smell. His smell.

They would find a dead boy no one knew. Suffocated and decomposed. A boy with no distinguishing marks and no identity papers.

His heart was beating so fast that his breathing could hardly keep up in his upright fetal position and he began to sweat. Even his fingers perspired, and the tenuous hold they kept on the thin edge of the safe door became increasingly hard to maintain.

Now came the sound of Romeo’s voice from the patio door by the living room, and the man at the front door responded. Only Pico was silent. Marco knew he was checking the basement.

The floorboards creaked as Pico climbed the stairs from the basement to the living room, and Marco felt the house to be alive, an organism whose rooms were thick bundles of nerve endings. A foot placed randomly on a floor sent electric impulses shooting into all corners of the house and into the safe where Marco strained to remain silent, though everything inside him screamed for help. The pounding of his heart, the explosive activity of his brain, the clothes on his skin, the tangle of his limbs, his fear, the enclosed space, all combined to thrust up his body temperature, his pores opening accordingly. And as Pico made the whole house tremble even by the very lightness of his step, sweat poured from Marco’s skin. Most perceptibly from his wrist to the index finger that kept hold on the door. And it was through this little digit, slippery with moisture, that he registered how close Pico was to finding him.

I’m not here, he repeated over and over in his mind, willing the words into Pico’s sensory apparatus. Marco’s not here, he left a while ago. Do whatever it is you’re here for, Pico, but do it quickly. The neighbors will
soon suspect something’s wrong when they see your man at the front door. He squeezed his eyes tight shut as cupboards slammed and furniture was shoved aside.

Pico was nothing if not thorough. Which was why Marco was so petrified.

“Have you found anyone?” Romeo whispered from the patio door.

“Not here,” Pico replied, without bothering to speak softly. “There’s no one in the dining room either.”

And then he came closer, flinging back the doors of the bedrooms. Marco heard him kick at the beds and get down on his knees to peer underneath, then get up again to tear back the curtains.

“No one here either. The kitchen’s clear, too,” Pico practically shouted.

“Look in the shower, it would be just like him,” Romeo instructed.

Marco felt the tremble of the floor beneath him. Pico paused at the bathroom door in the hall, only three meters away. It was as if his gaze was drilling its way into the office toward Marco’s hiding place. As though the steel that enveloped Marco’s being only barely resisted Pico’s X-ray vision.

He knows I’m here! The thought hammered in Marco’s brain. And his finger responded to his anxiety by secreting more moisture so he could no longer keep his grip and the door slipped gently away from him, white light slicing through the crack like the blade of a knife.

Through the tiny aperture that ensued, he saw Pico’s feet disappear into the bathroom. Adidas running shoes, new and soundless. Pico in a nutshell.

Marco feverishly pushed open the door of the safe, realizing now that he had to get out and find a place Pico had already looked. But in the same instant, Pico shouted out his frustration from the bathroom: the little bastard wasn’t there either. So Marco withdrew his hand immediately, wiping his finger on his shirt, hooking it onto the inner edge of the steel door and pulling it to again.

He got just a glimpse of the toe of a running shoe as it crossed the doorsill from the bathroom before the door of the safe swung almost shut again.

Pico was in the room now, looking around, and the whole house creaked in the silence. Every tiny breath Marco took sounded like the pumping of a leaky bellows, his body on the brink of exploding. All his dreams of freedom and a life of his own rained down on him like molten metal. Reality was about to take over.

The feet on the floor took another step forward, and again Marco sensed this piercing X-ray vision burning up the room.

Pico was in the office now, so close to the safe that Marco could almost touch the fabric of his trousers through the crack. It sounded like he was rifling through the shelves above the safe. Pico wasn’t one to leave a stone unturned.

He muttered something to himself, shoving books and ring binders aside. Then a book fell to the floor with a bang, landing directly in front of Marco’s hiding place. Marco gasped, adrenaline hurtling through his body. If Pico couldn’t hear his heart thumping now, he had to be deaf.

He saw Pico’s dexterous arm reach down to pick up the book, brushing the door of the safe so that Marco lost his grip. The crack of light gradually widened as Pico stooped. Any second now he would be on his knees, peering inside.

At the very moment Marco was considering giving himself up voluntarily so he wouldn’t be beaten to a pulp, a sudden infernal bird-squawk split the air, causing Pico to stop in his tracks.

“Pico, quick! Grab the photo and get out!” Romeo shouted from outside.

Pico’s response was an athletic sprint through the hall and living room, followed by the sound of breaking glass and finally the patio door slamming against the outside wall.

And then all was quiet. The man at the front door had called the whole thing off with his alarm. Apparently someone had got too close to the house.

Marco tumbled out onto the floor of the office like a lump of compressed metal that would never regain its shape. All his limbs were numb, even though he rubbed them vigorously. If he didn’t get his circulation going so he could get out of there, he risked being cornered if someone came barging in.

Then he forced himself onto his feet. His only chance was to take the patio door out into the open, through the back garden and hedges to the houses next door and beyond. And he would have to pray to God he didn’t run into Pico and the others.

The last thing he saw as he left the house were the shards of an overturned picture frame in the living room. That, and the empty space where the photo of William Stark had been, the one his stepdaughter had used in her poster appeal.

Zola sat for a
moment and reviewed the situation. Any minute now, his contact would be calling routinely to hear his report on how the Marco case was developing. The timing was hardly appropriate.

He had sent the others out of the room, which was how it had to be. Only the dog remained behind. What had happened had happened and there were undoubtedly going to be repercussions the clan members definitely didn’t need to hear. It was imperative his near-divine status within the family remain uncompromised, for Zola’s dominance relied solely on maintaining his authority. No, this was a phone call of the utmost privacy.

When it came, he tried to begin without humility, declaring boldly that the whole sorry business was merely the fault of a silly young boy and that, as usual, he had the situation under control.

A frigid voice turned this arrogant sword of Damocles against him.

“We should never have chosen you people for the job,” came the curt reply. “If this boy is allowed to wander the streets, the consequences could be enormous for everyone, not least for yourselves. I take it you’re aware of that?”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“So you’ve said before. How long has the boy been on the loose?”

“Listen! Marco’s been spotted in Østerbro. All the men operating out there have been alerted.”

“And what good is that when you’ve just told me he committed a break-in somewhere else in town entirely? He could be anywhere.”

Zola clenched his teeth. The man was right. It wasn’t good.

“Listen to me. All my own boys are out in Brønshøj right now. We’re dragging a net from there toward the city. Besides that, we’ve got three cars cruising the whole area up to Gladsaxe and out toward Husum.”

The voice at the other end didn’t sound satisfied. “I hope for your sake it’s sufficient. Apart from having his personal description, we know now that he’s actually wearing Stark’s necklace. Make sure the photo of it that you’ve procured gets out to everyone who’s searching. Next time you see him, just be absolutely certain you catch him, otherwise it’s better that you let him go. Do you understand? If he doesn’t realize we’re looking for him, it probably won’t be that long before we get another chance. OK?”

Zola nodded, though he resented the tone. The job had already been too costly by half. His brother had protested at the time, saying they should let it go, but the three hundred thousand they took in for taking care of Stark’s disappearance had been too tempting. The consequence of that decision had meant half the clan had been preoccupied since the end of November when Marco disappeared, and especially the last couple of days, which was extremely bad for business. With begging and thieving activities brought to a minimum, twenty-five thousand kroner were being lost every single day. The three hundred grand they’d got for kidnapping and murdering William Stark had long since been swallowed up.

A curse on that Marco! He should have clipped the boy’s wings the first day he realized how smart he was.

“We’ll be careful, don’t worry,” he assured his contact. “He won’t give us the slip again.”

“What was he doing out in Stark’s house?”

“We don’t know. We don’t know how he found it either. We’ll try to sort it out, OK?”

“We’ve talked about this before: Do you think the kid will go to the police?”

Zola paused to think. Anything he said in response would be a shot in the dark. Of course there was a chance he would turn them in. But the boy had been lying in that shallow grave when Zola and his father had
discussed the body, so he knew his father was an accomplice. Maybe that would be enough to prevent him. On the other hand, it was true that he had broken into Stark’s house, and why had he done that? Blackmail was the first thing that came to mind. The little parasite would likely turn all his criminal tendencies back upon those who had fostered him. The more Zola thought about it, the more probable it sounded. Under no circumstances could Marco be given the chance.

“Go to the police? Yes, I’m afraid there might be a risk of that,” he therefore replied. “The boy must be stopped, whatever the price.”

“Excellent.” A long silence ensued, a clear sign that his employer found it anything but. “You must understand that I am compelled to mobilize my own network now, Zola,” he went on. “And by the way, don’t count on us contacting you the next time a similar job arises.”

—

Bank manager Teis Snap was so stunned, he had to steady himself against his desk. Seconds before, his chairman of the board, Brage-Schmidt, had informed him that his men in the field had conceded that the boy they were looking for had broken into Stark’s home. And before the full gravity of the information had kicked in, Brage-Schmidt had demanded half a million kroner in cash, to be paid into what he called the
seek and neutralize the kid
account.

“Murdering a child, here in Denmark?” Snap protested quietly. “Do you really want Karrebæk Bank’s shareholders to finance that? Murder carries a life sentence, and who’s going to be the fall guy if we’re found out?”

“No one,” came the curt reply.

“No one? I don’t follow you. What do you mean?”

“It needn’t come to that. But if it does, I suggest we make René E. Eriksen accountable.”

Teis Snap stared at the photograph of himself and René on the desk in front of him. Two young students with beaming smiles and an ocean of broken ideals since.

“You’re out of your mind,” he said as calmly as he could. “René would never accept that under any circumstances. Why on earth would he?”

“
If
it becomes necessary, we shan’t be asking him. He’ll confess of his own accord.”

“How?”

“In a suicide note.”

Teis Snap pulled his Strand & Hvass office chair from the desk and sat down heavily on its soft leather.
Suicide, if it became necessary
, Brage-Schmidt had said. He hoped to God it wouldn’t.

“To be on the safe side, and to make sure we don’t suddenly run out of time, we have to formulate that note right away,” Brage-Schmidt went on. “First of all we need to cover up any links between Eriksen and our middlemen among the Cameroon officials. I want you to instruct him to do that himself. He’s the best choice in that respect. Is everything under control with our stocks in Curaçao?”

“Yes, they’re all still in the safe-deposit box at Maduro and Curiel’s Bank there.”

“And we’ve got the keys?”

“Yes, René and I have both got our own, but I’ll need his power of attorney.”

“OK, sort it this afternoon. After that, you fly down there and gather all the stock certificates, then cancel his safe-deposit box agreement with MCB. We have to get those certificates out while he’s still alive. If something goes wrong and we need to beat a fast retreat, then we’ll have them as well as our own. Are you with me?”

“I suppose, yes.” Teis Snap was sweating profusely as he struggled to assess the consequences. “If worst does come to worst, how do we explain his suicide?” he ventured, the final word petering into a whisper.

“Sexual abuse of a young boy, of course. That René E. Eriksen, along with his subordinate, William Stark, regularly had sex with this Marco, and the shame of it had long ago prompted Stark to choose the ultimate way out by committing suicide.”

Teis Snap may have been shaken, yet he felt his heart rate steady somewhat. The advantages of such an explanation seemed plain. Even William Stark’s disappearance would be accounted for.

“But this of course presupposes that we get our hands on the boy.
After all, we can’t have him denying the story. And what then, if we find him? Once he’s out of the way, who’s going to point the finger at Stark and Eriksen for abusing him?”

“They’ll accuse themselves in Eriksen’s suicide note. We will include details of precisely where he got rid of the boy’s body before doing away with himself.”

Snap frowned. So many disagreeable decisions with equally disagreeable consequences had originated behind that same brow in the course of time. But fake suicides and kids’ corpses were not obvious fixtures in his world. He had known René from their schooldays, on top of which he had children of his own, albeit older than the boy they were searching for.

“I understand. A truly frightening perspective, I must say, and yet logical. But we still need to find the boy.”

“Exactly. Which is why I want you to immediately release the half million for our search operation. My contact has bloodhounds who are used to sniffing people out. All we need is to get them flown in. Transfer the funds and we’re in business.”

Snap smoothed his hand over the desktop. The money was no issue. The quicker it was done, the better, no question about it.

“I’ll organize the transfer right away. But woe betide us if the authorities ever catch on. That’s
your
department, OK? Make sure it never happens.” The emphasis on “your” was pronounced. “I don’t want to know what you do or where and when you do it, understand? René is an old friend of mine, after all.”

“They’ll do their best, I’ll make sure of it.”

“Who are these people you’ll be flying in, anyway?”

“I don’t think you should worry about that, Teis, do you?”

—

René E. Eriksen had been sitting in his office, routinely running through the presentation his minister was scheduled to make in the parliamentary debate the following day. Over the years, he had learned to steer his superiors through the roughest of gales, and no matter who happened to
form the opposition, their attacks invariably came to naught, for René E. Eriksen had mastered the art of saying nothing of importance. When debates were most heated, the crux of the matter always remained untouched, because it was known only to him, his closest officials, and the minister himself. Eriksen was therefore revered among his peers in the steep pyramid of government officialdom, and the ministry’s permanent secretary could safely turn his attention to other matters.

This was one of those good, average days when René E. Eriksen felt he was on top of things. At least until a thrumming noise from a desk drawer informed him of someone wanting to speak to him on the rarely used prepaid mobile.

It meant Teis Snap had some important news.

This time his briefing was short and steeped in detail, a far cry from Snap’s usual style. It was almost as if his old school chum had learned every word by heart. But whether this was the case or not, the information he imparted was alarming indeed.

A boy who could reveal the murder of William Stark was on the loose. And to prevent the otherwise unavoidable avalanche of scandal, he had to be done away with. The search was already on.

A boy!

“For that reason we need to wipe out our tracks. I want you to get rid of anything that might link you to us and to your lackeys among the officials in Yaoundé. For our part we’re erasing all traces of our connections to the folks distributing the funds and removing as much evidence as we can that links us with Cameroon, OK? Moreover, I want you to call the relevant authorities down there and tell them the project’s on the back burner for a while. Tell your staff it’s a routine investigation of administrative irregularities in Yaoundé, but make sure those damn pygmies get some of what’s coming to them until the storm has blown over. Get hold of Louis Fon’s replacement and instruct him to buy lots of banana plants as quickly as possible. Get it sorted now, not tomorrow. Are you with me, René? You’re the only man we have who can do this easily, without fuss and without a trace.”

“Hold on a minute, Teis. I thought I’d made it perfectly clear I didn’t want to know what you were up to behind the scenes.”

“You did. But the way things are at the moment, there is correspondence and records we need to get removed from the system. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand the gravity of the situation. Just as you made sure to secure Stark’s laptop and prevent anything compromising leaking from that source, we now need to get hold of this boy, because if we don’t, the whole shebang could come tumbling down around us, especially if we’re not prepared. But we
will
be prepared, won’t we, René?”

René nodded to himself. He could follow the logic, yet at the same time a devil was prodding his subconscious with its fork. Teis Snap and Jens Brage-Schmidt might benefit from his carrying out these orders, but what about him? Would he, in reality, be worse off? Would he then risk being left alone in the firing line if the scam was uncovered? Or was there something more to this nagging doubt?

“One other thing, René. We’re a bit worried about our stock in Curaçao. If things go wrong here in Denmark, Brage-Schmidt reckons the stocks can be traced back to us, in which case there’s a risk of it all being confiscated. But now we’ve found someone willing to give us ten percent below the day’s quotation, so I need a signature from you to the bank in Curaçao, a power of attorney so I can get into the safe-deposit box and retrieve all the certificates.”

“I see. And what if I want to keep my share? Why should I hand over ten percent of fifteen million to some stranger when I can get the full rate on the market? I’m not with you.”

“You know as well as I do that we need to stick together on all our decisions, René, and on this one you’re in the minority.”

René felt his neck muscles tense. It was as if the executioner’s hatchet hung in the air above his neck. All alarms were going off at once. It wasn’t only Snap’s instructions but also the circumstances in which they were issued. Calling him about something as important as this without prior warning. It was most irregular. It required a personal meeting at the very least, where they could make the appropriate decisions in consensus.

Were they going to make off with all the proceeds and disappear? How could he be certain they respected his interests and that his share wouldn’t suddenly vanish into thin air?

He mobilized all his instincts and experience. This eruption of chaos was not going to be at his expense. That much he knew.

“I want guarantees, Teis. Written guarantees, so I know where I stand. You can buy my shares in Karrebæk Bank at the going rate. Transfer the sum to an account in Danske Bank. Until you do, there’ll be no power of attorney. Once you’ve sold the stocks, you’re to send all documents of transfer and registration by courier to my office here in the ministry, along with your written declaration. I’ll be waiting here until it’s done, Teis.”