The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel (40 page)

That cargo was Marco.

He felt cold inside. If only he had the courage, he would sneak up to the vehicle and slash its tires with Kaj and Eivind’s kitchen knife that he still had concealed under his jersey.

He looked along Sortedam Dossering. Maybe he should run that way, though it could be dangerous if someone blocked his path, with the lake on one side and hardly a single side street on the other. It was not an optimal route. Either he had to go back the way he’d come, or else he would have to stay put and wait for a vacant taxi.

Marco did not let the van out of his sight. Everything evil was symbolized by its presence. How often had they sat on the floor in the back, being led like lambs to slaughter into a life they’d been unable to refuse? How often had he lain there exhausted, dreaming that the drive would never end? But it always did. Every single day they ended up in their prison in Kregme. Eat, sleep, then off again early the next morning, such was their life. How he hated that van.

His chain of thought was broken abruptly. Was that his father coming out of the shop behind the van? And wasn’t that Zola himself right behind him? Were they so keen on finding him that they were now out in person, going from door-to-door? They were insane, there was no other word.

He ducked behind the trees and watched them spitefully as they went into the next shop. People like Zola and his father should never be allowed anywhere near children.

He saw the cyclist coming from the direction of Trianglen. An ordinary-looking type, though obviously unfamiliar with the bike he was riding.

Marco smiled to himself. That’s not yours, you just stole it, he thought, comparing the bike’s size, age, and color with its rider. Whatever made him think nobody would notice?

Then, all of a sudden, the guy wrenched his front wheel over the curb and headed straight for Marco, who managed to run only a couple of steps before the cyclist sailed right into him.

There were other cyclists on the cycle path who shouted to the man that he should watch where he was going, but Marco knew better, so instinctively he rolled to the side on the ground as the guy tried to grab him. He drew the knife from his jersey by reflex and stabbed his assailant in the ankle. There was a roar of pain as the man recoiled and fell backward. Marco leaped to his feet and legged it as fast as he could.

“Not that way, Marco,” cried a voice from the other side of the street. Marco looked up and saw that almost everyone was staring at him. In the same instant he also saw a man come running around the corner of Ryesgade at full speed and he was now only a hundred and fifty meters away.

Marco glanced around. A taxi from Østerport station with its green for-hire light on was heading toward him. He darted across the road to flag it down as the cyclist got to his feet and his second pursuer closed in.

“There’s one more, Marco!” the voice shouted.

He looked over his shoulder and saw his father standing with his hands cupped to his mouth. He was about to cry out again, but at the same moment Zola came from behind and shoved him so hard that his father lost his footing, stumbled over the cycle path and out into the street.

Marco saw the bus slam on its brakes and swerve. He heard people scream as his father disappeared beneath it, but was immediately compelled to turn and face the new threat bearing down on him. It was a dreadful moment. His father had just been run over, and Marco himself was surrounded on three sides as he stood at the curb, his arms flailing at the oncoming taxi.

An immigrant sat behind the wheel, the kind of taxi driver who didn’t own his own vehicle and wanted to demonstrate how content he was to drive someone else’s, as long as it had a leather interior and a motor powerful enough to leave everything else in its wake.

“Drive!” Marco commanded shrilly, his whole body feeling like it was about to collapse.

Two of his pursuers appeared alongside the taxi, hammering their fists against the window as the driver gave them the finger and floored the accelerator.

They took off so fast that Marco didn’t manage to see his father under the bus, only the blood spreading over the asphalt and the horrified crowd that had gathered on the pavement within seconds.

The last thing he saw before the Skoda Superb shot across Trianglen was the bus driver behind the steering wheel, face buried in his hands. Then his eyes locked on to Zola’s. The man was standing with his head held high, cold as ice amid the tumult of onlookers, none of whom seemed to have noticed what he had done.

That’s what’s in store for you
, Zola’s look told him.

“Terrible accident. Happens all too often, if you ask me. People drive like shit.” The taxi driver looked at Marco in the rearview mirror. “Where to?”

Marco sat with his head back, gasping for air. If he leaned forward he knew he would be sick. His father had tried to warn him, and for that Zola had killed him.

His father had tried to save him. His father.

Marco pictured his eyes. They were green-brown and full of warmth. This loving gaze was from a distant time, he realized that. But his father had just tried to warn him, so who cared about the time in between?

Now his father was dead and Zola had got away. And the taxi driver was asking him where he wanted to go.

Only five minutes ago he would have said the airport. Yesterday, he would have said Tilde’s house.

Now, he no longer knew . . .

Zola had murdered in cold blood, and Marco had seen with his own eyes how he’d done it. The man was completely without feeling, as he must also have been the time he turned Miryam into an invalid. William Stark had been killed just as cynically, and most likely others besides. And it was with that same callousness that Zola would have killed him. Feeling nothing.

“Have you gone deaf, mate, or what? Where do you want to go? You’ve got money, yeah?”

Marco nodded and passed two hundred kroner to the driver.

“OK, two hundred. Think about it for a bit.”

Marco shook his head. He didn’t need to think. Zola’s eyes had decided for him. Marco was staying to complete his mission. Zola was going to pay, no matter what.

“They weren’t half after you, those guys out there. Something to do with drugs, was it? Yeah, I know all about it. As soon as you start doing a bit of business for yourself, they flip totally out, don’t they? It’s a downer. Well, whaddaya say? Found out where you want to go?”

“Do you know the Hereford Beefstouw next to Tivoli Gardens?” Marco asked.

“Sure, I’m a taxi driver, aren’t I? Ask me something I don’t know and you can have your two hundred back.”

“Eriksen has left the
ministry, Carl.”

Carl looked at his watch. “He’s off early, then. When’s he—” He broke off, realizing from the look on Gordon’s face that for once he seemed to have something important to say, so he shut up.

“Eriksen has handed in his resignation with immediate effect. He went straight to his boss after we’d been over there, announced he was ill, and said he wouldn’t be coming back.”

Carl frowned. “Dammit, Gordon. I don’t know what you’ve done, but you’ve certainly set something in motion.”

He called for Rose and Assad and filled them in on the situation.

“Assad, you call Eriksen’s home and see if he’s there. And Rose, you call the ministry and get hold of the department head. We need to know what’s going on here. And when you’re done with that, call the Frederiksværk police and ask them to keep an eye on this Zola bloke and see if he’s about to do a runner. And to make sure they grab him if he tries.”

“On what grounds?” she asked.

“You’ll think of something, Rose.”

“And what about me?” asked Gordon.

“You check Eriksen’s background. We want to know if he owns a summer cottage or some other place where he can lie low. Call the tax authorities, people like that.”

It warmed Carl’s heart to see how disappointed the boy looked.

—

Assad nodded and snapped his mobile shut.

“It was Department Q’s very own Rose,” he said, putting his feet back up on the dashboard.

“That’s nice. Now let’s try and sum up,” said Carl, changing lanes. How come the traffic was already like being inside an anthill?

Assad nodded again.

“First thing is, do we agree that your methods of interrogation go a bit too far, Assad?”

“Too far? How do you mean, Carl? Aren’t they just creative?”

He shook his head. Creative? One day Assad’s creativity might just be their undoing.

“Secondly, I now know that Lars Bjørn spent time in Abu Ghraib prison while Saddam was in power. Don’t tell me you didn’t know, Assad, because I won’t believe you. Just tell me if you and Bjørn knowing each other has anything to do with that.”

Assad raised his head and stared out pensively along Ballerup Boulevard. Not exactly an uplifting sight.

Then he turned to Carl and nodded calmly. “Yes, it has. And now you must ask me no more about this. OK, Carl?”

Carl glanced at the GPS. Two more junctions and they’d be there.

“OK,” he replied. So far, so good. It was a step in the right direction. The question was, when would he take the next one? He certainly wasn’t going to let Assad off the hook that easily.

“All right, back to business. What did Rose have to say? Did she get hold of that department head?”

“Yes, and she got a rather more nuanced story than the one Gordon gave us.” He skimmed through his notepad. “I have it here. I wrote it all down.” He tapped his finger against the page. “It is true this René E. Eriksen has resigned his position with immediate effect. The reason he gave was that after having spoken with us he realized Stark had committed fraud and that it was his fault it was never detected. With this weighing down his shoulders he could no longer remain with the department.
The permanent secretary said that by rights he ought to have been suspended, but Eriksen was looking so poorly that they agreed he should go on sick leave as of that same day. Most likely there will be an internal investigation at some point, but for the moment he was unable to tell us any more.”

“OK.” Carl peered at the house numbers. A couple more and they could pull in. “Now it’s up to us whether we believe this or not. Is it really plausible that Stark’s actions shocked Eriksen as much as he claims? And not least of all, are we prepared to believe Stark was doing something illegal?”

Assad nodded. A bit absently.

—

For someone living in Rønneholtparken, the single-story dwelling in Ballerup maybe wasn’t that bad, but the location at the end of a dreary residential avenue was awfully bleak. Though the street was lined with trees, their closest neighbor was the Ringvej 4 motorway. Not that one actually heard the traffic that much, one simply smelled it. All in all, he’d rather stay put in the concrete boxes of his own estate, lined up in rows in the open landscape, with lots of friends around.

They rang the doorbell and were received by Eriksen’s wife, who clearly let them know they could come in for a minute, but she had other things to do besides answering their questions. Therefore she declined to offer them a seat, or ask if she might fetch them some refreshment.

“Looks like quite an accident,” Carl commented, pointing to the tarpaulin the emergency glaziers had rigged up where the window was supposed to be in the living room.

“I wouldn’t call it an accident. It was a planned assault, the day before yesterday. They smashed the window and set about attacking us, but I fended them off with my iron.”

Carl frowned. “I’m sorry, I’m not with you. As far as I know, nothing’s been reported to the police at this address.”

“No, I wanted to call the police, but my husband wouldn’t.”

“Hmm, strange. So what happened? Did they make off with anything?”

“As I said, I sorted them out with my iron before they had a chance.”

“So you do not actually know if this was intended to be a burglary?” Assad inquired.

“I don’t know what it was. Ask my husband.” She laughed, for no apparent reason.

“Would you happen to know where he is at the moment?” Carl asked, as he scanned the interior. Was there any sign of Eriksen being at home, but not making himself known?

“Nope. I assume he’s stuck his tail between his legs, seeing as how he packed his job in all of a sudden.”

Assad cut in: “Excuse me, madam. But do you not care?”

She smiled. “He’s my husband, and the father of my children.”

“So you don’t, then?”

She seemed astonished by his reasoning but smiled again, nevertheless. She’d probably been good-looking once, Carl thought, but it was a lot of gold teeth and upper-lip hair growth ago.

“Do you know if your husband might have had problems, something weighing him down?” he asked.

“I suppose he must have, otherwise he wouldn’t have been hanging around the airport at the crack of dawn, frothing at the mouth and waiting for Teis Snap.”

“Uhh, Teis Snap?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Yes, Teis Snap. Haven’t you read about him in the gossip magazines?” She laughed. “Never mind. He and my husband are old schoolmates. Though ‘mates’ might be pushing it a bit, considering the nonsense he’s been putting in René’s head.”

“What nonsense?”

“Stock trading. René had a lot of shares in Teis Snap’s bank, Karrebæk Bank. Tell me, haven’t you checked up on him? What kind of policemen are you?”

Carl looked at Assad, who shrugged.

“What kind of money are we talking about?” Assad asked.

“I’ve no idea. He was discreet about it, I’ll give him that. He was on the bank’s board of directors as well.”

“Might he have gone to see his friend, this . . . what was his name, now?” Assad flicked back through his notepad. “This Schnapps guy.”

“Snap. Teis Snap. I really wouldn’t know. He’s more likely gone to a hotel, the louse. And as far as I’m concerned, the creep can stay there.”

Creep? Was this her take on “to love and to honor, for better or worse”?

Carl’s mobile thrummed in his pocket. If it was Mona, everything else was on hold.

He glanced at the display but didn’t recognize the number. Was she calling from work, maybe?

“Helloski, Monsignor!” said the voice.

Who the hell was that?

“Gordon T. Taylor here. I’ve checked up on René E. Eriksen like you asked me to. There’s a lot of stuff about his education and career, but what struck me as interesting was that he recently sold off his shares in Karrebæk Bank for ten million kroner and that he’s a member of the board, besides. Kind of strange, wouldn’t you say?”

Christ on a bike. Ten million.

“Tell me something I don’t know, Gordon,” Carl teased, and hung up. That’d give him something to think about.

He turned to Eriksen’s wife, but then his phone rang again.

“For fuck’s sake, Gordon,” he snarled. “It can’t be that hard to grasp, surely? When I hang up the phone, it means we’re finished talking.”

“Carl?” came the sound of a woman’s voice. “Is that you? It’s Lisbeth.”

The furrows in his brow relocated immediately to his hairline. Lisbeth! He hadn’t given her a thought.

“Oh, sorry, Lisbeth. Thought you were someone else. Listen, I’m in the middle of an interview. Can we talk a little later on today?”

“Of course. Sorry if I’ve caught you at the wrong time.” She sounded disappointed. Maybe she had reason to be.

He said good-bye and promised to call back as soon as he had time. Somehow, it seemed neither true nor false. Just odd.

“Sorry about that,” he said, turning back to René E. Eriksen’s wife. “What I was about to say before was that your husband recently sold shares to the tune of ten million kroner in the bank whose board he happened to be on. Did you know about that?”

She asked him to repeat the sum.

And there she stood, wide-eyed, looking like her entire life was up for revision.

—

“Karrebæk Bank, Bente Mønsted. How can I help you?”

Carl nodded to Assad, who sat listening in. The GPS they’d had put in the service vehicle along with a wireless phone and all manner of electronics was nothing if not practical. He felt like a millionaire.

“I’d like to speak to your boss, Manager Snap. Could you put me through, please?”

“I’m sorry, whom am I speaking with?”

“Detective Inspector Carl Mørck, Department Q, Copenhagen police.”

“I see.” There was a pause. “I’m afraid I have to say Mr. Snap hasn’t been in today.”

“Is he off sick?”

“To be honest, I’m not quite sure. He’s just come back from a vacation in the Caribbean, but nobody’s seen him at the office yet. I know he met with our brokers in Copenhagen yesterday, but we haven’t been informed as to his schedule for today, and he hasn’t answered our calls. He’s still jet-lagged, I imagine.”

“I see. Maybe it’ll help his jet lag if I call him instead. I seem to have a magic touch when it comes to getting folks to answer their phone. Can you give me his home number?”

“I don’t think I’m authorized to give it out over the phone.”

“In that case, I’ll call the Næstved police and ask them to stop by in five minutes. It’ll look great, a couple of burly lads in full uniform turning up at the manager’s secretary’s office, don’t you think? But if that’s the way you want to do it, it’s fine by me. They can give me the number over the phone. But thanks for your help.”

“Well, if it’s really necessary, and it sounds like it is, then I suppose I can.”

Assad gave him a thumbs-up. It worked almost every time.

Twenty seconds later it was Assad’s turn to call, but this time Carl’s magic touch didn’t work. No reply.

“Check his address, Assad,” Carl instructed. “We’ll drive down there. There’s something fishy about this, if you ask me.”

“Fishy?”

“Yeah, something that doesn’t add up. We’ve got Eriksen vanishing all of a sudden. We’ve got him and Snap on the board of directors together. Eriksen’s just sold off a whole barrowload of stock, and now we’ve got Snap, who might or might not be off sick. Some funny coincidences, I’d say. It wouldn’t surprise me if the two of them were planning on meeting up somewhere.”

“Karrebæksminde is all the way down around Næstved, Carl.”

“Yeah, but we don’t care, do we? The day’s still young.”

—

“This is like half a sheikhdom,” Assad commented, staring out over the fields around the tree-lined gravel driveway leading up to Snap’s country home.

“I probably should have been a bank manager,” he added a minute later, before pressing the doorbell.

They stood and twiddled their thumbs for a minute or two at the heavy main door, until eventually Assad tried the handle. Naturally, the door was locked.

“Check the outbuildings and the garage over there, Assad, and I’ll take a walk around the house.”

Carl noted down the registration numbers of the three cars parked in front of the house, then went back to his vehicle and ran a check. All three belonged to Karrebæk Bank. Did anyone say perks?

He walked through a small apple orchard, the trees all stunningly in blossom, before coming out on the rear side of the house where there were neatly staggered terraces leading up to the house and wide-open windows upstairs.

He looked around the neatly cultivated surroundings, puzzled by all the sheets of paper that littered the garden. Probably they’d been left on a windowsill and had blown out of one of the open windows. Whatever the reason, they were now scattered all over the place and also hung in
the many fruit trees and the tall poplars further back in the windbreak facing northwest.

He picked up a sheet off the terrace. The paper was rather coarse, probably handmade. He sniffed at it. Notepaper belonging to a woman, definitely. Now she’d need to stock up anew.

“Hello, anyone home?” he shouted up at the windows, at least expecting some half-deaf maid to pop her head out, but there was no reaction.

“I’m wondering about those windows,” he said to Assad a few minutes later. “Are you any good at climbing?”

Assad hitched up his trousers. “The only difference between me and a monkey is the banana,” he replied, followed by a hearty laugh.

Carl wasn’t sure he got it.

As it turned out, the job was not without difficulty. “I don’t think it can take my weight,” Assad said, testing the trellis halfway up the wall. It looked like he was having a vertigo attack, the way he was clinging to the ivy.

“Come on, Assad. You’ve only got another meter to go. You don’t want me to climb up there, do you?”

There was a splutter of complaints that might have been interpreted as a “yes,” but then his voice became serious.

“It’s a good thing we googled Teis Snap, Carl, so we know what he looks like,” he called down, clinging to the window frame.