The Marco Effect

24

Marco checked the time on the computer. It was 6:10, so it would be a while before the library closed. But then why did the librarians behind the counter keep looking at him and their watches as if they were closing in five minutes?

Could there be others they were looking at?

He turned his screen slightly so he could see their reflections. Were they conferring now?

It was the one with the short brown hair, the one they called Lisbeth, he was most wary of. It was like she was everywhere. First here, then Brønshøj, and now here again, and no matter where it was, he’d felt her eyes upon him. Maybe this was the last time he’d be able to come here. The looks they kept sending in his direction seemed to tell him so.

He turned his screen back again and typed in another search. There were all too many policemen in Copenhagen by that name, and to make matters worse he’d just discovered it could be spelled with a “C” as well as a “K.” Back to square one. Since he knew neither the officer’s surname nor his rank, he reckoned his best bet was to search Google Images, typing in “Carl” and “police,” which returned photos galore of the Swedish king and a single image of a policeman in uniform by the name of Carl Åge, nothing like the man he had seen. Thousands of irrelevant hits, thousands of irrelevant individuals. He expanded his search, adding “Copenhagen” and “criminal.” This turned up new results, fewer in number, but still far too many.

Then he read about a few current cases in the online tabloids, noting words like “inspector,” “superintendent,” and “investigation,” and after a few minutes of renewed googling the face of the man suddenly appeared on the screen in connection with a case he and his assistant had solved concerning a well-known doctor, Curt Wad, and a number of illegal abortions. Marco smiled with relief. There he was, jacket buttoned wrong with a sour smile on his face as he stared in to the camera, flanked by a rather smaller, dark-skinned man and a black-haired woman who looked like a punk rocker. Somehow Marco felt a kind of kinship with the little dark man. There was something about his eyes, the calm gaze, his curly hair, the hue of his skin.

Carl Mørck, Rose Knudsen, and Hafez el-Assad read the caption, so now he knew his policeman’s full name. A proficient investigator, according to the article, and a specialist in unsolved cases.

Marco sat for a moment and stared into space with a rare feeling inside him. Had he really been this lucky? Wasn’t this Carl Mørck just the kind of man he needed?

He read on, discovering new links that mentioned the policeman. Not everything he found was particularly reassuring. One article described an incident out in Amager where Mørck had been shot under mysterious circumstances, after which he had been on sick leave for some time. And it said his fiery temperament was legendary among colleagues.

Marco knew all about fiery temperaments. One had to be careful around them.

Again, he turned the screen until he saw Lisbeth’s reflection as she stood whispering with the other librarians who still stood facing him. All his instincts were immediately alerted. He looked toward the glass entrance doors, noting that one of the male employees had positioned himself in front of them, his eyes glancing repeatedly in Marco’s direction.

It was annoying and unpleasant and made Marco stand up and move to the next computer. If he couldn’t get away by the entrance, at least he was on the ground floor. Then, if he needed to, it would be easy to climb through the window facing the parking lot round the back.

He picked up a book that had been left on the table and pretended to look something up, cross-checking with pages on the Web.

Maybe he was too jumpy, imagining things. Why should they be interested in him? He’d always behaved himself commendably at the library.

What could it be? Had he forgotten something on the shelf above the electricity meter that they had just discovered?

He shook his head. No, he’d left nothing behind there, he felt sure of it.

He looked out on the parking lot. All seemed quiet beyond the light green of the shrubbery. People coming and going, leaving or collecting their cars in the diagonal spaces, most of them wearing a smile. A mild May evening in Denmark such as this one could be so incredible with its sharp, clear light. It was one of the things he loved best about being here.

Marco turned back to his computer screen and smiled to himself. Now he had something to go on. The policeman’s name was Carl Mørck and he worked on unsolved cases. Regardless of any reservations he might have about going to the police, he realized this was the man he had to approach with what he knew. He only hoped he could avoid having to let on that he was stateless and that his family had brought him up to be a criminal. Marco frowned. It would be difficult. To succeed he would have to find a way of passing on his information without having to meet him in person.

Which meant he needed more information that would bring him closer to the man.

Marco surfed the Web for a while. Apparently Carl Mørck’s doings were a good subject for the press, several of his cases having received considerable attention. The articles included one about a politician who had gone missing, a series of arsons, kidnappings, a killer in Copenhagen’s Søndermarken, the case of a secret brotherhood carrying out unlawful abortions, and much more besides. Department Q, his section was called.

Marco put on the headphones next to the computer and clicked into a couple of short TV clips featuring Mørck, his dark-skinned assistant and the weird female colleague.

Mørck was easy to read, but his assistant Assad was rather more difficult. In fact, the clips gave Marco a quite different impression of the man than he had gained from looking at the images on the net. On the face of it, he seemed kind and good-natured, and yet there was something indefinable about his eyes and gestures that Marco found unsettling. There was a darkness in his gaze that made him seem shifty and a little too much on his guard.

This man had secrets he did not want to share. Beneath his smile he was a sharpened knife, Marco knew. Far too wary for a pickpocket to even come close. As far as possible he would have to avoid this Assad.

After a few more minutes of searching in vain for private information about Carl Mørck, he opened Google Maps and printed out the woodland area where he had hidden from the clan the day he escaped. He collected the printout and drew a cross at the location where he believed Stark’s body had lain. So far so good.

Again the librarian looked at her watch and glanced over to where he was sitting. She didn’t look straight at him, but straight enough.

Why was she so interested in the time? There was still quite a while until closing, and why was the man still over by the entrance? What was he doing there?

The librarian’s face twitched slightly as they all heard a car enter the parking lot, braking hard and pulling into the farthest space. Her expression didn’t change much, but suddenly she appeared relieved.

And instinctively Marco knew he now had to raise his hand to the security lock on the window by which he sat.

It was a movement the staff behind the counter didn’t like. They became agitated, and Lisbeth gave a strange nod to the man at the entrance. He nodded back and began strolling a bit too casually toward the area where Marco sat, pretending to check the shelves he passed on his way.

The windows rattled at the slamming of car doors and two figures came running, one with his jacket billowing behind him, the other scuttling crablike.

It was Mørck and his assistant.

Marco’s eyes were everywhere now as he unhasped the lock on the window as calmly and as inconspicuously as possible. The man from the entrance was only a few strides away, yet Marco remained seated for a second more. He wanted to be absolutely certain that he didn’t jump out before the two policemen had turned the corner and were heading for the entrance.

Now!

He took a deep breath, sent the lady librarian a sad look, pushed the window open, and jumped.

–

“You’re joking? Did he really just jump out the window? Why didn’t you people stop him?”

Carl sprang to the open window and looked out. Parked cars, otherwise nothing.

Lisbeth pointed at a young man who was sitting in a chair, moaning softly.

“Bent there tried to go after him, but he sprained his ankle clambering up onto the windowsill.”

Carl nodded testily to the man. What the hell kind of condition were Denmark’s young people in these days?

“What was the boy doing?” Assad asked.

“He was just sitting over there at the computer. He took a printout at one point. It might still be there.”

Carl went over to the table. There was nothing there and nothing on the floor either.

“Check the wastepaper basket over there, Assad,” he said, sitting down at the computer. He found himself wondering how much of his life he had wasted in front of Google’s logo, wishing himself back to the time when the Internet was no more than an electrical impulse in some bloke’s kinky brain.

“We could check and see if he had time to delete his searches,” Lisbeth suggested, leaning her ripe breasts lightly against his shoulder as she began to type with prettily painted fingernails.

Sensing her perfume, Carl inhaled cautiously but deeply. It wasn’t quite as pervasive as Mona’s, but almost. The kind of scent that put every gland in his body on the alert.

“I’m sure you know, but then you just click on the triangle there,” she said, leaning farther forward and doing it for him.

That was when Carl lost all interest in police work.

He wondered whether she was doing it on purpose, all his senses now converging on his shoulder region.

“There we are,” she said, relieving the angelic pressure as he followed the movement of her body. “Now we can see what he was so interested in. Maybe you can tell us why, Inspector Mørck.”

He stared listlessly at the screen, then woke up.

“Strange boy,” came Assad’s voice from behind him.

Carl focused his eyes and scrolled down to where the searches no longer seemed to be related. It all looked very systematic, and it was all about him.

“Now he knows who you are, Carl.”

“Yeah, and you, too, Assad.”

“I think you better keep an eye out for what’s happening around you.”

“I’m not afraid of a kid.”

“He is not just a kid, Carl, You can see for yourself right here. He wants to know all about you. Perhaps he knows more than is good.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just mean that sometimes the camel driver is driven by the camel.”

Carl nodded. What the hell did the boy want with all this information?

“Look at his last search,” said Lisbeth. “He’s been on Google Maps. That’s probably where his printout’s from.”

Carl clicked on the search word, only to find himself on another search page with another search field.

“Can I see which area he was searching for?”

Lisbeth leaned forward again. “Just do the same again. Click on the triangle there, Carl.”

She might just have told him. Not that he had the slightest objection to the heavenly feeling of her soft breasts once more against his shoulder. As far as he was concerned, she could stay like that a bit longer.

He looked at the list of searches.

Kregme came up.

“Strange name,” said Assad. “Just like the stuff in a layer cake.”

Lisbeth’s laughter was like feeling the gentlest of touches. Carl stared at her lips. What the fuck was happening?

“Do you live up in Kregme, Carl? That’s a long way.”

“No, I live in Allerød. I’ve no idea why he’d be interested in Kregme. Maybe he lives there himself. Maybe that’s where he’s off to now.”

“Allerød, that’s a coincidence.”

“Why, do you live there, too?” he asked. The thought of her perhaps soon heading off home in the same direction made him oddly restless.

She smiled. “No, in Værløse. Just a stone’s throw, isn’t it?”

“When do you get off work?” he blurted out, and could have bitten off his tongue. What the hell was he playing at? What kind of an idiotic question was that? He’d be asking how she was getting home next.

“How are you getting home?” he heard himself say, purely reflexively.

“You could give me a lift, for example.” She laughed out loud. So she probably didn’t mean it.

Carl took a deep breath. With the possible exception of the infinity of the universe, a female’s humor was probably the most difficult thing to get a handle on.

Carl looked at Assad. His smile seemed a bit too crooked. What was he thinking?

“Perhaps we could go out for a meal together?” Lisbeth added. “I’m rather hungry, as it happens. Then you could tell me all you know about this boy. I have to admit I’m curious. What do you say?”

–

He waited for them over on the other side of the street, crouching behind the cars parked outside the former Red Cross building.

From here he could see the policemen’s car in the parking lot. Any moment now they would come out and drive off. He just wanted to see them, and what they were going to do.

For that reason he was surprised when they came out with the librarian, and even more so when Carl Mørck and his assistant parted company and Carl and the librarian headed up the street together toward Lille Triangel.

Reaching the Dag H café, where Marco had so often lent a hand sweeping the pavement and clearing up, they went inside and sat down at a table that was not immediately visible from the street.

The thing now was to decide whether to make his next move straightaway. If there were too many or too few customers, he risked being discovered, but as far as he could make out, conditions were just right.

He waited twenty minutes before walking in and past the bar, nodding to those at work behind it.

Luckily, it was no one he knew.

They were seated in a corner on the left, their elbows on the table and faces so close together that anyone would think they knew each other most intimately.

Carl Mørck seemed different than the other times he had seen him. His fierce countenance had evaporated and been oddly replaced by the kind of half-witted boyish pose Danish men assume when trying to get off with a woman. And the strange thing was that the women usually fell for it, and this instance was no exception. Something was obviously going on.

It couldn’t have been better.

Marco scanned the café. For a thief this was perfect: a lively hum of voices, couples with fingers entwined, intimate conversation, joking between friends. A landscape free of cares, in which people like Marco worked best. Bags dumped on the floor, coats and jackets draped over chairs, mobile phones on table edges.

He straightened his shoulders and slid like a shadow into the passage between the bar and the cake display. If he could find a seat in the armchair on the raised area just behind Carl Mørck without the librarian seeing him, he’d be able to ease the wallet out of Mørck’s jacket that hung from the back of his chair.

It took him a minute or two to weave his way between the columns and into position. He advanced no more than a couple of meters at a time, for this was the technique and would hopefully reach the chair while it remained unoccupied.

When eventually he found himself seated back-to-back with Mørck he was close enough to sense their intimacy. The librarian talked the most while Mørck sat immobile and listened, beguiled and wholly absent from the world around him.

Before long she would casually place her hand on the table next to his, and if he responded by laying his on hers, Marco could just as well sound a fanfare as he dipped into the inside pocket of Carl’s jacket. They wouldn’t notice a thing.

Two minutes later he stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the restrooms with the open wallet in his hands. He was going to put it back as soon as he was finished with it, but then a waiter appeared, asking if he’d like to order, and he hadn’t the courage to stay that long. Mørck and his librarian were already ordering dessert.

He peered into the wallet. It was the flat kind preferred by men who couldn’t care less what was dictated by the fashion pundits in Milan and New York. The stitching was coming apart, the leather was thin and shiny from wear and tear, and it had gradually assumed the shape of the body against which it had unceasingly been pressed for years on end. Moreover, it was utterly unsuited to modern forms of payment. Marco couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a wallet without slits for credit cards and ID, where cards, coins, and banknotes were stuffed into the same zipper compartment.

Marco folded his slip of paper several times and slipped it in between Mørck’s old receipts and battered calling cards. The man apparently had none himself.

All I need to do now is wait, he told himself, then felt a prod on his shoulder. He looked up slowly to see his former employer, who had come up from his office in the basement.

“What are you doing here, Marco? Didn’t I tell you on the phone to stay away? You attract the wrong people, people I don’t care to see here. I want you to respect that. I thought we agreed.”

Munthe was OK, though he was a guy with his own opinions who wouldn’t shy from defending them promptly. This was definitely not what Marco wanted.

“I just need to use the bathroom, Munthe. I thought it would be OK.”

At that moment his eyes were bluer than ever.

And then Marco turned and went down the stairs. But not before noting that Munthe had already removed his apron.

Sure enough, only ten minutes passed before Munthe left the premises as usual to pick up his wife in the shop next door, and Marco was on his way back up the stairs.

From this vantage point he could see their table. The waiter had placed the bill in front of Mørck, who was now on his feet, frantically checking all his jacket pockets.

He stood there gesticulating like a character in a silent movie. Mystified, shocked, feverish, and ashamed. The entire gamut in seconds. And then the librarian put her hand reassuringly on his. The bill wasn’t a problem, even if it was a shame he’d lost his wallet.

Absorbed in discussion, they passed close by him on their way out as Marco’s fingers did what they were best at.