The Marco Effect

42

For Carl, Free State Christiania was familiar territory. There wasn’t a nook or a cranny in this colorful, unique, and anarchic oasis into which he hadn’t poked his nose back in the dawn of time, not a single house he hadn’t entered, clad in full uniform and his country-boy naivety.

Fredens Ark, Loppen, Operaen, Nemoland, Pusher Street, Den Grå Hal, the Green Light District, Sunshine Bakery. Each was a name with its own story, its own incidents. And because he knew the place, Carl also knew how hopeless their task was.

Carl’s viewpoint was ambivalent. From a policeman’s perspective, Christiania was a den of vice, a nest of riffraff, but seen from a different angle it was a place where a person could breathe freely and live the dream of an age before Copenhagen was handed over to the yuppies and everything was drawn in straight lines. Christiania was-and remained-an umbilical cord to the capital’s charm and to ideas in free flight. A bicycling, environmentally protective subcultural powerhouse where dogs and beautiful people had turned an ugly former military barracks into what was arguably Denmark’s biggest tourist attraction.

But, as is so often the case, the best intentions and ideas became subverted by stupid individuals without norms, twisted and distorted until they were no longer recognizable. Thus, Christiania existed in the eternal dilemma: to give freedom free rein, or to rein freedom in?

In recent years, the people of Christiania had been given the right of self-determination, so now they alone were responsible for how the free state functioned. Not surprisingly, both good and bad had come of it.

Now the days when smiling policemen in sensible shoes could stroll unchallenged through this cultural collage were long gone. All forms of police presence were anathematized, so that only the most recently hatched or most implacable officers felt like stirring things up in a place like Pusher Street.

People on that street could smell a pig a mile off, and given the chance, they’d make sure the cops never wanted to come back again. If it hadn’t been for Pusher Street, Christiania would have been a kind of paradise. Instead, if there was anywhere the police could count on resistance, it was Pusher Street in Christiania, and somehow the Africans had sussed this out.

Carl closed his eyes and tried to walk himself through this graffitied Klondike in his mind. There were guys openly stationed by the end of the street nearest Prinsessegade, keeping an eye on who came and went. At the other end, close by the colorful vegetable store, there were people sitting in the cafés or under lean-tos with equally watchful eyes. Of course a person could enter Pusher Street unseen by way of one of the side streets, though lookouts were posted there, too, amid the uninhibited commerce in hash and skunk. But coming in that way meant it would be well-nigh impossible to get an overview of what was going on along the entire length of the street, which in this case was imperative.

The question now was how the Africans were intending to deal with the situation. Doubtless they’d be expecting that once they’d got their hands on Marco and the girl had been released, the boy would start to kick up a fuss. For that reason one would have to assume they would be sticking close to the buildings along the street so as to be able to drag Marco somewhere quiet and pacify him with a hypodermic needle or a beating.

While the people of Pusher Street tended to be rather nonchalant when it looked like violence would erupt, most would surely draw the line at assault on a minor. The Africans would scarcely want a confrontation with a mob of that kind, so they would act swiftly and without drawing attention to themselves.

Carl showed Rose and Assad the police map of the area and pointed out the various options. The street itself wasn’t long, but it ran like an artery through all kinds of lanes and alleyways, some of which openly housed criminal activity while others seemed quaintly and peacefully rural with their allotment gardens. Personally, Carl favored a route from the entrance on Bådmandsstræde that led past Fredens Ark and Tinghuset, and therefore he decided he would offer it to Assad, since he was unfamiliar with the area.

Rose was to follow Marco at a suitable distance from one of the side entrances on Prinsessegade, continue past Bøssehuset and proceed toward Pusher Street from the opposite side. Carl himself would run the gauntlet directly from the main gate down toward the Freetown area, where he figured it most likely the Africans would be waiting for Marco.

Malene pleaded with them to let her come along, but was firmly instructed to remain at HQ in the company of a highly irate Gordon, who had long since been looking forward to heading home to Mama’s cooking.

Thank God I have a team that blends in here, thought Carl as he walked through the gate. Rose looked like so many others in Christiania, and no one was going to suspect someone of Assad’s color and shabby appearance of being who he was.

Carl, on the other hand, was feeling less than inconspicuous with the hasty makeover Rose had given him. Her hair spray had fixed his comb-over in a vertical position, and his eyes were rimmed with a liberal daubing of mascara. Back in the eighties he’d have looked like a poet down on his luck, but now, eleven years into the new millennium, there were but two possible interpretations: either he was sick in the head or else he was a cop wearing an incredibly bad disguise.

Aware that he had to do his utmost to live up to the first interpretation, he greeted the immigrant guy at the toasted almond stand just inside the gate with a cheery howdy, his mouth a bit too slack.

There were a lot of people on Pusher Street this evening. The last police raid there had led to a number of arrests, but, as everyone knew, weeds always grew best where the soil had been turned.

Carl scanned the street and estimated that there were just as many stalls selling dope as there had always been. It was fine by him. As long as it was out here that people bought and sold, there wouldn’t be as much need for hash clubs all over town.

As far as he could see, neither Rose nor Assad had reached the street yet, so everything was going according to plan.

He positioned himself on a corner next to the building they called Maskinhallen and tried to look like he’d run out of steam, slightly wilted and possibly a bit stoned. Apart from a girl with two kids on her carrier tricycle, no one looked in his direction.

To his consternation he realized there were quite a few black men on the street. A couple of slender Somalis with anoraks on and their hoods up, a couple of Gambians he recognized as pushers from in town, and then an assortment of extremely well-fed tourists-black, as well as white-from the cruise ships, wandering on the heels of the Free State’s local guides, cameras sensibly tucked from sight.

Now he saw Rose and Marco appear from one of the side paths a little farther down Pusher Street, and half a minute later Assad also arrived on the other side of the street. Rose was standing a couple of meters from Marco, her attention seemingly everywhere else but on the boy.

Assad walked a way toward Carl, then positioned himself by one of the hash stalls, sniffing the goods with what looked to Carl like a surprising measure of professionalism.

They waited for ages. By now it was at least a quarter past eight, and even at a distance it was easy to see that Marco was becoming increasingly edgy and impatient. After another five minutes he moved a bit farther away from Rose, and then, counter to everything they’d agreed on, began to wander off along the street. Slowly, yet forcing Carl and Rose to follow while keeping their distance.

–

Marco was clearly on his guard. Merely the way he walked, treading the cobblestones so softly, revealed that he was more familiar than most with the asphalt jungle’s pitfalls.

Careful, Marco, or they’ll spot us tailing you, Carl managed to think, just before a black figure stepped around a corner and grabbed Marco by the arm.

At the same moment Carl’s view was blocked by a huge, black, gold-festooned female cruise-ship tourist. For a couple of seconds he was unable to see what ensued, but he began to run, Assad and Rose likewise.

“Hey, take it easy!” the fat woman cried indignantly, as Assad got there first and shouldered her into the path of a Christiania transport trike that supported a large cargo crate.

He stopped and glanced around in all directions, pointed toward the corner of Mælkevejen and set off again as fast as he could. Incredible how a man of his thickset stature could accelerate so quickly, short legs and all.

Carl halted next to the immense black lady as Rose charged off in pursuit of Assad and the black man in front of him. “What’s the problem?” the woman snapped, nostrils flaring.

He studied her for a moment. Why the hell did she have to stand just there?

The guy can’t run from Assad when he’s got Marco to drag along with him, he thought as he looked around. But maybe he didn’t even have Marco any more. Maybe someone else had taken over and made off with the lad in a different direction and Assad and Rose were pursuing the wrong guy. He knew there were two of them working together.

Carl ran back and forth between Nemoland and Tinghuset, but there was no sign of them anywhere.

“Did you see a black guy run past holding a young boy?” he asked a junkie who was standing outside the bakery and seemed relatively conscious.

The guy gave a shrug and stroked his straggly beard.

“If anyone ran by here, Satan would have given them a nip in the ass,” he replied sluggishly, indicating the monstrous mutt at his side that looked like it could have devoured the Hound of the Baskervilles in one mouthful. “Sixty-seven kilos, he weighs,” he added proudly.

Carl nodded. Fucking dog, fucking situation, too. Dammit. If only they’d had more time to prepare the exchange, he would have made sure they had airborne back-up.

Then none of this would have happened.

He grabbed his mobile and began to enter a number to start a more widespread search, and as he did so he noticed a slender young girl coming straight toward him. She looked like Tilde and seemed confused, with movements as mechanical as a zombie someone had simply pushed in a certain direction.

“Tilde!” he cried, and ran toward her. But she didn’t react. Had Marco been given the same treatment?

How in the world could they have let it happen?

“Henrik, Carl Mørck here,” he said, when he got through to the duty officer at the dispatch desk. “We need patrol cars currently on the prowl in the vicinity of Christiania.” He passed on as good descriptions of Marco and the African as he could, then gave a loud whistle to call their own operation off. It was the only thing he could do, given the situation.

He turned back to the girl and approached her warily.

“Tilde,” he said, cautiously. “You’re free now. Do you remember me? Carl Mørck, the policeman?”

It took a long time for his words to register. “Where’s Marco?” she finally asked in a tiny voice, and glanced around with frightened eyes. The last couple of hours had not been good for her.

“Did they inject you with something, Tilde? Can you remember?”

She nodded listlessly. “Where’s Marco? Is he all right?”

Carl drew her toward him. “We’re looking for him right now.”

Suddenly he heard footsteps running along the adjoining lanes. He saw Rose sprinting barefoot down the one lane, past the barracks, and from the direction of the canal came a black man at full speed with Assad right on his heels.

“Head him off, Carl!” Assad shouted breathlessly.

Carl spread out his arms and sprang into the path of the African like an enraged bull confronting a toreador. The problem, however, was that Carl was at least thirty-five kilos heavier than the lively lightweight racing toward him, whose musculature had doubtless been genetically conditioned to perform the most mind-boggling maneuvers.

For that reason he decided to hurl himself to one side, thereby giving himself exactly the same odds as a goalkeeper facing a penalty kick. And as he landed unceremoniously in a heap on the ground, the two men tore past him and up Pusher Street, where Rose was waiting for them.

Unlike Carl, she chose to throw herself straight at the man’s legs with all her weight, toppling him like a tree in a forest. She heard a crack as his head hit the cobbles and suddenly he lay very still.

Carl watched as Assad, out of breath, was reaching for his handcuffs, and whistled to draw his attention to a horde of dark, unshaven faces that looked like extras in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, watching Assad’s every move.

“OK,” said Assad, discreetly sticking the cuffs back into his pocket and turning to face his audience. “This bastard was trying to kidnap a young boy. Anyone here got some string?”

Not five seconds passed before a guy removed his belt. “Here, use this. Just remember I want it back, yeah?”

Carl got to his feet, realizing with a flinch how heavily he had fallen. It hurt like hell.

“Any of you lot seen a brown-skinned boy with curly black hair, about fifteen years old? He was here less than five minutes ago and disappeared over there,” he gasped.

No one answered, but the disdainful look on their faces said they had more than enough to deal with already.

Behind Carl, Rose noticed the unconscious man was breathing more irregularly now, and that blood was running a little too steadily from a gash in his head, as well as from his shoulder, as though an existing wound had suddenly opened up again underneath his shirt.

“I’ll call an ambulance, OK?” she shouted, as she opened her mobile, clearly put off her stride by some booing from the crowd in front of her.

“Shut your gobs!”“ she yelled back, stamping her foot and flailing her arms. “Even scum like him has the right to fair treatment.”

Then she glanced at the display on her phone. “See? Now you made me dial the wrong number!”

A faint ringtone could be heard somewhere behind them, and everyone turned around.

Carl looked at Rose and studied the puzzled look on her face.

“This must be the last number I called, so it has to be the mobile the boy was carrying,” she said, scowling at the faces in front of her.

Then the crowd parted and someone pointed to where the ringing was coming from. The Christiania trike with its cargo crate.

The guy seated in the saddle shook his head and gave a shrug, as if he had no idea what was going on. But Carl sensed a lie.

The man was wearing gloves, and the hood of his anorak was drawn tight, so only his eyes were visible. It was a rather strange choice of apparel, considering the mild springtime weather.

Carl looked at the cargo box on the trike. It was big. Maybe just big enough.

“Hey, you,” he called out, approaching the man. “Would you mind showing me what’s in the-”

Before he could reach out and stop him, the guy was off, pedaling away like mad.

“Rose, you look after Tilde,” Carl shouted, setting off in pursuit. “Help us, for Chrissake!” he yelled up the street, as the dealers stepped aside with a collective frown of bemusement.

Carl knew damn well that one never ran on Pusher Street, but what about cyclists?

“Stop him!” he yelled again, his chest tightening as Assad sprinted past, together with the guy who’d lent them his belt.

“Hey, almond man!” he heard Assad scream, so loud that the words echoed off the wall of the Spiseloppen restaurant.

The vendor standing with his cart by the entrance turned around.

“Shove your cart into the path and block his way!” Assad shouted. “You’ll get a thousand kroner!”

The almond man burst into action, trundling his handcart in front of the gate, loath to pass up a potential source of income. After all, a thousand kroner was more than enough to repair any damage to his beloved almond cart.

The man fleeing on the trike veered off toward the large shed that housed Christiania’s refuse collection depot, recycling center, and a lot more besides. He braked hard, leaped from the saddle and tried to dodge behind a pile of rusty machinery, only to find his path blocked by a group of men who had just finished work and were standing around with beer cans in hand, enjoying the weather. They weren’t the sort of blokes you just shoved aside.

The only option left was to run inside the wooden building with its red-painted window frames.

By the time Carl arrived out of breath ten seconds later, Assad and the almond vendor were already inside, looking about.

“Where the fuck did he get to?” the Christianite exclaimed.

Carl quickly took stock. The large, high-ceilinged space was a festival of color. On the wall above the entrance hung a five-meter-tall mask, a caricature of a former Danish prime minister who was particularly despised in these parts. The floor and shelves were a clutter of machine parts and assorted junk, and further back was what looked like a jumble sale of everything from miniature racing cars to palm trees carved in wood with sombreros on them.

All in all, not the easiest place to apprehend a young black man with gymnastic talent.

“Try up there, one of you,” Carl instructed, pointing to the ceiling where an office of gypsum boards and wood had been constructed on top of the crossbeams. Then he turned around and went back outside to the cargo trike.

The silence that came from it made him uneasy.

If they had injected Marco with the same sedative as they had used on Tilde, only a much larger dosage, then more than likely they had already carried out their mission. It was a dreadful thought.

He pushed the bolt aside and lifted the lid of the box.

And sure enough, there was Marco. Curled up and inert.

Carl lifted him up and carried him into the shed and found a blanket on which to lay him, while Assad and the other guy clattered around among all the scrap metal.

Pulling up Marco’s sleeve, Carl ascertained that if there was a pulse at all, it was terribly weak.

Carl felt despair welling inside him. After all, it was his fault this had happened.

He got down on his knees beside the seemingly lifeless figure and began to attempt resuscitation. It was years since he’d done it last, and on that occasion the girl in question, the victim of a traffic accident, had died. Now the whole experience came back to him. The girl’s smooth skin, the mother’s anguish as she looked on. The paramedics who had gently pulled him away and taken over. It had taken Carl weeks to get over it, but if Marco died on him it would stay with him forever. He knew that now, as he knelt there, pumping the boy’s fragile rib cage.

He turned his head as a movement caught his eye, and saw the giant mask vibrate slightly in the draught from the entrance so it looked like the ex-prime minister’s mouth was moving. How strange to notice something so irrational and inconsequential in a situation like this, he mused.

“Come on now, Marco,” he whispered, as Assad hurled rusty junk out of his way and his Christianite helper rummaged about in the office above his head.

“He’s not up here,” the guy called down through a window.

“And there are no other exits down here, so he must still be here somewhere,” Assad shouted back from the far end of the shed.

Carl continued his efforts, now performing mouth-to-mouth. If only someone would come and help him.

Then he resumed the heart massage.

“Call an ambulance, Assad,” he yelled. “I’m afraid we’re losing Marco. He’s very heavily sedated. He may even be dead already.”

And then came the faintest of whispers from beneath him: “Owww, that hurts…!”

Carl looked down into Marco’s open, anguished face.

“You’re breaking something inside me,” the boy gasped, half suffocated.

At that moment the mouth of the great mask on the wall above them opened, and the African tumbled out, falling two or three meters to the floor below.

He seemed stunned as he lay there, but only for a couple of seconds.

“He’s here, hurry!” Carl barked, climbing to his feet.

“Stay lying there, Marco,” he said, and turned to face the African, prepared for combat.

When the man got up, Carl saw he had a gun in his hand, and that his finger was curled much too tightly around the trigger.

I’m going to die now, he thought, and was at once filled with a singular feeling of calm. He raised his arms in the air and watched as the African came toward him, then lowered his weapon and aimed it at Marco.

A shot rang out, giving Carl a start, the sound implanting itself deep inside him. And then he saw the blood on the African’s hand. The gun was gone.

He lifted his head and looked up at the office under the roof and saw the Christianite standing in the window with a pistol still smoking in his hand.

Only then did Carl recognize him. He was an undercover narc from Station City.

“I’m coming down,” he shouted, disappearing from view.

“Look out!” cried Marco from the floor, as Carl spun around in time to see the African lunge at him with a knife in his unwounded hand.

The shadow that came flying from out of nowhere was just as unexpected.

It was Assad. Enraged and utterly without fear, he aimed a high, flying heel-kick at the African’s chin, but his adversary was skilled in the same art and managed to spin around so the bones of their feet clashed together in kicks and parries. Assad tumbled backward, but the African remained on his feet and raised his hand to hurl the knife at Marco.

He’s insane, Carl managed to think, before the guy suddenly went limp and dropped the knife on the floor. There hadn’t been a sound.

Carl didn’t know what was happening. The African staggered sideways, clutching at whatever was at hand to stay upright. Finally, he slid to the floor in what seemed like slow motion, down-for-the-count unconscious.

Carl turned to Assad and the undercover drug-squad officer. Assad smiled and extended his palm. In it was a heavy metal nut.

“If he gets up he can have another one. There’s plenty more where it came from,” Assad said, thrusting his hand into a box of rusty nuts, bolts, and assorted odds and ends.

By now Marco had raised himself onto his elbows, white as a sheet, but alive and kicking.

“Tilde?” was all he could say.

“She’s OK. Rose is with her.”

The smile that appeared on the boy’s face was almost unnatural. “I want to go to her,” he said.

If a person ever needed someone to look up to, this boy was Carl’s number one candidate at the moment.

He looked out through the doors where a group of tourists were standing, seemingly enraptured. Maybe they thought they’d come just in time to catch the day’s Wild West show. Whatever it was, a couple of them burst into enthusiastic applause.

Only the enormous black woman from the cruise party who stood in their midst seemed rather less exhilarated. Gripping her bag tightly, she stormed off.

“Mikkel Øst, drug squad,” said the undercover officer, shaking hands with Assad and Rose with a look in his eyes that said he was less than satisfied with how the situation had developed.

He would have to turn in his weapon until the internal investigation of the shooting was concluded. Most likely he was relieved and annoyed at the same time. A four-month undercover stint in Christiania’s drug underworld wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, especially when you were interrupted just before results began to show.

Carl thanked him. “If we run into each other again, let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, yeah?” And then both Mikkel Øst and the ambulance containing the African were gone.

By now Tilde had appeared with Rose and was standing with Marco, their arms wrapped around one another. What each of them had just been through was apparently best dealt with jointly.

“There’s something we have to do,” said Tilde, when eventually she seemed more or less recovered. “Will you phone my mum, Carl, and tell her we all need to meet at the house in Brønshøj? Marco and I have something to show you.”

–

Half an hour later Tilde and her mother were hugging each other in the driveway of Stark’s house.

“What did they do to you, Tilde?” her mother asked, deeply shaken.

“They stuck a needle in me, and then I was gone until they woke me up. I sat on a bench by a shawarma stall for ten minutes out there before I could walk. It felt just like when they give me an anesthetic at the hospital. You feel a bit nauseous afterward, but I’m OK again now.”

“And what about you?” Malene asked Marco.

He nodded. “I’m OK, too, even though my legs still feel like they’re asleep.”

Be thankful it’s not a lot worse, thought Carl.

“What is it you want to show us?” asked Rose.

Tilde took a deep breath before letting go of her mother and leading them up the drive to the back garden.

“You do it,” she said to Marco.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. “No more secrets. We’ve kept this one long enough.”

So Marco lifted the flagstones one by one, placing the buried treasures in a row as he explained to them how they’d been discovered.

Five white plastic containers. Five testimonies from a dead man.

Carl shook his head and looked at Rose and Assad. How extraordinary to think it had all started with a missing persons notice, and now it was ending with a code written inside a safe and some plastic boxes buried in a garden. Sometimes police work was like a lottery. You checked your ticket stubs, hoping you have drawn at least one winning number.

I don’t think we need to show them everything, Marco’s eyes seemed to be saying to Tilde, but she took the containers one by one and explained what was in them.

Malene Kristoffersen needed a chair. There she sat with the jewelry and the little notebook in her lap, along with the certainty of how systematically the man she had loved had committed fraud. Even when Tilde began to speak in his defense, her hands remained clenched, her face a picture of shame and disappointment. Clearly, she felt betrayed.

“I think you should make sure all this gets into the right hands,” she said finally, handing Carl the bundle of documents bearing the foreign ministry’s logo.

Carl studied the uppermost sheet for a moment, then nodded. It was just as they’d thought.

If William Stark had embezzled from his ministry and the Danish state, he was but an amateur compared to his superior. Eriksen’s signature was everywhere.

Carl handed the bundle to Rose. “We’ll go through this later, OK?” he said, then pointed at the last box.

“What’s in this one?”

“Nothing of much use to us, as far as I can see,” said Tilde. “It’s William’s will.”

“His will?” Malene whispered.

Tilde nodded. “He was leaving everything to us, Mum. All his money, the house. Everything.”

That’s when they saw the cracks appearing in Malene’s facade. All the noble qualities she had attributed to her partner through the years came flooding back now. She was confused, embarrassed, and full of grief and anger all at once.

“You’re right. His will’s of no use to us now, Tilde,” she said tearfully. “William’s estate will be confiscated to cover the costs of his fraud.”

She lowered her head and allowed her tears to fall unhindered.

Then Marco stepped forward and whispered something in Carl’s ear.

The lad was definitely imaginative, he’d give him that. Carl nodded.

“OK, Malene and Tilde,” he said. “I think I’d better ask you to hand over the notebook and the documents. Would you please give them to Assad?”

The girl nodded and gently picked up the notebook from her mother’s lap, hugging her briefly. Then she gathered together the papers that documented Stark’s deceit and handed it all to Assad.

Carl looked around, then pointed over to a pile of bricks stacked up behind the bike shed.

“Over there, Assad.”

Assad stared blankly for a moment at his boss, but as Carl produced a pack of cigarettes and his lighter, the penny dropped.

“Oops,” said Carl, as he set fire to the stack of papers with the notebook on top. “I’m afraid there’s been a little accident. Would you happen to have some water handy, Rose?”

He gave her a penetrating look until the frown on her brow smoothed.

“Yes, as a matter of fact,” she said, cottoning on. “There’s the lake down there, of course. But I’m afraid it’s too far because this bucket’s got a hole in it.”

–

Marco was silent most of the way back to police HQ, and Carl understood him well.

Judging by what the lad had told them, this had been the worst and the best day of his life rolled into one.

“What’s on your mind, Marco?”

He shook his head.

“Why won’t Marco say anything, Assad?” he asked over his shoulder.

“I think perhaps he is trying to assess his situation at the moment,” came the reply.

Carl looked at Marco in the passenger seat. “Is that right, Marco? Are you wondering what’s going to happen now?”

The lad seemed smaller than ever.

“Is that it?”

Marco lowered his gaze and nodded his head slowly.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking that all the things I dreamed about are never going to happen. Now they’ll put me in a detainment center and then I’ll be thrown out of the country.”

Carl frowned and looked into the rearview mirror, where Rose and Assad were exchanging glances. Marco’s state of mind was clearly affecting them.

“That’s not at all certain, Marco,” Carl replied, trying to ease Marco’s mind. With his sparse knowledge of state policy regarding illegal immigrants, he realized this wasn’t much consolation.

“What would you do if you could decide for yourself?”

Marco sighed. “I just want to be completely ordinary. Go to school, study, look after myself.”

It wasn’t much to ask, and yet.

“You’re only fifteen, Marco. You’re too young to look after yourself.”

The boy turned his head to look at Carl with raised eyebrows. Of course I can, his expression said.

“Where would you live, Marco?” Carl went on.

“Anywhere. As long as I can be left in peace.”

“And you think things would work out? Without going back to crime?”

“I know it would.”

Carl looked out at the traffic crawling along Bispeengbuen, and at the surrounding buildings. Out there among the twinkling lights were thousands of human lives that failed to make the grade when society needed them. So what better chance did this boy have?

“What makes you think you’ll be able to take care of yourself when so many others can’t, Marco?”

“Because I have the will.”

Carl glanced into the rearview mirror again. The two of them were just sitting there, surprisingly passive. This wasn’t an easy situation to deal with on his own, dammit.

He took a deep breath and let out a sigh as he thought back to the look on Malene Kristoffersen’s face when they said good-bye, the way she’d stood there with William Stark’s last will and testament in her hand. It was a document that would change their lives significantly. Tilde would be able to continue her treatment, and they’d be given the freedom to do as they pleased.

All because he’d happened to have a lighter and lit a little bonfire.

Carl nodded and caught Assad’s eye in the mirror.

“Assad! That bloke you know, the one who’s good at forging identity papers, do you still have any contact with him?”

He felt a pat on each shoulder, and now both of them were all smiles.

But then when he turned to Marco, he saw that the boy was shaking all over.

“Is something wrong, Marco?”

The boy leaned forward in his seat, trying to make his limbs obey and his body relax, but he couldn’t.

“I’m not sure I understand, Carl,” he said after a moment. “Do you mean…” And then he began to cry.

Carl reached out and stroked the boy’s back.

“Rose and Assad, you tell him. He’ll believe it from you.”

“It’s all up to you, Marco,” Assad pronounced.

“Yeah,” Rose added. “But we don’t want to know where you are until you’ve found a proper place to live. We don’t want to hear that you’ve taken root in some Dumpster in some town in Jutland, you get it?”

And now they heard the boy laugh. Apparently he was beginning to believe in it himself.

“But listen, Marco,” Carl added. “Not a word about this to anyone, understand? Not even your kids or grandkids, OK? In return, we expect you to tell us everything you know about Zola and the clan in Kregme, and all the stunts you were pulling out on the streets. If you do that, our colleagues back in town will have something new and concrete to go on, and it’ll be a big win-win situation all round.”

Marco nodded and was silent for a moment. “What will happen with Miryam?” he asked.

“We’ll have to see. She’s probably not the one who will be the hardest for us to help. She’s been very cooperative.”

“OK, then I’ll be cooperative, too.” He sat still for a while and stared out over the city. “Is it really true, all this?” he asked eventually.

They nodded, all three.

“I just don’t get it,” Marco said, shaking his head. “But thank you so much.” Then came another slight pause. “Can we make a detour to Østerbro?” he said. “There’s something I need to do first.”

–

They pulled up in front of a doorway where a pair of teenagers stood making out. Marco asked Carl, Rose, and Assad to go in with him.

There was no answer when they rang the bell, so Carl pounded his fist against the door.

“Police!” he shouted, loud enough for everyone in the apartment building to hear.

It did the trick.

The two occupants seemed both frightened and reluctant when they saw four people standing at their front door, but at the sight of Marco their expression turned to intense anger.

“That one, we won’t let in. Or you either, for that matter. Where’s your ID, anyway?” one of them demanded, full of skepticism.

Carl pulled out his badge and stuck it in front of their faces. The two men exchanged glances, still shoulder to shoulder and unwilling to let them in.

Then Rose stepped forward. “We’d like a bit of consideration here, so if you gentlemen don’t mind, please step aside so as not to inadvertently prevent three officers of the law from carrying out their duty. The pair of you seem a bit slow-witted if you ask me, but I’m pretty sure you can understand that excessive denseness can easily be rewarded with correspondingly large doses of rage and nice, tight handcuffs.”

Carl was thunderstruck. It was almost like listening to himself.

The upshot was that the two men frowned simultaneously, then thought the better of it and stepped back to allow the frothing goth inside.

Then Marco beckoned them on to the little bedroom that could have fit into Assad’s cubbyhole at HQ three times over.

He opened a drawer and rummaged about until finding what he was looking for: an old-fashioned metal comb. He raised it in the air before getting down on his knees at the wall opposite the narrow bed.

Placing the comb in the groove between the floor and the baseboard, he ran it back and forth until he located the indentation where the comb found purchase.

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.”