The Marco Effect

3

Autumn 2010

The yellow van came and collected Marco in front of the scaffolding on Copenhagen’s Rådhuspladsen at precisely five in the afternoon, as always. This time he had waited twenty minutes in the square outside the town hall to be on the safe side. If he wasn’t there, ready when the van arrived, they would drive on without him. And if he had to join the city’s commuters on the S-train and the bus instead, they would beat him. The very thought was enough, not to mention the possibility of sleeping a whole night in some damp basement passage, for the weather was far too cold.

So Marco was never late. He simply hadn’t the guts.

He nodded to the others in the van who were sitting with their backs against the walls, but no one nodded back. He was used to that. They were all dead tired.

Tired of the days, of life, and of themselves.

Marco studied the group. One or two were still wet from the rain and sat shivering with cold. If he hadn’t known better he might have taken several of them to be ill, skinny and consumptive as they looked. It was no cheerful sight, but then not much was, on a clammy November day in Denmark.

“How’d you do today?” asked Samuel, who was leaning against the wall behind the cab.

Marco counted in his head.

“I made four separate deliveries. The second time alone was over five hundred kroner. I think about thirteen or fourteen hundred in all, with the three hundred I’ve got in my pocket.”

“I did about eight hundred,” said Miryam, the eldest of them. She always drew a sympathetic response with her bad leg. That kind of thing was good at boosting turnover.

“I only got sixty,” said Samuel, in such a quiet voice that everyone heard him. “No one wants to give me anything anymore.”

Ten pairs of eyes looked at him with pity. He was in for a hard time once they got back to Zola.

“Then take this,” Marco said, handing him two hundred-kroner notes. He was the only one to do so, for there was always a risk that one of them would snitch to Zola. As if he didn’t know.

Marco knew what was wrong with Samuel. Begging became a dwindling option once a boy began to look more like a young man. Though Marco himself was fifteen, he still resembled a kid, so things were easier for him. He was small for his age, unusually so, with the wide eyes of a child, his hair fine, skin still smooth. Unlike Samuel, Pico, and Romeo, whose skin had become coarse, facial hair sprouting. And while the others had already indulged in their first adventures with girls, many still envied Marco for his slow development, not to mention the keenness of his wits.

As if he didn’t know all this.

He may have been small for his age, but his eyes and ears were those of an experienced grown-up, and he was skilled at putting them to use. Very skilled indeed.

“Father, can’t I go to school?” he had pleaded since he was seven, back when they lived in Italy. Marco loved his father, but on this issue, like so many others, the man was weak. He told him his brother, Marco’s uncle Zola, insisted on the children working the streets. And so it became, for Zola was the undisputed and tyrannical head of the clan.

But Marco had a desire to learn, and in nearly all the small towns and villages of Umbria was a school where he could stand outside and absorb as though he were blotting paper. So when the sun began to warm the morning air he stood close up at the windows, listening intently, ears cocked for an hour or more before trudging off to scrape together the day’s earnings.

Once in a while a teacher would come out and invite him inside, but Marco would run away and not return. Taking up the offer would mean being beaten black and blue at home. In that respect, moving around the way they did was an advantage because the schools were always new.

Then came the day when one of the teachers nonetheless managed to get a firm grip on him. But instead of dragging him inside he handed him a canvas bag as heavy as the day was long.

“They’re yours, put them to use,” he said, releasing him again.

The bag contained fifteen textbooks, and wherever the clan settled Marco always found a secret hiding place where he could sit and study them without fear of discovery.

And so it was every evening and all the days when the grown-ups had other things to do than keep watch over the children. After two years he learned to do sums and to read both Italian and English, and as a result his curiosity was turned toward everything in the world he had yet to learn or understand.

During the three years they had now lived in Denmark, he was the only one among them who had learned to speak the language almost fluently. He was simply the only one inquisitive enough to bother.

All the rank-and-file members of the group knew that when Marco was out of sight he was sitting somewhere on his own, immersed in a book.

“Tell us, tell us,” Miryam in particular would urge, she being the one he was closest to.

Zola and his associates would be rather less enthusiastic about his reading habits, if they ever found out.

–

That evening they lay in their bunks listening to the beating and Samuel’s screams as they penetrated the wall of Zola’s room, percolating down to Marco’s like an echo of all the other injustices Zola had committed. Marco himself was unafraid of thrashings, for as a rule they were milder in his case, thanks to the influence of his father. And yet he clutched his blanket: Samuel was no Marco.

When once again silence descended and Samuel’s punishment was over, Marco heard the front door open. It had to be one of Zola’s gorillas, scanning the terrain before dragging the beaten and humiliated Samuel across to the house next door where his room was. The clan members were proficient at keeping up appearances and remaining friendly with the Danish families of the neighborhood. On the face of it, Zola was a somewhat reserved, rather elegant individual, and this was an image he definitely intended to maintain. He knew perfectly well that a presentable white man from the United States, speaking English-a language everyone understood-would in many ways be thought of as one of our own. One of those the Danes had no need to fear.

For that reason, punishment was always administered under cover of darkness behind soundproofed windows and drawn curtains. Similarly, it was imperative that all bruises and other signs of beating were never visible. The fact that Samuel would be aching all over the next morning as he dragged himself up and down Strøget, Copenhagen’s pedestrian shopping street, was another matter entirely, but this, of course, went unnoticed by the masses. Besides, the boy’s miserable appearance was good for business, and all experience showed that genuine displays of discomfort produced a better yield than false ones.

Marco got up in the dark, crept past the room shared by his cousins and knocked cautiously on the door of the living room. If the response was swift, then all was well. Hesitation, and one could never predict the mood Zola might be in.

This time almost a minute passed before he was called in. Marco braced himself.

Zola sat at the tea table like a king at his court, the television news blaring from the gigantic flat screen.

Maybe he brightened slightly when he realized it was Marco, but his hands had yet to stop trembling. Some of the group claimed that Zola liked to watch when they were being punished, but Marco’s father said the opposite: that Zola loved his flock as Jesus loved his disciples.

Marco wasn’t so sure.

For three days and nights, Detective Inspector Carl Mørck sat imprisoned here in this hermetically sealed room in the company of mummified corpses and had… said the voice on the screen.

“Turn that shit off, Chris,” Zola barked, with a nod toward the remote. Within a second it was done.

He patted his new acquisition, a gangling, thin-legged hound no one else dared approach, then fixed his gaze on Marco’s. “How brave of you to give Samuel money today, Marco. But do so again and you’ll be punished in the same way, do you understand?”

Marco nodded.

Zola smiled. “You’ve earned well for us today, Marco. Sit down.” He indicated the chair opposite. “What do you want, my boy? I suppose you’ve come to tell me Samuel didn’t deserve it. Am I right?”

And then his expression changed. With a quick gesture he instructed his near-omnipotent henchman, Chris, to pour tea into a mug. When he had done so, Zola nudged it halfway across the table toward Marco.

“I’m sorry to disturb you here in the living room, Zola. But yes, I wanted to say something about Samuel.”

Zola was impassive as the words were uttered, but Chris straightened up immediately and turned slowly to look at him. He was big and paler than most in the clan. His sallow presence was sufficient to make most in the flock retreat, yet Marco kept his eyes fixed on his uncle.

“I see. But Samuel is none of your concern, Marco. You understand that, I’m sure. Today he didn’t come home with enough earnings because he didn’t try hard enough. Unlike yourself.” Zola shook his head and leaned back heavily against the sheepskin that lay draped over the back of the armchair. “You must learn not to poke your nose in where it doesn’t belong, Marco. Listen to what your uncle tells you.”

Marco studied him for a moment. In Zola’s view, Samuel, unlike Marco, had not tried hard enough. Was he thereby saying it was indirectly his fault Samuel had been beaten? If so, that would be even worse.

Marco bowed his head and spoke his words as humbly as he was able.

“I know. But Samuel has become too old now to beg on Strøget. Most people ignore him completely, and those who don’t seem afraid of him and keep their distance. In fact, the only ones who-”

Marco sensed Zola making a sign to Chris. He looked up at the same instant as Chris stepped forward and slapped his face hard, making his ear ring.

“I told you, it’s not your business. Do you understand, Marco?”

“Yes, Zola, but-”

Another slap, and the message was received. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone who had been brought up in that environment made a fuss about.

He got to his feet unsteadily, nodded to Zola, and withdrew toward the door, forcing a smile as he went. Two slaps in the face and the audience was over. And still he mustered some courage as he stood in the doorway.

“It’s OK to hit me,” he said, lifting his head. “But it’s not OK to beat Samuel. And if you make that bully hit me again, I’ll run away from here.”

He noted the inquiring look Chris sent his uncle, but Zola merely shook his head, indicating with a sweep of his hand that Marco was to get out of his sight. At once.

–

When he again lay under his blanket he tried as always to run through all the unuttered arguments in his mind. If only he had said this or that, things might have turned out for the better. As Marco lay there in the gloom, Zola often became more reasonable in these inner dialogues, on occasion even acquiescing.

Such thoughts gave solace of a kind.

“Samuel’s a good boy at heart,” he imagined having said to Zola. “He needs to learn, that’s all. If you let him go to school, then maybe he could become a mechanic and look after the van. He’ll never be a good pickpocket like me or Hector, he’s far too clumsy, so why not give him a chance?”

And the words in his head made him feel better for a time. But as soon as he turned off the night lamp, the realities came tumbling down upon him.

The life he and his cousins led was a misery.

On the face of it they were decent people in yellow-brick houses, but the truth was they were criminals and delinquents with false passports, and in every sense they were in deep water. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, there was more. The worst was that the clan was even more secretive internally and that few of the kids knew where they were from any longer, who their real parents were, or what the adults did when they themselves were out on the streets raking in money for Zola’s empire. Marco knew the clan’s past was nothing to brag about, but the little good there had been had gone to the wall with the advent of Zola’s new style immediately before they left Italy. The only thing remaining from former times was the sum of their malicious crimes. Nothing had improved in any way. There were still only a couple among them who could read and write, though many would soon be grown up. But when they were out on the make they were full-blood professionals, albeit of the kind who saw no reason to boast of their peculiar areas of expertise: begging, pickpocketing, burglary, colliding with old ladies so they dropped their handbags, from fast-moving bikes drive-by grabs of anything hanging from a shoulder or hand that seemed like it might be worth something. They were proficient to their fingertips, and Marco in particular demonstrated talent in every reprehensible domain. He could beg, eyes wide and imploring, with a smile that awoke compassion. He could wriggle through the smallest of windows in private homes without a sound, and out on the street among the busy throngs he was truly in his element. Nimble and adroit, he would relieve his victim of watch or wallet. Never a wrong movement or sound, often gesticulating excitedly to distract attention, always eliciting sympathy.

There was only one thing about Marco that was neither to his own nor the clan’s benefit.

He hated his existence, and all that he did, to the depths of his being.

And so he lay in his bed listening to the other kids’ breathing, trying to imagine the life he did not have. The life that other children had, the ones he saw outside. Children with mothers and fathers who went to work; children who went to school and perhaps received a hug or a small gift every now and then. Children who were given nice food every single day and who had friends and family who came to see them. Children who didn’t always look afraid.

When he lay with these thoughts in his mind, Marco would curse Zola. Back in Italy they had at least formed a sort of community: play in the afternoons, songs in the evenings; summer nights around the fire, boastful stories of the day’s exploits. The women played up to the men, and the men puffed themselves up, on occasion clashing and exchanging blows, much to everyone’s amusement. That was when they still were Gypsies.

How Zola had managed to declare himself their indisputable guiding light was something Marco had difficulty grasping. Why did the other adults put up with it? The only things he did were to terrorize them, dominate their lives, and relieve them of everything they had struggled to scrape together. And when such thoughts troubled Marco’s mind he felt shame on behalf of the grown-ups, and especially his father.

This evening he raised himself onto his elbows in bed, fully aware he had ventured onto thin ice. Zola had not really done him harm back there in the living room, but his eyes had warned of miseries to come. Of that he was certain.

He knew he must speak to his father about Samuel. He needed to speak to someone, at least. The question was whether it would help. For some time his father had seemed so distant. As though something had happened that had really affected him.

The first time Marco had noticed it was almost two years before, when his father had sat one morning with his brow furrowed in a frown, passively staring at the food put before him. Marco had thought he must be ill, but the following day he was more energetic than he had been for months. Some said he had begun to chew khat like a number of others, but regardless of what he was up to, the furrows in his brow had come to stay. For some time Marco kept his concerns to himself, but eventually he confided in Miryam and asked if she knew anything.

“You’re dreaming, Marco. Your father’s exactly the same as he’s always been,” she said, and tried to smile.

They spoke no more of it, and Marco endeavored to put it from his mind.

But then, six months ago, he had noticed once more the look on his father’s face, though now a slightly different variant. There had been quite a bit of turbulence throughout the night, but after ten the kids were not allowed to leave their rooms, for which reason it couldn’t have been caused by any of them.

Marco had been woken in the middle of a dream by the sound of tumult in the hallway. Judging by the nature of the groans he heard, hard punishment was being meted out. Punishment so harsh that knowledge of what had taken place seemed etched in his father’s face the next morning as though branded there by hot iron. But Marco had no idea who had been on the receiving end, or for what reason. Certainly not a member of the clan, otherwise he would have known.

Since then, his father had slept in Lajla’s room on the other side of the living room.

Now, hungry and unable to sleep, Marco threw off the bed covers and made his way down the hall toward the kitchen. As he passed the living-room door he heard his father’s voice protesting vigorously behind it, then Zola’s calming him down.

“If we don’t put a stop to your son’s rebellion, it will not only mean lost earnings, it will also mean he will be spreading his poison to the other kids. You have to expect he will betray us one day and destroy everything, don’t you realize that?”

He heard his father protest again. This time with more desperation to his voice. It wasn’t normal for him.

“Marco will never go to the police, Zola,” he replied, urgency in his voice. “Once I’ve had a word with him he’ll toe the line. He won’t run away either. That’s just something he says. You know how he is. A bright boy with too many ideas in his head. A little too bright sometimes, but never with the intention of doing us harm. Zola, surely you can see that? Won’t you please leave him alone?”

“No,” Zola replied curtly. It was his call. He had the power.

Marco glanced down the passageway. Any minute now Chris could appear with the absinthe Zola always demanded for his nightcap. And when he did, Marco mustn’t be caught eavesdropping.

“You should know that Samuel has told me he’s seen Marco hesitate when he’s pickpocketing and stealing handbags,” Zola went on. “If it’s true, he can put us all in peril. You know that as well as I do. Those who hesitate will sooner or later be caught. And they’re the kind who can’t keep their mouths shut, either, when it really counts. You can’t bank on him being loyal toward us or the clan when things go wrong. That’s a fact.”

Then Marco put his ear against the door, his breathing as quiet as a mouse so the dog inside would not begin to growl. Was that really how Samuel spoke of him? It wasn’t true at all. When had he ever hesitated in his work? Never!

But Samuel had, on many occasions. And yet they had defended him. The fool.

“Marco’s old enough now for the invalid scam, so there’s no two ways about it. We know how great the benefits are. Look at Miryam.”

“But can’t you see there’s a difference between him and Miryam?” It was his father’s voice, imploring. “Her misfortune was an accident.”

“You really believe that, don’t you?” The words were followed by dry laughter. Marco felt a chill. What did he mean? That it wasn’t an accident? Miryam had stumbled while she was running across the road, everyone knew that.

For a moment all was silent inside the room. He could clearly picture the shock on his father’s face. But his father said nothing.

“Listen,” Zola continued. “We must look after the youngsters, make sure they’ve a bright future, yes? That’s why we can’t afford to be soft and make mistakes, do you understand? Soon we’ll have scraped enough money together to settle in the Philippines. I think you’d do well to remember that this has been our dream from the start. There’s a place for Marco in that dream, too.”

A minute passed before Marco’s father replied. It was clear he was already coming to terms with defeat. “And that’s why Marco must be maimed? Is that really what you want, Zola?”

Marco clenched his fists. Hit him, Father. Hit him, he urged in silence. You’re Zola’s elder brother. Tell him to leave me be.

“It’s just a small sacrifice for the benefit of the clan, don’t you agree? We sedate the boy and put his leg out into the traffic. It will be over in an instant. The Danish hospitals are good, they’ll fix him up well enough. And if he won’t go along voluntarily, we’ll have to help him, yes? If you oppose me on this issue, I may select you instead, you realize that, don’t you?”

Marco held his breath and saw Miryam’s hobbling figure in his mind’s eye. He fought back the tears. Was that how it happened? They had turned her into a cripple.

Say something, Father!, he urged again. But from behind the door came the sound of one voice only. The wrong one.

“Accident, disfigurement, insurance payout. So it will proceed,” Zola continued. “And as a permanently beneficial side effect, we will have created for ourselves a thoroughbred beggar who is unable to run anywhere.”

A faint draught in the passage made Marco turn, but too late. The kitchen door had opened and the figure that stepped out had seen him.

“What are you up to, boy?” Chris’s voice slashed through the dimness.

In an instant Marco sprang free of the wall and made a dash as Chris leaped after him, and the door of the living room was flung open.

Many times before he had told himself that if ever such a situation should occur he would seek refuge in one of the neighbor’s houses. But now everything around him seemed dead. The wind was whistling through the many trees between which the houses lay, quiet as mausoleums: dark, lifeless, deceased. All the windows around him were unlit. Only the faint glare of a single television screen was visible farther down the road.

And that was the house he ran toward, filled with dread.

“I won’t make it,” he kept telling himself as a cold rain began to wet his face. He would be caught before he ever roused the residents from their armchairs. He had to find another way.

Marco twisted round and glanced behind him as he ran, trying not to stumble over the curbs with his bare feet. Now he could see that two of his older cousins were on his heels, too, and they were fast. He hurled himself into the gravel on his stomach and squirmed through a hole in a hedge too small for the others to negotiate.

If he could cut through this garden and get to the main road, he might have a chance.

An automatic floodlight mounted on the house’s gable end tripped, painting the garden bright white. He saw the people inside come to the picture window of the living room, but he was already on his way through the next hedge, from where he rolled down into the ditch at the side of the main road.

Behind him came shouts for him to stop, but Marco’s attention was fixed on the passing cars and the thicket of trees halfway up the hill a few hundred meters beyond. That was where he needed to go. Any moment now they would have run down the residential street and emerge onto the road farther on. If he didn’t get away now, he would be done for.

A blue beam of halogen headlights tipped over the ridge, revealing the rainy tarmac to be a glittering bridge to freedom. If he ran into the middle of the road and stopped the car it might save him. And if it refused to stop, he would throw himself into its path and put an end to his trials. Rather that than spend the rest of his life a crippled beggar like Miryam.

“Stop!” he cried out as the car came toward him, his arms waving. Then he made directly for the headlight beams, like a moth to a flame.

Over his shoulder he could see his pursuers coming round the houses and spilling out onto the road. From that distance he was unable to see who they were, but it had to be his cousins and some of the other kids because they were so quick. He would have only seconds to stop the car and convince the driver to help him before they caught up.

The car flashed its lights, but the driver did not slow down. For a moment he was certain it wouldn’t stop and prepared to meet his fate when suddenly he heard the squeal of brakes and saw the vehicle begin to veer from side to side like a man inebriated.

Don’t move, or else he’ll just zoom on by, he told himself, trying to predict the direction in which the driver would next yank the wheel. He wasn’t going to let him past.

For a split second Marco saw the front of the car loom toward him like an executioner’s ax, and then with a whoosh of tires against the wet asphalt it came to a sudden halt, with Marco’s knee against the front bumper, as an extremely agitated man hurled abuse at him from the other side of the thrashing wipers.

Marco sprang to the passenger side and flung open the door before the man could react.

“What the hell are you playing at, you little brat?” the driver yelled, his face white as chalk from the shock.

“You’ve got to take me with you or those men there are going to get me,” Marco begged, pointing down into the dip in the road from where his pursuers were now approaching.

The man’s expression changed from shock to rage in a second.

“What the fuck? Are you a Paki?” he screamed, leaning over to the passenger seat and without warning lashing a fist at Marco’s head.

The punch caught him awkwardly, but hard enough to send him backward onto the road as the man slammed the door shut with a hail of invective to the effect that apes like him could damn well fend for themselves.

Marco felt the asphalt eating its way through his pajamas. It hurt but wasn’t nearly as painful as lying flat in the middle of the road in darkness and seeing the car accelerate off with the beam of its headlights aimed straight at those who were after him.

“Stop the car!” one of them shouted. Then came the dull thud of gunshots, but the vehicle hurtled on, picking up speed and heading directly toward the flock, forcing them to leap for their lives. And then it was gone.

He heard the confusion among them as he rolled over into the ditch and crawled under a bush. They must have thought he’d managed to throw himself into the car before it sped away. He crawled on all fours deeper into the underbrush at the edge of the woods that bordered the road as he strained his ears to hear what his pursuers were up to.

Peering through the vegetation, he saw that some men had now joined his young pursuers. From their silhouettes he took them to be Zola, Chris, and his father.

The young ones pointed up the road to where Marco had stopped the car, then turned in the direction in which it had disappeared. Suddenly a fist flew through the air and a figure slumped to the ground. Punishment for failing to capture the fugitive came promptly. What else did they expect?

He heard a barked order to search the area, and the group consolidated and began jogging toward the place where he lay concealed. He needed to get into the woods or somewhere else they wouldn’t look. He raised himself warily toward the dark, expansive landscape of tree trunks, shivering from the rapid cooling of his skin and the adrenaline pumping through his body. The rain had soaked his pajamas, making them feel like they were made of sponge as the icy cold bit through his skin and feet. He realized at the first step that he wouldn’t get far without shoes, and now his pursuers were so close he could tell the voices apart.

It sounded like they were all there: Hector, Pico, Romeo, Zola, Samuel, his father, and the others. Even a pair of female voices vibrated above the trees.

Only then did Marco truly sense fear.

“I didn’t see him in the car,” Samuel shouted in Italian, another answering in English that they wouldn’t have seen him even if he had been inside.

Again, Samuel had betrayed him.

And now Zola’s fury rose up above this chaos of voices. Fury at their having allowed the boy to run, fury at their not having checked well enough to know for sure whether he’d been in the car, fury at shots having been fired. Now they would have to suspend all activities for a long time, he yelled at them, his voice trembling. It was going to cost them, and those who had fired the shots would be made to pay. The younger members of the clan would need to make themselves scarce in the days that followed, until the dust had settled. More than likely, the man in the car would go to the police, and when he did, the kids would have to be nowhere near the neighborhood if searches were carried out and questions asked.

“Comb the area and see if Marco’s still here,” Zola commanded. “And if he makes a run for it again, you’ve my permission to shoot. Just make sure you hit him, that’s all. Marco has become a danger to all of us.”

He was shocked. They were going to shoot him because he was dangerous. Yet he had done nothing but contradict Zola and run away. Was that all it took? What about the others who had deserted the flock from time to time? Had Zola had them shot, too?

Marco shuddered as he felt his way forward with his feet, twigs, pine cones, and thorns jabbing at his ankles and soles. A hundred meters into the woods, he was forced to lie down. Moving on was simply too painful and too slow.

They’d catch him if he didn’t find cover, he told himself, the words pulsing in his mind as he prodded the ground and noted that the earth was cold as ice, hard as stone. The place offered no concealment.

He felt panic now, as he spread his arms out to his sides and wriggled a few meters forward on his stomach through the prickly undergrowth.

He pressed on, and after a minute he suddenly felt his knees sink. For a moment he thought he had ventured into bog, but the soil was dry and loose, as though it had been turned. It was perfect.

So he began to dig, and the farther down he got, the looser the earth became.

Before long the hole was big and deep enough for him to roll into it and draw the soil over his body, twigs and broken branches covering his face and arms.

They wouldn’t see him now unless they stepped on him. Please don’t let the dog be with them, he prayed, trying to control his breathing.

And then he heard the crackle of dry wood under many feet. They were coming.

They spread out in the underbrush, moving slowly toward the place he lay, the sweeping beams of two flashlights hovering between the tree trunks like gigantic fireflies.

“One of you stay by the road so he can’t escape that way. The rest of you search closely, make sure he hasn’t concealed himself underneath something,” Zola shouted into the darkness. “Prod the ground with sticks, there’s plenty of them.”

A moment passed and Marco heard the snapping of branches all around, for Zola’s word was law. Crunching footsteps vibrated through the earth, approaching where he lay as the sound of sticks jabbed against the cold ground made the sweat trickle from his brow in spite of the biting cold. Another minute and the flock was all around him. And then suddenly they were gone.

Stay where you are, he told himself, a stench of rot piercing his nostrils. Somewhere close by an animal lay dead, no doubt about it. He’d found them often when they’d lived in Italy. Dead, stinking corpses of all kinds: squirrels, hares, and birds.

When Zola called off the search they would return the same way through the woods. If they hadn’t posted a man at the roadside he would have run back whence he came and then out across the fields. But just now he hadn’t the courage, so what else could he do but remain as quiet as a mouse?

And after a long time-as long a time as it would take Marco to beg his way from Rådhuspladsen down to Kongens Nytorv-they came back and passed him by. He’d been lying in the ice-cold earth for nearly an hour now, as the rain poured through the canopy of fir.

He heard them one by one, frustrated by their unsuccessful manhunt, angry that Marco had betrayed them so. Some even expressed their fear of what his betrayal might lead to.

“He’s in for it if we get our hands on him,” said Sascha, one of the girls he’d liked best.

Bringing up the rear were his father and Zola, the sentiment in their voices equally unambiguous.

As was the whining of the dog.

Marco’s heart stood still. He held his breath, knowing it would be no defense against the canine’s sense of smell. And then the animal suddenly began to bark, as though the scent of Marco were the only thing in the world it was capable of focusing on.

Now he was doomed.

“This is about where we dug the hole,” said Zola in a subdued voice, only meters from the place where Marco lay. “Listen to the dog, it’s going crazy, so we must be getting close. Goddammit, you realize, don’t you, that we’ve got an even bigger problem on our hands now? And your son is to blame.” He swore again as he dragged the whining dog away. “We need to be real careful for a while. There’s no telling what Marco might do. I think we should consider moving the body as well. It’s a bit too close to home.”

Marco slowly sucked in air through his teeth. With each breath he took, his hatred of Zola grew. The sound of his voice alone made Marco want to spring from his hiding place and cry out his contempt. But he did nothing.

When eventually the voices had left the underbrush, he began to shake away the soil. Later in the night or early the next morning Zola and Chris were bound to return with the dog. It was something he couldn’t risk.

He had to get away. Far away.

He pulled his frozen arms free with difficulty and arched his back so the soil that covered him could slide from his body.

Then he wriggled in the earth so as to gain purchase to draw himself upright, the sleeves of his pajamas catching as he swept sticks and twigs aside. Suddenly his hand struck a slimy mass covering something hard, and then came the stench, smothering him like death itself.

Instinctively he held his breath as he sat up and tried to see what it was his hands had found, which was barely possible by the dim light of the moon. So he tipped forward, his nostrils pinched, and then he saw it.

At that moment it was almost as if his heart had stopped. Before him lay a human hand. Helpless, crooked fingers with the skin peeled away, nails as brown as the earth itself.

Marco flung himself to one side. For a long time he sat on his haunches a short distance away, staring at the arm of the corpse as rain slowly revealed its decaying face and body.

“This is about where we dug the hole,” Zola had said to his father. The hole in which he himself had been lying.

Together with a rotting corpse.

Marco got to his feet. It was not the first time he had seen a dead body, but he had never touched one before, and he never wished to again.

For a while he considered what to do next. On the one hand, his discovery had suddenly given him the opportunity to have Zola put behind bars and to finally free himself of the man. But on the other hand, his father had helped bury the body, and probably also more than that. That made all the difference.

As he stood pondering, slowly becoming used to the smell, he realized there was no way to get at Zola without incriminating his own father. And though his father was weak and in Zola’s thrall, Marco loved him. What else could he do? His father was all he had. How, then, could he go to the authorities and ask for help? He couldn’t.

Not now, not tomorrow… not ever.

Marco felt his icy skin turn even colder. Somehow the world had suddenly become too big for him. In this moment of pain he realized that without his clan he had only the streets to fall back on. From now on he was on his own. No yellow van would collect him again when the day was over. No one would prepare his meals. No one in the world would know who he was or where he came from.

He hardly knew himself.

He began to sob but then stopped. Neither pity nor self-pity were emotions that were to be found in the world he’d been raised in.

He looked down at his night clothes. They were the first thing he had to do something about. There were houses, of course, that he could break into, but nocturnal burglaries were something he preferred to leave to others. People never slept that heavily in Denmark. They often lounged in front of their TV screens until the early hours, and in the darkness ears had a habit of growing far too big.

He prodded the ground with a bare foot. Perhaps there was something useful to be found in the grave with this dead man. He needed to check, so he picked up a stick from the undergrowth and began to hollow out the soil around the shoulders of the corpse, continuing until the torso was completely exposed.

Despite the darkness and the dirt, the face was quite clear to him, cheekbones high and chiseled, the nose long and straight. And the reddest hair Marco had seen in all his life. The age was impossible to assess, for the skin of the face had almost liquefied. He sensed that, had it not been so dark, the sight would have been as appalling as the smell.

There was nothing for him here, he decided, his eyes resting in a moment’s distress on the tightened, decaying hand that seemed almost to be trying to grab and hold on to life itself. To this man also, Zola had brought calamity.

And then it was that Marco discovered the chain catch protruding from underneath the corpse’s withered thumb. A tiny, round fastener with a lever. How many times had he opened one just like it as he stole the necklace off some innocent individual’s neck?

He took hold and pulled until the bones gave way and the chain slipped from the hand. As easy as anything.

The trinket was heavy and foreign in appearance. Marco had never seen one like it. An intricate lattice of threads, with a few pieces of horn and small wooden masks dangling from it. It wasn’t appealing, but it was unusual.

Unusual, perhaps, but hardly a piece that could be traded for money.

Just something African.