The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel (14 page)

Their disappointment was worded most succinctly by the man from the bicycle shop: they were sure as hell having nothing more to do with a boy involved in crime. Was he a member of the mafia, or what?

All of them had been threatened with having their businesses burned to the ground if they refused to spit out what they knew about Marco, so they did. The mini-mart’s counter had been smashed and the manager punched in the face.

Marco was on his own again.

He picked up the piece of paper on which he had written down the number of the girl, smoothed it out on the desk, and dialed.

After a few seconds there was a jingle, then a woman’s voice at the other end. “The number you have called is unobtainable. Please try again.”

In other words, the number no longer existed.

—

The doorway across the street from Eivind and Kaj’s ground-floor apartment was one preferred by the youngsters of the area when they needed a place to hang around smoking, making out, or just messing around. Bicycles no one knew who owned were abandoned for no apparent reason against the wall, and the ground was littered with enough cigarette ends to make any bum more than happy. Marco now stood there as well, hugging the wall, his face turned toward the darkened windows.

He had been there an hour and would stay another hour or more, if necessary. As long as the lights didn’t go on in the living room and he couldn’t see the figures of Eivind or Kaj, he dared not step into the street.

Amorous youngsters kept hassling him, telling him to get lost when they realized he wasn’t going of his own accord. But Marco didn’t care. His only thoughts were for Eivind and Kaj and his belongings inside the
apartment, and how to get in touch with the girl named Tilde, whose phone number was no longer in use. He wanted to know more before he went to the police with the posters he’d stuck inside his shirt.

Perhaps the girl or her mother could help him establish some connection between William Stark and Zola and his father. And if he couldn’t get hold of the girl, at least he knew where they used to live. He had the address. Maybe there was someone at Stark’s house he could talk to, someone who might know something.

He heard the drag of footsteps before he saw the figure coming along the street, outlined against the sinking sun. The man had a slight limp, as though his knee were unable to bear his full weight, and at this sedate tempo he crossed the side streets that knitted the district together. In his hand were two plastic bags from the dry cleaners. He used them for receipts and invoices when the books needed doing. So Eivind had gone to the shop after they had been to the hospital. But why wasn’t Kaj with him? Was he so ill they’d kept him in? Was that why Eivind’s gait seemed heavier than usual, or was he just tired?

Marco frowned. It was good that Eivind was coming now, but there was something about it he didn’t like. Maybe Zola’s people were inside the apartment. So he decided to step forward into the light of the street lamps.

The smile that lit up Eivind’s face when he saw Marco was worthy of any father. But his expression changed to perplexity when he realized something was afoot.

“What are you doing standing here, Marco?” He looked up toward the apartment. “And why isn’t there anyone in?” he wanted to know, as the unlit windows and Marco’s silence made his smile wither.

“Why isn’t Kaj with you, Eivind?” Marco replied.

“Isn’t he home?” Eivind’s smile vanished completely.

“I don’t know. I’ve haven’t been in yet. I thought the two of you were together.”

“Good Lord!” Any second now, Eivind was going to go charging into the apartment, driven by apprehension. Suddenly the feelings for the man he loved had been converted to anxiety at the prospect of unexpected loss. Marco could feel it, too.

“Wait!” Marco blurted. “You can’t go in. There might be someone waiting in there. Someone who’s after me, Eivind. Someone you don’t want to meet.”

Eivind stared at him as though of all the disappointments life could inflict, he was standing face-to-face with the greatest. And then, in spite of Marco’s warning, he let go of his bags, rushed across the street, and entered the apartment building. Seconds passed and a light went on in the window, accompanied by Eivind’s wails of distress.

Marco hugged the wall. At the slightest sound of a scuffle inside he would have to make himself scarce. It was cowardly, but if the front door was flung open he would have to disappear in a flash. These were his thoughts as his heart pounded in his chest, aware that Zola’s evil had now spread to these two people’s lives through him. And then he thought of his savings, hidden away behind the baseboard, realizing shamefully that they were foremost in his mind.

“MARCO!” Eivind shouted from inside. It wasn’t a cry for help. This was rage of the kind Marco had so often seen followed by violence in Zola’s world. He had never heard Eivind yell like this before.

His eyes scanned the street. All was quiet.

So he crossed over and stepped through the front door, which was still open. Even from a distance Eivind’s indecipherable ranting could be heard from within.

As in all the gay homes he had broken into, the hall was an overture to the dwelling’s contents and character. This narrow passageway provided clues enough to identify the passions of those who lived there. In Eivind and Kaj’s case it was actors, and especially actresses, of old, all presented in the most exclusive of mahogany and silver frames, adorning the walls like icons in the churches of northern Italy where Marco had once tried to find solace. Now these idols lay strewn across the floor amid shards of glass and broken frames. And beyond the alarming disarray, two feet in familiar slippers protruded from the doorway. Marco’s heart almost stopped.

He glanced warily into the rooms he passed before stepping into the living room.

The sight that met him was a shock, but unfortunately not unexpected.

Eivind was kneeling beside Kaj, holding his head in his hands. Thankfully, he was alive and his eyes were open, but the blood that covered his face and the floor around him was a sign that everything might easily have ended differently.

“What have you done, Marco?” Eivind’s voice was shrill with emotion. “Who were those people? Are you in trouble, you little bugger? How dare you bring this into our home! Tell me who did it! I know you know!”

Marco shook his head. Not because he didn’t want to answer, or because he couldn’t. He shook his head because it was the way his shame came to expression.

“Call an ambulance, Marco. NOW! And then leave. Get out and don’t come back! Do you hear me? Get out!”

He made the call as Eivind, with stifled sobs, tried to console his life’s companion on the floor. And when Marco went to his room to get his things, noting in a moment of relief that the baseboard was still intact, Eivind came charging in after him.

White in the face and convulsed with all the emotions that accompany complete and all-consuming rage, he took a swing at Marco and yelled: “Give me your key and get out of my sight, you fucking Gyppo runt. Right this minute!”

Marco protested and asked for permission to take his belongings with him, but in desperation Eivind tried to hit him again, then thrust his hand into Marco’s pocket and poked around until he retrieved the key to the apartment.

He wanted to make sure the boy wouldn’t be coming back.

The last Marco saw of Eivind was when he threw open the window and unloaded Marco’s earthly possessions onto the pavement below.

Everything but his duvet and what lay concealed behind the baseboard.

Forced to leave behind the most important thing of all.

The couple in the doorway just sniggered.

That evening, Carl lingered
outside his house waiting until the light was turned off in the kitchen, having no desire to deal with Morten’s monkish compassion or Mika’s gestalt-therapeutic manipulations. All he wanted was to get upstairs into bed and lick his wounds. In fact, he was planning to stay there until he went moldy.

Mona had given him the boot, and he was at a total loss. He hadn’t a clue why, especially just now; nor could he understand why he hadn’t charmed the panties off her before she demolished all his hopes with just a couple of sentences. He didn’t get it at all, and the way he was feeling now he suspected he never had. At least not where women were concerned. What made them act so outlandishly, with such predictable unpredictability? Soft and fluffy on the outside; jagged and prickly underneath.

When would he ever learn?

He crept up the stairs, his spirits in free fall, and threw himself down on the bed with all his clothes on, trying desperately to understand what had happened and what the consequences might be. Usually he would reach for his mobile and consult Mona when such a Gordian-knotted noose tightened around his neck. But what about now? What the fuck was he supposed to do?

—

Café Bohème had not been Carl’s choice, but when he finally looked around this exclusive restaurant and gazed out the windows along the Esplanade, he realized it wasn’t the worst place in which to declare his
undying love. He had been waiting for an opportunity like this for a long time, but it wasn’t until a couple of days before, when he’d stumbled upon the shop of a Russian silversmith who created jewelry worthy of the gods, that he realized the time had come.

Carl had the ring with him, expectations sky-high, his fingers already clamped around the silk pouch in his pocket, when she looked him straight in the eye.

“Carl, I want to talk to you today because we’ve been together long enough now to ask ourselves what we really mean to each other.”

Carl smiled to himself. It was perfect. No one could wish for a better prelude to what he was going to do next.

He felt the warm silk against his palm and prepared to place his gift on the table the moment she declared it was time for their relationship to be consolidated. A joint household, a marriage certificate at city hall—whatever she wanted, he was willing. There would be an outcry back home, of course, but it would all work out. As long as Hardy continued to provide the household with a regular income for Morten’s assistance and Mika chipped in, 73 Magnolievangen wouldn’t need to change ownership.

“What do we want with each other, Carl? Have you thought about it?” she asked.

He smiled. “As a matter of fact, I have. I was . . .”

She looked at him with such benevolence that he felt quite moved and paused for a moment. He had an incredible desire to smooth his hand against her cheek, to feel her downy skin, kiss her soft lips. And he noticed how her breathing had become sharper and more resolute, recognizing it as a reflex that usually signaled major deliberations and final decisions. But she was taking her time, and that was OK. Navigating through occasions as momentous as this couldn’t be hurried.

“Carl, I’m so very fond of you,” she said. “You’re a lovely man, but are we actually going anywhere? I’ve thought about it so many times. Would it make any difference if we were closer together? If we lived together and woke up beside each other in the mornings?” She took his hand in hers and squeezed it harder than he’d anticipated. She seemed to be having difficulty getting it said. Perhaps she preferred he take charge. But
Carl merely smiled. He would allow her to answer her question herself, and
then
he would produce the ring.

The answer came without passion or enthusiasm. “I can’t see it would change much, to be honest. I think we’d soon run short of things to talk about. And the good sex we have once in a while would happen less and less, don’t you agree? Lately you’ve grown distant from us, Carl, and from yourself. Maybe it’s best that this should happen now. You forget when we’re supposed to see each other, and often you’re miles away when you’re with my daughter and grandchild. You don’t see me as you used to see me, and you’re unable to confront your own situation. You’ve stopped your therapy sessions in spite of what we agreed. I’m looking for development here, Carl, and have been doing so for a very long time. Long enough, if truth be told. Which is why I think we should stop now.”

Carl turned cold as ice. He had wanted to say something epochal and decisive, but now he was reeling. Was that really the way she felt about him? He shook his head and felt dazed, unable to collect his thoughts. Words stalled in his throat, but Mona seemed clearheaded and determined. In any other situation he would have loved her for it.

“I don’t know why it’s taken so long for us to have this discussion. It’s my profession, after all,” she went on. “But now it’s high time we did. I mean, neither of us is getting any younger, are we, Carl?”

He gestured for her to stop, and in the minutes that followed he tried anxiously to reassure her that things had been going fine until now, in spite of everything, but that of course he’d been having thoughts of his own as well. He mobilized his self-defense and charm offensive into a kind of symbiosis that safeguarded every word, every intonation. Where any pause too long might signal indifference, any pause too brief could make him appear panicked.

Christ, he was careful with those pauses.

Eventually she seemed softened and more compliant. As though the whole sorry situation had been caused by some kind of midlife crisis and all she had needed was to hear him talk. And so in this hour of reckoning he ventured to smile, making sure by way of conclusion to leave her the opening that all dealings between adults of equal standing required.

“So I’m one hundred percent open to any suggestions you might want
to make, Mona.” And for one tiny moment he had the delicious feeling of being back in business. Any second now she would take it all back and climb down, and then he would be ready with the reward: a small, but very expensive ring.

She gave him a rather odd smile in return and nodded. But instead of meeting him halfway where they promised to do their utmost for the good of their relationship and allow each other space for spontaneity, she seized her chance and turned his words against him.

“Thanks, Carl. In that case, my suggestion is that from now on we concentrate on leading our own separate lives.”

Her words slammed into his stomach like a battering ram. His self-image, his sense of reality, were in tatters. He simply no longer knew the woman sitting across from him.

And the ring remained in its silk pouch.

It was too late.

—

It was one of those mornings when it took ages to become Carl again. How on earth he managed to make his way into the city he had no idea. The rear lights of cars in front and the recollection of Mona’s eyes as she swept him out of her life were the only things he was aware of.

He made room among the piles of folders on his desk so he could put his feet up and resume the night’s failed attempts at sleep. His body and soul needed it more than anything. But Rose appeared in front of him in full gear the moment he sat down, squawking something about the missing persons notice she’d shown him the day before.

As if he wanted to think about anything that had to do with yesterday.

He tried to shake some life into his cerebrum. He was supposed to be at work, after all, but his thoughts refused to get out of the rut that kept circling around Mona. A mere three hours of sleep was all the shock had allowed him. Even Hardy’s remarkable progress that he had witnessed on Tuesday had completely receded into the background.

“Here, Carl.” A dark hand shoved a pair of cups the size of thimbles over the desk toward him and Rose, and the stench of something decidedly other than coffee rose up from the clay-colored substance.

“I’m not so sure,” he said, peering into the cup while Assad assured him that as far as he knew no one had ever died from drinking chicory coffee, and that its beneficial effects were well documented. It was something he remembered his grandmother telling him.

Chicory coffee? Wasn’t that what they’d tricked innocent citizens with during the war? Had this affront to centuries of careful refinement of the noble bean really survived such a definitive, universal holocaust? What horrible injustice.

“It’s like I say: weeds and cockroaches will be the only things left when we finally press the button,” he said with a sigh.

They stared at him as if he’d suffered an acute brain hemorrhage. He was able to sense it, but so what if he
had
skipped a couple of steps in making his deduction?

He let it be and studied Rose’s sunburned nose instead. She looked almost human all of a sudden. “Why is that notice so important to you, Rose? We’ve still got the Anweiler case, you know.”

“The Anweiler case needs a name change if you ask me. Hopefully we agree that the man’s innocent, don’t we? I’ve written Lars Bjørn a report giving the department’s investigation a good kick in the nuts. Assad and I have reached the conclusion that either the bloke the dead woman ran out on is worth having a chat with, or else maybe we should try and find out if she was technologically illiterate.”

“‘Technologically illiterate’? Don’t know the expression. What the devil does it mean?”

“Someone dysfunctional in matters electronic. A person who’s unable to operate devices that have more than one handle or button. Thick as a half-wit when it comes to understanding a manual, switching from a dial telephone to a mobile or from sink to dishwasher. You know the type?”

Assad nodded attentively. No doubt it was he who’d coined the expression in the first place.

“You don’t say. So you reckon the fire on the houseboat could have been an accident, is that it? And all the experts who’ve been involved are no more than a bunch of superficial chuckleheads who never bothered to let that possibility sink in and pursue it?”

Assad raised a finger in the air. Carl stared at it, fascinated. Where did all those hairs on it come from? Chicory coffee?

“That was good, Carl. Letting the possibility
sink
in. Just like the boat, yes? Very clever.”

Carl closed his eyes and gave a sigh. Had his two most trusted and only colleagues been downing soda all night in a kindergarten, or what? Christ on a bike. If only they’d leave him in peace.

He turned to Assad. “What do the fire investigation boys have to say about this accident?”

“It seems they do not believe there was anything on the boat to cause such a very big explosion. Neither the gas bottle, nor—”

Rose interrupted. “When you’re a lamebrain all sorts of accidents can happen. The right combination of hair spray on the kitchen counter, the stove leaking gas because she forgot to light it. Lamp oil to get the heating stove going, nail polish remover on the shelf. And how did Anweiler make his living? Think about it. He was a roadie and lighting man, wasn’t he? Don’t they have all sorts of things that get dead hot when they’re in use? A spotlight, maybe, that he’d left behind, and the woman turned it on by mistake, and then it falls on to the sofa where she’s left a couple of bottles of household spirits. There are so many possibilities, we just don’t know. And basically I don’t care, because it’s not our case, is it? I was just told to ring doorbells, right? That lot on the third floor can work out all the answers.”

Carl took a deep breath. With an imagination like that, Rose had no need to worry about her future. A new Agatha Christie was born.

“And Carl, you’d do well to think back on yesterday. Wasn’t there something you couldn’t be arsed about with this Anweiler case?”

Carl straightened up in his chair and donned his mental work clothes. It was high time he quelled his emotional hangover and reminded this cheeky shrew whose door had a shiny brass plate on it and whose didn’t.

“I dunno, was there? Anyway, I know perfectly well where you’re heading with this, and the answer is that today I can’t be arsed with dealing with missing persons, so you might just as well get it into your head. You don’t kick off a new case until you finish the one you’re on,
especially when not all its aspects have been investigated thoroughly, right? Besides, we’ve got any amount of cold cases as it is.”

Assad gave a shudder of delight. Like when you realize your backside is freezing off because it’s sticking out from your duvet on an ice-cold winter’s night, and then you draw it back it again. His eyes sparkled in anticipation of Rose’s reaction.

“So tell me, why would we need another case on our hands?” Carl went on. “Or have you forgotten the ones still up on the board out there in the corridor? All those cases joined up with Assad’s red and blue strings? How many have we got at the moment, Assad?”

“What? Strings?”

“No, cases!”

Rose’s mascara glare rumbled in his direction. “Sixty-two cases in all, don’t you think I keep count? But this one’s—”

“Listen, Rose. They may have done a shoddy piece of work upstairs on the Anweiler case, but so will we if we don’t get our act together and tie up the loose ends we’ve uncovered.”

Assad nodded zealously in agreement. Obviously some element of syntax had gone over his head.

“We need to take into account that the fire investigation was severely inhibited by the boat being totally burned out and having sunk to the bottom. On top of which weather conditions were bad and the current in the harbor was relatively strong. For Christ’s sake, Rose, these technicians know what they’re doing, they’re experts.”

She gave him a surly look.

“And don’t sulk either, because it happens to be true. I’ve been in this job since you were a snotty-nosed kid, remember? And if you don’t acknowledge the fact, then that’s what you are still.”

Assad rasped his hand across the stubble of his chin. It almost drowned out Rose’s sigh.

“OK,” he finally said. “We must speak to Anweiler. We need to know what condition the boat was in. Was it good or bad? Who was the victim? We must investigate her profile.”