The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel (17 page)

“Assad, come in here a minute, will you?” she hollered.

A moment later he shuffled in, hungry for something new to sink his teeth into, ready for action with his hand-chased metal tray and three tiny cups of steaming, sticky goo. “I think this calls for some Turkish delight,” he announced, with a nod toward the colored blobs of sugar on the tray as if they were the contents of the Holy Grail.

“Assad’s done a background check, and I’ve been researching the situation as it stands now,” Rose explained, as if this were just a matter of course.

Carl shook his head. The two of them together were like a herd of stampeding gnu on the plains of Africa. Heads down and full steam ahead, and if he wasn’t going to join in, he’d better get out of the way.

Assad deposited his saccharine shock on the table and sat down next to Rose, notepad at the ready.

“A clever guy, this William Stark. Top of his year at law school. Very strange, in fact, that he then did not rise higher in the hierarchy before he disappeared.” Assad laid some papers in front of him. “Forty-two years old and fifteen years as a ministerial civil servant. Before that, a legal clerk and consultant for a number of lobby groups. Unmarried, but has been living six years with a Malene Kristoffersen and her daughter, Tilde. Malene is forty-seven now, Tilde is sixteen, and they live out in Valby.”

“What about Stark’s personal finances?”

Assad nodded. “Twenty years of careful saving up. Mortgage paid off and more than eight million kroner in securities. Mostly inherited from his mother, who died just before he went missing. He was an only child, and there were no other close family members.”

“Eight million? Wow!” Carl whistled. If he had that kind of money he’d buy two tickets to Cuba and force Mona into coming with him. A month under the palm trees and a bit of rumba to loosen the loins and ruffle the sheets, and she was bound to soften up.

He shook the thought out of his head. “OK, have we got any statements from people who knew him? Anything that might give us a hint as to why he disappeared?”

Rose took over. “No, nothing. His colleagues at work describe him as the quiet type, but at ease with himself. The report says that nothing at work or on the domestic front gave cause to suspect he was depressed or anything like that.”

Lucky bastard.

“But again, Rose, why are you so interested in this case? Other than feeling sorry for the young girl, which I completely understand. What else is there?”

“The circumstances, Carl. I can understand going to Africa and disappearing there. Of course it could have been against his will, with all the dangers there must be in a place like that, but intentionally vanishing in a region with no rule of law could be a possibility, too. It could have been a lust for adventure, or he might have just been sick and tired of the daily routine back home. Sick and tired of his work and his colleagues. Fed up with the cold and dark of winter and the political climate in Denmark. Or maybe he needed more sex. Maybe he had a preference for young, dark-skinned girls. He wouldn’t be the first, would he?” She paused to give weight to what followed. “Or young, dark-skinned boys, for that matter. He might have had secrets. We all have them, you know.”

Carl nodded. If anyone would know, she would.

He turned to Assad. He, too, nodded, though rather more hesitantly. Like a seasoned criminal, realizing his story had to be as close to the truth as possible, and yet holding back on just the right details.

It was a very odd kind of nod.

“Did Stark have secrets, do you think?”

Rose shrugged. “Who knows? The fact is, he
didn’t
disappear in Africa, and that’s what’s so damn puzzling. He comes back to Denmark, Carl, right? He’s been in Cameroon only a few hours before canceling his
return flight and booking another. And he lands here at Kastrup just like he’s supposed to. We’ve got the passenger list from the airline as well as some CCTV footage of him trundling his suitcase along. And then all of a sudden he’s gone. Maybe for good.”

Carl tried to picture the situation. “Perhaps he was clever. Our eyes are on Denmark because this is where he disappeared. But he might have driven straight over the bridge to Sweden, just like Sverre Anweiler, and wandered off in some forest. Or maybe he turned round and went back to Africa with false papers, or went somewhere else entirely.”

“Rose and I have talked about this, Carl,” said Assad. “Did Stark have enemies? Did he like gambling? Had he embezzled funds? Was there a pickup of some money? Had he forgotten something in Denmark, something he had to come back for? Could there have been another woman who was supposed to come along? We have talked about it all, and yet none of it seems very plausible.”

Carl thrust out his lower lip. The two of them were certainly getting involved in the case, but it didn’t look like they’d got much of a handle.

“Not a lot to go on, really, is there? What does the report say? Is there anything else at all that might point in some specific direction the earlier investigation could have missed?”

They both shook their heads.

“So where does that leave us? Have we anything at all?” If it were up to him, it would be a short investigation.

“William Stark has never been declared dead,” Rose said, bowing her head with a dark look in her eyes.

“No, of course he hasn’t, Rose. It’s not been five years yet.”

“And his house is still pretty much the way it was when he went missing,” Rose continued. “What’s even better is that I got hold of a set of keys from Bellahøj station. They had sealed the place off.”

Carl frowned. The bloodhound wags its tail when it picks up the scent and with a single sentence, Rose had got him going.

Dammit.

“OK,” he said, reaching behind his chair for his jacket. “Let’s go and have a look.”

It wasn’t a good
day for Marco. Shadows made him jump and even the slightest sounds were fatiguing.

He was back in Østerbro, for Zola had always told them never to go back to the same place if they were ever discovered. So Østerbro was probably the only part of town where they wouldn’t be looking for him.

It was well past midnight when he finally bedded down at the bottom of a Dumpster, hoping for a couple of hours’ respite from his fears of what the new day might bring.

It was no longer a question of them making him an invalid if they found him. Now that Zola probably knew Marco had seen the missing persons notice and could link it to the dead man in the woods, his life was at stake.

He woke up abruptly when a wino opened the lid and almost dropped dead from fright when Marco leaped out.

It couldn’t have been much more than half past six, but sunlight already glared down between the buildings that towered over the narrow street. Marco could hear the first faint rumble of traffic from the main thoroughfares. The city was awakening.

He gathered his things in a black trash bag and headed purposefully for the library on Dag Hammarskjölds Allé, taking care not to walk too quickly and draw attention to himself. The library had everything he needed. Toilets where he could wash, computers so he could print out maps of places he would go later in the day. And there was a place to stash his gear, a shelf above the electricity meter in a cupboard where no
one ever came. He had previously made note of the place should he ever have need.

Here in the embassy quarter there were plainclothes security guards everywhere. Russians keeping an eye on Americans, and vice versa. And in the midst of it all was an impressive building that he had been told once belonged to the Red Cross, reminding him that there were children in this world worse off than himself. Not that it made him feel any better. The children who skipped past him now on their way to school certainly had no need for charity.

When finally the library opened and he had taken care of his errands, he crossed over Sortedamssøen, carrying on along Ryesgade, and then heading north, eyes peeled for any untoward movement in the landscape.

Good thing he had his map.

—

He reached Stark’s house at a time of day when the suburbs seemed all but deserted. Friday midday was probably the easiest time of all to commit burglary in a tidy and peaceful residential neighborhood anywhere in Denmark. It was a country where both parents worked, decent living standards more often than not requiring two incomes. In a ghetto of affluence such as this, everything went by the book. What glued the place together were not the kind economic constraints with which Marco was familiar, but the exact opposite, and any child growing up here knew that to achieve the same status as their parents, they had to stay in school. For that reason nearly every house was empty. What he needed to watch out for were dogs, pensioners, and the occasional housewife. But Marco was used to being careful, so he mobilized everything he had learned, the trained thief ambling impassively along a street in which he did not belong. A far cry from the asphalt cowboys from the Baltic countries or Russia, who could be spotted a mile away in their grubby, ill-fitting faded jeans or tracksuits that had gone out of fashion ten years ago. They might as well have been wearing a sign that read
THIEF
. Shambling and unkempt, always in pairs, with tattered backpacks or a couple of bulging plastic bags too many. It was just the wrong way to look.

Marco, by contrast, was inconspicuous, his eyes seemingly fixed on some point farther down the street, but in fact intensely scanning every home he passed.

It was a pretty neighborhood, definitely the sort of place where he planned to live one day. Swings and seesaws, playhouses with little verandas. Beautiful, tall trees lined one side of the street, their branches reaching out over the lake and marshlands, while fine, spacious homes occupied the sloping grounds on the other.

And in the midst of this well-to-do idyllic setting, his thoughts turned toward the dead man. So strange to think that the corpse with which he had shared a hole in the ground had once walked these streets, as large as life.

Now he was gone from this world. No more than a face on a poster.

Approaching the address, he saw a woman on her knees before a flower bed next door to the garden that must have been William Stark’s. She was engrossed in her gardening and Marco counted the plants in her planting box. Ten left, perhaps fifteen? The way she was working it would be a while before she was done. Until then, no one could walk up the path to Stark’s house without her noticing. He would have to be patient, carry on down the street and come back later.

As he came to Stark’s home he noticed a dark blue Peugeot 607 parked a little way up the drive. A serious setback.

He reasoned that if he could see a girl inside as he walked past, then she was likely to be the one who had put up the notice, and he resolved in that case to ring the bell. He slowed down. The woman next door would just have to wonder.

Behind the pane of the bungalow’s front window he saw shadows moving against the walls. Holding his breath, he heard the faint sound of voices. Perhaps the house had been sold, although it was still only William Stark’s name that popped up on a Google search.

He shook his head. Of course there could be possibilities he hadn’t considered. The place could have been let. If so, he might just as well give up straightaway, for there would be nothing for him to find.

Marco noticed the man in the window before the man saw him. He seemed to be pondering, in no hurry with whatever he was doing. Not a
young man, but seemingly alert, with eyebrows raised, head turning this way and that. He was examining the room methodically, almost like a carpenter or painter appraising a job. But he wasn’t, Marco’s experience told him so. He knew better than anyone what policemen looked like and the kind of movements they made. He remembered how he and Samuel sometimes played a game when they were working the streets, where they’d see who would be the first to spot cops in the crowd. The mere way they checked out people around them was usually enough.

Marco took another look at the dark blue car. There, on the dashboard, was the blue lamp. He would have to make himself scarce.

But just as he was asking himself why they might be there, the policeman turned his face directly toward him. Only the briefest of seconds, and yet Marco had never before felt himself so sized up.

Those eyes have already seen enough of me, he thought, and began to run.

Not until he reached Husum Torv, his lungs wheezing and mouth parched, did he stop and consider what had happened.

The police were at Stark’s house. The case had not been closed. And the knowledge made his next move unavoidable.

He had to go back and get into that house.

—

The house, a small yellow bungalow from the thirties, lay on sloping ground with a spectacular view across the Utterslev marsh, the monumental ugliness of the Høje Gladsaxe ghetto beyond. In this area of Copenhagen, history was thus laid bare, a grim manifestation of why humanity was the worst thing that could happen to this green planet.

Carl shook his head. Welfare-state concrete slapped down in a landscape of beauty, a pillar of shame in Danish architecture. What a flagrant lack of foresight.

“A nice mast, don’t you think, Carl?” said Assad, pointing through the trees toward the Gladsaxe TV transmitter’s Babylonian lattice against the sky.

As far as Carl was concerned, the whole structure could collapse and he wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

“There was a break-in, you say. When was that?” he asked.

Rose produced a key and opened the front door.

“Shortly after William Stark disappeared. His girlfriend and stepdaughter hadn’t moved out yet, so we’ve got a fairly clear picture of what went missing.”

“The usual stuff?”

“You could say. The thing is, they really made a mess of the place. Slashed mattresses, paintings torn down off the walls. It wasn’t vandalism, more like they were looking for something.”

Carl nodded. Neither a typical disappearance nor a typical break-in. He could understand Rose’s curiosity.

Inside, there was a musty smell about the place, the kind that came when life ground to a halt and no one cared. This was the place where Stark had lived, and most likely he would never live here again.

Carl stepped into the neat front room and stared out of the panorama window across the garden toward the delights of Brønshøj. The lawn had been mown, red currant and black currant bushes pruned and ready for the next harvest.

“Who looks after the place?” he asked.

“His partner still comes, I think. Doesn’t it say in the report, Assad?”

He nodded.

Carl looked around. The whole setup seemed to indicate Stark had made do with less than might be expected of a man in his position. Maybe he just wasn’t interested, judging by the cheap wooden ceiling boards and shoddy DIY extension. But cozy, nevertheless. Not at all the sort of place that gave immediate rise to thoughts of suicide or the urge to vanish.

A few photos on a pinewood shelf told the tale of togetherness and the pleasure of one another’s company. Stark, his partner, and her daughter standing close, a warm huddle. It was easy to see from the way they were laughing that Stark had pressed the shutter timer and had just got back in position in time. The sort of photos that never won prizes.

Malene Kristoffersen was a roundish, pleasant-looking woman with dimples in her cheeks and healthy in appearance, in contrast to her daughter, who seemed exceptionally thin and disheveled in the way of a weak fledgling whose sibling would instinctively push it from the nest.

Stark seemed happy in all the pictures, his arms around his family’s shoulders, bending to put his head between theirs. A man whose most daring fashion exploit would be to wear a purple tie or perhaps even a green-checkered shirt with short sleeves. It was plain to see on this basis alone why his excellent education had failed to elevate him into the upper echelons. The man had been too quiet, too tentative, and probably, in many ways, too honest. He simply radiated this, and Carl was fascinated. If irregularities suddenly intruded upon the life of an upstanding guy like Stark, they usually left traces.

“Tell me about the break-in, Assad,” he said.

Assad opened his folder and pulled out the copy of the report.

“It was a professional job. No fingerprints, no DNA. Some neighbors said they saw a couple of guys arrive in a yellow van wearing blue overalls and black caps, and they waved to the people next door. Very ordinary-looking men, though perhaps rather tanned for the time of year.” Assad smiled. It was an expression he wouldn’t hesitate to use on himself.

“But you can’t really tell with skin color these days, can you? Everyone’s traveling all year-round. Ski trips, vacations at the beach. Soon everyone will look like me, only not quite as handsome.” He raised his eyebrows ingratiatingly. If he was expecting a compliment he’d have a long wait.

He gave a shrug. “In any case they came in through the front door, probably using a lock gun so no one had any idea something was going on. A woman tending her garden next door kept an eye out to see if they came out again with their arms full, but they had nothing. All in all, they were inside for about an hour and then they left again with a wave.”

“Did Malene Kristoffersen report the break-in herself?”

“Yes, and it was the reason they moved. They were uneasy about the place after that, especially with Stark being gone.”

“And the house is still as it was?”

“Yes.”

“How can that be? Who’s paying the mortgage?”

“It’s all paid off, Carl. All other expenses are taken care of by the returns on his assets.”

“Hmm.” Carl scanned the room again. “I wonder what they were looking for since they didn’t make off with the hi-fi over there? Cash, securities, jewelry? Are we sure his money wasn’t from something illegal? Have you checked out the validity of that inheritance? Have you seen the documents from the probate court?”

Assad stared at him in disappointment. Of course he had.

“It all looks innocent enough,” Carl went on, “but that could be a mistaken assumption. Maybe it has something to do with narcotics. Maybe he’s got property or other assets abroad that he hasn’t declared to the Danish authorities. Something he got by way of some criminal activity. Maybe he came back from Cameroon so quickly because something had gone totally wrong and there was a welcoming committee waiting at Kastrup Airport to get rid of him. Is there any CCTV footage showing how he carried on from there?”

“Yes, he took the metro.”

“And then what?”

“You see him on the platform and then that’s it.”

“Is that footage still available?”

Assad shrugged. On that point he had to pass.

“Have a look over here,” said Rose, over by the double doors.

She pointed across the hall to a small office with a safe up against the wall. Fair-sized, massive, and with a handle in the middle.

“Was it open before the break-in, too?” she asked Assad.

He nodded. “Malene Kristoffersen said it was never locked. William Stark never used it. He had a safe-deposit box with Danske Bank, but it was canceled a few months before he disappeared.”

“Did she have any idea what that deposit box might have contained?” Carl took over. “There must have been
something
of value in it, or there’d be no point in having it, would there?”

“Malene said he had some floppy disks and CD-ROMs, and his parents’ wedding rings. But he took all of it home, went through the disks on his computer and wiped the disks clean.”

“Do we know what was on them?”

“His doctoral thesis,” Assad replied.

“Doctoral thesis? Are you saying he has a PhD?”

“He never got that far. He hadn’t even tried to get it approved.”

“Sounds daft, if you ask me. Why would he delete all his work?”

“The same reason you didn’t want to be a chief inspector, I suppose.”