The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel (9 page)

Marco shook his head. He saw the woman inside the 7-Eleven now, already with the items in her hand that she wanted to buy. In a moment she would be at the counter.

This was the first time he had ever really seen the vulnerability in one of his victims. Normally he would have been far away by now and the possessions he had stolen already passed on to one of the other clan members. The victim would be out of sight and mind, and Marco would already be targeting the next.

Was there anything in the wallet, the wallet he now felt burning his skin, that the woman would be truly sorry to lose? Did it contain anything but money and credit cards? He didn’t want to know, nor did he want to be tormented by this feeling of shame. As of this moment, the days of Zola ruling Marco and his life were over.

He brushed the wet snow from his face and hurried over the crossing when the signal again turned to green. To anyone else, this would have seemed easy enough, yet for Marco these were the longest twenty-five meters of his life.

The woman was already rummaging through her bag in a panic by the time he reached the glass door. The assistant behind the counter was trying to appear patient, but it was obvious he felt she was wasting her time.

Marco took a deep breath, hardly aware of what he was doing as the door slid open and he went inside.

“Excuse me,” he said, reaching the wallet toward her. “Were you the one who dropped this outside?”

The woman stiffened, her facial expression blurring like a strip of film caught in the projector, melting. Worry turned to dark suspicion, then to the kind of relief a person might feel when an object hurtling toward them misses by a centimeter. It was strange, watching her reactions. Marco braced himself, unsure what to expect.

If her movements were too fast he would drop the wallet and leg it. He had no desire to feel the tight grip of her hand on his wrist.

Marco watched her intently as she finally thanked him and reached to take the wallet.

He bowed almost imperceptibly and turned quickly toward the door, already on his way.

“Stop!” The woman’s voice cut through the air. It seemed obvious to Marco that her life had been defined by issuing commands.

He glanced warily over his shoulder as the doorway was blocked by two incoming customers. Why did he have to go and hand back the wallet? They had seen through him, of course they had. Anyone could tell what sort of an urchin he was.

“Here, take this,” the woman said. Her voice was so soft now that everyone heard it. “Not many people would be as honest as you.”

He turned slowly to face her, staring at the hand extended in front of him. In it was a one-hundred-kroner note.

Marco reached out and accepted it.

Half an hour later he tried the trick with the wallet again, this time without success, as the woman he had picked out became so upset by her carelessness and loss that she clutched at her breast, unable to staunch the shock wave of sobbing that Marco had precipitated.

So he withdrew without his reward, but with the resolve that this had been the very last time.

The hundred kroner would simply have to last.

Early 2007 to late 2010

Marco received the shock
of his life the day Zola gathered the flock and without warning revealed that from now on they would no longer live as Gypsies and had never belonged to that tribe, anyway.

It was the day Marco reached the age of eleven, and at that moment his respect for Zola ceased.

He expected his uncle to explain what he meant, but Zola merely gave a wry smile when he saw how the children reacted. Then he told them of the nights he had lain with a raging fever, his mind suddenly becoming clear, his thoughts collecting to focus on whole new pathways in life.

Marco turned and stared at the grown-ups who stood in a ring behind the children. They looked so odd with sheepish smiles creasing their otherwise stern faces, as though at once both glad and apprehensive. It was obvious something momentous was in the offing.

“I have awoken from my delusions,” Zola went on, this being the way he spoke to them when they were gathered. They were used to it.

“As from today, you are blessed with a spiritual leader, a man who not only serves to unite the family in common endeavors, but who will also steer you on toward new and greater goals. Do you know what I mean, children?”

Most shook their heads, but Marco sat quite still, absorbed by the intensity of the man’s piercing gaze.

“No, I am sure you do not. But though we have lived as Gypsies for many years, Roma we are not. Now you know.” His words were as simple as that.

Marco frowned as his window on the world disintegrated. It was as though all life had suddenly been sucked out of him.

“And even though we feel tied together by the flesh as a family, this is not the case for all of us. But fear not, for we are all of us brought together by God.”

Everyone sat as though hypnotized, but not Marco. He stared at the ground and tried to focus his gaze on a blade of grass. Zola said they were not all family. What then?

Zola spread his arms as though to embrace them all. “Yesterday it came to me that Almighty God created one singular day on which nothing whatsoever occurred in the world. A day when everything stood still. Yes, yesterday I read about this one unique day on which no plane fell from the sky, no wars raged, no event of significance found its way to the front page of any newspaper. On this day, not one notable personage died or was born. The wheels of history ceased to turn, if only for a day, for God desired that this day should be the purest, least eventful day on earth. And it was surely on a day such as this that the Lord Jesus was born.” He nodded pensively. “And why did God create such a day? I shall tell you. He did so to perfectly frame one, single momentous event that took place on exactly the day in question.” He closed his eyes tight. “And do you know what day that was, children?”

Once more, the majority shook their heads, even many of the adults could not refrain.

“The day was April 11, 1954, the least eventful day of our time. And several of us present here know why he chose that very day, and why the silence of sudden peace in the world descended in veneration of one special occurrence that was to outshine all others. And now I shall reveal to you all what it was.” His face lit up in a smile wide enough to expose his gums. It had been a long time since he had smiled so much.

“The reason God did so was because this was the day on which I was born.”

Nearly all the adults broke into applause, but most of the children merely stared blankly at Zola as though having failed to truly grasp the momentous nature of that fantastic day. Marco was among them.

For he believed it to be a lie.

Zola lifted his head and gestured for them all to be quiet. And then he told them of how as a young man in Little Rock he had fled the draft that would have sent him to the war in Vietnam, and of how later in Italy he saw the flowers of peace and love bloom among like-minded peers in the Damanhur movement.

The garb of the hippies became his uniform and during those first months he became enthralled by northern Italy, soon joining up with the other flower children who would become his family. And on one particularly enchanting night when the stars were out in their multitudes they vowed to establish their own community on the plains of Umbria, where they would live together like the Roma in solidarity with the fate and circumstances of that martyred people.

There were many difficult words, but Marco understood what they meant. The grown-ups had lied to him and the other children. They were not Roma at all, and from that moment, being Marco would be so much harder, no matter what Zola said. It was like having your skin removed and replaced by another.

Marco looked around at the other children. They were silent and motionless. He didn’t like it at all.

Behind him stood two of the adults with somber faces. Once, Marco had heard them whisper that Zola had been expelled by the Damanhur movement for stealing. The other adults seemed not to have paid attention to this seditious comment, for they stood like an arcade of statues, as entranced as the children.

Zola raised his arms above them. “Just as with the Jews, God sentenced the Roma to wander the earth until they made themselves deserving of his grace. A curse lay upon them, as it had upon Job, so they were compelled to beg, steal, and rob their way through life. Yet this was but one example of the trials imposed by God, as when Abraham was instructed to sacrifice his own son. But friends, I say to you: we no longer need to bear the chalice of the Roma, for I have received a message from God and will show you how from this moment forth we can live as ourselves.”

At this point Marco stopped listening. What could he ever believe in now? Were the clothes they wore not like those of the Roma? Had the spittle with which the local inhabitants so often had humiliated them
been hawked for no reason at all? Had he listened to their oaths and been shoved aside daily on account of something he was not?

In the course of those few minutes Marco was stripped of everything. And he was shaken, even though he had hated his life almost every day he had lived.

He got to his feet and looked around. He was aware that he had a better head on him than most, but he had not known how painful this could be.

So who were they all now? Was Zola, who called himself his uncle, perhaps not even his father’s brother? And were his cousins just some random children?

And if so, where was his real family? Who was he?

Therefore, Marco considered the day that one newspaper had referred to as the dullest in history as the day that had fostered the worst that could ever befall him: the birth of Zola. The one who beat and tormented them and forced them to beg and steal. The one who forbade them to go to school and denied them the chance to live their lives like everyone else. Zola, who with God’s help now had more power over them than ever before.

The eleventh of April 1954, he’d said.

It was a day Marco truly loathed.

—

Some four years had now passed since Zola had made that speech and elevated himself by the grace of God to clan leader. It had been four years of terror and angst like never before.

The night following his address they decamped, leaving behind everything that belonged to their nomadic existence: tents, Primus stoves, cooking utensils, and many of the primitive tools they employed in their break-ins. The group numbered twenty adults and as many children, all dressed in their finest clothes that they had stolen from the outfitters of Perugia.

As they journeyed through northern Italy, Austria, and Germany during the days that followed, they broke into a total of ten shiny luxury cars with leather interiors, equipping them with false number plates and
then heading in a convoy for the border of Germany and Poland at Swiecko and on toward Poznan. No one mentioned how they got rid of the vehicles and how much money they brought in, but one night the whole group found itself traveling northward by train through the Polish night. Some said Zola had summoned two of the men to his compartment to guard the money, and Marco mused that if the job required the services of two, then the sum must be large indeed.

In the ensuing months, Zola demonstrated to them unambiguously what he meant when he had told them new times lay ahead. In any case, these new times were in no way synonymous with good times, and so it was that several members of the clan disappeared without a word. Marco knew why. They had grown sick of beatings, being forced to work, and a life of need.

Everyone in the group knew Zola was a wealthy man and that he loved his money. He always had. The problem was that he kept it all for himself, coercing the others by means of threats into earning more each day. The begging and the stealing on which the clan had survived all through Marco’s life was destined to continue as before.

When winter came they settled in Denmark, renting two adjoining single-story homes on a residential street within comfortable striking distance of Copenhagen. By then their numbers had fallen to only twenty-five in all, and had it not been for Marco’s father’s weak character, he and Marco would probably have disappeared along with the other apostates and the woman Marco had called his mother, and who no longer was mentioned by anyone.

Zola gathered the group together at regular intervals and equipped them with new, presentable clothing. He told them it made a better impression out on the streets. The women and young girls were given long skirts and tight, colorful tops; the men received dark suits and black shoes. Marco found it both wrong and impractical to sit on the pavement begging in his fine clothes, but it was another matter when picking pockets, snatching bags, or breaking and entering. In such cases, the suit was a help, making him a less conspicuous culprit.

In this way three and a half years had passed.

—

After battling the snow and strong winds, Zola, his brother, and their helper, Chris, eventually found the place in the woods where they had buried the body. The dog was with them, though in the circumstances it had been of little help. Frost and wind had banished all scent from the landscape, the ice-blue glare and glittering crystals of snow conspiring to conflate all visual impressions. It was sheer hell to be out in such weather.

“Goddammit, why didn’t we do this before the weather turned? Now the ground’s as hard as stone, we’ll have to hack the corpse free,” Zola’s brother cursed, but Zola was not dissatisfied. Traces of a decomposed body were almost impossible to remove from the ground under normal conditions. A frozen one was that much better.

The most important thing, however, was that they had found it.

But Zola’s spirits sank a moment later when Chris brushed away loose dirt from the body and its red hair lit up like a torch against the white background. Why was it not covered in earth?

“Do you think some animal’s been at work here?” Marco’s father wondered.

It was a naive question. What animal of decent size and strength would not have gnawed on the meat? None of which Zola was aware. The hound at his side, at least, could hardly contain itself, even though the corpse was frozen solid.

“I thought I told you to keep the beast in check, Chris,” he hissed. “Tie it to the tree and start digging the body out.”

Zola turned to his brother. “Unless he was still alive when we chucked him in the hole, someone else has been here.”

“He
was
dead,” his brother replied.

Zola nodded. Of course he had been dead, but who had removed the earth around the body and yet not raised the alarm? There were even finger marks where the soil had been scraped away.

His eyes scanned the scene in detail, stopping at the thin branch of a fir tree that reached out over the hole. It was covered in snow, but at its tip something was visible that obviously did not belong.

Zola nudged the branch with his boot, sending a powdery cloud of snow over the corpse and prompting him to shield his eyes.

“Do you recognize this piece of material?” he asked, pointing to the little shred caught on the point of the branch.

The way the color disappeared from his brother’s face was answer enough.

Zola considered the situation. “Disastrous” was probably the best way to describe it.

“So now we know why we didn’t find Marco that night. He was lying in this hole while we were out searching for him. He may even have heard what I said to you.”

Zola’s brother’s eyes were dark and troubled as he stared disconsolately back at his leader. Desperation had set in, and that was the difference between them. Zola never grew desperate. That was why his younger brother had been appointed bloodhound.

“I can see from your expression that you realize I need to think about this. Only now there is no way back, do you understand me?”

His brother nodded almost imperceptibly, more a tremble than a nod. It was all he could muster.

“But that’s how things stand now, and you need to grasp the fact. Marco must be eliminated. Completely eliminated.”

—

Money aside, to a man such as Zola only two things really mattered: awe and respect from those around him. Without them, he would be unable to manage the clan. Without the aura of divine light in which he always took care to be reflected, there would be limits to what he could demand of his subjects. The absence of these limits was crucial.

The years in Denmark had been good to them. The Schengen Agreement, the police reforms that had increased bureaucracy and reduced the numbers of police on the street, the cutbacks in public services, all had been beneficial to Zola’s setting up a network that took on all manner of shady activity. Here in Kregme, they could live without risk of being checked by the authorities, unless they were reported by neighbors. From Denmark, stolen goods could be transported across the borders
without control. And within Denmark it was easy to recruit any number of Balts, Russians, and Africans, already resident in the country with the purpose of milking its hubristic abundance in every conceivable and inconceivable way. As long as he could keep the Eastern Europeans in check and his own clan in reverential esteem all was in order. But Zola was wary of the downside. The moment he showed signs of weakness, there were those in the group who would gladly and unscrupulously attempt to topple him from the throne.