“I’m in the street they call Pisserenden,” Pico answered. “Hector just come and tell me Romeo and Samuel both gone. They not been at Nyhavn for long time. First, Samuel does not come back, then same with Romeo. This not so good, Zola.”
“What do you mean? Explain!”
“Police were in Black Diamond. We know now they grab them at the lockers.”
Zola leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Fuck! Was it now that everything was finally going to happen?
“How?”
“They were just there, waiting.”
He nodded, as one whole side of his face grew cold.
“OK. Keep away from there! And Pico, get everyone together before we pick you up. We need to know where everyone is and what’s going on. If any of you know where the Africans are, make sure they know Marco headed north. Give them Stark’s address.”
“Why? He could be gone anywhere.”
“Just do it, Pico. Or maybe you have a better idea?”
He hung up, took a deep breath, then typed in the number of the house in Kregme. It was Thursday, and Lajla would be making ready for his return. The house would smell of fresh-baked rolls and tempting willingness, but today he had other things for her to do. She would gather together everything of value. Everything of precious metal, and of course the jewelry. Just to be on the safe side.
“I was just about to call you, Zola,” Lajla said when he got through. “There’s a car parked at the end of the road, and it’s been there for quite some time. I took the dog for a walk and went past it on my way out to the main road. I wanted to see who it was, and if there were other cars just parked for no apparent reason. And there were. Up on the hill were two vans and men in white clothes. I think it was the police.”
“Which hill?”
“You know the one. The place where Marco disappeared. What do you think they’ve found?”
“How should I know? What about the car parked at the end of the road?”
“It’s still there. They’re just sitting there.”
Zola gripped the armrest of his chair. The police, with his people in custody. Police, watching his house. Police, snooping around where William Stark’s body had been buried. Dammit!
“Just stay calm, Lajla, it’s got nothing to do with us. But you better collect all our valuables and hide them good, in case anyone comes to search the house.”
She hesitated but seemed composed. That would change once she heard the clan was breaking up and that he had shoved his brother, her off-and-on boyfriend, to his death.
He handed the mobile to Chris and rolled down the side window so the warm air could chase the chill out of his body.
For more than twenty years he had been a part of this flock, the people he called his clan. He had seen them bow in the dust at his behest and seen them perform countless acts from which only he had benefited. They had been faithful to him. The question now was whether their time, and that of the clan, had come to an end.
He looked momentarily at Chris, his right-hand man, his ultimate shield against anything bad that might befall him. Chris was the one he would miss the most.
“Give me a cigarillo,” he demanded. Chris did as he was told, along with a lighter.
Then and there he decided that moments where tobacco smoke floated lazily over his head in the dry air and mingled with the scent of the tropics would soon be a central feature of his new life. He could no longer trust Samuel, that meathead, to keep his mouth shut, and once Lajla found out what he had done to her lover, he would no longer be able to trust her not to thrust a knife into his heart.
Objectively, it was quite simple. He would have to abandon the valuables he had amassed in Kregme. It would give the police something to chew on in kroner and øre. It didn’t bother him that much.
The rest of his fortune was waiting for him in Zurich. A bulging bank account, nourished over many years by the incomes of companies that appeared to be legal, although they were anything but. Once he had collected all his assets, he had to decide in which of two ways to use them. Either he took the money and lived peacefully for the rest of his life with an abundance of women in Venezuela or Paraguay, or else he would put together a new clan. There were markets enough to exploit, but harsh winters and months of darkness like those in Denmark were definitively a thing of the past. He had time enough to decide, and the world was a big place.
Looking at it like that, his situation was perhaps not so bad that something positive couldn’t come of it anyway. He only hoped that Marco, who had forced him into this situation, got what he deserved. That the Africans would succeed in tracking him down, and the sooner the better.
Zola looked at his watch.
Another half hour to wait and he would drive in to Rådhuspladsen and harvest the spoils of the day. He would need some cash to tide him over on the journey. Credit cards could be traced just like mobile phones, so if he was going to make a safe and orderly exit he would have to exhibit the greatest of caution.
As Chris gazed absently out of his side window, he opened the glove compartment and took out his false passport and the couple of thousand kroner that always lay there, ready and waiting, and slipped it all surreptitiously into his pocket. He didn’t need questions from Chris. Who could tell what he might do if he caught wind of what was going on?
“Let me do the driving, Chris,” he said, indicating that they swap places.
His helper looked at him with surprise, but he had learned not to question the validity of his master’s commands.
Zola slapped him on the back.
“Listen to me now, Chris. There’s something we have to do.” And then he explained to him what it was.
As soon as they reached Rådhuspladsen, Chris was to tell the waiting clan members to take the train home from Vesterport station instead. That he and Chris had important business to attend to so they could get Romeo and Samuel out of custody fast. And as an extra safety measure, they would ask the group to turn over the day’s haul to Chris in case the police were waiting for them at home. Afterward Chris was to tell them that he and Chris were going to pay a visit to the best solicitor in the entire kingdom of Denmark. Zola happened to know precisely which one. He was never unprepared, not even in a rotten situation such as this.
It was plain that Chris was moved by this display of concern for the members of the clan. Had it not been for the black bag on the seat between them, he would have grabbed Zola’s hand and kissed it.
–
They reached the square two minutes before five, and nothing turned out as Zola had planned.
Chris managed to get out of the van and begin collecting their haul as the clan members stood about uneasily, listening to him tell about what had happened during the day.
But as he was about to lift the satchel of booty onto the driver’s seat, a cry went up and at once Zola’s people scattered. Only Miryam and another girl remained when the police charged in from all sides.
Zola didn’t have time to think before he floored the accelerator, causing the entire square to reverberate with the screech of the van’s spinning wheels.
He did, however, have time to assure himself that the money he’d taken from the glove compartment was enough for a plane ticket, and that it was odd the police hadn’t stationed patrol cars to thwart an escape attempt such as this.
And he even managed a brief laugh before the windshield suddenly shattered in a thousand pieces and something heavy struck his knee.
What he didn’t manage, however, was to see the truck heading straight at him from the opposite direction.
–
Marco’s taxi driver turned out to be more than worth his two hundred kroner. He swerved into the cycle lane and deposited Marco right outside the Hereford Beefstouw where he could jump out unobserved and scale the construction site fence in seconds, ending up at the rear of the site as the building workers were leaving by the main entrance.