He knew he had to be doubly on his guard this time, and he knew that if the Africans or someone like them came back, he would not be unarmed.
He found a claw hammer on the first floor and weighed it in his hand. One side of the head was heavy and blunt, the other, used to extract nails, curved down into two prongs as sharp as awls. Not quite as good as a gun, but at least as good as a knife.
Marco was no longer afraid. Rational emotions such as fear and anxiety occur primarily in those who love life, who believe in the future and the people they hold dear, and don’t want to lose any of these things. But when hatred takes over, love is forced aside, and with it, fear.
The way he felt at the moment, only the hate remained.
Zola had murdered his father before his very eyes, and if Marco hadn’t been there it would never have happened, he knew that. Indirectly it was his fault his father had been killed, because his actions and presence had prompted his father to abandon his loyalty to Zola and warn his son instead.
Marco stared vacantly into the distance. “His father”! If only he could caress those words, he would. They gave rise to such deep emotion, and now, like the word “son,” they were no longer a part of his world. A cold-blooded push from the man Marco hated most in all the world had deleted these words from his vocabulary, and this was something he was ready to avenge at any price-along with the murder of William Stark, Tilde’s stepfather. Not until he had had his revenge would he again be able to look forward.
He crept on all fours across the concrete floor to check the rubble chute through which he had escaped the day before.
It was empty now, of course, so the African must have extricated himself. Marco couldn’t help smile at the thought of how he had managed it.
Only when he reached the fourth floor did he begin to feel safe. All was quiet except for one or two workmen lingering around the huts below.
If he laid low until darkness came he could spend another night here in his den. There was always the risk that someone, against all common sense, might figure out he’d come back here, but in that case he felt ready for them. And if no one came, he would try to get close as possible to the house in Kregme and do away with Zola for good.
He frowned at the thought. It would not be easy, and he wasn’t sure he could do it. He wasn’t sure at all.
He found a slab of concrete, dragged it across the floor to the very edge of building’s low wall facing Rådhuspladsen, and used it for a chair. Resting his forearms on the wall, he gazed out over his entire kingdom.
It was almost five o’clock. Soon Chris would arrive in the yellow van to pick them all up.
He couldn’t see the vehicle yet, but what he saw instead were men with alert eyes on two of the adjacent street corners.
He didn’t like these guys. Not only because they all seemed to be looking his way, but also because he couldn’t recall having seen men like them standing like that, and in such numbers.
Were they after him, too?
He strained his eyes to see, waiting for one of them to make a move, but none of them did. If they were plainclothes police, then some telltale signs were lacking. The intense gaze, the posture, the hands in pockets, the bulge of the holster. But he was just too far away to tell.
And then he caught sight of Miryam limping toward the square from Farvergade, and a couple of other clan members appearing from the Strøget. As they crossed Rådhuspladsen, the men stationed on the corners turned slightly in their direction. Marco nodded. They were police, no doubt about it.
He shook his head. So now it was the clan’s turn. He had seen to it himself with the note he had written on the parking ticket and dropped into that policewoman’s bag, but now it felt very wrong. Did he seriously believe he could get at Zola by making life hard on his slaves? It wouldn’t work. Zola would go free, and all the others would bear the brunt.
He wanted to call out to Miryam and the others and warn them, but all at once the yellow van turned the corner of Vesterbrogade and steered directly toward the waiting flock.
He had expected them to slide the side door open as usual and climb in, but instead Chris jumped out from the passenger seat with a black satchel in his hand and began discussing something with them. But why? Why didn’t they just drive off? And who was behind the wheel?
Then he saw his old friends depositing the day’s haul in Chris’s bag, and then abruptly scattering like frightened birds as men rushed them from all sides.
In the split second where Chris turned toward the open passenger door, obviously in doubt as to what to do, Marco realized that the man behind the wheel was Zola.
Instinctively and driven by hatred, he picked up the slab of concrete on which he had been seated and raised it aloft as the van revved up and the screech of its spinning wheels echoed between the buildings.
And then he hurled it with all his might, without a thought for the danger in which he had suddenly put the innocent people below.
An eternity passed as the slab descended, and the smoking rubber of the van’s wheel spin seemed to propel the vehicle forward. Marco held his breath. So bound together were this plummeting chunk of masonry and Marco’s bated breath, that if it had gone on falling forever, he would have forgotten to breathe.
And when finally it smashed through the windshield and was gone, the world came to a standstill. Only the van remained in motion, veering diagonally across the street and colliding head-on with an oncoming truck in a sickening crunch of metal against metal. The outcome was inevitable, and a wave of shock stunned onlookers as the van overturned in the collision and was squashed beneath the enormous truck. This time Goliath had proven stronger than David.
Marco drew back, then darted ten meters to another spot by the wall from which he could observe events undetected.
Most eyes were directed on the scene of the accident, and were horror-struck.
A few looked up.
And Marco realized he was on the run again.
39
“This is no easy case, Carl,” grumbled Assad. “I would not like to be in the shoes of those South Zealand and Lolland-Falster police right now.”
“You said it, Assad. Snap’s killing was a nasty business indeed,” Carl replied. “His wife’s neck was broken, and Snap had his larynx crushed before being strangled to death. What kind of person’s capable of that? Do we know if Eriksen has any kind of background in the Danish commando forces or anything like that?” he asked, overtaking a car that was hogging the middle lane at eighty kilometers an hour.
Assad shook his head. “No, he doesn’t. The army rejected him. It was something to do with his back.”
“Well, now we’ve got a warrant out on him. We’ll have to see what happens.”
An alert came over the police GPS. There was only twenty minutes until the pickup at Rådhuspladsen. They’d have a job making it on time.
“Has Rose gathered the troops?” he asked.
Assad gave him a thumbs-up. Of course she had.
He stomped on the accelerator and turned on the blue light and siren.
–
They skidded to a halt in front of Tivoli Gardens’ main entrance, leaving the car halfway on the pavement so it couldn’t be seen from Rådhuspladsen. They hurried toward the square, arriving at the same instant as a van careered across the road and smashed into a truck that was headed for the building site, heavily laden with construction iron.
All was chaos. On their side of the road a pair of plainclothes officers took off in pursuit of fleeing men in dark suits while others surrounded a couple of young women who had remained behind. Out on the street cars slammed into the back of one another in a pileup as the van was crushed flat against the asphalt, sparks flying in all directions. Onlookers screamed or stood paralyzed by shock. Some yelled at the police that it was their fault.