Marco felt a shiver run down his spine. “Zola’s dead. Why are you still hunting me?”
“He’s not the one who’s paying us.”
His shoulders sagged. “I was going to surrender myself to you. Why didn’t you let me?”
“We’ve got other things to think about now, thanks to you.”
“Let me speak to Tilde.”
“You’ll see her when we do the exchange. We’ll call and tell you where. If you go to the police, we’ll kill her. If we sense something is wrong when we exchange you two, we’ll kill her.”
“But I-”
“We’ll be in touch,” the woman snapped, and hung up.
Marco rang back immediately, but the line was already dead.
When the world collapses into tiny pieces, one is able to comprehend the individual elements of the catastrophe as it unfolds. Thus it must have been for the hapless souls in the Twin Towers on 9/11, as well as for the stunned onlookers who witnessed it all from the ground. For Marco, that moment where he stood in the middle of the road, totally impotent, was but one of a chain of misfortunes leading to the definitive finale: his own demise.
He knew now that he had to make a sacrifice. There was no time to acquire a firearm, for where would he get one, and who would sell him such a thing? And even if he tried to fight back, he ran the risk of not only losing his own life, but of Tilde losing hers as well.
Then he saw a car turn the corner and head in his direction. He stepped aside reluctantly as the vehicle braked.
“What’s the matter with you, kid?” the woman shouted.
It was Tilde’s mother.
The last person in the world he wanted to speak to at the moment, yet in reality the most important of all.
“They’ve taken Tilde,” were the first words he said.
The rest he told her as she stared at him, her eyes wild, and insisted they drive to police HQ.
Immediately!
41
“Can you pop up to the interview room, Carl?” Assad asked over the phone. “I have something exciting for you.”
“I’m not sure I can cope with more excitement today,” he replied, shoving aside Rose’s stack of printouts on Brage-Schmidt’s financial transactions and career movements. “But give me a couple of minutes, I’ll be right up.” He hung up and called Rose again.
Where the hell was she?
Even though she hadn’t yet got hold of all the documents he’d asked for, it was becoming clearer and clearer to him what lay behind the events of the past few days. The exact whys and wherefores were unknowns, but nonetheless he felt he was beginning to see the perspectives involved in large-scale misappropriation of development funds and their subsequent siphoning off into the accounts of the individuals who had lost their lives over the past few days. The way things were shaping up, this was clearly a case for the fraud squad and other experts in economic crime. They’d have plenty to dig into.
The murders of Snap and his wife down in Karrebæksminde and the apparent arson attack in Rungsted that had cost a further two lives weren’t strictly speaking a matter for Department Q, but it was hard not to suspect that in some way or another they were connected to what had happened to William Stark.
As Carl saw it, Stark had either known too much, or else he was deeply involved in what Snap and the others were up to. But Stark was dead, they knew that now, and whatever criminal activity he might or might not have been engaged in was academic at this point.
Now his role in the Stark case was closed. At some point a presumption-of-death verdict would be pronounced, and maybe one day a dog or a Boy Scout would come across the remains of some bones that Malene Kristoffersen could properly consign to the earth with a regular headstone. Then everyone could get on with their lives. Everyone but Stark himself.
Carl stared at the two phone numbers on the slip of paper before him. One was Mona’s consultancy, the other was Lisbeth’s.
The way he was feeling at the moment, he hadn’t a clue which to choose.
“Have you seen the time, Carl?”
He looked up at Rose, standing in the doorway, then at his watch.
Almost seven.
“I’m just popping out before the shops close. Anything you need?”
“No, thanks. I’m on my way upstairs to Assad. He’s got the last of Zola’s boys in interview. He claims he’s got something interesting for us. After that, I’m off home.”
“OK, but come down here again before you go. I’ve got something for you guys, too.”
Carl sighed as Rose’s footsteps faded down the corridor. You’d better take care of this now, the phone numbers in front of him seemed to be insisting.
He looked at them again.
These were two women, each with her own qualities. No doubt about it.
–
“This here is Hector, Carl. Say hi to Carl, Hector,” said Assad.
Carl nodded. No need to be hostile. The guy seemed softened up already.
Hector put out his hand, but shaking it would be a bit much, Carl reckoned.
“Well, now,” he said, plonking himself down on a chair by the desk. “No handcuffs, I see, so you’ve been a good boy, haven’t you, Hector?”
He nodded.
“Hector is the oldest in his generation of Zola’s children,” Assad explained, clapping him on the shoulder. “Everyone saw him as Zola’s successor when the time came, and now he is sitting here telling me that all his life he has dreamed of getting away.”
Carl looked at Assad and gave a wry smile. “So therefore you’ve told Hector that he could be in line for a permanent residence permit, is that right, Assad?”
He raised a thumb. “Exactly, Carl.”
Christ on a bike!
“Tell Carl then what you told me, Hector.” Assad turned to face his boss. “Now the interesting part is coming.”
The guy looked dapper in his black suit. If Assad had been able to fulfil his promise, his appearance certainly wouldn’t be a hindrance to his assimilation into Danish society. If only a tenth of Denmark’s sartorially challenged citizenry-himself included-dressed like Hector, the nation would take possession of haute couture’s yellow jersey from the Italians and the French.
“I said there were two things that went terribly wrong today,” he said in fluent English. “One was that Zola killed his brother out in Østerbro. If he could do a thing like that, it meant none of us was safe. Until then, I thought I was, at least. The second thing was the Africans. I saw them beat a couple of guys to a pulp. I think they were from Estonia, and they were plenty nasty, too. But the blacks scared me because they were so young, and their eyes were so cold. And now they’re out on the streets, looking for Marco.”
Carl frowned. Here were two important pieces of information he’d need to follow up on, and then he was finished with the case.
“Why are they still hunting Marco, now that Zola’s dead?”
“They’re contract killers. People like them do what they’ve been paid for. Their reputation depends on it.”
Contract killers? In Copenhagen?
“Have you any idea where Marco is now?”
Hector shrugged. “Marco’s good at playing hide-and-seek,” he replied.
“You heard where they were from, didn’t you, Carl?” said Assad.
“Yeah.” It wasn’t what concerned him most at the moment.
“People like them don’t talk,” said Hector, taking a gulp of the water Assad had placed in front of him, the only luxury in this cramped and barren room. “So none of us knows who hired them. All I can say is it wasn’t Zola. He kept well away from blacks.”
Carl looked at Assad. “What are you thinking, Assad?”
“I’m thinking about a lot of things, Carl. I’m thinking about a consul for African countries, a man who is chairman of the board of the same bank that the deceased Snap was the manager of. And a second man who disappears after visiting Africa. Then a third, who goes missing in Africa. And a fourth, a mysterious African who has vanished from the consul’s house. Then there’s the swindle involving development funds for a project in Africa, and a man who works professionally with aid to Africa whom we find dead, together with the consul. And now these Africans, running around Copenhagen and scaring macho types like Hector here.”