Mørck caught her gaze. Now they could all see the desperation in her eyes. “What happened, Malene?”
It was a simple question, but it triggered a burst of tears, beseeching, and rampant alarm. Marco could see how hard it was for the three police officers to follow her disjointed, staccato narrative.
But when she said two Africans who were pursuing Marco had taken Tilde, they stiffened.
The woman they called Rose asked them both to take a seat. Mørck put a hand on Marco’s shoulder and squeezed it warm, just the way his father had done all too rarely, and then he turned his attention to Malene.
Marco trembled. He had never experienced anything like this. It almost pained him physically to think of how all his misgivings had been put to shame. Especially now, when it wasn’t long before he would have to sacrifice himself.
Assad asked if he should make some tea, but Mørck stopped him abruptly and sat down in front of Tilde’s mother, taking her hand in his.
She began to speak, slower now and more coherently, as Rose and Assad whispered to each other in the background.
On the flat screen behind Mørck a reporter was speaking outside Tivoli as a streaming text at the bottom of the screen told of police rolling up a band of thieves from north Zealand that had been ravaging Copenhagen, and that many arrests had ensued.
Then the newscast cut to one of the more dramatic arrests showing several officers subduing a fiercely resisting man.
It was Pico.
Mørck turned to the boy with a grave expression on his face. “May I see the mobile they left in the road for you, Marco?”
He handed it over and Mørck studied it. A quite ordinary Nokia, five or six years old, from the time the company had been riding high. Marco had stolen hundreds of them.
Mørck turned it over in his hands. There was a number on the back in felt-tip, probably put there by whoever had got the phone unlocked before selling it on. These things were to be found all over Copenhagen, Marco knew that better than anyone.
“Give this number a call, will you, Rose?” Mørck instructed. “It might be this one’s, or another one entirely. It may even be the one we’re waiting to hear from.”
She entered the number. The mobile in Mørck’s hand rang.
“OK, so that’s sorted. But have a look at the display and check the number the kidnappers called from, Rose. It looks like an African country code.”
She glanced at the display, then left with the phone in her hand.
In the minutes that followed they succeeded in getting Tilde’s mother to breathe more regularly, but they couldn’t make her hands stop shaking.
“How are you feeling, Marco? Not too good either?” Mørck asked.
He shook his head in confirmation.
“We’ll get Tilde back, you’ll see,” he said. But Marco didn’t like the looks he and Assad exchanged.
“The Ivory Coast. That’s the country code,” Rose announced as she came back in. “I don’t think we’re going to get too far with that number, unfortunately. It doesn’t seem to be registered in an existing name.”
“Oh, God,” Tilde’s mother gasped.
Then the African mobile in Rose’s hand beeped quietly.
“It’s a text message,” she said in a quiet voice.
“What’s it say?” Mørck asked.
“It says: Pusher Street, Christiania. Tonight eight P.M.-and they want Marco to come alone, otherwise…”
Her voice trailed off as she looked up at Tilde’s mother, then handed Marco the phone.
They had exactly twenty-five minutes.
42
For Carl, Free State Christiania was familiar territory. There wasn’t a nook or a cranny in this colorful, unique, and anarchic oasis into which he hadn’t poked his nose back in the dawn of time, not a single house he hadn’t entered, clad in full uniform and his country-boy naivety.
Fredens Ark, Loppen, Operaen, Nemoland, Pusher Street, Den Grå Hal, the Green Light District, Sunshine Bakery. Each was a name with its own story, its own incidents. And because he knew the place, Carl also knew how hopeless their task was.
Carl’s viewpoint was ambivalent. From a policeman’s perspective, Christiania was a den of vice, a nest of riffraff, but seen from a different angle it was a place where a person could breathe freely and live the dream of an age before Copenhagen was handed over to the yuppies and everything was drawn in straight lines. Christiania was-and remained-an umbilical cord to the capital’s charm and to ideas in free flight. A bicycling, environmentally protective subcultural powerhouse where dogs and beautiful people had turned an ugly former military barracks into what was arguably Denmark’s biggest tourist attraction.
But, as is so often the case, the best intentions and ideas became subverted by stupid individuals without norms, twisted and distorted until they were no longer recognizable. Thus, Christiania existed in the eternal dilemma: to give freedom free rein, or to rein freedom in?
In recent years, the people of Christiania had been given the right of self-determination, so now they alone were responsible for how the free state functioned. Not surprisingly, both good and bad had come of it.
Now the days when smiling policemen in sensible shoes could stroll unchallenged through this cultural collage were long gone. All forms of police presence were anathematized, so that only the most recently hatched or most implacable officers felt like stirring things up in a place like Pusher Street.
People on that street could smell a pig a mile off, and given the chance, they’d make sure the cops never wanted to come back again. If it hadn’t been for Pusher Street, Christiania would have been a kind of paradise. Instead, if there was anywhere the police could count on resistance, it was Pusher Street in Christiania, and somehow the Africans had sussed this out.
Carl closed his eyes and tried to walk himself through this graffitied Klondike in his mind. There were guys openly stationed by the end of the street nearest Prinsessegade, keeping an eye on who came and went. At the other end, close by the colorful vegetable store, there were people sitting in the cafés or under lean-tos with equally watchful eyes. Of course a person could enter Pusher Street unseen by way of one of the side streets, though lookouts were posted there, too, amid the uninhibited commerce in hash and skunk. But coming in that way meant it would be well-nigh impossible to get an overview of what was going on along the entire length of the street, which in this case was imperative.
The question now was how the Africans were intending to deal with the situation. Doubtless they’d be expecting that once they’d got their hands on Marco and the girl had been released, the boy would start to kick up a fuss. For that reason one would have to assume they would be sticking close to the buildings along the street so as to be able to drag Marco somewhere quiet and pacify him with a hypodermic needle or a beating.
While the people of Pusher Street tended to be rather nonchalant when it looked like violence would erupt, most would surely draw the line at assault on a minor. The Africans would scarcely want a confrontation with a mob of that kind, so they would act swiftly and without drawing attention to themselves.
Carl showed Rose and Assad the police map of the area and pointed out the various options. The street itself wasn’t long, but it ran like an artery through all kinds of lanes and alleyways, some of which openly housed criminal activity while others seemed quaintly and peacefully rural with their allotment gardens. Personally, Carl favored a route from the entrance on Bådmandsstræde that led past Fredens Ark and Tinghuset, and therefore he decided he would offer it to Assad, since he was unfamiliar with the area.
Rose was to follow Marco at a suitable distance from one of the side entrances on Prinsessegade, continue past Bøssehuset and proceed toward Pusher Street from the opposite side. Carl himself would run the gauntlet directly from the main gate down toward the Freetown area, where he figured it most likely the Africans would be waiting for Marco.