“Comb the area and see if Marco’s still here,” Zola commanded. “And if he makes a run for it again, you’ve my permission to shoot. Just make sure you hit him, that’s all. Marco has become a danger to all of us.”
He was shocked. They were going to shoot him because he was dangerous. Yet he had done nothing but contradict Zola and run away. Was that all it took? What about the others who had deserted the flock from time to time? Had Zola had them shot, too?
Marco shuddered as he felt his way forward with his feet, twigs, pine cones, and thorns jabbing at his ankles and soles. A hundred meters into the woods, he was forced to lie down. Moving on was simply too painful and too slow.
They’d catch him if he didn’t find cover, he told himself, the words pulsing in his mind as he prodded the ground and noted that the earth was cold as ice, hard as stone. The place offered no concealment.
He felt panic now, as he spread his arms out to his sides and wriggled a few meters forward on his stomach through the prickly undergrowth.
He pressed on, and after a minute he suddenly felt his knees sink. For a moment he thought he had ventured into bog, but the soil was dry and loose, as though it had been turned. It was perfect.
So he began to dig, and the farther down he got, the looser the earth became.
Before long the hole was big and deep enough for him to roll into it and draw the soil over his body, twigs and broken branches covering his face and arms.
They wouldn’t see him now unless they stepped on him. Please don’t let the dog be with them, he prayed, trying to control his breathing.
And then he heard the crackle of dry wood under many feet. They were coming.
They spread out in the underbrush, moving slowly toward the place he lay, the sweeping beams of two flashlights hovering between the tree trunks like gigantic fireflies.
“One of you stay by the road so he can’t escape that way. The rest of you search closely, make sure he hasn’t concealed himself underneath something,” Zola shouted into the darkness. “Prod the ground with sticks, there’s plenty of them.”
A moment passed and Marco heard the snapping of branches all around, for Zola’s word was law. Crunching footsteps vibrated through the earth, approaching where he lay as the sound of sticks jabbed against the cold ground made the sweat trickle from his brow in spite of the biting cold. Another minute and the flock was all around him. And then suddenly they were gone.
Stay where you are, he told himself, a stench of rot piercing his nostrils. Somewhere close by an animal lay dead, no doubt about it. He’d found them often when they’d lived in Italy. Dead, stinking corpses of all kinds: squirrels, hares, and birds.
When Zola called off the search they would return the same way through the woods. If they hadn’t posted a man at the roadside he would have run back whence he came and then out across the fields. But just now he hadn’t the courage, so what else could he do but remain as quiet as a mouse?
And after a long time-as long a time as it would take Marco to beg his way from Rådhuspladsen down to Kongens Nytorv-they came back and passed him by. He’d been lying in the ice-cold earth for nearly an hour now, as the rain poured through the canopy of fir.
He heard them one by one, frustrated by their unsuccessful manhunt, angry that Marco had betrayed them so. Some even expressed their fear of what his betrayal might lead to.
“He’s in for it if we get our hands on him,” said Sascha, one of the girls he’d liked best.
Bringing up the rear were his father and Zola, the sentiment in their voices equally unambiguous.
As was the whining of the dog.
Marco’s heart stood still. He held his breath, knowing it would be no defense against the canine’s sense of smell. And then the animal suddenly began to bark, as though the scent of Marco were the only thing in the world it was capable of focusing on.
Now he was doomed.
“This is about where we dug the hole,” said Zola in a subdued voice, only meters from the place where Marco lay. “Listen to the dog, it’s going crazy, so we must be getting close. Goddammit, you realize, don’t you, that we’ve got an even bigger problem on our hands now? And your son is to blame.” He swore again as he dragged the whining dog away. “We need to be real careful for a while. There’s no telling what Marco might do. I think we should consider moving the body as well. It’s a bit too close to home.”
Marco slowly sucked in air through his teeth. With each breath he took, his hatred of Zola grew. The sound of his voice alone made Marco want to spring from his hiding place and cry out his contempt. But he did nothing.
When eventually the voices had left the underbrush, he began to shake away the soil. Later in the night or early the next morning Zola and Chris were bound to return with the dog. It was something he couldn’t risk.
He had to get away. Far away.
He pulled his frozen arms free with difficulty and arched his back so the soil that covered him could slide from his body.
Then he wriggled in the earth so as to gain purchase to draw himself upright, the sleeves of his pajamas catching as he swept sticks and twigs aside. Suddenly his hand struck a slimy mass covering something hard, and then came the stench, smothering him like death itself.
Instinctively he held his breath as he sat up and tried to see what it was his hands had found, which was barely possible by the dim light of the moon. So he tipped forward, his nostrils pinched, and then he saw it.
At that moment it was almost as if his heart had stopped. Before him lay a human hand. Helpless, crooked fingers with the skin peeled away, nails as brown as the earth itself.
Marco flung himself to one side. For a long time he sat on his haunches a short distance away, staring at the arm of the corpse as rain slowly revealed its decaying face and body.
“This is about where we dug the hole,” Zola had said to his father. The hole in which he himself had been lying.
Together with a rotting corpse.
Marco got to his feet. It was not the first time he had seen a dead body, but he had never touched one before, and he never wished to again.
For a while he considered what to do next. On the one hand, his discovery had suddenly given him the opportunity to have Zola put behind bars and to finally free himself of the man. But on the other hand, his father had helped bury the body, and probably also more than that. That made all the difference.
As he stood pondering, slowly becoming used to the smell, he realized there was no way to get at Zola without incriminating his own father. And though his father was weak and in Zola’s thrall, Marco loved him. What else could he do? His father was all he had. How, then, could he go to the authorities and ask for help? He couldn’t.
Not now, not tomorrow… not ever.
Marco felt his icy skin turn even colder. Somehow the world had suddenly become too big for him. In this moment of pain he realized that without his clan he had only the streets to fall back on. From now on he was on his own. No yellow van would collect him again when the day was over. No one would prepare his meals. No one in the world would know who he was or where he came from.
He hardly knew himself.
He began to sob but then stopped. Neither pity nor self-pity were emotions that were to be found in the world he’d been raised in.
He looked down at his night clothes. They were the first thing he had to do something about. There were houses, of course, that he could break into, but nocturnal burglaries were something he preferred to leave to others. People never slept that heavily in Denmark. They often lounged in front of their TV screens until the early hours, and in the darkness ears had a habit of growing far too big.
He prodded the ground with a bare foot. Perhaps there was something useful to be found in the grave with this dead man. He needed to check, so he picked up a stick from the undergrowth and began to hollow out the soil around the shoulders of the corpse, continuing until the torso was completely exposed.