Malene pleaded with them to let her come along, but was firmly instructed to remain at HQ in the company of a highly irate Gordon, who had long since been looking forward to heading home to Mama’s cooking.
Thank God I have a team that blends in here, thought Carl as he walked through the gate. Rose looked like so many others in Christiania, and no one was going to suspect someone of Assad’s color and shabby appearance of being who he was.
Carl, on the other hand, was feeling less than inconspicuous with the hasty makeover Rose had given him. Her hair spray had fixed his comb-over in a vertical position, and his eyes were rimmed with a liberal daubing of mascara. Back in the eighties he’d have looked like a poet down on his luck, but now, eleven years into the new millennium, there were but two possible interpretations: either he was sick in the head or else he was a cop wearing an incredibly bad disguise.
Aware that he had to do his utmost to live up to the first interpretation, he greeted the immigrant guy at the toasted almond stand just inside the gate with a cheery howdy, his mouth a bit too slack.
There were a lot of people on Pusher Street this evening. The last police raid there had led to a number of arrests, but, as everyone knew, weeds always grew best where the soil had been turned.
Carl scanned the street and estimated that there were just as many stalls selling dope as there had always been. It was fine by him. As long as it was out here that people bought and sold, there wouldn’t be as much need for hash clubs all over town.
As far as he could see, neither Rose nor Assad had reached the street yet, so everything was going according to plan.
He positioned himself on a corner next to the building they called Maskinhallen and tried to look like he’d run out of steam, slightly wilted and possibly a bit stoned. Apart from a girl with two kids on her carrier tricycle, no one looked in his direction.
To his consternation he realized there were quite a few black men on the street. A couple of slender Somalis with anoraks on and their hoods up, a couple of Gambians he recognized as pushers from in town, and then an assortment of extremely well-fed tourists-black, as well as white-from the cruise ships, wandering on the heels of the Free State’s local guides, cameras sensibly tucked from sight.
Now he saw Rose and Marco appear from one of the side paths a little farther down Pusher Street, and half a minute later Assad also arrived on the other side of the street. Rose was standing a couple of meters from Marco, her attention seemingly everywhere else but on the boy.
Assad walked a way toward Carl, then positioned himself by one of the hash stalls, sniffing the goods with what looked to Carl like a surprising measure of professionalism.
They waited for ages. By now it was at least a quarter past eight, and even at a distance it was easy to see that Marco was becoming increasingly edgy and impatient. After another five minutes he moved a bit farther away from Rose, and then, counter to everything they’d agreed on, began to wander off along the street. Slowly, yet forcing Carl and Rose to follow while keeping their distance.
–
Marco was clearly on his guard. Merely the way he walked, treading the cobblestones so softly, revealed that he was more familiar than most with the asphalt jungle’s pitfalls.
Careful, Marco, or they’ll spot us tailing you, Carl managed to think, just before a black figure stepped around a corner and grabbed Marco by the arm.
At the same moment Carl’s view was blocked by a huge, black, gold-festooned female cruise-ship tourist. For a couple of seconds he was unable to see what ensued, but he began to run, Assad and Rose likewise.
“Hey, take it easy!” the fat woman cried indignantly, as Assad got there first and shouldered her into the path of a Christiania transport trike that supported a large cargo crate.
He stopped and glanced around in all directions, pointed toward the corner of Mælkevejen and set off again as fast as he could. Incredible how a man of his thickset stature could accelerate so quickly, short legs and all.
Carl halted next to the immense black lady as Rose charged off in pursuit of Assad and the black man in front of him. “What’s the problem?” the woman snapped, nostrils flaring.
He studied her for a moment. Why the hell did she have to stand just there?
The guy can’t run from Assad when he’s got Marco to drag along with him, he thought as he looked around. But maybe he didn’t even have Marco any more. Maybe someone else had taken over and made off with the lad in a different direction and Assad and Rose were pursuing the wrong guy. He knew there were two of them working together.
Carl ran back and forth between Nemoland and Tinghuset, but there was no sign of them anywhere.
“Did you see a black guy run past holding a young boy?” he asked a junkie who was standing outside the bakery and seemed relatively conscious.
The guy gave a shrug and stroked his straggly beard.
“If anyone ran by here, Satan would have given them a nip in the ass,” he replied sluggishly, indicating the monstrous mutt at his side that looked like it could have devoured the Hound of the Baskervilles in one mouthful. “Sixty-seven kilos, he weighs,” he added proudly.
Carl nodded. Fucking dog, fucking situation, too. Dammit. If only they’d had more time to prepare the exchange, he would have made sure they had airborne back-up.
Then none of this would have happened.
He grabbed his mobile and began to enter a number to start a more widespread search, and as he did so he noticed a slender young girl coming straight toward him. She looked like Tilde and seemed confused, with movements as mechanical as a zombie someone had simply pushed in a certain direction.
“Tilde!” he cried, and ran toward her. But she didn’t react. Had Marco been given the same treatment?
How in the world could they have let it happen?
“Henrik, Carl Mørck here,” he said, when he got through to the duty officer at the dispatch desk. “We need patrol cars currently on the prowl in the vicinity of Christiania.” He passed on as good descriptions of Marco and the African as he could, then gave a loud whistle to call their own operation off. It was the only thing he could do, given the situation.
He turned back to the girl and approached her warily.
“Tilde,” he said, cautiously. “You’re free now. Do you remember me? Carl Mørck, the policeman?”
It took a long time for his words to register. “Where’s Marco?” she finally asked in a tiny voice, and glanced around with frightened eyes. The last couple of hours had not been good for her.
“Did they inject you with something, Tilde? Can you remember?”
She nodded listlessly. “Where’s Marco? Is he all right?”
Carl drew her toward him. “We’re looking for him right now.”
Suddenly he heard footsteps running along the adjoining lanes. He saw Rose sprinting barefoot down the one lane, past the barracks, and from the direction of the canal came a black man at full speed with Assad right on his heels.
“Head him off, Carl!” Assad shouted breathlessly.
Carl spread out his arms and sprang into the path of the African like an enraged bull confronting a toreador. The problem, however, was that Carl was at least thirty-five kilos heavier than the lively lightweight racing toward him, whose musculature had doubtless been genetically conditioned to perform the most mind-boggling maneuvers.
For that reason he decided to hurl himself to one side, thereby giving himself exactly the same odds as a goalkeeper facing a penalty kick. And as he landed unceremoniously in a heap on the ground, the two men tore past him and up Pusher Street, where Rose was waiting for them.
Unlike Carl, she chose to throw herself straight at the man’s legs with all her weight, toppling him like a tree in a forest. She heard a crack as his head hit the cobbles and suddenly he lay very still.