Carl nodded. If anyone would know, she would.
He turned to Assad. He, too, nodded, though rather more hesitantly. Like a seasoned criminal, realizing his story had to be as close to the truth as possible, and yet holding back on just the right details.
It was a very odd kind of nod.
“Did Stark have secrets, do you think?”
Rose shrugged. “Who knows? The fact is, he didn’t disappear in Africa, and that’s what’s so damn puzzling. He comes back to Denmark, Carl, right? He’s been in Cameroon only a few hours before canceling his return flight and booking another. And he lands here at Kastrup just like he’s supposed to. We’ve got the passenger list from the airline as well as some CCTV footage of him trundling his suitcase along. And then all of a sudden he’s gone. Maybe for good.”
Carl tried to picture the situation. “Perhaps he was clever. Our eyes are on Denmark because this is where he disappeared. But he might have driven straight over the bridge to Sweden, just like Sverre Anweiler, and wandered off in some forest. Or maybe he turned round and went back to Africa with false papers, or went somewhere else entirely.”
“Rose and I have talked about this, Carl,” said Assad. “Did Stark have enemies? Did he like gambling? Had he embezzled funds? Was there a pickup of some money? Had he forgotten something in Denmark, something he had to come back for? Could there have been another woman who was supposed to come along? We have talked about it all, and yet none of it seems very plausible.”
Carl thrust out his lower lip. The two of them were certainly getting involved in the case, but it didn’t look like they’d got much of a handle.
“Not a lot to go on, really, is there? What does the report say? Is there anything else at all that might point in some specific direction the earlier investigation could have missed?”
They both shook their heads.
“So where does that leave us? Have we anything at all?” If it were up to him, it would be a short investigation.
“William Stark has never been declared dead,” Rose said, bowing her head with a dark look in her eyes.
“No, of course he hasn’t, Rose. It’s not been five years yet.”
“And his house is still pretty much the way it was when he went missing,” Rose continued. “What’s even better is that I got hold of a set of keys from Bellahøj station. They had sealed the place off.”
Carl frowned. The bloodhound wags its tail when it picks up the scent and with a single sentence, Rose had got him going.
Dammit.
“OK,” he said, reaching behind his chair for his jacket. “Let’s go and have a look.”
14
It wasn’t a good day for Marco. Shadows made him jump and even the slightest sounds were fatiguing.
He was back in Østerbro, for Zola had always told them never to go back to the same place if they were ever discovered. So Østerbro was probably the only part of town where they wouldn’t be looking for him.
It was well past midnight when he finally bedded down at the bottom of a Dumpster, hoping for a couple of hours’ respite from his fears of what the new day might bring.
It was no longer a question of them making him an invalid if they found him. Now that Zola probably knew Marco had seen the missing persons notice and could link it to the dead man in the woods, his life was at stake.
He woke up abruptly when a wino opened the lid and almost dropped dead from fright when Marco leaped out.
It couldn’t have been much more than half past six, but sunlight already glared down between the buildings that towered over the narrow street. Marco could hear the first faint rumble of traffic from the main thoroughfares. The city was awakening.
He gathered his things in a black trash bag and headed purposefully for the library on Dag Hammarskjölds Allé, taking care not to walk too quickly and draw attention to himself. The library had everything he needed. Toilets where he could wash, computers so he could print out maps of places he would go later in the day. And there was a place to stash his gear, a shelf above the electricity meter in a cupboard where no one ever came. He had previously made note of the place should he ever have need.
Here in the embassy quarter there were plainclothes security guards everywhere. Russians keeping an eye on Americans, and vice versa. And in the midst of it all was an impressive building that he had been told once belonged to the Red Cross, reminding him that there were children in this world worse off than himself. Not that it made him feel any better. The children who skipped past him now on their way to school certainly had no need for charity.
When finally the library opened and he had taken care of his errands, he crossed over Sortedamssøen, carrying on along Ryesgade, and then heading north, eyes peeled for any untoward movement in the landscape.
Good thing he had his map.
–
He reached Stark’s house at a time of day when the suburbs seemed all but deserted. Friday midday was probably the easiest time of all to commit burglary in a tidy and peaceful residential neighborhood anywhere in Denmark. It was a country where both parents worked, decent living standards more often than not requiring two incomes. In a ghetto of affluence such as this, everything went by the book. What glued the place together were not the kind economic constraints with which Marco was familiar, but the exact opposite, and any child growing up here knew that to achieve the same status as their parents, they had to stay in school. For that reason nearly every house was empty. What he needed to watch out for were dogs, pensioners, and the occasional housewife. But Marco was used to being careful, so he mobilized everything he had learned, the trained thief ambling impassively along a street in which he did not belong. A far cry from the asphalt cowboys from the Baltic countries or Russia, who could be spotted a mile away in their grubby, ill-fitting faded jeans or tracksuits that had gone out of fashion ten years ago. They might as well have been wearing a sign that read THIEF. Shambling and unkempt, always in pairs, with tattered backpacks or a couple of bulging plastic bags too many. It was just the wrong way to look.
Marco, by contrast, was inconspicuous, his eyes seemingly fixed on some point farther down the street, but in fact intensely scanning every home he passed.
It was a pretty neighborhood, definitely the sort of place where he planned to live one day. Swings and seesaws, playhouses with little verandas. Beautiful, tall trees lined one side of the street, their branches reaching out over the lake and marshlands, while fine, spacious homes occupied the sloping grounds on the other.
And in the midst of this well-to-do idyllic setting, his thoughts turned toward the dead man. So strange to think that the corpse with which he had shared a hole in the ground had once walked these streets, as large as life.
Now he was gone from this world. No more than a face on a poster.
Approaching the address, he saw a woman on her knees before a flower bed next door to the garden that must have been William Stark’s. She was engrossed in her gardening and Marco counted the plants in her planting box. Ten left, perhaps fifteen? The way she was working it would be a while before she was done. Until then, no one could walk up the path to Stark’s house without her noticing. He would have to be patient, carry on down the street and come back later.
As he came to Stark’s home he noticed a dark blue Peugeot 607 parked a little way up the drive. A serious setback.
He reasoned that if he could see a girl inside as he walked past, then she was likely to be the one who had put up the notice, and he resolved in that case to ring the bell. He slowed down. The woman next door would just have to wonder.
Behind the pane of the bungalow’s front window he saw shadows moving against the walls. Holding his breath, he heard the faint sound of voices. Perhaps the house had been sold, although it was still only William Stark’s name that popped up on a Google search.