Marco shook his head. “I know a place I can stay. Maybe you could drive me there. You live out of town, don’t you?”
“I live in Gladsaxe.”
“Can you give me a lift to the Utterslev marsh?”
Kasim leaned across the passenger seat and swept a pair of paper bags onto the floor. “Keep your head down until we’re out of the city, OK?”
–
It was a rather silent drive, Kasim clearly not wanting to know too much if anyone should ask.
“The neighborhood shopkeepers are frightened, they don’t want you contacting them again,” was about the only thing he said before dropping him off.
And what more was to say, really? Marco knew the trouble he had caused, and he wasn’t proud of it.
The walk from the log cabin at the beginning of the motorway along the lake to Stark’s house became a journey through the layers of Marco’s conscience. He did not wish to steal, but in Stark’s wardrobe were clothes he could use, and in the basement was a washing machine as well as jars of pickled vegetables, even though he wasn’t crazy about the taste. And there were beds with sheets and duvets. All of which could help him get back on his feet.
Thus he woke up on the Sunday morning with a fraudulent feeling of having entered a new period in his life. Even the curtains and the sunlight that edged its way into the bedroom where he lay seemed completely unfamiliar. To lie all alone in a nice, well-equipped bedroom was not only a luxury for him, it was practically a picture of the future he sought.
He stretched his limbs under the duvet and tried to push the thought from his mind. Of course there was no way he could stay here, it was too risky by half. They had almost caught him yesterday, and last time he’d been here had been a close call as well. If he was to avoid something like this happening again, he’d have to turn the tables on them, make it so he observed them rather than the other way round. He needed to be one step ahead at all times.
Looking around him as he chewed on a pickled gherkin in the kitchen, he found it hard to imagine anyone but the man in the shallow grave had lived in this house. In earlier times, if he had broken in to a house like this one in the same kind of neighborhood he would at least have expected to find a couple of good kitchen appliances and a set of easily flogged knives by Solingen, Masahiro, Raadvad, or Zwilling. But this place was different. No aprons or knickknacks or anything to suggest a woman had lived here either.
Presumably they had taken all the kitchen items with them when they moved.
Only one thing stuck out. A glossy magazine left by the side of the stove. An ordinary women’s weekly with the usual model on the front, the tantalizing captions about health and fashion. Nothing special, and yet it stuck out.
Marco got to his feet and picked it up. Thursday, April 7, 2011, read the date on the cover. Hardly a month old.
He frowned. How had it got there? Who had been in this house? The place seemed cleaner than might be expected. Did Tilde and her mother still come here? Had this magazine been in Tilde’s hands? Had they stood here waiting for the kettle to boil, flicking through the pages before enjoying a cup of tea together? Perhaps they had forgotten to take it with them again and hadn’t been here since.
He sniffed at the paper, but it smelled of nothing. He was disappointed.
He skimmed a few more pages before tossing the magazine back onto the counter. It was then that he noticed a small wad of what looked like crumpled plastic on the floor at the foot of the stove.
He went over and kicked it across the linoleum. Something about it made him curious, so he picked it up and flattened it out. It was some sort of foil bag with a label on it saying Malene Kristoffersen and her address on Strindbergsvej in Valby.
Kristoffersen! The same surname as Tilde’s. Maybe it was her mother.
Marco nodded to himself. Of course, it had to be.
So now he knew where she lived.
–
The house was bigger than he had expected. Yellow, with an odd, almost vertical section of roof where a normal one would come to an end. It was the kind of neighborhood the clan steered well clear of when out making their break-ins. Though there were gardens all round and no shortage of places in which to hide or routes by which to steal away, the houses were so close together that the neighbors could see most of what went on behind the windows next door. Accordingly he proceeded with caution as he sneaked through the parting in the hedge and up to the names on the two mailboxes hanging next to the red-painted door.
It meant two families shared the place. On the uppermost box was a weather-worn label, which read TILDE & MALENE KRISTOFFERSEN.
Marco took a deep breath and stared at the windows above. So this was where she lived, and since it was Sunday she might even be home.
Did he have the courage to ring the bell? What would he say to them?
He stood for a moment, a trembling finger raised toward the bell, when he heard two female voices and the rustle of shopping bags coming from the street.
Someone was coming, he realized, ducking reflexively behind a bush. Then he heard laughter and two figures appeared, walking their bikes through the opening in the hedge.
He couldn’t see their faces in his awkward position, but his eyes followed them as they went round the side of the house, where it sounded like they were parking their bikes.
Tilde’s mother was the first to appear again. Dark-haired and rather good-looking, with a bulging shopping bag under her arm.
“Have you got your key, Tilde? Mine’s underneath all this flea-market junk we hadn’t the sense to ignore.”
There was more laughter. It made Marco feel warm inside.
And when at last he set eyes on Tilde, he couldn’t help smiling from behind the foliage of his hiding place. She was so lovely. A bit thin and gangly with big feet, yet she seemed almost to glide across the flagstones like a ballerina, dangling her key in the air in front of her.
“You’re a treasure,” said her mother as Tilde opened the door.
“Takes one to know one,” she riposted. And then they were gone.
Marco froze the image in his mind. He wanted to remember her features. He wanted to remember them for having just made him feel so warm inside. Even the sound of her voice moved him.
Don’t forget your father killed her stepfather, he told himself. How would he ever be able to approach her, especially now, after he’d seen what she was like? Now, when that inexpressible tenderness he had previously felt for her on account of William Stark and her appeal to find him had materialized in flesh and blood, with light and luminous laughter to boot?
How could he approach her with the feelings he had, knowing he had done nothing in spite of what he knew?
Marco extracted himself from the bushes and wandered farther up the road, past gaudily painted homes that only made him feel dirtier inside.
He had to do something. Even though it would hurt her a lot to learn the truth, she needed to know. He felt he owed it to her. Which was why it had become necessary to go to the police, even if it meant sacrificing his father.
–
The next morning he rummaged through the wardrobe of women’s clothes and found a checkered shirt better than the one he had, and more or less his size. He took a Windbreaker from the hall and went down into the basement, where he pulled his clean underwear and socks out of the drier.
He considered himself in the bathroom mirror and nodded. He looked so decent all of a sudden, certainly tidy enough for what he had to do. All he needed now was a little cash, and that was the hard part.
If only he could sell off the clothes that Stark would definitely no longer be needing, his financial problems would be somewhat alleviated. But he knew no one who bought secondhand clothes or everyday china and furniture. No one wanted analog TV sets anymore, or computer towers or hi-fi systems, and nobody would ever buy the other knickknacks. So while it may have resembled a perfectly average Danish home, it contained absolutely nothing that could be sold for money. Danes simply adored spending money, so anything that was more than a few years old quickly became worthless.