“I’m afraid we have to take the necklace back with us, Tilde. It needs to be analyzed by our forensics officers. There may be something on it that can tell us where it’s been all this time.”
Her hands wafted before her face as the tears began to roll, and she nodded. “I skived off school to put the posters up. I didn’t have any left when I was finished, not even one for myself.” Her head dropped. All the hopes that had been pinned to her appeal now returned unfulfilled. She twisted free of her mother’s embrace and left the room. Her footsteps on the stairs were almost silent.
“The two of them were like…” Malene crossed her fingers. “William came into her life before she started school. She was lonely in those days. None of the other children could understand why she kept having pains, and no one would play with her. William saw to it that all of that changed.” She gave a sigh. “Tilde was the reason we moved in together a couple of years before William went missing, because she really did love him like a father and because he was always there for her when she was feeling poorly. And it was Tilde who insisted that she and I move out of William’s house. She couldn’t live there without him.”
“Was it her idea for you to leave clothes and other items behind?”
She nodded. “Yes, that was Tilde as well. ‘Just imagine,’ she said. ‘When William comes home one day he’ll be able to see we’re still in his life.’“
“When he comes home?”
Malene looked at Carl with moist eyes. “That’s what she said. She has never said ‘if.’ But of course William has never been officially declared dead, and the house is still there. The interest from his bank assets takes care of the payments, so it hasn’t been so difficult for Tilde to keep thinking ‘when.’”
Carl didn’t feel like asking any more questions, but Assad persevered. “Did William do any gambling?” he asked.
Malene frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We know he paid much more for Tilde’s treatment at the beginning than he had at his disposal. Can you explain that?”
“He received an advance on his inheritance, I think.”
Assad’s dark eyebrows plunged. It was obvious that he, too, was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the situation. “No, I’m afraid we can confirm that he did not. His inheritance was first paid out when his mother died.”
“I don’t understand.” She shook her head, clearly at a loss.
“We are talking about two million kroner. That’s why I asked if he was into gambling.”
Again, Malene shook her head. “Tilde once gave him a scratch card for his birthday and he didn’t even know what it was. He was totally useless when it came to things like that. I can’t imagine him gambling at all. He was much too cautious to take chances.”
“What about the two million, then?”
She looked at Assad pleadingly.
Carl took a deep breath. “Can one rule out his having been involved in some kind of financial crime? Would you say he wasn’t capable of that either?”
Malene didn’t reply. She was visibly shattered.
–
Driving back to headquarters, the scene out the windows of the car were like a film flickering by as each of them grappled with his own problem. Carl’s was the fact that somewhere out there was a boy who represented a riddle inside an enigma. Assad’s was obviously that René E. Eriksen had stuck out his neck to tell a story that didn’t hold water, thereby raising a kind of suspicion that was hard to articulate.
“We’re going to have to talk to him again, Assad,” Carl suggested eventually, but Assad was silent.
A rather annoying habit he’d gotten into of late.
22
When Marco climbed over the fence of the construction site the night before, he first located a direct access route into the building that enabled him to move quickly and inconspicuously between the upper floors and street level. A crucial strategy for any good thief wherever there was a risk of running into guards or guard dogs.
Next, he made note of where equipment, tools, and building materials were concentrated in the various sections of the site so that he knew what places to avoid at the change of shift.
On the fourth floor he found a recess that was sheltered from the wind, gathered layers of cardboard, and made a bed from where he could keep watch through the empty window openings in the concrete walls. Here in this niche, where the lifts would be running in a couple of months, he could remain undiscovered until the morning shift arrived, then make off when they went for their break in the hut below.
Apparently there weren’t many workers on the job outside normal working hours, which gave Marco the considerable advantage of being able to move around relatively freely in the evenings, at night, and on weekends, as long as he made sure not to be discovered by passers-by when he squeezed behind the fencing and climbed up into the building by the Hereford Beefstouw restaurant. In any case the night watchmen and the dogs never ventured all the way up into the concrete landscape to the place in which he had installed himself.
The building was enormous. The facade had been stripped away and the entire interior demolished, so only the staircases, supports, and floors remained. Cold, gray concrete all over, as well as an abundance of temporary elevators, tools, and equipment, bordered by portable offices stacked like Lego blocks.
From here he could look out on the Tivoli Gardens as they awakened to yet another season, Rådhuspladsen and H. C. Andersen’s Boulevard, down the pedestrian street, Strøget, and a good stretch up Vesterbrogade on the other side. It was a perfect spot as long as the weather was reasonably warm, and the best possible surveillance point for keeping an eye on the Zola clan’s thieving and hustling in the city center.
This Tuesday morning the van came at nine as usual, dropping off Zola’s troops. This time it was Miryam, Romeo, Samuel, and six others. For a moment they conferred on the pavement before fanning out into the side streets of Vestergade, Lavendelstræde, and Farvergade, from where they could home in on the various sections of Strøget.
In the hours ahead, numerous unfortunate individuals would be relieved of possessions they failed to look after with due care. Watching his old friends spread out into the city streets like bacteria, Marco felt a growing sense of intense shame at having been a part of such beastliness.
Here, from above, he would consider how best to strike back. Perhaps he should try to win some of the other clan members over so that not all of them went down when he denounced Zola and his father. From this vantage point he could see how he might select a few and try to talk them into leaving. If it worked, they would be able to tell him who Zola had recruited to help track him down, and when they thought the hunt would be called off. Once he felt more secure he would venture out to Eivind and Kaj’s apartment to retrieve his money and get out of Copenhagen. He knew there were other cities, like Århus and Aalborg in Jutland, far enough away and yet big enough and with enough facilities for him to be able to pursue his education and absorption into Danish society.
But all that was a long way off. Now that the police had seen him and the items he’d left behind at the police station in Bellahøj, would they not be looking for him, too? And if they were, what would happen if they found him? Without any ID would he end up in a refugee center? Did he have anything with which to bargain in order to avoid it?
Seemingly not.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that he had nothing to offer the police. There was a strong likelihood that William Stark’s body was no longer where he had found it and that Zola’s people had removed all traces of the crime.
He scanned the scene from his concrete hideout, his stomach rumbling, feeling both isolated and abandoned.