It took him a minute or two to weave his way between the columns and into position. He advanced no more than a couple of meters at a time, for this was the technique and would hopefully reach the chair while it remained unoccupied.
When eventually he found himself seated back-to-back with Mørck he was close enough to sense their intimacy. The librarian talked the most while Mørck sat immobile and listened, beguiled and wholly absent from the world around him.
Before long she would casually place her hand on the table next to his, and if he responded by laying his on hers, Marco could just as well sound a fanfare as he dipped into the inside pocket of Carl’s jacket. They wouldn’t notice a thing.
Two minutes later he stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the restrooms with the open wallet in his hands. He was going to put it back as soon as he was finished with it, but then a waiter appeared, asking if he’d like to order, and he hadn’t the courage to stay that long. Mørck and his librarian were already ordering dessert.
He peered into the wallet. It was the flat kind preferred by men who couldn’t care less what was dictated by the fashion pundits in Milan and New York. The stitching was coming apart, the leather was thin and shiny from wear and tear, and it had gradually assumed the shape of the body against which it had unceasingly been pressed for years on end. Moreover, it was utterly unsuited to modern forms of payment. Marco couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a wallet without slits for credit cards and ID, where cards, coins, and banknotes were stuffed into the same zipper compartment.
Marco folded his slip of paper several times and slipped it in between Mørck’s old receipts and battered calling cards. The man apparently had none himself.
All I need to do now is wait, he told himself, then felt a prod on his shoulder. He looked up slowly to see his former employer, who had come up from his office in the basement.
“What are you doing here, Marco? Didn’t I tell you on the phone to stay away? You attract the wrong people, people I don’t care to see here. I want you to respect that. I thought we agreed.”
Munthe was OK, though he was a guy with his own opinions who wouldn’t shy from defending them promptly. This was definitely not what Marco wanted.
“I just need to use the bathroom, Munthe. I thought it would be OK.”
At that moment his eyes were bluer than ever.
And then Marco turned and went down the stairs. But not before noting that Munthe had already removed his apron.
Sure enough, only ten minutes passed before Munthe left the premises as usual to pick up his wife in the shop next door, and Marco was on his way back up the stairs.
From this vantage point he could see their table. The waiter had placed the bill in front of Mørck, who was now on his feet, frantically checking all his jacket pockets.
He stood there gesticulating like a character in a silent movie. Mystified, shocked, feverish, and ashamed. The entire gamut in seconds. And then the librarian put her hand reassuringly on his. The bill wasn’t a problem, even if it was a shame he’d lost his wallet.
Absorbed in discussion, they passed close by him on their way out as Marco’s fingers did what they were best at.
25
The time was exactly twelve o’clock when Eriksen’s secretary appeared before him with a printout of a scanned message saying a UPS shipment was on its way.
He studied the invoice. One bubble envelope, 320x455mm, 600 grams. It seemed reasonable enough.
He leaned back in his chair and mused on how it would feel to be holding 600 grams of immeasurable prosperity safely in his hands. Once the package arrived, his future would be brighter than he could ever have dreamed. Provided he handled the sale of his shares appropriately, their proceeds together with what he made from selling off his stock in Karrebæk Bank would not only provide a very satisfactory future: they would also lift him definitively out of the life-sapping social stratum to which he had hitherto belonged, to those unmentionable heights where luxury and beautiful women seemed to be almost inevitable parameters of daily existence. Farewell, wife and children, who had written him off anyway. Farewell, crappy little car and dismal little house. Farewell, cruel winters and terminally dull colleagues. Farewell to all the times he had stood in the checkout lines of low-end supermarkets with low-end people for whom, while they may have been his neighbors, he couldn’t be bothered to spare even a thought.
Now eternal summer beckoned beyond the gates of the future, gates he was more than ready to throw wide-open.
He looked around his office and began laughing at the sight of shelves full of dreary cases and years of trivial toil. What joy he would feel at giving it all the finger. Simply baring his ass and pulverizing the self-importance of it all with a derisive emission of methane.
He laughed the way his wife so hated. He could hardly wait for the day he would use that laugh while he patted her on the head and said good-bye forever.
For a while he sat there, his face frozen in a mask of glee until it almost hurt. And then his secretary came in and placed a folder in front of him.
“While the folder you left on my desk is the budget for the draining project in Burkina Faso, it’s the wrong year, despite what it says on the front. Dare one ask for a file with the right contents?”
René shook his head in annoyance. It wasn’t often he made a mistake like that.
“I’ll be more careful next time,” he said curtly.
And then reality suddenly dawned on René E. Eriksen.
The right contents echoed in his mind as he stared at the receipt for the UPS shipment.
Who the hell was to say whether the contents of the package would be what he was waiting for?
–
Snap didn’t sound particularly communicative at the other end of the line. He had been up since six o’clock Curaçao time, and not being allowed to nurse a two-day jet lag was no fun.
“You’ve got the receipt you asked for, what more do you want?” he barked. “Once the package arrives you’ll see for yourself what’s in it, OK?”
“And what if my share certificates aren’t there?”
“They are, René. Now leave me in peace and let me enjoy what few days I’ve got here, all right?”
René pictured him. An overweight bon vivant who thought he was born with the right to stand first in line when the privileges were handed out.
But this time he was wrong, dammit, when it was going to be at René’s expense.
“Listen to me, Teis. You can call Brage-Schmidt and tell him that if the two of you are pulling one over on me, I’ll turn you both in. I’ve found a fail-safe way out so you can’t drag me down with you.”
“Come on, René, don’t give me that. The three of us are in this up to our necks, and there are a thousand things incriminating you that you can’t talk your way out of. Our liaisons over the years have been a bit too close for that.”
René would have liked to have laughed but couldn’t. The rage he was suppressing was just too powerful. “Yeah, but you know what, Teis? You’re wrong, dangerously wrong. The authorities will be able to see you’ve given me financial advice on occasion, and that it was for this reason I purchased Karrebæk shares as a way of supporting the bank. And because you owed me favors from our school days, you told me when the prices were favorable. Nothing illegal there, and that’s all they’ll be able to find out. And as for the Curaçao shares, they’re all unregistered, so you can’t threaten me with that one. And what else is left? Bank transfers? Correspondence? Nothing, right? Phone calls, perhaps, but that’s natural enough. As a friend, I’ve been trying to get you to stop being party to this fraud that I’ve long suspected you and William Stark of carrying out, but which I’ve only now become certain of, having found proof of Stark’s involvement. That’s right, it’s all here in black and white. And that’s what I’ll be telling the police if it comes to that.”