“I’ve got the description and his photo here. What makes him so special?”
“If you didn’t know better, you’d think he’d been brought up in the bush. I hid in a hollow log as a last resort, but this one thinks ahead, otherwise his family would have tracked him down long ago. He is the rat in the sewer, Mammy. The bird on the roof.”
She laughed. “But you we found, Boy. Both his clan and a lot of Eastern Europeans are out searching for him, you say?”
“Yes, and they’ve spotted him on a couple of occasions.”
“OK. In half an hour we’ll be at the Square Hotel. Come in an hour and show us what you’ve got.”
–
The room was on the small side, but the view was good. Mammy was reclining on a patterned sofa, filling up most of its space. Her reserves were greater than ever before, she liked to say of herself with a certain kind of pride.
Boy nodded to the two jet-black Africans in basketball jerseys who were lounging on the bed watching the NBC news. He took them to be in their twenties, and yet their faces seemed in glimpses to be ancient and lined, their eyes filled with skepticism as to all the things normal people coveted. Boy knew what it was like. For them, happiness was a good, long night’s sleep and fucking their brains out. And, of course, the hunt itself.
“We went for a little walk outside this evening,” Mammy said. “You were right in what you wrote about the Danes. They don’t even see us. As long as we don’t walk together they won’t condescend to look at us. This is good, Boy.”
She patted him on the thigh. Long time no see.
“You’re looking good, Boy. Almost thirty years of age now. How many of your old comrades have got that far?” She leaned back and looked across at her two bloodhounds on the bed. “Hey, you two. Take a look at this one. You can be like him too if you make Mammy happy, OK?”
“OK, Mammy,” they replied in unison. And then slipped back into limbo again.
Boy smiled, handing her maps of the areas in Copenhagen where Marco had been seen, where they reckoned he’d previously been hiding out, and where they thought he could be now.
Mammy nodded. Her time-worn, shrewd eyes glided over the maps’ main thoroughfares, the side streets, the S-train stations, and all the small, open green areas. It was astonishing once more to see how quickly she could absorb unfamiliar topography.
When they had finished she assured him the boy was already as good as dead, and that it had always been a pleasure working for him and Brage-Schmidt.
Boy nodded. Thanks that came seldom were the best.
“Catch the boy and everyone’s happy,” he said, turning to the young men on the bed. “He’s a snake, but you can spear him, I know you can.”
They sat up on their elbows. Like all soldiers, they took their briefing seriously. Sometimes it was their only defense against ambush and sudden death. Here in Copenhagen it was imprisonment and unfamiliar reaction patterns they were up against.
So they listened intently.
“Stay close to Zola’s men and those working with him.”
He tossed two sheets of paper with photos of Zola’s people on the bed. The snakelike eyes of Mammy’s boys began processing them immediately. There was no doubt these boys had been carefully selected.
“Once Zola or some of the others have encircled the boy, be ready to take over. Don’t take it for granted that they will inform you, so stay close and keep your eyes open.”
They nodded.
A net too widely meshed never caught a bird.
27
An unfamiliar feeling of sun wakened Carl to the sweet smell of perfume and sex.
His nostrils flared as he inhaled recollections of wantonness and no-nonsense shagging. Good Lord, he thought, eyes tight shut as he stuck his hand under the duvet and sensed how incredibly naked he felt with his half-erect member and his rump pressed close against soft female skin.
Opening his eyes tentatively to the world, he found himself staring up at a ceiling with two-tone stucco and a lamp that glowed faintly through a silk scarf.
My God, he mused, immediately aware of the sticky situation he’d got himself into.
“Are you awake, Carl?” Lisbeth purred, beneath the covers.
Did he dare say yes?
She turned over, snuggling her downy face up close as featherlight fingers drew circles around his belly button and twirled the hairs of his chest.
“It’s not going to be a one-night stand, is it, Carl?” she whispered, moving the inside of her thigh against his nether regions.
Oh, wow, was all he could think, trying not to let out a sigh.
The fact of the matter was that he was confused as hell. She’d been absolutely amazing to make love to. Utterly uninhibited despite being out of training, as she’d called it. He thought himself lucky she hadn’t been completely match-fit, otherwise he’d have been down for the count.
“I thought we were great last night. How about you?” she asked, rubbing her nose against his. It felt nice. Not the kind of tenderness he was used to.
“You were gorgeous, Lisbeth, and still are,” he said, and meant it.
He avoided her searching gaze and closed his eyes again, racked by feelings of guilt. What the hell was he playing at?
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked, as though he was ready to sleep a couple of hours more.
“It’s eight, but you don’t really need to go to work this early, do you?”
She giggled as her hand crept downward. Her breathing grew heavy almost immediately.
“Did you say eight?” he cried, extracting himself from her arms. “I’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes at headquarters. Shit! Today of all days! I’m really sorry, Lisbeth, but I’ve got to go.”
He jumped out of bed without looking at her, pulled on his trousers, and wriggled his bare feet into his shoes.
“Forgive me, forgive me,” he said, pecking her quickly on the cheek and then dashing off before she had a chance to ask the obligatory question of when they’d see each other again.
Who could answer that one?
“What a predicament,” he muttered as he tried to work out where he’d left the car the evening before. As far as he remembered, they’d stood and had a grope by a blossoming cherry tree that was fairly close to the scene of a murder he’d investigated some years back in the vicinity of the Syvstjernehusene housing development. It was there they had been making out like a pair of teenagers, hands all over each other. Arousing as hell, but which cherry tree, and where, for Chrissake?
“Let’s park at a distance from my house,” she’d said. “The neighbors are still friends with my ex.”
Now, feeling like a fool as he trawled the Højlundshusene neighborhood, the thought of Mona kept coming back to him, seriously weighing on his conscience. Why did he still have these feelings for her, anyway, after she’d kicked him to the curb like that? And how come he felt so sullied, so ridden by guilt? Lisbeth wasn’t just some casual one-nighter. She was so sweet and bright and warm.
Maybe that was precisely why.
He crossed another couple of streets, noting as he went that blossoming cherry trees were damn popular in these parts. What would Mona say if she saw him now, wandering about in search of his car like a confused adolescent? How would she feel if she sniffed his body?
And how would he feel if she had done the same thing?
He flinched at the thought. Of course, goddammit. It was an act of preemptive rationalization on his part.
For who was to say she hadn’t?
Carl looked up and glanced around him as he realized he was basically back where he started. There they were, the green bedroom curtains behind which only a few hours ago he had cast to the wind all thought of what Mona might think about him and what he was doing with another woman.