If it hadn’t been for all the construction workers and the risk of being discovered, and if the entire city’s criminal lowlife hadn’t been hunting him, he would have kept sitting there, enjoying the view.
Behind him the air was filled with shrieks from the children in Tivoli Gardens. Despite the heavy clouds, people were happy and full of exuberance. He saw legs sticking out from the Star Flyer eighty meters aboveground and children in free fall from the Golden Tower. Kids like himself having a fantastic time, testing their limits and courage. It was something Marco didn’t need to do.
He had enough challenges as it was.
The clan was one thing. He knew them. But what about those he didn’t? The ones who might suddenly catch sight of him from a window and with a quick call could summon assistance to bring him in?
He knew now that if they caught him, they would kill him. Having so many people on the streets would be costing Zola a bundle. And the only reason he would accept that kind of expenditure was because he needed to make sure by any means necessary that Marco would no longer pose a threat. Now it was serious, and if the police had been to Kregme it was too late to call a ceasefire. He had thrown the dice. All he could do was hope and pray the police had picked them up.
For the umpteenth time that day, concrete elements and steel girders were hoisted in through the side of the site facing Rådhuspladsen. The two steel structures opening out on to H. C. Andersen’s Blvd and Tivoli were taking shape, and the next level was already being built on top of the naked stories that comprised the previous House of Industry. So Marco kept to the rear corner toward Vesterbrogade since it was the least busy area of the site at the moment.
When the majority of the workmen knocked off for the day he emerged like a badger from its lair, moving to the front of the building to keep a watchful eye on the square below. From here he had a perfect view of the spot where Zola’s van stopped to pick up the others.
He didn’t notice the foreman in the fluorescent yellow vest until he was almost upon him, the noise from the crane hoisting iron mesh into the building having drowned out his footsteps.
“Hey, you! How’d you get in here?” The man’s voice rang out through the concrete landscape. “That book and the other stuff stashed away over by the lift shaft, is it yours?”
Marco shook his head. “I’m sorry. I came with my dad. I know I’m not supposed to be up here. I’ll go down now. It was just so exciting to see, that’s all.”
The man eyed Marco’s hard hat, frowned, and then nodded. Maybe he couldn’t imagine a lad like him owning a book. “You tell your dad it’s grounds for dismissal if he brings you with him again, get it?”
“I will. I’m sorry, really,” Marco replied, feeling the man’s eyes on the back of his neck until he reached the stairway. He mustn’t see me here again, he told himself, nodding to the workmen who were watching him on his way down.
I won’t get past the guard, it occurred to him, so he cut diagonally across the ground floor toward the corner by the oddly named restaurant A Hereford Beefstouw. There he stashed his hard hat away as usual behind a stack of pallets before clambering over the fence like a squirrel.
Now he was out on the street in the rain and it was just past three in the afternoon. He wouldn’t see the van from above today, but luckily the foreman had discovered him early enough for him not to risk running into the clan members who in two hours would be waiting close by to be picked up.
But Marco was wrong. He hadn’t even made it across Jernbanegade before a cry pierced the air above the streams of cyclists in rainwear and sodden pedestrians on their way home.
“Murderer!” The word had been shouted unequivocally, and in English. He knew the voice immediately.
He stopped in his tracks halfway across the street and glanced around to see where Miryam was.
“Now we know why they’re all looking for you. Chris told us, you murderer!” she yelled at him.
Marco registered the reaction from passers-by. Half of them gave him caustic, disapproving looks while the other half looked the other way, eyes fixed on the ranks of bicycles parked in front of the Dagmar cinema.
He caught sight of her in the midst of the throng, huddled beneath a poster advertising the premiere of The Tree of Life. Her hair was plastered to her cheeks and her clothes black from the rain. Her eyes shone with disappointment, hateful and full of sorrow at the same time.
Marco stepped out onto the street and glanced around. Was she alone?
“Yeah, you can look for the others, you coward, but there’s only me. They’re going to get you anyway. Murderer!” Then she turned toward the oncoming pedestrians, folding her arms and pressing her elbows tight against her body. She was clearly exhausted, had been on the street for hours, and Marco knew the pain in her leg was almost unbearable.
“Someone grab him! He’s killed a man, come and help me!” she shouted, but no one seemed to think it was worth the trouble, once they saw where the cries were coming from.
Marco was in shock. He crossed the pavement in three strides, gripping her shoulders hard. “I’ve done nothing. You know me, Miryam. It was Zola who did it.”
But his words glanced off her. Still she refused to let herself believe him. “LISTEN TO ME!” he yelled, shaking her by the shoulders. “It was me who got the police to pay Zola a visit, don’t you understand? You’ve got to believe me.”
Miryam twisted free. The expression on her face told him he was hurting her. “Murderer,” she said again, almost in a whisper this time. “The police said you’re trying to give Zola the blame. You’re a defector and a rat of the worst kind, stabbing your own benefactor and all the rest of us in the back.”
Marco shook his head and felt tears beginning to appear. Was this really what she believed? Was this what Zola had got them all to believe? The bastard.
“Miryam, Zola’s to blame for what happened to your leg. The accident you had, it was something he set up. Don’t you realize-”
He didn’t see the hand she struck him with, but he instantly felt a deep sense of hopelessness and betrayal much stronger than the stinging physical pain.
He dried his eyes and reached out to stroke her cheek in a gesture of farewell, only to be distracted by the fleeting glance she made over his shoulder.
Instinctively, he turned to see Pico, his jaw bandaged, weaving through the crowd, forcefully shoving people aside as he went, his gaze locked on Marco.
Marco reacted promptly, leaping toward a girl who was parking her bicycle and sending her headlong to the pavement. He cried out an apology as he grabbed her bike.
He was up on the bike, cutting through the swarm of incensed pedestrians and out on to the street before the girl could react, but Pico had anticipated him, sprinting into the lane of traffic with arms waving.
Marco heard him panting behind him, but not his silent Adidas sneakers against the asphalt. He was fast, his strides long, as people stopped on the pavement to stare silently at the pursuit without the will to intervene.
Marco jerked the handlebars, wrenching the front wheel over the curb and hurtling on past the poster columns in front of the garish Palads cinema, where the hotdog stands and forest of café parasols on the open square provided a snarl of obstacles.
Now he could hear Pico calling out behind him: “Stop, Marco, we’re not going to hurt you. We just want to make a deal.”
Sure. A deal where he swapped the bike for a leg lock and a ten-minute wait before they threw him into the van. Fuck them!
Marco leaned forward and pedaled as hard as he could as Pico charged through the crowds in his wake. Behind him he heard a woman fall to the ground with a yelp of pain. This wasn’t good.
“Hey, are you crazy or something?” someone shouted at him as a man tried to jab the point of his umbrella into the spokes of his front wheel.