“Because I get the clear impression the man knows a hell of a lot more than he’s telling us, and that right now he’s probably putting a story together about why those official trips he and Stark made within days of each other couldn’t just as well have been combined into one.”
–
“Do you know if forensics are turning anything up in that grave outside Kregme?” he asked Tomas Laursen.
Laursen wiped his hands in his chef’s apron an extra time for good measure. It was a sad sight to see the man who was once the force’s best forensic technician with remoulade remains all down his front.
“Yes, they’re finding a bit. Hair, skin, clothing fibers. A couple of fingernails.”
“Loads of DNA, then?”
Laursen nodded. “In a couple of days you should know if it matches what they’ve collected from William Stark’s home address.”
“It will. I don’t need their results. Just knowing there was a human corpse in that grave is enough for me. I’m absolutely certain it’s our man.”
Laursen nodded. “Pity the body isn’t there anymore. Any idea where it might be?”
“No, and my feeling is we’re not going to find out either. You don’t bury a body and dig it up again just to put it somewhere else where it can be found. It’s been chopped into bits and chucked into very deep water, if you ask me.”
“You’re probably right. It’s been seen before, anyway.”
He wiped his hands again and began kneading the lump of dough lying in front of him. New success story: fresh-baked bread first thing in the morning had become all the rage at police HQ. The man was doing his utmost for the cafeteria’s survival.
“One more thing, Tomas. I’ve learned a few things about Bjørn’s time in Iraq, and I’ve a feeling you can pitch in with more. Am I right?”
Laursen paused with a frown. “I think you’d better ask him yourself, Carl. It’s none of my business.”
“So you do know something.”
“You can interpret it as you wish.”
“He was put in prison. Do you know what for, and when?”
“I’m not the one to ask about it, Carl.”
“Can’t you just tell me when it was? Was it right before Saddam Hussein was brought down?”
He tipped his head from side to side.
“A bit before, then?”
No reply.
“A year?”
Laursen smacked his clump of dough onto the counter. “Lay off, will you, Carl? It’s not worth our falling out over.”
Carl nodded and left the man in peace, but inside him there was anything but.
Assad was in the process of questioning a man downstairs.
Department Q’s little charmer, Assad, an untrained policeman whose employment at police headquarters seemed more and more to be thanks to the good graces of Lars Bjørn. A man who was now Carl’s acting superior and who had previously been imprisoned in a notorious Iraqi jail under the rule of Saddam.
Carl stopped halfway down the stairs.
For God’s sake, Assad, he thought. Who are you, anyway?
–
He found him standing outside the interview room with a big smile on his face.
“What are you doing here, Assad?” he asked.
“I’m taking a break. They should not have to look at one all the time, should they? They must have the chance to think things over. It helps get them talking, you know? In the end they blurt it out, log, stick, and barrel.”
“Lock, stock, and barrel, Assad. Who have you got in there?”
“Romeo. The one with the burn on his face who then would not say his name.”
“But you got it out of him?”
“Yes, I was a bit persistent.”
Carl tipped his head to the side. “How so?”
“Come inside and I will show you.”
The guy was sitting on his chair. Without handcuffs, with no trace of anger, and without the protective loathing of officialdom one otherwise always encountered. What remained was a nice young man in a suit.
“Say hello to Carl Mørck, Romeo,” Assad instructed.
He lifted his head. “Hello.”
Carl nodded.
“Tell Inspector Mørck what you told me before, Romeo.”
“What part of it?” came the reply, in a heavy accent.
“The part about Zola and Marco.”
“I don’t know why, but Zola wants Marco killed. We’re all looking for him, and not just us. He’s got other people helping him, too. Estonians, Lithuanians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Africans. We’re all looking.”
“And why do you tell me this, Romeo?”
The man who looked up at Assad was exhausted. Why wasn’t Assad?
“Because you promised me that then I can stay in Denmark.”
Assad looked at Carl with a gleam of triumph in his eyes. Simple as that, his expression seemed to say.
“You can’t just promise him that, Assad,” said Carl, once they were back outside. “Tomorrow he’s going to be remanded in custody, maybe even put into isolation, if he really knows as much as he was just jabbering on about. And what happens when he’s no longer in isolation? How are you going to protect him and keep your promise then?”
Assad shrugged. It wasn’t his problem, Carl could see. A pretty hard-boiled attitude for his taste.
“I asked him if he knew William Stark, and he did not. Then I asked him if Marco was abused sexually in Zola’s house, which he denied most adamantly. This, at least, they were not subjected to.”
Carl nodded. It was all useful info.
The means justified the ends, as people usually said while washing their hands.
35
Never had Marco felt the cold as much as he did that night.
He had clung to the side of the sightseeing boat when it put in at Holmen’s Church and Nyhavn, but hadn’t dared let go as long as he was still within the city center where Zola’s people were stationed. For that reason he had allowed himself to be drawn through the icy water across the city’s inner harbor, on through the canal past the Opera House, and didn’t release his grip until when the boat passed the Little Mermaid. There he clambered ashore, so wet and exhausted that a couple of the day’s final tourists tried to grab him, yelling that someone should call an ambulance, while the rest blitzed him with rapid-fire digital cameras as if he were some mythical marine creature. The Little Mermaid herself paled in comparison.
“Go away!” Marco cried, shoving them aside and limping off along the concourse, then on through the Frihavn harbor toward the Svanemølle marina.
This time, finding shelter among the moored boats wasn’t so easy. Another warm May weekend had brought out the sailing fans in force, and a great many watching eyes followed the pathetic, shivering boy as he made his way along the jetties in the twilight. Welcome, he certainly was not.
–
He was still wet when he woke up inside the little covered motorboat, but a warm breeze coupled with bright sunshine was sufficient to coax him forth.
He squinted up at the sun and figured it was still early enough for him to get to Kaj and Eivind’s apartment before they went off to work.
The last twenty-four hours had shaken him up. The two African boys had been so close. If he shut his eyes he could still clearly see the one with the knife in front of him, the other with his yellow-white eyes staring at him under the water.
Now all he wanted was to get away. Away from Copenhagen, away from Denmark. He dare not stay here any longer. He’d take the train to Sweden and try to begin afresh. A country so sparsely populated and so expansive that from north to south was the same distance as from Copenhagen to Rome had to be a place in which it was possible to disappear. He’d often heard the Swedish language on the streets and realized it wasn’t so different from Danish. That, too, he would learn.
The way things had developed the last twenty-four hours, taking revenge on Zola meant less to him now. All he wanted was to survive.
By the time he got to Kaj and Eivind’s flat, he was dry and utterly determined not to leave the place until his money was in his hand. This time, he wasn’t about to let them stop him.