A moment later two more girls appeared. Like the first, they were in nightclothes and anything but ready to meet the challenges of a new day.
“What are you running from?” one of them asked, stroking his cheek. She was gentle and engulfed in a heavy scent of perfume, but her face was pockmarked and her body oddly proportioned, with tremendous breasts that defied gravity.
Marco dried his eyes and tried to explain his predicament, but it was obvious they understood little more than that some Eastern Europeans were running around outside and shouting. The information made them visibly uneasy, prompting them to withdraw into a corner, where they huddled together, whispering.
“You listen,” the one who had comforted him eventually said. “You cannot stay here with us. In two hours a man comes for money. He must not find you here, otherwise trouble, not just for you, for us, too.”
“We give you some food,” the third girl added. “You wash, and then you go. You can only go out back door, but we try to get you across the yard and through a apartment to Willemoesgade. Then you on your own.”
He asked them to please call a taxi, but their hospitality would not extend that far. Calls from their mobiles were checked every day by their pimp, to make sure they weren’t freelancing outside opening hours. And who but a john would want a taxi?
Marco felt sorry for them. These were full-grown women living alone here, and yet they were being tormented in the same way as Zola tormented his own. He didn’t understand. Why didn’t they run away as well?
–
The women did as they promised and led him through the yard and up the back stairs, then on to the second floor of the building across the street, where the man lived who had allowed his flat to be used as an escape route. He was just an old customer, the girls explained, who would do anything to help them out.
“Next time, extra loving treatment for you, Benny,” one of the girls promised. So that was probably why. He certainly looked satisfied with the deal.
Marco knew Willemoesgade. Here he had gone from shop to shop without securing work, so at least the proprietors here weren’t hostile, if they even recognized him. The only problem was the Irma supermarket on the corner, where there was a high turnover of young lads managing the bottle return and you never knew where they were from. So Marco crossed the street and continued toward the junction of Østerbrogade.
He was entering dangerous territory indeed. But maybe he could quickly flag down a taxi to take him to the airport train station where he could jump on a train to Sweden and then he’d be free.
He leaned up against a wall and stuck his hand in his pocket. There was just under five thousand kroner left of what he’d taken from Samuel’s shopping bag. A tidy sum that was sure to get him far. Soon it would be summer, and the weather was mild. What more could he ask? Sleeping under the stars was free, and once he’d got farther north, around Dalarna or Jämtland, he knew he would have little trouble finding an abandoned house or an empty summer cottage rarely in use. He’d be all right, though it pained him to think of all the money behind the baseboard in Kaj and Eivind’s apartment. Now he had to start again from the beginning, and who could tell how things would go next time around?
The cabs that passed by were taken, so Marco decided he would walk along Sortedamssøen and then up to Trianglen, where he knew there would be ranks of taxis waiting for customers.
But he never got that far.
Suddenly he saw Chris’s van parked sideways on the pavement some distance farther up the street. Presumably the Balts had alerted Zola’s right-hand man after Eivind had called them, and now the van was there, waiting to pick up its cargo, dead or alive.
That cargo was Marco.
He felt cold inside. If only he had the courage, he would sneak up to the vehicle and slash its tires with Kaj and Eivind’s kitchen knife that he still had concealed under his jersey.
He looked along Sortedam Dossering. Maybe he should run that way, though it could be dangerous if someone blocked his path, with the lake on one side and hardly a single side street on the other. It was not an optimal route. Either he had to go back the way he’d come, or else he would have to stay put and wait for a vacant taxi.
Marco did not let the van out of his sight. Everything evil was symbolized by its presence. How often had they sat on the floor in the back, being led like lambs to slaughter into a life they’d been unable to refuse? How often had he lain there exhausted, dreaming that the drive would never end? But it always did. Every single day they ended up in their prison in Kregme. Eat, sleep, then off again early the next morning, such was their life. How he hated that van.
His chain of thought was broken abruptly. Was that his father coming out of the shop behind the van? And wasn’t that Zola himself right behind him? Were they so keen on finding him that they were now out in person, going from door-to-door? They were insane, there was no other word.
He ducked behind the trees and watched them spitefully as they went into the next shop. People like Zola and his father should never be allowed anywhere near children.
He saw the cyclist coming from the direction of Trianglen. An ordinary-looking type, though obviously unfamiliar with the bike he was riding.
Marco smiled to himself. That’s not yours, you just stole it, he thought, comparing the bike’s size, age, and color with its rider. Whatever made him think nobody would notice?
Then, all of a sudden, the guy wrenched his front wheel over the curb and headed straight for Marco, who managed to run only a couple of steps before the cyclist sailed right into him.
There were other cyclists on the cycle path who shouted to the man that he should watch where he was going, but Marco knew better, so instinctively he rolled to the side on the ground as the guy tried to grab him. He drew the knife from his jersey by reflex and stabbed his assailant in the ankle. There was a roar of pain as the man recoiled and fell backward. Marco leaped to his feet and legged it as fast as he could.
“Not that way, Marco,” cried a voice from the other side of the street. Marco looked up and saw that almost everyone was staring at him. In the same instant he also saw a man come running around the corner of Ryesgade at full speed and he was now only a hundred and fifty meters away.
Marco glanced around. A taxi from Østerport station with its green for-hire light on was heading toward him. He darted across the road to flag it down as the cyclist got to his feet and his second pursuer closed in.
“There’s one more, Marco!” the voice shouted.
He looked over his shoulder and saw his father standing with his hands cupped to his mouth. He was about to cry out again, but at the same moment Zola came from behind and shoved him so hard that his father lost his footing, stumbled over the cycle path and out into the street.
Marco saw the bus slam on its brakes and swerve. He heard people scream as his father disappeared beneath it, but was immediately compelled to turn and face the new threat bearing down on him. It was a dreadful moment. His father had just been run over, and Marco himself was surrounded on three sides as he stood at the curb, his arms flailing at the oncoming taxi.
An immigrant sat behind the wheel, the kind of taxi driver who didn’t own his own vehicle and wanted to demonstrate how content he was to drive someone else’s, as long as it had a leather interior and a motor powerful enough to leave everything else in its wake.
“Drive!” Marco commanded shrilly, his whole body feeling like it was about to collapse.
Two of his pursuers appeared alongside the taxi, hammering their fists against the window as the driver gave them the finger and floored the accelerator.
They took off so fast that Marco didn’t manage to see his father under the bus, only the blood spreading over the asphalt and the horrified crowd that had gathered on the pavement within seconds.