The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel Page 5

  Then Marco put his ear against the door, his breathing as quiet as a mouse so the dog inside would not begin to growl. Was that really how Samuel spoke of him? It wasn’t true at all. When had he ever hesitated in his work? Never!

  But Samuel had, on many occasions. And yet they had defended him. The fool.

  “Marco’s old enough now for the invalid scam, so there’s no two ways about it. We know how great the benefits are. Look at Miryam.”

  “But can’t you see there’s a difference between him and Miryam?” It was his father’s voice, imploring. “Her misfortune was an accident.”

  “You really believe that, don’t you?” The words were followed by dry laughter. Marco felt a chill. What did he mean? That it wasn’t an accident? Miryam had stumbled while she was running across the road, everyone knew that.

  For a moment all was silent inside the room. He could clearly picture the shock on his father’s face. But his father said nothing.

  “Listen,” Zola continued. “We must look after the youngsters, make sure they’ve a bright future, yes? That’s why we can’t afford to be soft and make mistakes, do you understand? Soon we’ll have scraped enough money together to settle in the Philippines. I think you’d do well to remember that this has been our dream from the start. There’s a place for Marco in that dream, too.”

  A minute passed before Marco’s father replied. It was clear he was already coming to terms with defeat. “And that’s why Marco must be maimed? Is that really what you want, Zola?”

  Marco clenched his fists. Hit him, Father. Hit him, he urged in silence. You’re Zola’s elder brother. Tell him to leave me be.

  “It’s just a small sacrifice for the benefit of the clan, don’t you agree? We sedate the boy and put his leg out into the traffic. It will be over in an instant. The Danish hospitals are good, they’ll fix him up well enough. And if he won’t go along voluntarily, we’ll have to help him, yes? If you oppose me on this issue, I may select you instead, you realize that, don’t you?”

  Marco held his breath and saw Miryam’s hobbling figure in his mind’s eye. He fought back the tears. Was that how it happened? They had turned her into a cripple.

  Say something, Father!, he urged again. But from behind the door came the sound of one voice only. The wrong one.

  “Accident, disfigurement, insurance payout. So it will proceed,” Zola continued. “And as a permanently beneficial side effect, we will have created for ourselves a thoroughbred beggar who is unable to run anywhere.”

  A faint draught in the passage made Marco turn, but too late. The kitchen door had opened and the figure that stepped out had seen him.

  “What are you up to, boy?” Chris’s voice slashed through the dimness.

  In an instant Marco sprang free of the wall and made a dash as Chris leaped after him, and the door of the living room was flung open.

  Many times before he had told himself that if ever such a situation should occur he would seek refuge in one of the neighbor’s houses. But now everything around him seemed dead. The wind was whistling through the many trees between which the houses lay, quiet as mausoleums: dark, lifeless, deceased. All the windows around him were unlit. Only the faint glare of a single television screen was visible farther down the road.

  And that was the house he ran toward, filled with dread.

  “I won’t make it,” he kept telling himself as a cold rain began to wet his face. He would be caught before he ever roused the residents from their armchairs. He had to find another way.

  Marco twisted round and glanced behind him as he ran, trying not to stumble over the curbs with his bare feet. Now he could see that two of his older cousins were on his heels, too, and they were fast. He hurled himself into the gravel on his stomach and squirmed through a hole in a hedge too small for the others to negotiate.

  If he could cut through this garden and get to the main road, he might have a chance.

  An automatic floodlight mounted on the house’s gable end tripped, painting the garden bright white. He saw the people inside come to the picture window of the living room, but he was already on his way through the next hedge, from where he rolled down into the ditch at the side of the main road.

  Behind him came shouts for him to stop, but Marco’s attention was fixed on the passing cars and the thicket of trees halfway up the hill a few hundred meters beyond. That was where he needed to go. Any moment now they would have run down the residential street and emerge onto the road farther on. If he didn’t get away now, he would be done for.

  A blue beam of halogen headlights tipped over the ridge, revealing the rainy tarmac to be a glittering bridge to freedom. If he ran into the middle of the road and stopped the car it might save him. And if it refused to stop, he would throw himself into its path and put an end to his trials. Rather that than spend the rest of his life a crippled beggar like Miryam.

  “Stop!” he cried out as the car came toward him, his arms waving. Then he made directly for the headlight beams, like a moth to a flame.

  Over his shoulder he could see his pursuers coming round the houses and spilling out onto the road. From that distance he was unable to see who they were, but it had to be his cousins and some of the other kids because they were so quick. He would have only seconds to stop the car and convince the driver to help him before they caught up.

  The car flashed its lights, but the driver did not slow down. For a moment he was certain it wouldn’t stop and prepared to meet his fate when suddenly he heard the squeal of brakes and saw the vehicle begin to veer from side to side like a man inebriated.

  Don’t move, or else he’ll just zoom on by, he told himself, trying to predict the direction in which the driver would next yank the wheel. He wasn’t going to let him past.

  For a split second Marco saw the front of the car loom toward him like an executioner’s ax, and then with a whoosh of tires against the wet asphalt it came to a sudden halt, with Marco’s knee against the front bumper, as an extremely agitated man hurled abuse at him from the other side of the thrashing wipers.

  Marco sprang to the passenger side and flung open the door before the man could react.

  “What the hell are you playing at, you little brat?” the driver yelled, his face white as chalk from the shock.

  “You’ve got to take me with you or those men there are going to get me,” Marco begged, pointing down into the dip in the road from where his pursuers were now approaching.

  The man’s expression changed from shock to rage in a second.

  “What the fuck? Are you a Paki?” he screamed, leaning over to the passenger seat and without warning lashing a fist at Marco’s head.

  The punch caught him awkwardly, but hard enough to send him backward onto the road as the man slammed the door shut with a hail of invective to the effect that apes like him could damn well fend for themselves.

  Marco felt the asphalt eating its way through his pajamas. It hurt but wasn’t nearly as painful as lying flat in the middle of the road in darkness and seeing the car accelerate off with the beam of its headlights aimed straight at those who were after him.

  “Stop the car!” one of them shouted. Then came the dull thud of gunshots, but the vehicle hurtled on, picking up speed and heading directly toward the flock, forcing them to leap for their lives. And then it was gone.

  He heard the confusion among them as he rolled over into the ditch and crawled under a bush. They must have thought he’d managed to throw himself into the car before it sped away. He crawled on all fours deeper into the underbrush at the edge of the woods that bordered the road as he strained his ears to hear what his pursuers were up to.

  Peering through the vegetation, he saw that some men had now joined his young pursuers. From their silhouettes he took them to be Zola, Chris, and his father.

  The young ones pointed up the road to where Marco had stopped the ca
r, then turned in the direction in which it had disappeared. Suddenly a fist flew through the air and a figure slumped to the ground. Punishment for failing to capture the fugitive came promptly. What else did they expect?

  He heard a barked order to search the area, and the group consolidated and began jogging toward the place where he lay concealed. He needed to get into the woods or somewhere else they wouldn’t look. He raised himself warily toward the dark, expansive landscape of tree trunks, shivering from the rapid cooling of his skin and the adrenaline pumping through his body. The rain had soaked his pajamas, making them feel like they were made of sponge as the icy cold bit through his skin and feet. He realized at the first step that he wouldn’t get far without shoes, and now his pursuers were so close he could tell the voices apart.

  It sounded like they were all there: Hector, Pico, Romeo, Zola, Samuel, his father, and the others. Even a pair of female voices vibrated above the trees.

  Only then did Marco truly sense fear.

  “I didn’t see him in the car,” Samuel shouted in Italian, another answering in English that they wouldn’t have seen him even if he had been inside.

  Again, Samuel had betrayed him.

  And now Zola’s fury rose up above this chaos of voices. Fury at their having allowed the boy to run, fury at their not having checked well enough to know for sure whether he’d been in the car, fury at shots having been fired. Now they would have to suspend all activities for a long time, he yelled at them, his voice trembling. It was going to cost them, and those who had fired the shots would be made to pay. The younger members of the clan would need to make themselves scarce in the days that followed, until the dust had settled. More than likely, the man in the car would go to the police, and when he did, the kids would have to be nowhere near the neighborhood if searches were carried out and questions asked.

  “Comb the area and see if Marco’s still here,” Zola commanded. “And if he makes a run for it again, you’ve my permission to shoot. Just make sure you hit him, that’s all. Marco has become a danger to all of us.”

  He was shocked. They were going to shoot him because he was dangerous. Yet he had done nothing but contradict Zola and run away. Was that all it took? What about the others who had deserted the flock from time to time? Had Zola had them shot, too?

  Marco shuddered as he felt his way forward with his feet, twigs, pine cones, and thorns jabbing at his ankles and soles. A hundred meters into the woods, he was forced to lie down. Moving on was simply too painful and too slow.

  They’d catch him if he didn’t find cover, he told himself, the words pulsing in his mind as he prodded the ground and noted that the earth was cold as ice, hard as stone. The place offered no concealment.

  He felt panic now, as he spread his arms out to his sides and wriggled a few meters forward on his stomach through the prickly undergrowth.

  He pressed on, and after a minute he suddenly felt his knees sink. For a moment he thought he had ventured into bog, but the soil was dry and loose, as though it had been turned. It was perfect.

  So he began to dig, and the farther down he got, the looser the earth became.

  Before long the hole was big and deep enough for him to roll into it and draw the soil over his body, twigs and broken branches covering his face and arms.

  They wouldn’t see him now unless they stepped on him. Please don’t let the dog be with them, he prayed, trying to control his breathing.

  And then he heard the crackle of dry wood under many feet. They were coming.

  They spread out in the underbrush, moving slowly toward the place he lay, the sweeping beams of two flashlights hovering between the tree trunks like gigantic fireflies.

  “One of you stay by the road so he can’t escape that way. The rest of you search closely, make sure he hasn’t concealed himself underneath something,” Zola shouted into the darkness. “Prod the ground with sticks, there’s plenty of them.”

  A moment passed and Marco heard the snapping of branches all around, for Zola’s word was law. Crunching footsteps vibrated through the earth, approaching where he lay as the sound of sticks jabbed against the cold ground made the sweat trickle from his brow in spite of the biting cold. Another minute and the flock was all around him. And then suddenly they were gone.

  Stay where you are, he told himself, a stench of rot piercing his nostrils. Somewhere close by an animal lay dead, no doubt about it. He’d found them often when they’d lived in Italy. Dead, stinking corpses of all kinds: squirrels, hares, and birds.

  When Zola called off the search they would return the same way through the woods. If they hadn’t posted a man at the roadside he would have run back whence he came and then out across the fields. But just now he hadn’t the courage, so what else could he do but remain as quiet as a mouse?

  And after a long time—as long a time as it would take Marco to beg his way from Rådhuspladsen down to Kongens Nytorv—they came back and passed him by. He’d been lying in the ice-cold earth for nearly an hour now, as the rain poured through the canopy of fir.

  He heard them one by one, frustrated by their unsuccessful manhunt, angry that Marco had betrayed them so. Some even expressed their fear of what his betrayal might lead to.

  “He’s in for it if we get our hands on him,” said Sascha, one of the girls he’d liked best.

  Bringing up the rear were his father and Zola, the sentiment in their voices equally unambiguous.

  As was the whining of the dog.

  Marco’s heart stood still. He held his breath, knowing it would be no defense against the canine’s sense of smell. And then the animal suddenly began to bark, as though the scent of Marco were the only thing in the world it was capable of focusing on.

  Now he was doomed.

  “This is about where we dug the hole,” said Zola in a subdued voice, only meters from the place where Marco lay. “Listen to the dog, it’s going crazy, so we must be getting close. Goddammit, you realize, don’t you, that we’ve got an even bigger problem on our hands now? And your son is to blame.” He swore again as he dragged the whining dog away. “We need to be real careful for a while. There’s no telling what Marco might do. I think we should consider moving the body as well. It’s a bit too close to home.”

  Marco slowly sucked in air through his teeth. With each breath he took, his hatred of Zola grew. The sound of his voice alone made Marco want to spring from his hiding place and cry out his contempt. But he did nothing.

  When eventually the voices had left the underbrush, he began to shake away the soil. Later in the night or early the next morning Zola and Chris were bound to return with the dog. It was something he couldn’t risk.

  He had to get away. Far away.

  He pulled his frozen arms free with difficulty and arched his back so the soil that covered him could slide from his body.

  Then he wriggled in the earth so as to gain purchase to draw himself upright, the sleeves of his pajamas catching as he swept sticks and twigs aside. Suddenly his hand struck a slimy mass covering something hard, and then came the stench, smothering him like death itself.

  Instinctively he held his breath as he sat up and tried to see what it was his hands had found, which was barely possible by the dim light of the moon. So he tipped forward, his nostrils pinched, and then he saw it.

  At that moment it was almost as if his heart had stopped. Before him lay a human hand. Helpless, crooked fingers with the skin peeled away, nails as brown as the earth itself.

  Marco flung himself to one side. For a long time he sat on his haunches a short distance away, staring at the arm of the corpse as rain slowly revealed its decaying face and body.

  “This is about where we dug the hole,” Zola had said to his father. The hole in which he himself had been lying.

  Together with a rotting corpse.

  Marco got to his feet. It was not the first time he ha
d seen a dead body, but he had never touched one before, and he never wished to again.

  For a while he considered what to do next. On the one hand, his discovery had suddenly given him the opportunity to have Zola put behind bars and to finally free himself of the man. But on the other hand, his father had helped bury the body, and probably also more than that. That made all the difference.

  As he stood pondering, slowly becoming used to the smell, he realized there was no way to get at Zola without incriminating his own father. And though his father was weak and in Zola’s thrall, Marco loved him. What else could he do? His father was all he had. How, then, could he go to the authorities and ask for help? He couldn’t.

  Not now, not tomorrow . . . not ever.

  Marco felt his icy skin turn even colder. Somehow the world had suddenly become too big for him. In this moment of pain he realized that without his clan he had only the streets to fall back on. From now on he was on his own. No yellow van would collect him again when the day was over. No one would prepare his meals. No one in the world would know who he was or where he came from.

  He hardly knew himself.

  He began to sob but then stopped. Neither pity nor self-pity were emotions that were to be found in the world he’d been raised in.

  He looked down at his night clothes. They were the first thing he had to do something about. There were houses, of course, that he could break into, but nocturnal burglaries were something he preferred to leave to others. People never slept that heavily in Denmark. They often lounged in front of their TV screens until the early hours, and in the darkness ears had a habit of growing far too big.

  He prodded the ground with a bare foot. Perhaps there was something useful to be found in the grave with this dead man. He needed to check, so he picked up a stick from the undergrowth and began to hollow out the soil around the shoulders of the corpse, continuing until the torso was completely exposed.