“What’s it say?” Mørck asked.
“It says: Pusher Street, Christiania. Tonight eight P.M.—and they want Marco to come alone, otherwise . . .”
Her voice trailed off as she looked up at Tilde’s mother, then handed Marco the phone.
They had exactly twenty-five minutes.
42
For Carl, Free State Christiania was familiar territory. There wasn’t a nook or a cranny in this colorful, unique, and anarchic oasis into which he hadn’t poked his nose back in the dawn of time, not a single house he hadn’t entered, clad in full uniform and his country-boy naivety.
Fredens Ark, Loppen, Operaen, Nemoland, Pusher Street, Den Grå Hal, the Green Light District, Sunshine Bakery. Each was a name with its own story, its own incidents. And because he knew the place, Carl also knew how hopeless their task was.
Carl’s viewpoint was ambivalent. From a policeman’s perspective, Christiania was a den of vice, a nest of riffraff, but seen from a different angle it was a place where a person could breathe freely and live the dream of an age before Copenhagen was handed over to the yuppies and everything was drawn in straight lines. Christiania was—and remained—an umbilical cord to the capital’s charm and to ideas in free flight. A bicycling, environmentally protective subcultural powerhouse where dogs and beautiful people had turned an ugly former military barracks into what was arguably Denmark’s biggest tourist attraction.
But, as is so often the case, the best intentions and ideas became subverted by stupid individuals without norms, twisted and distorted until they were no longer recognizable. Thus, Christiania existed in the eternal dilemma: to give freedom free rein, or to rein freedom in?
In recent years, the people of Christiania had been given the right of self-determination, so now they alone were responsible for how the free state functioned. Not surprisingly, both good and bad had come of it.
Now the days when smiling policemen in sensible shoes could stroll unchallenged through this cultural collage were long gone. All forms of police presence were anathematized, so that only the most recently hatched or most implacable officers felt like stirring things up in a place like Pusher Street.
People on that street could smell a pig a mile off, and given the chance, they’d make sure the cops never wanted to come back again. If it hadn’t been for Pusher Street, Christiania would have been a kind of paradise. Instead, if there was anywhere the police could count on resistance, it was Pusher Street in Christiania, and somehow the Africans had sussed this out.
Carl closed his eyes and tried to walk himself through this graffitied Klondike in his mind. There were guys openly stationed by the end of the street nearest Prinsessegade, keeping an eye on who came and went. At the other end, close by the colorful vegetable store, there were people sitting in the cafés or under lean-tos with equally watchful eyes. Of course a person could enter Pusher Street unseen by way of one of the side streets, though lookouts were posted there, too, amid the uninhibited commerce in hash and skunk. But coming in that way meant it would be well-nigh impossible to get an overview of what was going on along the entire length of the street, which in this case was imperative.
The question now was how the Africans were intending to deal with the situation. Doubtless they’d be expecting that once they’d got their hands on Marco and the girl had been released, the boy would start to kick up a fuss. For that reason one would have to assume they would be sticking close to the buildings along the street so as to be able to drag Marco somewhere quiet and pacify him with a hypodermic needle or a beating.
While the people of Pusher Street tended to be rather nonchalant when it looked like violence would erupt, most would surely draw the line at assault on a minor. The Africans would scarcely want a confrontation with a mob of that kind, so they would act swiftly and without drawing attention to themselves.
Carl showed Rose and Assad the police map of the area and pointed out the various options. The street itself wasn’t long, but it ran like an artery through all kinds of lanes and alleyways, some of which openly housed criminal activity while others seemed quaintly and peacefully rural with their allotment gardens. Personally, Carl favored a route from the entrance on Bådmandsstræde that led past Fredens Ark and Tinghuset, and therefore he decided he would offer it to Assad, since he was unfamiliar with the area.
Rose was to follow Marco at a suitable distance from one of the side entrances on Prinsessegade, continue past Bøssehuset and proceed toward Pusher Street from the opposite side. Carl himself would run the gauntlet directly from the main gate down toward the Freetown area, where he figured it most likely the Africans would be waiting for Marco.
Malene pleaded with them to let her come along, but was firmly instructed to remain at HQ in the company of a highly irate Gordon, who had long since been looking forward to heading home to Mama’s cooking.
Thank God I have a team that blends in here, thought Carl as he walked through the gate. Rose looked like so many others in Christiania, and no one was going to suspect someone of Assad’s color and shabby appearance of being who he was.
Carl, on the other hand, was feeling less than inconspicuous with the hasty makeover Rose had given him. Her hair spray had fixed his comb-over in a vertical position, and his eyes were rimmed with a liberal daubing of mascara. Back in the eighties he’d have looked like a poet down on his luck, but now, eleven years into the new millennium, there were but two possible interpretations: either he was sick in the head or else he was a cop wearing an incredibly bad disguise.
Aware that he had to do his utmost to live up to the first interpretation, he greeted the immigrant guy at the toasted almond stand just inside the gate with a cheery howdy, his mouth a bit too slack.
There were a lot of people on Pusher Street this evening. The last police raid there had led to a number of arrests, but, as everyone knew, weeds always grew best where the soil had been turned.
Carl scanned the street and estimated that there were just as many stalls selling dope as there had always been. It was fine by him. As long as it was out here that people bought and sold, there wouldn’t be as much need for hash clubs all over town.
As far as he could see, neither Rose nor Assad had reached the street yet, so everything was going according to plan.
He positioned himself on a corner next to the building they called Maskinhallen and tried to look like he’d run out of steam, slightly wilted and possibly a bit stoned. Apart from a girl with two kids on her carrier tricycle, no one looked in his direction.
To his consternation he realized there were quite a few black men on the street. A couple of slender Somalis with anoraks on and their hoods up, a couple of Gambians he recognized as pushers from in town, and then an assortment of extremely well-fed tourists—black, as well as white—from the cruise ships, wandering on the heels of the Free State’s local guides, cameras sensibly tucked from sight.
Now he saw Rose and Marco appear from one of the side paths a little farther down Pusher Street, and half a minute later Assad also arrived on the other side of the street. Rose was standing a couple of meters from Marco, her attention seemingly everywhere else but on the boy.
Assad walked a way toward Carl, then positioned himself by one of the hash stalls, sniffing the goods with what looked to Carl like a surprising measure of professionalism.
They waited for ages. By now it was at least a quarter past eight, and even at a distance it was easy to see that Marco was becoming increasingly edgy and impatient. After another five minutes he moved a bit farther away from Rose, and then, counter to everything they’d agreed on, began to wander off along the street. Slowly, yet forcing Carl and Rose to follow while keeping their distance.
—
Marco was clearly on his guard. Merely the way he walked, treading the cobblestones so softly, revealed that he was more familiar than most with the asphalt jungle’s pitfalls.
Careful, Marco, or they’ll spot us tailing you, Carl managed to think, just before a black figure stepped around a corner and grabbed Marco by the arm.
At the same moment Carl’s view was blocked by a huge, black, gold-festooned female cruise-ship tourist. For a couple of seconds he was unable to see what ensued, but he began to run, Assad and Rose likewise.
“Hey, take it easy!” the fat woman cried indignantly, as Assad got there first and shouldered her into the path of a Christiania transport trike that supported a large cargo crate.
He stopped and glanced around in all directions, pointed toward the corner of Mælkevejen and set off again as fast as he could. Incredible how a man of his thickset stature could accelerate so quickly, short legs and all.
Carl halted next to the immense black lady as Rose charged off in pursuit of Assad and the black man in front of him. “What’s the problem?” the woman snapped, nostrils flaring.
He studied her for a moment. Why the hell did she have to stand just there?
The guy can’t run from Assad when he’s got Marco to drag along with him, he thought as he looked around. But maybe he didn’t even have Marco any more. Maybe someone else had taken over and made off with the lad in a different direction and Assad and Rose were pursuing the wrong guy. He knew there were two of them working together.
Carl ran back and forth between Nemoland and Tinghuset, but there was no sign of them anywhere.
“Did you see a black guy run past holding a young boy?” he asked a junkie who was standing outside the bakery and seemed relatively conscious.
The guy gave a shrug and stroked his straggly beard.
“If anyone ran by here, Satan would have given them a nip in the ass,” he replied sluggishly, indicating the monstrous mutt at his side that looked like it could have devoured the Hound of the Baskervilles in one mouthful. “Sixty-seven kilos, he weighs,” he added proudly.
Carl nodded. Fucking dog, fucking situation, too. Dammit. If only they’d had more time to prepare the exchange, he would have made sure they had airborne back-up.
Then none of this would have happened.
He grabbed his mobile and began to enter a number to start a more widespread search, and as he did so he noticed a slender young girl coming straight toward him. She looked like Tilde and seemed confused, with movements as mechanical as a zombie someone had simply pushed in a certain direction.
“Tilde!” he cried, and ran toward her. But she didn’t react. Had Marco been given the same treatment?
How in the world could they have let it happen?
“Henrik, Carl Mørck here,” he said, when he got through to the duty officer at the dispatch desk. “We need patrol cars currently on the prowl in the vicinity of Christiania.” He passed on as good descriptions of Marco and the African as he could, then gave a loud whistle to call their own operation off. It was the only thing he could do, given the situation.
He turned back to the girl and approached her warily.
“Tilde,” he said, cautiously. “You’re free now. Do you remember me? Carl Mørck, the policeman?”
It took a long time for his words to register. “Where’s Marco?” she finally asked in a tiny voice, and glanced around with frightened eyes. The last couple of hours had not been good for her.
“Did they inject you with something, Tilde? Can you remember?”
She nodded listlessly. “Where’s Marco? Is he all right?”
Carl drew her toward him. “We’re looking for him right now.”
Suddenly he heard footsteps running along the adjoining lanes. He saw Rose sprinting barefoot down the one lane, past the barracks, and from the direction of the canal came a black man at full speed with Assad right on his heels.
“Head him off, Carl!” Assad shouted breathlessly.
Carl spread out his arms and sprang into the path of the African like an enraged bull confronting a toreador. The problem, however, was that Carl was at least thirty-five kilos heavier than the lively lightweight racing toward him, whose musculature had doubtless been genetically conditioned to perform the most mind-boggling maneuvers.
For that reason he decided to hurl himself to one side, thereby giving himself exactly the same odds as a goalkeeper facing a penalty kick. And as he landed unceremoniously in a heap on the ground, the two men tore past him and up Pusher Street, where Rose was waiting for them.
Unlike Carl, she chose to throw herself straight at the man’s legs with all her weight, toppling him like a tree in a forest. She heard a crack as his head hit the cobbles and suddenly he lay very still.
Carl watched as Assad, out of breath, was reaching for his handcuffs, and whistled to draw his attention to a horde of dark, unshaven faces that looked like extras in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, watching Assad’s every move.
“OK,” said Assad, discreetly sticking the cuffs back into his pocket and turning to face his audience. “This bastard was trying to kidnap a young boy. Anyone here got some string?”
Not five seconds passed before a guy removed his belt. “Here, use this. Just remember I want it back, yeah?”
Carl got to his feet, realizing with a flinch how heavily he had fallen. It hurt like hell.
“Any of you lot seen a brown-skinned boy with curly black hair, about fifteen years old? He was here less than five minutes ago and disappeared over there,” he gasped.
No one answered, but the disdainful look on their faces said they had more than enough to deal with already.
Behind Carl, Rose noticed the unconscious man was breathing more irregularly now, and that blood was running a little too steadily from a gash in his head, as well as from his shoulder, as though an existing wound had suddenly opened up again underneath his shirt.
“I’ll call an ambulance, OK?” she shouted, as she opened her mobile, clearly put off her stride by some booing from the crowd in front of her.
“Shut your gobs!”“ she yelled back, stamping her foot and flailing her arms. “Even scum like him has the right to fair treatment.”
Then she glanced at the display on her phone. “See? Now you made me dial the wrong number!”
A faint ringtone could be heard somewhere behind them, and everyone turned around.
Carl looked at Rose and studied the puzzled look on her face.
“This must be the last number I called, so it has to be the mobile the boy was carrying,” she said, scowling at the faces in front of her.
Then the crowd parted and someone pointed to where the ringing was coming from. The Christiania trike with its cargo crate.
The guy seated in the saddle shook his head and gave a shrug, as if he had no idea what was going on. But Carl sensed a lie.
The man was wearing gloves, and the hood of his anorak was drawn tight, so only his eyes were visible. It was a rather strange choice of apparel, considering the mild springtime weather.
Carl looked at the cargo box on the trike. It was big. Maybe just big enough.
“Hey, you,” he called out, approaching the man. “Would you mind showing me what’s in the—”
Before he could reach out and stop him, the guy was off, pedaling away like mad.
“Rose, you look after Tilde,” Carl shouted, setting off in pursuit. “Help us, for Chrissake!” he yelled up the street, as the dealers stepped aside with a collective frown of bemusement.
Carl knew damn well that one never ran on Pusher Street, but what about cyclists?
“Stop him!” he yelled again, his chest tightening as Assad sprinted past, together with the guy who’d lent them his belt.
“Hey, almond man!” he heard Assad scream, so loud that the words echoed off the wall of the Spiseloppen restaurant.
The vendor standing with his cart by the entrance turned around.
“Shove your cart into the path and block his way!” Assad shouted. “Yo
u’ll get a thousand kroner!”
The almond man burst into action, trundling his handcart in front of the gate, loath to pass up a potential source of income. After all, a thousand kroner was more than enough to repair any damage to his beloved almond cart.
The man fleeing on the trike veered off toward the large shed that housed Christiania’s refuse collection depot, recycling center, and a lot more besides. He braked hard, leaped from the saddle and tried to dodge behind a pile of rusty machinery, only to find his path blocked by a group of men who had just finished work and were standing around with beer cans in hand, enjoying the weather. They weren’t the sort of blokes you just shoved aside.
The only option left was to run inside the wooden building with its red-painted window frames.
By the time Carl arrived out of breath ten seconds later, Assad and the almond vendor were already inside, looking about.
“Where the fuck did he get to?” the Christianite exclaimed.
Carl quickly took stock. The large, high-ceilinged space was a festival of color. On the wall above the entrance hung a five-meter-tall mask, a caricature of a former Danish prime minister who was particularly despised in these parts. The floor and shelves were a clutter of machine parts and assorted junk, and further back was what looked like a jumble sale of everything from miniature racing cars to palm trees carved in wood with sombreros on them.
All in all, not the easiest place to apprehend a young black man with gymnastic talent.
“Try up there, one of you,” Carl instructed, pointing to the ceiling where an office of gypsum boards and wood had been constructed on top of the crossbeams. Then he turned around and went back outside to the cargo trike.
The silence that came from it made him uneasy.
If they had injected Marco with the same sedative as they had used on Tilde, only a much larger dosage, then more than likely they had already carried out their mission. It was a dreadful thought.
He pushed the bolt aside and lifted the lid of the box.
The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel Page 49