The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen Read Free Book Online Page B

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