The Marco Effect: A Department Q Novel by Jussi Adler-Olsen Page A

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 waythrough 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