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who had learned to speak the language almost fluently. He was simply the only one inquisitive enough to bother.
    All the rank-and-file members of the group knew that when Marco was out of sight he was sitting somewhere on his own, immersed in a book.
    “Tell us, tell us,” Miryam in particular would urge, she being the one he was closest to.
    Zola and his associates would be rather less enthusiastic about his reading habits, if they ever found out.
    —
    That evening they lay in their bunks listening to the beating and Samuel’s screams as they penetrated the wall of Zola’s room, percolating down to Marco’s like an echo of all the other injustices Zola had committed. Marco himself was unafraid of thrashings, for as a rule they were milder in his case, thanks to the influence of his father. And yet he clutched his blanket: Samuel was no Marco.
    When once again silence descended and Samuel’s punishment was over, Marco heard the front door open. It had to be one of Zola’s gorillas, scanning the terrain before dragging the beaten and humiliated Samuelacross to the house next door where his room was. The clan members were proficient at keeping up appearances and remaining friendly with the Danish families of the neighborhood. On the face of it, Zola was a somewhat reserved, rather elegant individual, and this was an image he definitely intended to maintain. He knew perfectly well that a presentable white man from the United States, speaking English—a language everyone understood—would in many ways be thought of as
one of our own
. One of those the Danes had no need to fear.
    For that reason, punishment was always administered under cover of darkness behind soundproofed windows and drawn curtains. Similarly, it was imperative that all bruises and other signs of beating were never visible. The fact that Samuel would be aching all over the next morning as he dragged himself up and down Strøget, Copenhagen’s pedestrian shopping street, was another matter entirely, but this, of course, went unnoticed by the masses. Besides, the boy’s miserable appearance was good for business, and all experience showed that genuine displays of discomfort produced a better yield than false ones.
    Marco got up in the dark, crept past the room shared by his cousins and knocked cautiously on the door of the living room. If the response was swift, then all was well. Hesitation, and one could never predict the mood Zola might be in.
    This time almost a minute passed before he was called in. Marco braced himself.
    Zola sat at the tea table like a king at his court, the television news blaring from the gigantic flat screen.
    Maybe he brightened slightly when he realized it was Marco, but his hands had yet to stop trembling. Some of the group claimed that Zola liked to watch when they were being punished, but Marco’s father said the opposite: that Zola loved his flock as Jesus loved his disciples.
    Marco wasn’t so sure.
    For three days and nights, Detective Inspector Carl Mørck sat imprisoned here in this hermetically sealed room in the company of mummified corpses and had . . .
said the voice on the screen.
    “Turn that shit off, Chris,” Zola barked, with a nod toward the remote. Within a second it was done.
    He patted his new acquisition, a gangling, thin-legged hound no one else dared approach, then fixed his gaze on Marco’s. “How brave of you to give Samuel money today, Marco. But do so again and you’ll be punished in the same way, do you understand?”
    Marco nodded.
    Zola smiled. “You’ve earned well for us today, Marco. Sit down.” He indicated the chair opposite. “What do you want, my boy? I suppose you’ve come to tell me Samuel didn’t deserve it. Am I right?”
    And then his expression changed. With a quick gesture he instructed his near-omnipotent henchman, Chris, to pour tea into a mug. When he had done so, Zola nudged it halfway across the table toward Marco.
    “I’m sorry to disturb you here in the