Death Sentence (11 page)

The sight of Verner refused to leave me alone. With a photo of him in front of me, it was impossible to think of anything else. He had contributed much of the background for
As You Sow
. The superintendent murdered in the book was based on a specific person as far as Verner was concerned, but to me it was someone else. For Verner, it was his boss. For me, it has always been Verner himself. I have never liked him. When I wrote his murder, I felt that he was atoning for his racism, his offensive jokes and his lack of tact and empathy. He was being punished for all the snide remarks he had uttered about Line and for his pathetic paedophile tendencies. Line and I had been divorced for some years when I wrote the book, but I still had a feeling that I was exposing him for her sake. An act
of
penitence for contacting Verner after she had told me what a bastard he was.

If Verner ever suspected the victim in the book was him, he never said so. He was content to punish his own tormentor, the superintendent in his department whom he regarded as corrupt and greedy for power, characteristics which in time had come to define Verner as well.

The question of who was really murdered in the book had now been settled.

It
was
Verner.

I SLEPT LITTLE
that night. Instead I carried on drinking my way through the minibar, feeling increasingly sorry for myself.

I had no idea what to do next. Options whirled around my head, each one more unreal than the next. Several times I grabbed the telephone to call the police, but every time I chickened out before I had pressed all the numbers. What would I say? If I reported Verner’s murder, I would have to explain how I had come to have the key to the hotel room, and thus the envelope. This, in turn, would bring up the subject of the murder of Mona Weis and consequently the question of why I hadn’t contacted them earlier. I had no answer to this. It like an avalanche: impossible to stop it without someone getting hurt.

It was only a matter of time before the body in room 102 would be found. The smell in the room would soon spread and the staff would become suspicious. It would take Ferdinan seconds to recognize the method by which Verner had been killed. Besides, he was likely to remember Verner from the restaurant; other guests would
testify
we had dined together and that we had a row. It was only a short distance from there to the police knocking on my door.

I should have pre-empted them, contacted them immediately, regardless of the consequences, but something held me back. Verner had been killed before he had time to tell the Murder Squad that Mona’s murder was a copycat killing; he had had our proof, the book and the photo of Mona, on him. I hadn’t searched room 102, but I was fairly sure the killer had removed everything and left the scene precisely as in the book.

The irony was that this could work to my advantage – the book, I mean. There was a copy of
As You Sow
in room 102, and with a manual for the murder in the same room as the body there was no obvious link between the killing and me – if you ignored the fact that I knew the victim and was probably the last person to see him alive, apart from the killer.

My alibi was even more problematic. I didn’t know exactly when the murder had been committed, but it must have been shortly after our dinner. The killer might have waited for Verner in the lobby and enticed him up to the room on some pretext. In the book, the killer was a vindictive hooker and Verner was just the sort who’d be susceptible to a honeytrap. He occasionally boasted of being paid ‘in kind’ when dealing with the local prostitutes so it wasn’t difficult to imagine that he would let himself be tempted by a freebie.

The thought that I had left the restaurant, taken the lift and strolled to my room while Verner’s life was ebbing away so close to me made my stomach churn. He was
a
bastard, but he didn’t deserve an end like that, and certainly not on my account.

The bottom line was I had no alibi after our dinner other than an empty minibar, which would not necessarily help my defence.

My author brain had started working again after the initial shock. It examined the plot and the sequence of events, put the pieces together and built structures, but no matter how hard I pushed it, no solution was forthcoming. I needed more information. I needed time. I needed help.

The breakfast buffet opened at seven o’clock and even though I wasn’t hungry, I left my room at five minutes to. Ferdinan was in reception, looking just as bright-eyed as he always did. It was bordering on inhuman to be that cheerful at this time in the morning when he had probably only had five hours’ sleep.

‘Good morning, Mr Føns,’ he said with a song in his voice.

‘Good morning, Ferdinan,’ I replied with as much warmth as I could muster. I stopped at the counter.

‘Can I help you with anything?’ Ferdinan asked.

‘Yes, I hope so,’ I replied. ‘Listen, my room is wonderful, but it’s a bit too big for me.’

Ferdinan nodded.

‘Any chance I could move to room 102?’

Ferdinan shook his head. ‘I’m afraid it’s not free yet,’ he said. ‘But I could find out when the guest is leaving.’ He gestured towards the computer screen and added, ‘If I can find out how to work the damn thing.’ He stepped behind the screen and touched his chin. ‘Let me see … hmmm.’

‘Perhaps I can help you?’ I suggested, and joined him behind the counter. ‘I’m quite good with computers.’ This was a lie – I have no technical qualifications at all. I use my computer purely as a typewriter.

‘Yes,’ Ferdinan said. ‘Together we should be able to crack it.’ He hit a key and a long list appeared on the screen. ‘Look … this is supposed to be the rooms … No … looks more like bookings.’ He stretched out his hands and mimed strangulation across the keyboard. ‘Arrghh, it makes me so …’

I had spotted a button on the screen with the wording ‘Room Deployment’.

‘May I?’ I asked, and Ferdinan stepped aside.

‘Please,’ he said with relief in his voice.

I clicked the button and the screen produced yet another list, this time sorted by room number.

‘Oh, yes,’ Ferdinan said. ‘That looks like it.’

My eyes located room 102 before Ferdinan’s did, and I had found what I was looking for.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Ferdinan exclaimed. ‘The room won’t be vacated until Monday afternoon … I can see the guest has asked for the room not be cleaned during his stay so it’ll probably take longer to clean later.’

Luckily we were standing side by side so he couldn’t see my reaction. The colour must have drained from my face. He was quite right: cleaning room 102 would take a lot longer than usual this time.

I thanked him and left the reception as quickly as I could without looking back. I had got what I wanted. One of those things was the check-out date – obviously relevant in respect of how much time would pass before
Verner
’s body was discovered – but just as important was the name in which the room had been booked.

That name was Martin Kragh, one of the characters in
Brotherly Love
, a disagreeable parasite of a man, who was based on my former friend and Scriptorium brother, Morten Due, known to us all as Mortis.

IT COULDN’T BE
a coincidence.

Whoever had booked room 102 had obviously given a false name, but using Martin Kragh had to be significant. Did Mortis know something? Was he in danger, was it a red herring or was the killer taunting me? Another possible explanation was that the killer had simply picked a random name from the book; after all, it was very much an insider’s reference, although Bjarne had spotted it immediately when he read the book.

The main character in
Brotherly Love
is Mark Nordstrøm, a 40-year-old managing director of a shipping company owned by his dying father. As well as running the company, Mark also nurses his father in his final days. Mark is a good son and attends dutifully at his father’s deathbed in the knowledge that he is the sole heir to the family fortune. Or so he thinks. It turns out that his father had sired a handful of kids and they all appear at the reading of the will to claim their share of the estate. In Mark’s eyes, they have never worked a day in
their
lives, but instead have been sponging on society and, worse, the family money that should rightly go to him. Even though there is enough money for everyone to live comfortably, Mark is so outraged that he decides to kill them all, one by one. Mark knows perfectly well that suspicion will fall on him so he takes care to make the murders look like accidents or suicides and to have a bullet-proof alibi ready for every one of them. And he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams; he dispatches all his new siblings in a variety of ways, but with the common denominator that it’s their perceived laziness or lack of willpower that kills them, typically through some form of entirely unreasonable endurance test. Mark is never arrested, even though the sergeant investigating the case knows he is involved.

I considered various permutations while I ate a few mouthfuls of breakfast and drank some coffee, and I reached the conclusion that I had to get in touch with Mortis, if only to eliminate him.

From my hotel room I called Directory Enquiries, but they had no Morten Due listed in Copenhagen or surrounding areas. I called Bjarne. He was on his way to work at the sixth-form college where he taught.

‘Hi, Frank,’ he said when he heard my voice. He sounded out of breath and there was traffic noise in the background. ‘What’s up?’

‘I wanted to know if you have an address or telephone number for Mortis?’

‘Hmm …’ I heard down the other end. A car horn beeped and Bjarne cursed. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen
him
. I might have an address somewhere at home. I think he lives in north-west Copenhagen.’

‘Do you remember where?’

‘No, sorry, I don’t. Like I said, it’s a long—’

‘When will you be back?’

‘This afternoon,’ Bjarne replied. ‘But we’re seeing you tonight anyway. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?’

Of course I had. Dinner with Bjarne and Anne in the old Scriptorium flat was normally the highlight of my trip when I was in town, but all plans had been upset now. I looked around as if I had just woken up from a nap. What day was it? Was it morning or afternoon? Suddenly I didn’t know.

‘Frank?’

I cleared my throat. ‘Of course I haven’t,’ I lied slickly. ‘Seven o’clock, was it?’

‘Exactly.’

‘OK, see you tonight.’

I hung up before Bjarne had time to reply. The clock on the wall showed nine. That meant ten hours before I could get the address. The dinner invitation prompted me to remember the rest of today’s programme. It was the first day of the book fair and I was expected to promote
In the Red Zone
by signing copies. My editor’s fear that the book might be stopped was so far unfounded. His words echoed in my head. Pretend nothing has happened. Stick to the plan.

But how could I when Verner lay murdered a couple of floors below me? Then again, neither could I stand being in the hotel any longer.

I took a taxi to Forum in Frederiksberg.

Forum was a large cube of concrete and steel, placed between proud old buildings with the finesse and sensitivity to its surroundings of a piece of rubbish tossed in a flowerbed.

The queue of visitors already stretched outside. I picked up my entrance pass at the information desk and entered the exhibition hall.

My first task was to sign books and even at a distance I could see people lined up clutching books outside ZeitSign’s stand. It was ten minutes after the starting time stated in the programme.

ZeitSign’s black and white colours dominated the stand, which was bigger than usual. Black fabric had been draped over one corner and this was where all my books were exhibited – with the exception of my first two, for which I was grateful. Hundreds of copies of
In the Red Zone
had been piled up around a small table and chair that were waiting for me. This was where I could look forward to spending the next hour signing autographs.

I toyed with the idea of walking on, losing myself in the crowds pushing and shoving in between the displays. Unfortunately I loathed being swept along by a constant stream of pushy book fanatics with plastic bags and darting eyes even more than I loathed signing books. I took a deep breath and forced my way to the stand and my table. There, at least, I would be able to sit down and no one would bump into me or step on my toes.

People shuffled closer and mumbled impatiently when I hung my jacket over the back of the chair and took my seat. I found my fountain pen, secured the cap, conjured
up
the biggest smile I could manage and turned to face the first person.

As always it was mostly women who wanted their books signed. This is obviously because more women read fiction than men, but I also think women want to see the person who wrote the book. They are curious to know something about the person behind it and the signature itself is less important. The female interest when I broke through with
Outer Demons
was huge. Women wanted to meet the monster who had dreamed up such explicit scenes of violence and torture. They searched for something dangerous or evil in my eyes to make them shudder. They may have been disappointed, but it has never prevented them from turning up in vast numbers for book signings to confess how affected they were when they read this or that passage.

‘Oh, there you are,’ a voice said next to me and I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Finn Gelf. ‘We were just starting to worry that you might not show.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, giving a signed copy of
In the Red Zone
to a woman in her forties. She smiled gratefully and disappeared clutching her trophy. ‘The circus horse is ready to take another trip round the ring,’ I added, and smiled to the next person in the queue.

Finn patted my shoulder.

‘That’s good to know, Frank. Please would you pop by backstage when you’re done?’

The backstage area was a small cubicle behind the stand. A couple of folding chairs let you to take the weight off your feet, a necessity for staff who had to stand up all day and a sanctuary for the authors. Though it was narrow
and
busy, it still offered some respite from the crowds and, most importantly, it featured a keg of beer. I was already looking forward to it.