Death Sentence

12

THE REST OF the journey back to the hotel went by in a blur. Perhaps I said something to the driver before I went into the lobby and up to the lift, or maybe I just paid and walked away, I don’t know, but I remember the sensation of falling even as the lift carried me up to my floor.

The envelope felt heavier the last few steps down the corridor to my room. Once inside I locked the door behind me and left the letters on the coffee table. Fortunately Ferdinan had made sure to stock up the minibar, so I poured myself a double whisky and sat down in an armchair. The envelope was identical to the one I had received earlier, yellow and anonymous, with my name written on a white label. The only difference was that this time my publisher’s address had been added.

I swallowed a mouthful of whisky without taking my eyes off the envelope. There was plenty to suggest it was from the same person who had sent me the picture of Mona Weis, but I couldn’t know for sure until I opened it. I put the glass down. My hands shook as they reached out for what I was sure would be the worst letter I’d ever receive. I turned the envelope over, but there were no other clues. With great care I eased open the flap. Once I had done that, I placed the envelope on my knees and stuck my hand inside. I got hold of the book and pulled it out.

It was a copy of As You Sow, a novel I had written five years ago, in which a murder is committed in the very hotel where I was now staying.

I placed it on top of the envelope. A dryness in my throat made me reach for my drink and take a large gulp.

The book cover was a photograph of a Copenhagen street by night. You couldn’t make out which street it was, but it clearly wasn’t a salubrious area. Dark doorways and grey facades combined with neon lights and cobblestoned alleyways to convey a dirty, raw atmosphere, exactly what the book promised.

The killer and main character, Silke Knudsen, was a Copenhagen prostitute who had seen most things and been screwed out of everything. One day she has had enough and takes revenge on everyone who has ever hurt her. Violent punters are dispatched with the same savagery they have themselves inflicted on the girls, pimps die a slow, painful death for every krone they have taken in commission and a vile, corrupt superintendent dies in a hotel room. The victims include a woman: a fellow prostitute who cheated Silke out of her share of the money they were paid for a threesome. Silke arranges for her to be gang-raped. Afterwards, as the woman lies bound, beaten and ravaged on a bench in a cold warehouse in Sydhavnen, Silke injects her with an overdose of heroin. The murder of this woman happens early in the book and it causes the woman’s sister, Annika, to travel from Jutland to investigate. Annika is confronted with the dark underbelly of prostitution, but she doesn’t give up. She uses her background as a lawyer to investigate the case, assisted by a young police officer who has a crush on her. The showdown takes place at a hotel in the red-light district where the two women finally meet. Their fight takes them to the top of the building while the lower floors go up in flames. Silke falls six floors from the roof – with considerable help from Annika – and smashes into the pavement in front of the hotel. Annika has avenged her sister, but discovers that she has prostituted herself in the process. She has no real feelings for the police officer and she has given legal advice to criminals in exchange for information during the investigation. At the end of the book, Annika’s future is unclear; the reader doesn’t know if she goes back to Jutland or becomes a prostitute.

As far as I could see the book was unread. It was a first edition, not surprisingly; As You Sow hadn’t sold terribly well.

I turned the first ten or fifteen pages without finding anything. Then I flicked my way through the rest of the book.

It was a third of the way in, on see here. A Polaroid. The image showed a man, slightly overweight judging from his face. At first I couldn’t make out who it was. He had a broad strip of grey tape across his mouth. He was sweating and his small, deep-set eyes showed panic. Fear contorted his facial features, but eventually I recognized him.

It was Verner.

I turned the photo over. There was no information on the back so I focused my attention on the front. I tried to keep my emotions out of it by breathing deeply and concentrating on the details in the picture. Verner’s short hair was soaked in sweat and his face slightly pink. He didn’t appear to be wearing a shirt; I could see the top of his naked shoulders. Behind him was a brass frame of some sort.

I got up abruptly, tumbling the book and the envelope to the floor, and went to my bedroom. The bed was bigger than I was used to in hotels, but it was the same type – a sturdy brass frame with turned brass bars. I held up the photo to the bed frame to compare. There could be no doubt.

Back in the living room, I picked up the envelope and looked inside it. I hadn’t expected to find anything, but this time it wasn’t empty. A key nestled at the bottom. I turned the envelope upside down and scooped it up as it fell out.

As I had already guessed, it was the key to room 102, the room I normally stayed in, the room that was the crime scene in As You Sow.

I had a flash of inspiration. It could be a hoax. Perhaps Verner was setting me up. He was twisted enough to do something like that, but what would be the point? I looked at the photo again. The expression in his eyes looked like genuine terror and Verner was no actor.

There was only one way to find out.

It took two more whiskies before I summoned up the courage to leave my suite. On impulse I took the stairs, possibly because I didn’t wish to meet anyone, least of all Ferdinan, but also because I felt queasy and didn’t want to be trapped inside the claustrophobic lift.

I made sure no one saw me outside room 102. The corridor was empty. A ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hung from the door handle. I inserted the key and let myself in.

The stench was overwhelming: a mixture of faeces, urine and a third substance I didn’t even want to think about. I had to swallow a couple of times in order not to throw up on the spot.

It was dark. The blinds were down and the curtains closed. My hand found a switch inside the door and I turned on the light. I was in the small hallway with access to the bathroom, then the room itself, which was mainly occupied by the double bed.

Though I knew precisely what awaited me, I still gasped when I saw Verner.

He was resting against the headboard, naked, with his arms stretched out as far as they could go and strapped to the brass frame with black cable ties. On the wall above the bed, someone had written ‘PIG’ in what looked like blood. His chin rested on his chest as if he were staring down at himself. His large body was smeared in blood and vomit, and his legs spread and tied to the under frame with nylon rope. The weight of his body had caused the mattress to sink and a large pool of blood and other bodily fluids had formed around him.

I ran to the bathroom and reached the toilet bowl just in time to throw up. When my stomach was empty, I collapsed on the floor and sobbed. No one deserved what Verner had been subjected to, but I wasn’t crying for him, I was crying for myself. I cried because I was powerless. I was the real victim here, punished for something I had yet to understand.

After some time, I don’t know how long, I got up. I spat into the toilet bowl a couple of times, blew my nose, washed my face and tried to rinse away the taste of vomit with water.

Then I took a towel and wiped down the taps, the toilet seat and the door.

Back at the bed I spent a moment studying Verner. Everything seemed to match the description in the book: the way he had been tied up, the mutilation of his genitals and the deep cuts to his abdomen. However, in the book I had stated that his hands had turned purple like a pair of gloves from having been tied so tight, but in reality they had the same pale colour as the rest of his body.

Everything suggested Verner was dead, but I had to check. I bent over and pressed two fingers against his neck. He was cold and stiff. I withdrew my hand and wiped my fingers on the towel as if I had touched something contagious.

There was no need for me to examine him closely. If I wanted to know what had happened to him, all I had to do was reread my own book. There I would learn that his testicles had been cut off and stuffed into his mouth, and there would be blunt force trauma to his head from pistol-whipping. The scalpel should be lying on the floor somewhere, tossed aside like a lolly stick. I knelt down and leaned forward to inspect the floor. The scalpel lay on the other side of the bed. Next to it was the Bible, which had served as the chopping board during the castration.

I felt queasy again and ran to the toilet to be sick, but nothing came up. Only a dry cough rang out between the tiled walls. I was incapable of thinking clearly.

All the same I managed to retain my composure long enough to wipe down any area or object I remembered touching. Afterwards I let myself out into the corridor, gave the door handle the same treatment and stuffed the towel inside my shirt. That left the key. I briefly considered pushing it under the door, but for some reason I changed my mind and hid it in a flowerpot on the way back to my room.

There was no whisky or gin left in the minibar so I drank some brandy straight from the bottle. The taste of vomit was forced out by the alcohol, but the nausea lingered. I was sweating profusely and wiped my face with the towel.

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.