Death Sentence

13

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.