Death Sentence

21

THOUGH I HAD never been there before, I knew that Rentemestervej hadn’t changed. I have always imagined north-west Copenhagen as grey, gloomy and neglected, and it didn’t disappoint when I arrived in a taxi straight from Bjarne and Anne’s flat. Once I got Mortis’s address, I made my excuses and left. Bjarne was clearly worried. He almost certainly knew I’d go straight to Rentemestervej, but he said nothing and he didn’t try to stop me. Perhaps he believed that seeing Mortis would clear up the situation for me and finally convince me I was on the wrong track.

I started having doubts myself as I stood outside number 43. It was a yellow brick building, but over time sunlight and exhaust fumes had given it a sickly grey hue, like a chain smoker’s fingers. Cheap aluminium balconies had been screwed to the brickwork outside every flat in the three-storey building, but most of the residents used them to store rubbish or junk they had no room for inside. It was hard to imagine anyone in this block could plan or manage anything other than basic survival.

On the ground floor I studied the list of residents and found Morten’s name. Morten Jensen. Of course. That was the reason I had been unable to find him through Directory Enquiries. Mortis’s real name was Morten Due Jensen, but in the Scriptorium days he refused to use Jensen and called himself Morten Due. ‘Jensen is the name of the bog-standard Dane,’ he said if anyone asked. He wanted to stand out from the crowd. He wanted to be someone. It would appear he had changed his mind.

The communal light switched itself off, so I switched it back on and headed up the stairs. I hesitated once I reached Mortis’s door. I didn’t really know why I had come. Perhaps it was to check he really existed, now confirmed by the white plastic letters on the letter flap.

There was no doorbell, so I knocked on the door, three hard knocks that echoed in the stairwell. It was quiet behind the door. I waited a few seconds and knocked again, but there was still no response. Irritated, I squatted down, pushed open the letter flap and tried to peer inside. It was completely dark.

‘Morten?’ I called out, my lips close to the flap.

I refused to accept I’d come in vain. It couldn’t be a dead end. There was too much at stake.

I lifted the doormat to check if there was a key. Of course there wasn’t, but the idea wasn’t that far-fetched. Mortis had a tendency to lose things when he went out, so back in the Scriptorium days he had always kept a spare key somewhere. I got up and traced my fingers along the top of the door frame, but all I got out of it was a cushion of dust. Perhaps he had got better at looking after his keys? I pushed down the door handle, just to make sure he hadn’t given up on keys altogether, but the door was locked.

The communal light switched itself off and the light from the moon shone on me from a window between the floors. I walked up a few steps to the window and opened it. My heart started racing. Mortis’s balcony was only two or three metres from the window and I could see that the balcony door was ajar. The balcony itself was only a couple of metres square; I could see that it was littered with empty bottles, leaving a small area clear around the door.

My eyes sought out the building across the road. It was only eleven o’clock, so there was still light coming from most of the flats. Televisions glowed in some of them, others had candlesticks on the windowsills or tea lights in saucers. But there were no people to be seen, no one who would notice an intruder on the balcony.

I rested my forehead against the window frame and closed my eyes. How badly did I want to do this? If I fell from the second floor, I could break both arms and legs, and if I was very unlucky, I might end up dead. The image of Verner in the hotel bed surfaced in my mind. Mortis was my only real clue. Admittedly only in the form of a pseudonym from one of my own novels in which room 102 had been booked, but nevertheless it was a clue, it was a name.

I opened my eyes and pushed up the window. The sill outside was fairly wide. The pigeons had discovered this too and it was covered in pigeon shit. I held on tight to the window frame, climbed up and out on to the sill. I knelt down, like a runner on a starting block, and concentrated on the balcony diagonally below. The blood was pumping around my body as if I was preparing for a parachute jump rather than a leap of a couple of metres. The hand that was gripping the window frame was starting to get sweaty.

I checked the building opposite and I set off.

My feet slipped in bird poo, my arms reached out, my eyes focused on the balcony. I felt the wind against my face as I moved through the air. It wasn’t elegant or graceful, more like a diver jumping from the three-metre board and suffering a heart attack halfway. The balcony rushed closer and my chest banged into the railing followed by the rest of my body. It sounded very loud to my ears and all I could think about was getting inside the balcony and out of sight. I climbed over the railing and slid down on a sea of empty bottles. The clinking sound rang out between the blocks.

The impact had knocked the air out of me and I inhaled greedily until a sharp pain in my left side made me stop. I tried to breathe more calmly, but it still hurt. Had I been able to swear or scream I would have done so, but all I was capable of was gasping. Carefully I lifted a hand and touched my ribs. My body contracted as my fingers explored the left side of my chest. More bottles on the balcony toppled. I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes.

It took me a couple of minutes to get my breathing under control. I heard someone call out and a door nearby being closed; apart from that, it was quiet. The bottles underneath me felt like a pile of stones, but I didn’t dare move even though my body ached all over. The crash might have woken up the whole block, but I prayed that no one had seen me and that the noise had echoed around the walls so its origins couldn’t be identified. I lay there for another five minutes to make absolutely sure.

The door to the balcony couldn’t be opened immediately. The bottles had rolled everywhere and in order to make room for the door, I had to move several of them while remaining unseen. My ribs hurt with every movement and I was forced to pause to catch my breath. At last I had cleared enough space to open the door and sneak inside.

When I could lie down on my back on the living-room floor, I allowed myself to moan loudly. I examined my ribs again, but could find no sign of fracture.

The flat was quiet. All I could hear was my own laboured breathing. The place smelled stuffy and close. The balcony door might have been ajar, but not enough to air the room. I was lying on a parquet floor and a short distance away from me was a dark leather sofa, an armchair and a coffee table. Empty bottles and cups of cold coffee and cigarette butts were scattered across the table. What appeared to be big frames of some sort were lined up against the walls and it wasn’t until I had closed the blinds and switched on the light that I realized the frames were bookcases, empty bookcases.

I was taken aback. Mortis loved books and a home without books would be anathema to him. The TV stand was also empty. A black square in the dust revealed that a television had sat there until very recently.

In the hall lay a huge pile of newspapers and post, mainly bills. They had been pushed to one side behind the door so you could just about open it. I found what I was looking for: Mortis’s spare key hanging from an elastic band right next to the letter flap so you could pull it out with a finger, if you knew where it was. My ribs protested and I cursed loudly.

I found the most recent newspaper and checked the date. It was over a month old. Had Mortis moved, done a runner or was he just too lazy to sort his post?

The bottle collection carried on into the kitchen and the fridge was just as empty as the bookcases in the living room. Plates, glasses and pizza boxes littered the worktops and the sink. Only a few clean plates were left in the cupboards.

I pushed open the door to the bathroom. The light was already switched on and revealed walls of yellow plastic with rounded corners, which were probably easy to clean, but reminded me of a passenger ferry. It stank of urine and the toilet bowl was brown from limescale and muck. An empty gin bottle lay in the sink. The shower curtain was mouldy and pulled across.

I was just about to switch off the light and close the door when something made me stop. As I was there I might as well make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything. I went back, grabbed the shower curtain and prepared to fling it aside. I held my breath. My brain and my heart had already told me what I would find, the biggest horror film cliché of them all, a body in the bath, naked, pale and staring at me with accusing eyes.

With a brisk movement, I opened the shower curtain.

Mortis lay curled up in the shower tray. His long body was folded up in the small space, but he wasn’t naked and he wasn’t staring at me with dead eyes. He looked like he was asleep. His hair was shoulder length, wispy and had acquired streaks of grey since the last time I saw him. He wore a white shirt with yellow stains; a pair of black jeans concealed his skinny legs. His feet were bare and practically ashen.

I squatted down and held out a hand to him.

‘Morten.’

His shoulder was scarily fragile and I took care not to shake it too violently. I pressed a couple of fingers against his neck. There was a pulse; it was weak, but it was there.

At that moment Mortis’s body jerked, he opened his mouth and threw up all over my hand in an odd mechanical movement. I leapt up and took a step backwards.

‘Bloody hell, Mortis,’ I cursed. I washed my hands while keeping an eye on him. My concern had turned into irritation.

He didn’t move, but started to snore, loudly and regularly. Nor did he react when I straightened him up in the shower cubicle. His head lolled from side to side and he coughed once, but he accepted being moved into an upright sitting position. He stank of vomit though he clearly hadn’t eaten for a long time.

I swore again, took the showerhead and hosed Mortis’s stomach contents down the drain, before directing the jet of water at him. Eventually the water soaked into his greasy hair and flowed down his face and chest.

He tried to move his head away from the water, but I followed him and turned up the cold water. He spewed bubbles and rambled some swear words.

‘Morten!’

His eyelids twitched and deep furrows emerged on his forehead.

‘It’s me, Frank!’

His lips appeared to repeat my name and the furrows grew deeper. Suddenly his eyelids sprang open and he stared directly at me.

‘What the hell,’ he muttered.

I turned off the water. ‘Are you OK?’

His gaze was swimming and his half-open eyes looked around the bathroom and down his clothes before returning to me. ‘Frank?’

‘From the Scriptorium.’

‘Yes, yes … what an honour.’ Mortis swallowed a couple of times before expelling a long belch. ‘I don’t remember … I don’t remember inviting you.’ He shut his eyes for a moment, but then he glared at me. ‘Why can’t a man be allowed to party in peace?’

‘Party?’

‘Yes, for Christ’s sake, party … you know … it’s … what day is it?’

‘Friday.’

‘That’s right!’ He had barely spoken the words before his head slumped on one shoulder and his eyes closed.