Death Sentence

22

BJARNE ARRIVED AT one o’clock in the morning.

I called him from Mortis’s mobile and he hadn’t sounded surprised. Anne drove the car, a Volvo of a square design, spacious and with seatbelts everywhere. She parked right outside the entrance door so Bjarne and I could easily lift Mortis on to the back seat.

He was still unconscious. Occasionally he would mutter to himself, but he hadn’t opened his eyes or spoken coherently since the shower cubicle. None of us said anything on the way back to their flat. Anne made up a bed in the spare bedroom, my old Scriptorium room, and Bjarne and I took off Mortis’s clothes, dressed him in an old pair of Bjarne’s pyjamas and put him to bed.

‘Just like the old days, eh?’ Bjarne said, as we watched our sleeping Scriptorium brother.

I laughed briefly, at the same time thinking this was nothing like the old days.

Bjarne promised to keep Mortis indoors for a couple of days. He didn’t want to know the reasons for my request; to him it was enough that our mutual friend needed help. I think he felt ashamed at his failure to respond when Mortis contacted him a couple of months ago. He ought to have known, he said over and over.

Once Mortis was safely installed, I left Bjarne and wandered down to the Lakes. I sat down on a bench and stared across the water. Neon advertisements reflected in the surface of the water, but numerous little waves broke up the images into smaller, sharper stripes of light, blinking in an infinite variety of patterns. I was mesmerized by this dance of light for a long time. I can’t remember what, if anything, was going on behind my unfocused eyes.

What I do remember when I stood up again was a sense of resolution. I had a feeling that everything was up to me. It was impossible to know if Mortis was part of the killer’s plan, but if he was, I had just saved his life. I had thwarted the killer’s game plan, refused to play along and therefore won this round. This meant, I felt, that I wasn’t fighting a losing battle. There was hope. The time had come to take action and apply all of my criminal imagination to getting out of this mess, like a fighter, stronger than before.

The problem was that my only real clue hadn’t lead to a breakthrough. All I had to go on now was my instinct, but then again, why wouldn’t that be enough? If the killer was really trying to get me, he must have made an effort to get inside my head, understand my thinking, and I could exploit that as a kind of double bluff.

My reconstruction of Verner’s last moments might turn out to be quite near the truth. All I had to do was find Lulu – that is, if she really existed. My contact with the police had ended with Verner’s death and I couldn’t start asking them questions without attracting unnecessary attention.

If I was going to find Lulu, I would have to do it on my own.

I knew I stood no chance of getting information out of the prostitutes in Vesterbro if I was on foot. They would think I was a policeman. However, there was no risk anyone would take my old Toyota Corolla for a police car, so I fetched it and drove towards Halmtorvet.

Urban regeneration had improved the old red-light district considerably and initially the hookers had been scared off. Nevertheless the area’s reputation had been hard to shake off and a few years later the prostitutes returned to their old haunts because that was where the punters came looking for them.

I drove down Søndre Boulevard. The girls were lined up at fifty-metre intervals, some in pairs, others alone. They were mainly foreign, dark like the night or pale with angular, Russian features. When I slowed down, they would walk up to the car with a frozen smile and their eyes fixed at a spot behind me.

‘We have sex?’ they asked in a voice that sounded like a recording.

I was looking for a white girl. Verner had nothing but contempt for East European or African women and I knew they would never have been able to lure him anywhere.

The sad and bleak expressions in the women’s faces failed to move me. My brain had switched to survival mode and the feelings and predicaments of others were lost on me. I was on a mission: Mission Frank Føns.

I turned down the women’s offers, but asked if they knew a Danish girl who had worked the Marieborg Hotel last Wednesday, and described the girl from the lift. Most of them didn’t understand me or knew nothing about it. One of them suggested I went to Istedgade, a street favoured by the Danish prostitutes, and I followed her advice.

Istedgade had more traffic, better lighting and was indeed more popular with the Danish girls. There was a greater degree of presence with them and their approach seemed more genuine, or at least better rehearsed.

After only a few enquiries, I struck lucky with a tall slim woman with jet black hair, enormous breasts and a huge firm bum. The whole package was poured into a tight-fitting black catsuit and a white jacket.

‘You’re looking for Marie,’ she said with the accent of a docker, never letting her chewing gum rest. ‘That was the easiest job she has ever had.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘What do you want with her? You a cop or something?’

‘No, no,’ I said quickly. ‘Someone recommended her.’

‘Right,’ the black-haired woman said, still staring at me with distrust. ‘And what’s wrong with me,’ she said, opening her white jacket to give me a better view of the inflated breasts.

‘Perhaps some other time,’ I said and smiled. ‘I’ll give you two hundred if you tell me where she is.’

She looked around and held out her hand. I found my wallet and fished out two hundred kroner, which quickly disappeared down her cleavage.

‘Try Saxogade,’ she said, nodding further down the street. ‘But she has the decorators in so she’s only up for French and hand jobs.’

‘Decorators?’ I asked, but interrupted myself. ‘Oh, I get it. OK.’

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a filly whose equipment is in full working order?’

I declined and drove on to Saxogade.

‘Ask for Monica next time!’ she called out after me. ‘Monica!’

I found Marie sitting on a doorstep in Saxogade. She was small and thin, just like I remembered her when I bumped into her in the lift. Her hair was blonde and her skin pale, where she hadn’t covered it with blusher. Her make-up was slapped on as if she had applied it going down the stairs. Her vacant eyes registered that I stopped the car and she forced the corners of her mouth into something that resembled a smile but only made her look worse.

I asked if she had been to the hotel two days ago.

She closed her eyes as if it took all of her concentration to remember what day it was and where she had been. When she didn’t reply, I thought she might have fallen asleep. I got out of the car and went over to her.

‘Lulu,’ I said, prodding her. ‘Did you go to the Marieborg Hotel last Wednesday?’

She opened her eyes. ‘My name’s not Lulu.’

I shook my head. ‘Did you meet Verner, the police officer, there?’

I spotted a flicker of recognition in her eyes.

‘Oh, Paedo? Yes, yes.’

My heart began to pound and I could barely control myself.

‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Who contacted you?’

Marie stared at me. ‘Who the hell are you?’

I straightened up and glanced around. ‘I’m a friend of Verner’s. I need to know what happened.’

‘How much?’

‘What do you mean?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘How much do you need to know?’

I reached for my wallet. ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

She wiped her nose with her hand. ‘I need a hit,’ she said. ‘And I need it now. Business is bad when you’re on the rug and I need something now.’

‘OK, Lulu,’ I said. ‘How much is it?’

‘Why do you keep calling me Lulu?’

‘Sorry. Marie,’ I corrected myself and looked up and down the street again. ‘How much is it?’

She peered at me through half-closed eyes. ‘Eleven hundred per gram,’ she said.

I only had five hundred in cash, but I nodded. ‘Deal.’

‘That’s twenty-two hundred,’ she added quickly. ‘I need two grams.’

I protested, but she interrupted me.

‘Do you want to know what happened or not?’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you know.’

Marie shook her head. ‘Oh, no, that’s not how we do it. Drugs first.’

We both stood up and got into the car.

‘OK, where we going?’

‘Just drive to Enghave Plads and I’ll direct you from there.’ Her eyes stared straight ahead at the reward waiting for her.

I stopped at a cashpoint in Istedgade to get some more money. At Enghave Plads she directed me through some side streets before telling me to stop outside a 7-Eleven.

‘Here?’ I asked.

‘No, it’s a bit further down the street,’ she replied. ‘But you’ll wait here. If they see a strange car outside the flat, they’ll shit themselves.’ She held out her hand.

‘How do I know you’ll come back, Lulu?’ I asked as I counted out the twenty-two hundred kroner.

‘Cut that Lulu crap, OK?’

I held up my hand in a conciliatory gesture. ‘How do I know you’ll come back, Marie?’ I repeated.

‘I’m not shooting up in there again. Once I woke up with no knickers and spunk all over me. I’m not doing that again.’ She snatched the notes from my hand. ‘And get me some water.’

Marie left the car and walked down the street. I watched her and wondered if I had just waved goodbye to twenty-two hundred kroner and the last real clue I had.