Death Sentence

3

WHILE I DROVE back to the cottage, I tried to work out how many people had read In the Red Zone. My editor was the first person to read the script and I guessed that probably three or four other people at the publishing company, as well as a couple of bookclub editors, must have seen it. The book would be published in a few days; it had been printed, so the printers must have had access to it for a month or two. I had received thirty complimentary copies in the post and it was likely that several copies had been sent to reviewers and to bookshops as pre-orders. Of my thirty copies, I had sent one to Verner, given one to my neighbour, and sent one to my ex-wife and one to my parents.

In total I estimated that somewhere between one and two hundred people had had access to the printed text of In the Red Zone, but both my publishers and the printers had the electronic version and that tends to appear in the strangest of places. I once received a printout of my sixth book, Nuclear Families, where the names of the victims had been replaced with mine and my family’s. I didn’t take threats like that seriously. I had grown used to letters that attacked my work or me personally, but on that occasion someone on the inside had leaked the electronic version of the script. My publishers couldn’t explain it, but took the opportunity to enhance their security procedures. However, this was now some years ago and such precautions quickly become ineffective if they aren’t reviewed at regular intervals.

The bottom line was I had no way of knowing who or how many people had access to In the Red Zone, so I was none the wiser when I pulled into the drive of the Tower.

‘Hello, FF,’ my neighbour, Bent, called out as I got out of my car.

He was standing in his own drive wearing baggy army trousers, a far too tight black T-shirt and resting an axe on one shoulder. During the summer he had chopped down seven or eight trees on his own property and three on mine, and most of his garden was littered with timber in all lengths and widths. He had an artificial leg, but he was remarkably active and insisted on splitting all the wood into logs by hand.

‘Hello, neighbour,’ I replied and tried to produce a smile.

‘We’re running a bit late today,’ he said, grinning.

He was referring to our afternoon ritual of meeting up for a drink or two around three o’clock. Bent drank beer and I had a whisky, usually a single malt, Laphroaig or Oban. For me, it often marked the end of my working day. I rarely wrote for more than five or six hours and I had started to value human company after thinking about my book all day. My discussions with Bent were seldom very sophisticated and at times I got irritated by his prejudiced views about immigrants, women or politics, but he was always friendly and willing to lend a hand whenever I needed it.

‘I think I’ll have to make my excuses today, Bent.’ I pointed to my temples. ‘I’ve got a splitting headache.’

‘Oh, all right,’ he said, sounding disappointed. ‘I guess it must be hard work committing all those murders.’

‘What?’

‘Coming up with them, I mean.’

‘Oh, right, I see. No, I think it’s something else,’ I lied. ‘Might be flu.’

Bent nodded. ‘OK, I hope you feel better soon.’ He swung the axe from his shoulder and was about to carry on chopping, but stopped when I called out to him.

‘By the way, have you started the new book?’

Bent shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he replied. ‘I haven’t finished your last one yet. I’m not a fast reader and when I’ve been outside most of the day, I fall asleep once my head hits the pillow.’ He grinned. ‘I’m not saying your books are boring, it’s just all that fresh air wears me out.’

‘That’s quite all right, Bent. I was just checking.’

‘See you later, FF.’

FF was the nickname he had given me shortly after we met. It was not only the initials of my name, but also of his favourite beer, Fine Festival, which for him was the perfect trade-off between price and strength.

Bent was only ever known as Bent. He came from a working-class family. His father was a blacksmith and his mother a housewife until Bent and his brother, Ole, were old enough to look after themselves, when she got a job as a cashier in the local supermarket. Even though Bent did well at school, he started an apprenticeship at fifteen and became a smith like his father. But the trade bored him, so he was delighted when his name came up for National Service and he was sent to the barracks in Næstved. He showed considerable promise and jumped at the chance to pursue a career in the army, a career that saw him posted to Iraq. He loved being stationed abroad and extended his posting several times – until he saw one of his mates ripped to pieces by an IED and was himself hit in the leg by shrapnel. The doctors couldn’t save his leg and after three years’ service abroad he was invalided out with miserly compensation.

Back home in Denmark, he realized he had no chance of getting a job and took early retirement at the age of twenty-six. He was in the habit of saying that his experiences in Iraq had aged him forty years, so technically he had reached retirement age.

He kept his army haircut and usually wore camouflage clothes and army boots, possibly out of habit, but more I suspect because it was important to him to remind himself and those around him of his past.

The mental calculations I had done on the way home were still buzzing around my head. I checked the stack of In the Red Zone that was on my desk. My publishers appeared to have short-changed me by one book on this occasion. At any rate, I’d given away four, but only twenty-five copies remained, including the one I had taken out on to the terrace earlier.

These days I’m rather wary of handing out copies of a new novel until it has been reviewed, so it was unlikely I’d given one away and forgotten about it. In the past I had given away books when drunk, sometimes with preposterous dedications to entice the recipient into bed, but it was several years since I had last done that.

I poured myself a whisky, which I knocked back before calling Verner. He wasn’t back from work yet, his wife said, so I asked her to get him to call me. For the first time since moving to the cottage, I was actually waiting for the telephone to ring.

Which it did after another two whiskies.

Verner had worked late to find out more about the Gilleleje murder. He got a bit annoyed when I told him I had been to the marina. He couldn’t see why I would want to do that; on the contrary, he said, I ought to stay away to avoid suspicion. But I had nothing to hide, and I reckon the real reason for his anger was that he thought I didn’t trust him. It was a poor start to the conversation, but after I made a couple of placatory remarks, he got to the point.

‘I’ve got some bad news for you,’ he began. ‘Turns out the dead woman wasn’t a redhead after all.’

‘And you call that bad news?’ I burst out. ‘That’s brilliant!’

‘Not really. She has short black hair, but when they found her, she was wearing a red wig.’ He waited a couple of seconds for the penny to drop. ‘The killer put her in that wig to make her look like the woman in your book.’

I didn’t interrupt him again.

Verner told me someone had reported seeing light in the water last night. A couple of divers were sent to investigate this morning and had discovered the body. The light originated from a powerful diving lamp aimed straight up at the surface and it had clearly been placed there to make sure she was found. No one appeared to have noticed any boats anchored in the area.

The police believed the woman had been dead for thirty-six hours when they found her, and they established that she had been alive when she was immersed and would probably have been conscious for at least fifteen minutes before she suffocated to death. The cuts to the body were caused by a sharp knife or scalpel and inflicted underwater.

In my book I had given the victim those cuts to attract small fish so she would feel them nibbling little chunks off her, but Verner told me there were very few bites to the body and they definitely hadn’t been inflicted while she was alive. Somehow I couldn’t help feeling annoyed about this difference.

‘Do you know who she was?’ I asked.

‘A local girl,’ Verner replied. ‘She worked in a bookshop in Gilleleje High Street. Mona something; I don’t remember her surname.’

My heart skipped a beat.

‘Mona Weis?’ I said.

Silence down the other end of the telephone.

Then, ‘Yes … do you know her?’

‘You just told me she worked in a bookshop in Gilleleje. I’ve signed books there a couple of times and I’ve met her, that’s all.’

‘Hmm,’ Verner grunted. ‘And yet you can remember her surname?’

To my ears his question was tinged with a certain amount of suspicion, but then again he is a copper.

‘It’s an interesting name,’ I replied. ‘Authors collect interesting names.’

In truth there was a completely different reason why I remembered Mona’s surname. I had indeed signed autographs in the bookshop in Gilleleje High Street and that was where I had met her, but it had turned into more than just an incidental meeting.

I can’t deny that Mona was the inspiration behind Kit Hansen in the book – apart from the hair. Mona Weis had short black hair, as Verner had said, but came across as incredibly feminine. Her face was narrow and she had luminous blue eyes, a fine pointed nose and a small round mouth that made her look as if she was constantly blowing kisses. She was tall and slim without being gangly. Later, when I addressed her as Cleopatra, she rolled her eyes and said she had heard that one before. It failed as a compliment, but I couldn’t help it, she really did look like her.

I was due to spend two hours in the bookshop and I signed a grand total of four copies, of which one was a borderline sleazy dedication to Mona. The shop wasn’t very big, but they had found room for me in a corner where they had displayed a selection of my books and put up a till to serve the hordes of fans expected to queue up to buy a copy and get it signed by the author. It was Mona’s job to operate the till, so we had ample time to talk, and flirt, in two hours while we waited for customers. She offered to add a little something to my coffee to help both of us stay awake and to my delight the next cup she brought me had an overpowering taste of whisky. We drank a lot of coffee and became increasingly animated, something the other staff members couldn’t help noticing.

Afterwards we went to the Kanal Café or the ‘Carnal Café’ as the locals call it, where we carried on drinking whisky. It was there that I called her Cleopatra and she told me she couldn’t stand my books. I must have looked taken back because she quickly added that she liked me very much. She said she was fed up with dating fishermen and country bumpkins who drank beer and only ever talked about cars. At this point we both agreed there was no reason to stay in the café, and we returned to her flat, two rooms above the town’s photo shop, where we tore each other’s clothes off as soon as the door had slammed shut. We fucked like rabbits, changed positions and places constantly, but my most vivid memory was being ridden by Cleopatra, whose blue eyes practically glowed down on me.

She tired of me after six weeks. I wasn’t surprised; she was twelve years younger than me and I was just grateful for the time we had together. She told me little about herself and I didn’t encourage her to tell me more. We were lovers at a time when we both needed someone, that was all.

Yet her death hit me like a blow to the chest. I hadn’t seen her for over two years, but the thought of anyone dying in this way, let alone her, made me feel nauseous.

Down the other end of the telephone, Verner cleared his throat.

‘Listen, Frank. I have to ask you a question.’

‘Of course.’

‘Can you account for your whereabouts these last three days?’