Death Sentence (26 page)

I looked around. The bedroom was done entirely in white and in the grey light cast by the sombre sky outside, it seemed clinical and sad. Linda wasn’t there. I sniffed the bed linen. It smelled of sex and sweat like after a pub crawl. From the bed I could look out of the door, out on to the landing from where steps led down to the living room. Images of us fucking our way up the stairs flashed before my eyes.

I shook my head, but stopped when I felt a headache hit it like a hammer. My throat was parched and my stomach complained with a loud rumbling.

Slowly, I sat up in the bed. My legs trembled as I stood up and I had to wait a moment until the dizzy spell passed. I shuffled through the door and across to the stairs. Small lithographs hung on the walls all the way down. I clutched the banister and started my descent. The lithographs appeared to be telling a story, but it wasn’t until I reached the foot of the stairs that I recognized it. It was the
Divine Comedy
.

I smiled to myself at this discovery and turned my head.

The sight that met me made me jump back with a cry.

Linda Hvilbjerg was hanging from the balustrade on the landing with a rope around her neck.

Her dead eyes were wide in terror as if they had just witnessed something incomprehensible, something unbelievably terrifying. Dark lines of coagulated blood flowed
from
her neck down her white, slender body. The lines traversed her breasts and continued down between her legs. Her groin was a bloody pulp and a massive object had been forced up her vagina.

It was a book.

I averted my eyes and stared at the white wall. My whole body was shaking and I had to sit down on the steps in order not to fall. I breathed deeply in an attempt to regain control of myself.

A few minutes later I slowly turned my head.

Linda Hvilbjerg’s naked body was still hanging there. A large puddle of blood had gathered on the floor beneath her. It was dark, black almost, and seemed viscous like oil. An overturned chair lay nearby. Footprints had been left on the floor around the body, numerous bloody shoeprints as if someone had outlined the choreography of a complicated dance.

My heart pounded and the nausea spread from my stomach up through my chest and throat. I tumbled forwards, landed on all fours and threw up at the foot of the stairs. Every spasm felt like a blow to the stomach and it carried on long after my stomach was empty. When I could throw up no more, I started to sob. I struggled to breathe and my crying was chopped into intermittent outbursts, like that of a little boy.

I crawled over to the puddle where I knelt down and stared up at Linda’s body.

Even without having touched her, I knew she was cold. Her colour and immobility told me that the warm body I had enjoyed in the night had now been reduced to a lump of dead meat. Still I reached up and took hold of her foot,
which
dangled roughly half a metre above the floor. The coldness caused me to let go, but I made myself grab it again. Her toenails were painted purple, a detail I hadn’t noticed before and which was now completely irrelevant.

I released her foot and stood up. I was almost eye-level with her groin and I had to swallow repeatedly not to throw up again. The book that had been forced up her vagina was bent double and soaked in blood, apart from a few pages that glowed eerily white in contrast to the blood and the flesh. Her stomach and breasts were streaked with blood and my eyes followed the lines upwards. The blue nylon rope around her neck dug deep into her flesh. Under the rope, cuts had been made to her throat, some all the way to her veins from where the blood had flowed freely. Scrunched-up pages had been stuffed into her mouth and I knew that they had been ripped out of the same book.

In
Media Whore
, the killer had placed his victim on a chair and raped her with a book after which he had hoisted her up on the chair and tightened the rope around her neck, so she could only avoid strangulation by standing on her toes. Then he had made the first incisions into smaller veins causing her to slowly lose blood. She began to weaken and was finally unable to keep upright. The moment she collapsed, he severed her artery and spun her around so the blood sprayed the walls like a garden sprinkler. The body was emptied of blood and in her death throes, the victim kicked over the chair.

My naked body shook with cold and shock. True, I had described the terrifying scenario in front of me in detail, but I had never imagined the horror of actually
experiencing
it. The only discrepancy I registered was that the blood hadn’t sprayed all the way up the walls as I had imagined in the book, but the scene was macabre enough without this detail. Everything else fitted my description. I wouldn’t need to turn Linda Hvilbjerg’s body around to see that her hands were tied behind her back with gaffer tape. Even so that’s what I did and was proved right. Her body slowly swung back when I let go of it and again I was staring at her groin.

Using my thumb and index finger, I took hold of the book. I tried pulling it out with quick tugs, but it refused to move and only caused the body to swing towards me. I gave up and stepped back, frightened, and wiped my fingers on my chest.

I steeled myself and approached the body again. I steadied her hip with one hand and grabbed the book with the other. Then I yanked downwards until the book came out, but it was too slippery to hold on to and it fell from my hand and landed in the puddle on the floor. A large amount of blood that had been held back by the book followed and splashed over the book and floor and up my legs.

I instantly released the body and knelt down by the book. The cover was smeared with blood and I had to wipe the title with my fingers to be able to read it. It was – as I had known all along – a copy of
Media Whore
and, when I opened the book, I could see that my signature was there too, the signature I had last seen in Hotel BunkInn.

I cursed loudly. If only I had stayed in room 87, or at least taken the book with me, I might have been able to prevent it. If only I had done
something
.

My body was covered in blood and I could barely make it obey me. Yet I managed to crawl over to a white sofa, where I climbed into a corner and curled up. I had had sex with Linda on that sofa a few hours ago – or how long was it really?

I looked around for a clock, but couldn’t see one. It was daylight outside, but the murky sky didn’t reveal what time of day it was. How long had I been asleep?

There was no avoiding it this time, I knew that. I had to contact the police immediately. Yet I remained on the white sofa, which was now stained with blood, for at least half an hour.

Finally, I pulled myself together and sat up.

A telephone was mounted on the wall near the door to the hall. I summoned all my strength and stood up. I staggered to the door and grabbed the telephone. The line was dead. In despair I yanked the receiver so the cable snapped and I hurled it at my feet. Plastic fragments scattered over the parquet floor.

I went out into the hall. This was where our love-making had started. I expected to find my clothes where I had thrown them in a messy heap on the floor, but instead they lay neatly folded on a chair next to a full-length mirror. My shoes had been placed under the chair.

As I approached, I sensed that something was wrong. My shoes were slightly shiny. When I picked them up, I saw this was because they were coated with blood. I glanced back at the living room where the shoeprints performed their dance. There was also blood on the soles of my shoes. I put them down and picked up my trousers
from
the chair. When I held them up I realized what had happened.

The killer had dressed in my clothes and shoes for the murder.

Suddenly I was convinced he was still in the house, watching me. I could almost hear him chuckling to himself somewhere, relishing my horror when I realized that the prints on the living-room floor in Linda Hvilbjerg’s blood had been made with my own shoes.

A violent rage exploded inside me and I vented it by storming naked around the whole house, snarling like a guard dog, determined to tear my prey to pieces once I caught it. It was a desperate, impulsive action, I was unlikely to be able to do anything if the killer really was here. But I had to know for sure. If only to see his face, yank those sodding sunglasses off him, look him in the face and demand an answer. I had to know who was trying to ruin my life, force an explanation out of him somehow.

But there was no one.

Exhausted, I flopped down on the sofa again. My footprints on the living-room floor now mingled with the killer’s shoeprints. It looked chilling. My feet and my shoes, that was how it would look to the police. And it wasn’t as if they would be short of evidence. We had left fingerprints and DNA all over the house during the night and for some reason I knew the killer hadn’t.

The daylight was fading and I guessed it must be late afternoon. I hadn’t shown up for the last interview at the book fair and Finn must have been bombarding the hotel with telephone calls. That meant nothing now.

I knew I had to leave the house. As I couldn’t call the
police
, I had to drive to the station and report the murder. It didn’t occur to me to try the neighbours. The only person I needed to talk to was Sergeant Vendelev. He would undoubtedly arrest me. All the evidence pointed to me, I knew that, and yet it must speak in my favour that I had come of my own free will. Besides, there was my warning on Linda’s mobile; they would have to take that into consideration.

Her mobile. I jumped up and ran out into the hall. Linda’s handbag hung on a peg under her jacket. I emptied out the contents on the floor. Make-up, receipts, car keys, pills and paper tissues. No mobile.

What did that mean? That the killer had stolen her mobile and cut the connection to her landline? Why? To prevent her calling for help or delay my contacting the police? It was now a matter of urgency that I got hold of Sergeant Vendelev.

My clothes were soaked in blood so I went upstairs and searched her wardrobe. All of Linda’s clothes, sorted according to colour, lay in neat piles or were suspended from hangers. The insides of the doors were mirrored. I froze temporarily when I caught sight of my own reflection. My hair was tangled, my eyes red from crying and my body and legs covered in blood. I felt even worse than I looked.

The only suitable item of clothing her wardrobe could offer me was a white shirt. I took it and went out into the bathroom. There I washed the blood off my body as well as I could and put on the shirt. Then I went down to the hall and put on my bloodstained trousers, socks and shoes, and jacket.

I picked up her car keys from the floor where they had landed when I emptied her handbag and took one last look into the living room where Linda’s body hung from the landing. Again, I was overcome by nausea.

I pushed down the door handle firmly and opened the front door.

There was a thud at my feet.

An object had been leaning against the door and it fell over when I opened it.

A book.

AFTER LINE LEFT
me, I stayed with Bjarne and Anne. The first few days were almost like the Scriptorium days with whisky and deep conversations until the early morning hours, but Bjarne and Anne both had jobs to go to and soon I felt like a relative who has outstayed their welcome. I checked into the Marieborg Hotel, my first encounter with the hotel that would later feature in
As You Sow
.

Deep down I think Bjarne and Anne were glad to see the back of me. I was their friend, but I knew they believed the break-up was entirely of my own making. It was my fault that Line had left me and I had lost the most precious people in my life through my own carelessness. They never said so directly, but I could see it in their eyes and hear it in the silences that followed whenever I entered the room. There was nothing for it but to move out.

There were still talks to give and receptions to go to and, as I didn’t fancy sitting alone falling apart in the cottage, the hotel proved to be the answer. It was cheap and relatively near the city centre.

There was no need for me to be bored. Wealth and fame means it is never hard to find company and company was what I craved. Every time I was on my own, I had a panic attack. It was like sinking into a dark ocean. The shadows of strange creatures swam around me, but only rarely came close enough for me to be able to make them out. Sometimes they were mermaids in the shape of the Line or the girls, other times they were shapeless crossbreeds of marine animals and mammals.

It was highly likely that these visions were the result of the alcohol and drug abuse I was undertaking with the commitment and precision of a participant in a highly amoral research project. I consumed doses in exact quantities and at such intervals that enabled me to party for as long as possible without feeling either too much or too little. I balanced on a knife edge, constantly focusing on my next fix: an upper or a downer, a beer or spirits. Fortunately, I had the money to buy whatever I wanted, and when the money is there, getting booze, drugs or friends is never a problem.

I met a lot of people whom I mistakenly believed to be my friends. They were on the same ride as me, a roller-coaster in permanent motion with our hands raised high above our heads and our eyes staring straight ahead. Every night we met up at Dan Turèll, Konrad, Viktor or whichever bar was the ‘in’ place that week and prescribed for one another throughout the night until the place closed or some woman dragged me into a taxi. There were plenty of women and there were several days in a row where I didn’t sleep in my hotel bed at all. I wouldn’t feel remorseful until the next day and
even
then my contrition only lasted until I had had my first drink. I slept with Linda Hvilbjerg a couple more times – this was before I vented my spleen on her – and a paparazzo managed to snap a photo of us together at a party. This wasn’t something that worried either of us. The following week we were photographed with other people and soon Linda in general and me in particular were regular fixtures in the gossip columns. Or so I was told. I didn’t read them myself and nor did I care all that much except when the women I tried to chat up in bars turned me down with a snooty comment that they had no wish to be on a tabloid front page. Still, it never deterred me from moving on to the next woman who either hadn’t heard about my escapades, wasn’t bothered or actively courted publicity and viewed me as a shortcut. There was a surprisingly large number of the latter.