Death Sentence, page 14
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.
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.
23
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Marie returned.
I had been into 7-Eleven to buy cigarettes and a bottle of water. I spent the rest of the time smoking and regretting that I had allowed myself to be duped so easily. Again. I knew perfectly well what people would promise in return for a hit, a drink, a beer or some dosh. Consequently I was both surprised and relieved when I saw Marie stroll casually towards the car, her hands deep in the pockets of her puffer jacket and a small smile on her lips.
