Authors: Mikkel Birkegaard
My scalp was sweating and itchy and I was suddenly aware of the heat from the spotlight above the stage. The audience was murmuring.
‘Now the police haven’t released much information about the murder yet, but it seems like an incredible coincidence. How do you feel about that?’
I took a sip of my vodka and cleared my throat before I replied.
‘I read that article too,’ I replied. ‘It’s awful that something like that can happen in a lovely place like Gilleleje, but it proves that evil is everywhere, that we’re never safe, no matter where we are or how secure we feel …’
‘But doesn’t the similarity upset you at all?’
‘Of course it does,’ I said and I think I might have snapped at her. ‘But you also have to be careful about jumping to conclusions just because you’ve recently read a book.’ I paused. ‘If you’ve got a hammer, all problems look like nails,’ I quoted. ‘I can’t imagine that every detail of that murder matches the book. It must be a coincidence.’
I hated lying so brazenly and I didn’t think for a moment that I was fooling anyone, certainly not Linda Hvilbjerg. She fixed me with her eyes and I could see that the reporter part of her brain battled with the entertainer part over which one of them would be allowed to continue. Fortunately, the entertainer part won.
‘As I mentioned, your fans regard the realism as the appeal of your books, while your critics claim you’ve written the same book ten times over,’ she said. ‘What have you got to say to them?’
‘That they can’t have read them properly,’ I replied and was rewarded with a few laughs from the audience and a brief smile from Linda. ‘I get numerous letters from my readers stating precisely the opposite. Many look forward to the next book and express how they’re surprised time
and
time again at the imaginative plots and range of characters …’
‘But, Frank … is it correct to say that every single one of your books follows a particular template, a model you have used since your best-known work,
Outer Demons
?’
It was a reasonable question and I had no reason to think she was trying to provoke me, I just objected to
Outer Demons
being referred to as my best-known work yet again. It was as if I would never improve on my breakthrough novel in the eyes of the critics. It had dragged after me like a ball and chain ever since; it rattled every time I tried to move and drowned out my voice, no matter what I did.
‘It’s correct, Linda, that my books have a unique style and that the tension builds up according to a pattern, but that’s also my strength. The reader recognizes a Føns thriller when they read it, just like you recognize a song by Depeche Mode, even if you haven’t heard it before.’ I shrugged. ‘All my books are about murders and the detection of them, so in that sense they’re identical. However, if you look closer, you’ll see that it’s not entirely true.’
Linda nodded. ‘So you’re saying that if I read a passage from one of your books, you’ll be able to tell me which one it is?’ She pulled out a piece of paper and the audience greeted the challenge with scattered laughter.
I held her eyes for a second. She smiled at me with a cheeky expression around her lips. I wasn’t entirely clear what she was up to, but it was too late to back down. My day was already ruined: how much worse could it get?
‘OK,’ I replied. ‘Any children present?’
The audience tittered, but Linda peered across them,
temporarily
wrong-footed. Nevertheless, she must have decided that it was acceptable to carry on and coughed before she started reading:
The girl squeezed her eyelids together as hard as she could. Her face was bathed in sweat and tears and the gaffer tape had started to peel off her cheek. She whimpered.
‘Look!’ he ordered her. ‘Look, or the eyelids will be next!’
Reluctantly, she opened her eyes. They were filled with tears and terror. He held up the severed nipple in front of her. She tried to scream and she fought against the cable ties pinning her to the chair, but they only dug themselves deeper into her flesh.
He moved the nipple to his lips and sucked it as if he were a nursing infant. The woman thrashed her head from side to side spraying sweat, tears and snot around.
He laughed and lifted the shears to her other breast. She froze at his touch and he smiled while he fondled the breast with the cold metal. Slowly, the nipple hardened.
‘Look, she likes it,’ he exclaimed and leered again.
With his thumb and index fingers he pinched the nipple, rubbed it a little and pulled it. He opened the shears and placed the steel jaws around the nipple.
The flesh quivered …
Linda stopped reading. The audience had fallen silent, completely silent.
She was good at reading aloud; I had to give her that. Her stresses were accurate, the pauses precisely measured and the characters brought to life despite the brevity of the passage. Personally, I didn’t like reading my own books aloud. There was something revealing about reading to others. It was proof of what I had written, an open declaration that I stood by it. Consequently I carefully selected the sections I read aloud, unless I could avoid it altogether. The choice itself would expose me. How would it reflect on the author if I read the most bestial passages? After all, the mood should ideally remain pleasant and, for that reason, I typically chose the more subdued chapters, preferably those with a little humour that wouldn’t offend anyone and which had no direct link to me.
However, it wasn’t Linda Hvilbjerg’s plan to let me get away with that.
‘
Inner Demons
,’ I replied. ‘Not exactly a bedtime story.’
The audience laughed with relief bordering on gratitude.
‘Correct,’ Linda declared. Some members of the audience applauded. ‘What this passage doesn’t mention is that the woman is heavily pregnant – otherwise we would have made it far too easy for you.’
She smiled and I laughed briefly.
‘
Inner Demons
was the follow-up to your breakthrough novel,
Outer Demons
,’ she explained to the audience. She turned her gaze back on me.
‘Is it true that you wrote it while your then wife was expecting your second child?’
‘THAT WENT GREAT,’
Linda Hvilbjerg said, having checked that the microphones had been switched off. The interview was over, but I didn’t have the energy to get up from the armchair. She had grilled me for forty-five minutes, pursuing her ‘theme’ of fiction mirroring reality by bringing up examples from my earlier books and linking them to events in my private life. From
Nuclear Families
she had drawn parallels to my divorce from Line; she viewed
You Don’t Have To Call Me Dad
as a book that criminalized decent step-parents and which, as Linda pointed out, had been written after Line moved in with Bjørn and their shared children, including mine.
I hadn’t tried very hard to defend myself. All I could do was refuse to discuss my private life and argue that the best stories take as their starting point experiences that are familiar to us all or which we can easily imagine. In order to describe the horror that had made me famous, I had to explore every detail of it, no matter how revolting it might be. If it meant using my own experiences and feelings as a springboard, then that’s what I did. It
improved
my motivation, the book and, ultimately, the reader’s reaction.
All in all, I was quite pleased with my performance. After the shock start with the Gilleleje murder, I had quickly spotted in which direction the interview was heading and, though alcohol coursed around my body, I felt more sober than I had for a long time. Not once did I lose my temper or reply in anger, even though it required enormous restraint not to react emotionally. I knew that was what she wanted, an outburst that would reveal the monster who produced what she could never bring herself to refer to as literature. If she was disappointed at her failure, she didn’t show it. Perhaps muddling up fiction and reality and presenting it as her ‘evidence’ had been enough for her?
‘You failed to mention
Media Whore
,’ I sniped. ‘That would have proved your point.’
Linda Hvilbjerg shrugged. ‘That’s water under the bridge, Frank. Let’s call it quits?’
‘Quits? So this was payback?’
‘Payback?’ Linda exclaimed, smiling. ‘Not at all. I’ve just given you forty-five minutes of free publicity. Your books will carry on selling, don’t you worry.’
I snorted. ‘Possibly, but you also made sure that no one will ever speak to me again because they think I’ll end up killing them in a book.’
She gathered her papers and stood up. ‘Can you blame them, Frank?’
I shot up and was about to inform her just how little importance I attached to her opinion, but the words never came out of my mouth.
‘Take care,’ Linda Hvilbjerg said and hugged me as if nothing had happened. ‘Good luck with the book.’
I had no time to reply before she had turned around and stepped down from the stage. She attracted a fair amount of attention; the crowds moved out of her way and let her glide through as if an invisible force was parting them for her. Behind her, the crowd filled the vacuum and, after a few seconds, I could no longer see her.
‘What a bitch!’
Finn Gelf was standing in front of the stage, holding out his hand to me. I took it and stepped down to him.
‘I saw most of it,’ he said sympathetically. ‘She really managed to open up old wounds, eh?’
I nodded.
‘But don’t worry about it,’ Finn said, patting my shoulder. ‘It can only boost sales. Including the back catalogue.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘People will read the books she mentioned to gain an insight into your writing process.’
‘And my private life,’ I added.
‘That too,’ Finn Gelf admitted. ‘But then again, you don’t give many interviews, so where else can they look?’ His face took on an animated expression. ‘People want to know how the famous and mysterious Frank Føns is put together, what makes him tick. It’s perfect. It couldn’t have happened at a better time.’
‘I really don’t think—’
‘Yes, yes, it all fits.’ He leaned into me. ‘And linking it to the murder in Gilleleje … it’s going to be massive,’ he whispered and nodded conspiratorially. ‘And when they’ve read all your books, we’ll launch the biography.’
‘Biography?’
‘Yes, we’ll have no choice,’ he carried on, now in a normal voice. ‘The true story of your life in murder and mutilation.’
‘Sounds like a death sentence,’ I declared.
Finn Gelf snapped his fingers. ‘That could be the title –
Death Sentence
!’ He nodded, pleased with himself. ‘Bloody hell, it’ll be brilliant.’
We were interrupted by a middle-aged woman pressing a book in between us with a request for an autograph. I grabbed my pen and signed the book without looking at it, but kept my eyes fixed on Finn Gelf.
He looked like he really meant it. His eyes shone with a passion I hadn’t seen in him for a long time. Once he got that look in his eyes, it was hard to talk sense to him. I remembered what Ellen had told me about the company’s finances. ZeitSign was Finn’s life. There was nothing he wouldn’t do, and – in many cases – hadn’t already done to keep the company afloat, and when there was money at stake, he could be very convincing.
‘I’ll think about it, Finn,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Super,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s going to be great, just you wait.’ He checked his watch. ‘I’ve got to go, but I’ll be seeing you tomorrow as arranged.’
I nodded and we said goodbye.
I wanted to tell Finn about Verner, but I didn’t want to do it at the book fair, and Finn
was
the book fair. He breathed it for the three days it lasted, moving between the stands and the crowds such that no one could keep up with him and he heard everything, despite the noise level. He seemed indefatigable. Everyone knew him and he knew them, but he wasn’t there for the small talk.
His
brain was set on business, making new contacts and nurturing his existing network. I was tempted to believe he had a filter that would remove Verner’s murder, if I tried to talk to him. Everything but publishing would be white noise to Finn.
To some extent that was why I had indulged his idea of a biography, but part of me was just as excited as he was. I wasn’t keen on exposing my private life, but I was intrigued by the premise, and I discovered that my brain was already working on possible angles for the story, not least – I’m ashamed to admit – how I could use the murders of Mona Weis and Verner to spice up the narrative. They might have been murdered to harm me, but now it looked like it could have the opposite effect. However, it would only work if I could play the hero, the detective who uncovers the plot and catches the killer at the end.
Now that would be a biography I’d want to read.
AFTER FINN HAD
left, I stood there for a moment not knowing what to do with myself. The idea of the biography refused to leave me alone and everything else faded into a distant humming.
I wandered around aimlessly. I skimmed books and back-cover blurbs without really registering what I read. I stopped at some of the small makeshift platforms where authors answered questions with clenched fists and shaking voices, mercilessly amplified by microphones and speakers. But I didn’t listen to what they were saying and I didn’t notice where I was going. Eventually I found myself in a corner of the exhibition hall with a small bar in the style of an old English pub, quite unlike the other refreshment outlets at the book fair, which consisted mainly of plastic chairs and canteen tables.
I ordered a dark beer, which was drawn from a brass tap, and sat down in a corner on a bench upholstered in red velvet. It was the last free seat and I had to share the table with two raucous men in their fifties discussing the
bookseller
trade. Judging from their accents, they were from Jutland. This was probably their annual trip to the capital, which was spent on books, beers and hookers. One of them nodded to me as if he recognized me. I nodded back, but took out my notebook in order not to encourage further conversation.