Death Sentence (21 page)

Meanwhile Line’s stomach grew and I followed her body’s development closely. When Line had been pregnant with Ironika, I had been too busy with the various jobs I needed to do to pay the rent, but this time I had front-row seats. Apart from the fascinating study of how the female body changes, I had a secondary motive: it was of the utmost importance that every detail about pregnancy and birth was correct in the book. It’s possible I may have been a little too curious. One evening when I was exploring her stomach and groin as usual, she pointed
out
that it would be nice if I could talk to her face rather than to her genitals for once.

A few days later something happened for which Line never forgave me.

Ironika had been in a sulk all morning and refused to go to nursery. This irritated me. I had hoped to be able to write four or five pages that day, but my daughter had now reached an age where she demanded constant attention. I tried to strike a deal with her. She would be allowed to stay at home if she could look after herself. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the computer to work. The agreement with my daughter lasted ten minutes, then she appeared in the doorway with her plastic kitchen equipment and insisted we bake a cake. I tried very hard to control myself, but eventually I got rather angry. In a stern voice I told my daughter to go downstairs to the living room, play on her own and be quiet. If she didn’t do that, I would take her to nursery and leave her there until the next day. It was an empty threat, of course, but it worked, and a crestfallen Ironika left my study and padded downstairs.

Not long after there was a crash from the kitchen followed by clattering sounds and a scream from my daughter.

I leapt up, ran downstairs and into the kitchen. Ironika was lying on the floor, sobbing. She was surrounded by knives, forks and other cutlery. She must have decided to bake a cake on her own and could just about reach the kitchen drawer, which she had pulled out, causing the utensils to rain down on her. To my horror, I saw a dark puddle of blood under her thigh and it was spreading with
alarming
speed. I lifted her up on the table, pulled down her trousers and spotted a deep cut to her inner thigh. It was a clear cut from one of the carving knives and the sight of blood pouring from it made me dizzy. I got hold of some tea towels and tied one around her thigh and closed the cut itself with another. Ironika was still howling, but she was also turning disturbingly pale.

I took her in my arms and ran out of the house. If necessary, I would run the two kilometres from Kartoffelrækkerne to the Central Hospital, but our neighbour, Kaj, had a car and was usually at home. Fortunately, he was in and took us to the hospital in the back of his old Saab. All the way I could see Ironika grow whiter and whiter, though I pressed against her cut as hard as I could. Her screaming had been reduced to a whimper and she could barely keep her eyes open.

The only thought I remember was: what have I done?

We were seen immediately when we arrived at A & E. Ironika was taken from me by people in white coats and moved directly to theatre. I called Line at work and told her what had happened. There was complete silence from the other end. I couldn’t even hear her breathing. When she finally spoke, her voice was shaking and she announced she was on her way.

Even though it probably only took half an hour, it felt like days before they rolled Ironika out of theatre. They assured me that everything had gone well. She had received a blood transfusion and they had sutured the veins.

Line hadn’t had turned up yet so I sat alone at Ironika’s side while she slept. It was horrible to see her tiny body
in
the huge hospital bed, but she also looked so peaceful lying there, completely unaffected by the mayhem around her. When Line arrived she barely looked at me, but headed straight for the bed and took Ironika’s hand. She cried very quietly, interrupted only by a sniff. I handed her a tissue and she blew her nose without looking at me.

When she finally spoke, it was in anger.

‘Where were you? Why weren’t you looking after her? Why wasn’t she at nursery?’

The questions came one after the other, far too quickly for me to reply when a yes or a no wouldn’t suffice. I took her in my arms and pulled her towards me. She resisted to begin with, but slowly relaxed and, at last, she embraced me and sobbed. I cried a little myself.

Line stayed with Ironika while I went back to the house, which we had left with no thought of locking the door or closing the windows. Adrenaline was pumping around my body. I couldn’t help imagining how much worse it might have been; I was probably the luckiest man alive. In attempt to calm my nerves, I carried out all the housework I had planned to do that day. I washed clothes, tidied up the kitchen, carefully scrubbed the bloodstains off the kitchen floor and washed the cutlery and put it back in the drawer. I binned Ironika’s bloodstained trousers. I didn’t want them reminding me or others about the incident so I carried them all the way out to the bin in the street. When I had finished, the only trace of the accident was a dent in the kitchen floor where the knife had embedded itself after cutting my daughter’s inner thigh.

When there were no more practical tasks to occupy my thoughts, I returned to the hospital to give Line a break.

I could see that she had spent the time thinking and she sent me a searching look when I arrived. I had to tell her the whole story again, where I had been when it happened, what had taken place in the moments leading up to the accident and how we had got to the hospital. Eventually she ran out of questions, but I could see that something was nagging her – a thought she couldn’t or didn’t dare to voice.

Ironika woke up and felt fine. Her vocabulary was still limited, but we understood that she had little recollection of what had happened. With some help from me she could remember being in the kitchen, but not the reason why she was now in hospital. However, she soon adjusted. We spoiled her with sweets and stories and made sure one of us was by her side constantly.

The next day all three of us came home.

Ironika was excited to see her room again and insisted on having a nap before we had even taken her coat off. Line and I stayed by her bed, watching her until she fell asleep. When we tiptoed downstairs, Line asked me to show her where precisely it had happened. I suppose I grew a little irritated. We had already talked about it and I thought it was over and done with, but Line insisted and I showed her the drawer and the mark in the floor from the knife. She thought it was strange that I had thrown away Ironika’s trousers. They could easily have been mended and perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea to be reminded of the incident every now and again. I felt I was being attacked, forced to explain a simple accident as if it were the plot of a novel.

Finally I’d had enough. I stormed out to the bin to
fetch
Ironika’s trousers. It had started raining, naturally, and I had to rummage through the rubbish for a long time getting soaked in the process before I gave up looking for them. The trousers weren’t there. Litter lay scattered around me on the pavement and I was aware of our neighbours’ curtains twitching. Either the bin had been emptied or someone had taken the trousers. I started clearing up while I cursed myself for having thrown away the ‘evidence’. Wet and filthy, I returned to the house, where I tried to account for the missing trousers. Line followed me into the bathroom, where I took off my smelly clothes and showered. When she wasn’t asking questions, she would scrutinize me, and when I went to embrace her after my shower, she wriggled free. She didn’t speak to me for the rest of the day, but the following day she was her usual gentle self. It was as if nothing had happened. I breathed a sigh of relief.

That same day Line took early maternity leave from her job to be at home. I didn’t think it was necessary, but she insisted, and we could afford it so there was little to discuss. It meant I could focus on my writing, but my partnership with Ironika changed. Now it was the girls who had secrets and me who didn’t understand their private exchanges.

Slowly we grew accustomed to the new rhythm. I worked more and more in isolation and Line and Ironika looked after each other while Line’s stomach grew. We never discussed the knife incident again, but I was aware of an increased vigilance in Line every time I played rough and tumble with Ironika. She tried not to let her daughter out of her sight, and her lack of trust exasperated me.

As I was also struggling with the pivotal chapters of
Inner Demons
, I might have been rather prickly in the weeks leading up to its completion. We had a couple of minor arguments, nothing serious, but enough to oppress the mood in the house. When it got too bad, I would shut myself away in my study.

The book was finished around the time Line gave birth to our second daughter, Mathilde. The birth went without a hitch. Line came home only two days later and in the meantime her father looked after Ironika. When we were all home again, it was as if the air had been cleared. We were a family once more. I had submitted
Inner Demons
for editing and could devote myself to my girls, and Line had nine months more leave, during which we could have a nice time together.

Everyone was happy and content, until the book was published.

I MUST HAVE
been overcome by tiredness in the end because the next morning I was woken up by the sound of the telephone ringing. I had kicked off my duvet during the night and I was cold.

‘It’s Finn,’ a voice said down the other end.

‘What time is it?’ I stammered.

‘Take it easy,’ Finn said. ‘You’ve got plenty of time to get to the book fair, I just wanted to make sure you were awake.’

I muttered something to that effect.

‘I didn’t have time to remind you yesterday,’ Finn continued. ‘So I thought I would just—’

‘That’s great, Finn. I’m on my way.’

I hung up before he had time to reply.

It was only Saturday.

I felt I had been in the city for months. The prospect of again sitting for hours signing books held no appeal at all. I dragged myself into the bathroom.

A deathly pale face with black rings round the eyes observed me from the mirror. A huge purple bruise spread
across
a couple of ribs under my left nipple and it hurt if I breathed too deeply. I shuddered and stepped under the shower, turning up the water as hot as I could stand it. Even so, I couldn’t get warm. It was as if the events of last night had planted a chill in my body that had taken root while I slept. I pushed aside the memory of Marie and concentrated on my morning ritual. The familiar routine of trimming my beard, combing my hair and applying deodorant helped keep my thoughts at bay.

Breakfast was reduced to a cup of coffee and a crusty roll, which I wolfed down while I flicked through the newspaper. Reading the news had become a nerve-wracking experience. Every moment I expected to see Verner’s eyes staring out at me from one of the pages, though I knew that once he was found, I would hear about it before the newspapers did.

‘Will you be checking out tomorrow?’ Ferdinan asked as I walked through the lobby.

Suddenly I was unsure. I desperately wanted to leave the city as quickly as possible, but I had a case to solve and I couldn’t do that from the cottage in Rågeleje.

‘I might be staying a couple more days,’ I replied.

Ferdinan’s face lit up. ‘Ah, a woman perhaps?’

I shook my head vigorously. ‘No, nothing like that. I want to visit some friends.’

‘If so, you can get your old room back,’ Ferdinan said and smiled.

My heart galloped. The thought of staying in that room made me feel sick. I was sure no one would ever sleep in there again.

‘No, that’s not necessary,’ I replied and tried to smile. ‘I’m slowly getting used to the luxury suite.’

‘OK,’ Ferdinan replied. ‘Just let me know.’

I thanked him and hurried outside to my taxi.

I told the driver to take me to Forum, but once we were in motion I had second thoughts. How could I sign books as if nothing had happened? Shouldn’t I go to the police instead? Shouldn’t I do what I had put off for far too long, try to fix it all? I cursed myself. If only I had contacted the police straightaway everything would be different. Even though I now had a concrete clue, room 87 at Hotel BunkInn, I couldn’t pass on this information to the police without getting Marie in trouble and I didn’t want that.

I grew increasingly frantic, but I was also aware that it really was up to me to solve the case. It was no longer about an ingenious angle for an autobiography or research for my next thriller, this was about survival.

It looked hopeless. All I had to go on were the words of a drug-addicted hooker, the name of the hotel and a room number. However, it was the first time since the body of Mona Weis was discovered that I felt I had caught up with the killer. No matter how devious he was, he couldn’t have predicted that I would find Marie. Unless he had actually been following me last night, he couldn’t know I was breathing down his neck.

A plan was starting to take shape. I didn’t delude myself that I could overpower the killer physically, that was too risky, but I might find evidence in the room at the BunkInn, something that pointed straight to the real killer, something I could take with me and place in the room where Verner lay murdered. In this way I wouldn’t
be
directly implicated. It was simplicity itself. However, it required that I gained access to room 87 soon. When the booking of room 102 expired, it would be too late.

When we had almost reached Forum, I told the taxi driver to take me to Copenhagen Central station instead. Finn and his autograph-hunters would have to wait.

Hotel BunkInn is near the station, but I had to buy a couple of things first. Marie had told me that the man who hired her, Verner’s killer, had a beard and wore a hat and sunglasses. I already had the beard, but was lacking the hat and sunglasses. A quick visit to a shop took care of that. Of course, I couldn’t know what kind of hat he had worn or what his glasses looked like, but in my experience people don’t pay much attention to such details. Not if they staff a busy hotel reception, and especially not in Vesterbro where a hotel receptionist’s best qualification is a short-term memory.