14
IT COULDN’T BE a coincidence.
Whoever had booked room 102 had obviously given a false name, but using Martin Kragh had to be significant. Did Mortis know something? Was he in danger, was it a red herring or was the killer taunting me? Another possible explanation was that the killer had simply picked a random name from the book; after all, it was very much an insider’s reference, although Bjarne had spotted it immediately when he read the book.
The main character in Brotherly Love is Mark Nordstrøm, a 40-year-old managing director of a shipping company owned by his dying father. As well as running the company, Mark also nurses his father in his final days. Mark is a good son and attends dutifully at his father’s deathbed in the knowledge that he is the sole heir to the family fortune. Or so he thinks. It turns out that his father had sired a handful of kids and they all appear at the reading of the will to claim their share of the estate. In Mark’s eyes, they have never worked a day in their lives, but instead have been sponging on society and, worse, the family money that should rightly go to him. Even though there is enough money for everyone to live comfortably, Mark is so outraged that he decides to kill them all, one by one. Mark knows perfectly well that suspicion will fall on him so he takes care to make the murders look like accidents or suicides and to have a bullet-proof alibi ready for every one of them. And he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams; he dispatches all his new siblings in a variety of ways, but with the common denominator that it’s their perceived laziness or lack of willpower that kills them, typically through some form of entirely unreasonable endurance test. Mark is never arrested, even though the sergeant investigating the case knows he is involved.
I considered various permutations while I ate a few mouthfuls of breakfast and drank some coffee, and I reached the conclusion that I had to get in touch with Mortis, if only to eliminate him.
From my hotel room I called Directory Enquiries, but they had no Morten Due listed in Copenhagen or surrounding areas. I called Bjarne. He was on his way to work at the sixth-form college where he taught.
‘Hi, Frank,’ he said when he heard my voice. He sounded out of breath and there was traffic noise in the background. ‘What’s up?’
‘I wanted to know if you have an address or telephone number for Mortis?’
‘Hmm …’ I heard down the other end. A car horn beeped and Bjarne cursed. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen him. I might have an address somewhere at home. I think he lives in north-west Copenhagen.’
‘Do you remember where?’
‘No, sorry, I don’t. Like I said, it’s a long—’
‘When will you be back?’
‘This afternoon,’ Bjarne replied. ‘But we’re seeing you tonight anyway. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?’
Of course I had. Dinner with Bjarne and Anne in the old Scriptorium flat was normally the highlight of my trip when I was in town, but all plans had been upset now. I looked around as if I had just woken up from a nap. What day was it? Was it morning or afternoon? Suddenly I didn’t know.
‘Frank?’
I cleared my throat. ‘Of course I haven’t,’ I lied slickly. ‘Seven o’clock, was it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘OK, see you tonight.’
I hung up before Bjarne had time to reply. The clock on the wall showed nine. That meant ten hours before I could get the address. The dinner invitation prompted me to remember the rest of today’s programme. It was the first day of the book fair and I was expected to promote In the Red Zone by signing copies. My editor’s fear that the book might be stopped was so far unfounded. His words echoed in my head. Pretend nothing has happened. Stick to the plan.
But how could I when Verner lay murdered a couple of floors below me? Then again, neither could I stand being in the hotel any longer.
I took a taxi to Forum in Frederiksberg.
Forum was a large cube of concrete and steel, placed between proud old buildings with the finesse and sensitivity to its surroundings of a piece of rubbish tossed in a flowerbed.
The queue of visitors already stretched outside. I picked up my entrance pass at the information desk and entered the exhibition hall.
My first task was to sign books and even at a distance I could see people lined up clutching books outside ZeitSign’s stand. It was ten minutes after the starting time stated in the programme.
ZeitSign’s black and white colours dominated the stand, which was bigger than usual. Black fabric had been draped over one corner and this was where all my books were exhibited – with the exception of my first two, for which I was grateful. Hundreds of copies of In the Red Zone had been piled up around a small table and chair that were waiting for me. This was where I could look forward to spending the next hour signing autographs.
I toyed with the idea of walking on, losing myself in the crowds pushing and shoving in between the displays. Unfortunately I loathed being swept along by a constant stream of pushy book fanatics with plastic bags and darting eyes even more than I loathed signing books. I took a deep breath and forced my way to the stand and my table. There, at least, I would be able to sit down and no one would bump into me or step on my toes.
People shuffled closer and mumbled impatiently when I hung my jacket over the back of the chair and took my seat. I found my fountain pen, secured the cap, conjured up the biggest smile I could manage and turned to face the first person.
As always it was mostly women who wanted their books signed. This is obviously because more women read fiction than men, but I also think women want to see the person who wrote the book. They are curious to know something about the person behind it and the signature itself is less important. The female interest when I broke through with Outer Demons was huge. Women wanted to meet the monster who had dreamed up such explicit scenes of violence and torture. They searched for something dangerous or evil in my eyes to make them shudder. They may have been disappointed, but it has never prevented them from turning up in vast numbers for book signings to confess how affected they were when they read this or that passage.
‘Oh, there you are,’ a voice said next to me and I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Finn Gelf. ‘We were just starting to worry that you might not show.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, giving a signed copy of In the Red Zone to a woman in her forties. She smiled gratefully and disappeared clutching her trophy. ‘The circus horse is ready to take another trip round the ring,’ I added, and smiled to the next person in the queue.
Finn patted my shoulder.
‘That’s good to know, Frank. Please would you pop by backstage when you’re done?’
The backstage area was a small cubicle behind the stand. A couple of folding chairs let you to take the weight off your feet, a necessity for staff who had to stand up all day and a sanctuary for the authors. Though it was narrow and busy, it still offered some respite from the crowds and, most importantly, it featured a keg of beer. I was already looking forward to it.
The first thirty minutes I wrote dedications non-stop. My smile was set on autopilot while I listened to people’s comments and thanked them, nodded and smiled again. Individuals turned into a blur of smiling, sweating, panting faces. The queue seemed never-ending and the only thing that kept me going was the prospect of an ice-cold beer in the backroom.
My gaze was fixed on the spot on the title page where I signed my name, but I was roused from my daze when someone put a book in front of me with a different title. The book was Media Whore, which I wrote seven years ago. I straightened my back and looked up at the reader. It was a man, which was in itself unusual, but even more unusual, he wore sunglasses and smiled in a bizarrely expectant manner as though he was waiting for me to recognize him, despite the glasses.