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.