* * *
The interview lasted about an hour and was, in contrast to our opening discussion, very factual. He asked about my relationship with Verner, when I had last seen him and what I had been doing at the time of the murder. I had no alibi for the rest of the evening we had dined together, but it didn’t appear to worry the sergeant. He didn’t ask me if Verner had any enemies, but I reckoned he was already aware of any. He clearly knew Verner well and I would hazard a guess that Verner would have classified Sergeant Vendelev as one of the goody-goodies. Conversely, Verner was probably a stain on the police force in Vendelev’s eyes, and if he was motivated to find the killer, it wasn’t because he cared about him, but about the job he represented.
The Gilleleje murder was never mentioned, and I was grateful that police sergeants appeared to have too much taste to read my books.
Overall I thought I handled the interview well. The questions relating to Verner’s murder were sufficiently precise for me to answer them honestly, but there were undeniably some unfortunate coincidences. I had been the last person to see Verner alive and then there was the manner of his death, obviously. Sergeant Vendelev approached these circumstances with some hesitation; he merely prodded them only to conclude that they weren’t ripe yet and swiftly proceeded to other questions.
When we said goodbye, I had to assure him I wouldn’t leave the country – that cliché held true – and I knew I hadn’t seen the last of Sergeant Vendelev.
I walked back to the hotel alone.
Ferdinan was at the reception, still with the same mournful expression. His movements seemed slow compared to his usual bounce. When he saw me, he shook his head again.
‘It’s just awful,’ he said.
I nodded, but said nothing.
‘And the police … they’re all over the hotel,’ he carried on, miserably. ‘What must my guests be thinking?’
‘I’m sure they don’t blame you for anything,’ I said.
‘Perhaps … but how can they ever feel safe here again?’
I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. ‘They’ll catch him. And then you will have another story to tell.’
Ferdinan looked at me with gratitude in his eyes.
‘But, imagine, if you had booked that room,’ he said. ‘It could have been you.’
‘I really don’t think so,’ I declared. ‘It seems more like an act of revenge.’
‘Like in the book?’
‘Just like in the book.’
28
INNER DEMONS GOT a rough reception in the press, but the sales figures spoke their own easily measurable language – it was a hit.
Finn Gelf was over the moon. Outer Demons had financed ZeitSign’s offices in Gammel Mønt and now it looked like Inner Demons would ensure the company’s financial stability for years to come. There was enough left over for him to buy himself a villa in Spain and replace his old Fiat with a BMW.
For my part I was happy and relieved to know that I had still got it in me to attract readers. I was even grateful I had followed Finn’s advice and dropped Join the Club in favour of the moneymaker that was Inner Demons.
The familiar merry-go-round of interviews, book signings and talk shows started all over again and I was more or less absent from home for three weeks around the time of publication. Line, who was still on maternity leave, looked after the two girls on her own, far too busy to take part in the media circus and so pressed for time that she didn’t read the book until two months later.
When she finally read Inner Demons, she left me.
The main character and killer in the story, Ralf Sindahl, had been born in traumatic circumstances. His mother, a Red Cross aid worker, fell in love with another aid worker in Africa and became pregnant, but shortly before she was due to give birth she was abducted by an African tribe who raped her before performing an improvised Caesarean section with a machete. The infant boy was sold or stolen from tribe to tribe where he was starved and abused until he was bought by a rich white couple, who couldn’t have children of their own. Growing up on the family farm, however, didn’t spell an end to the child’s troubles. The husband was a sadist, not only towards the staff who worked under slave-like conditions, but also towards his wife and the most recent victim, little Ralf. The boy in turn takes out his frustration on the workers, who are too scared to resist or tell his father, and his attacks become increasingly vicious, the older he gets. At the age of fourteen, he kills his father, who is trying to stop the boy beating up a pregnant black girl. Ralf decides to run away, but before he leaves, he ransacks the house looking for money. He discovers a report that describes his violent entry into the world and contains information about his real parents. He flees to Denmark with the report, where he tracks down his biological father, Claus, who takes him in. Claus, however, soon realizes there is something seriously wrong with the boy and, a few months after their reunion, he is forced to hand him over to the authorities. The boy knows nothing of fear or humility and his brutality puts him on the path to a career as a successful criminal. Soon he has more money than he can spend. However, it isn’t money that interests him, but power. He is obsessed by the thought that his strength is the direct result of his brutal birth, and in an attempt to create small monsters in his own image, he kidnaps pregnant women whom he tortures right up until the birth, after which he kills them. He leaves the babies in hospitals or orphanages, convinced he is their psychological father through the shared bond of a traumatic birth. He believes the children will grow up with his powers and rule the world one day. Ralf’s fate and downfall comes in the shape of a strong pregnant woman, who outwits him and kills him with a sledgehammer.
But his ‘children’ are still out there …
Not terribly original, I know, but there were still a few people who hadn’t read or seen The Boys from Brazil and so thought it was quite cool. However, most reviewers agreed that Inner Demons was rubbish – a cynical exploitation of people’s need to be frightened and outraged.
Once more I was Mr Splatter and Inner Demons was condemned by some as a wicked and dangerous book that people should stay away from – which only served to boost sales even further. A number of libraries, acting as moral guardians, refused to let anyone under the age of eighteen borrow the book. The result was that schoolchildren would steal my books from library shelves in order to read the bloodiest extracts in secret, and among teenagers a cult arose around the book and my authorship. At a school in Aalborg, teachers discovered that a group of boys had founded the Deadly Poets Society, whose purpose was to collect and read the most graphic depictions of torture in literature. My two Demon books were practically their bibles; they read aloud from them and made drawings of some of the scenes with a precision worthy of a police report. Families were shocked, parent–teacher associations furious and right-wing politicians spoke about bans, censorship and introducing a minimum age requirement for books as is the case with films. Many of my fellow authors queued up to denounce my work. It had nothing to do with literature, they claimed, and hinted that the paper would have been put to better use in a lavatory.
Meanwhile, sales soared.
Around the same time, people started ringing me and making threats. Furious voices called me the worst names and described how I should be put down in ways so vile I wouldn’t even have used them in my books. We got an unlisted number, which put an end to the calls, but it didn’t stop the letters. As my address was also secret, this so-called fan mail was sent to my publishers and a sackful would be waiting for me each week. To begin with I opened and read every letter, including those that smeared me, but in time I became so practised I wouldn’t even need to open the hate mail – I could sense the outrage oozing from the handwriting on the envelope.