Looking back, that first meeting with Bent, the sight of the turned-down corners and especially the frequency of them, was crucial for my return to writing. I told myself I had done a good deed. A heathen had been converted to the true faith. A non-reader had been converted to a reader and, better still, one of my readers. I was flattered. This wasn’t hollow praise from colleagues or the jet set, but a totally spontaneous gesture, as if I had found a source of pure water in a desert with nothing but poisoned wells.
Not that we were drinking water. We drank the bottles we had and Bent went off for fresh supplies several times. For the first time since my arrival, I opened the book crates. I wanted to introduce him to my favourite readings. Soon the floor was covered with books. He had reignited my voice and I let it talk and talk, words that had built up in the past weeks poured out of my mouth without me censoring what I said. I think I spoke completely over his head, but he showed no sign of being bored – on the contrary. I gave him a copy of Inner Demons and told him he could borrow books from me any time he wanted to.
Bent introduced me to the others on the stones in front of the shop and in the weeks that followed I became a member of their circle. I learned about Bent’s army career, which later formed the basis for A Bullet in the Chamber, and gained insight into Viggo’s and Johnny’s lives as long-term unemployed in an area otherwise inhabited by wealthy tourists and second-home-owners from the capital.
If meeting Bent inspired me to write again, then Viggo and Johnny gave me the motivation to get started. After only two weeks, they were repeating the same old stories, and I discovered to my horror that I was doing it too. I saw in them what I would become a few years from now if I didn’t do something to prevent it, and the thought frightened me.
Overnight I reduced my alcohol intake drastically – in fact, I switched to whisky, a marked contrast to my usual menu of beer and schnapps. It was partly a return to what used to be my favourite tipple while I wrote. The taste of good whisky alone seemed to revive my writing brain cells.
I started planning A Bullet in the Chamber. It was the perfect comeback book. I wouldn’t even need to leave the cottage to carry out research; all I had to do was wait for Bent to stop by with his bag of Fine Festival beer. He did so every day and the book quickly took shape.
I even ventured to contact Finn to tell him to expect something and his relief was palpable. When I left Copenhagen, he had been forced to turn down a number of interviews and opportunities to promote Inner Demons, but my disappearance had in itself been a great story. Sales had benefited from the coverage, admittedly fairly critical and condescending, of the missing author and Finn himself had been interviewed about my sudden exit. He knew very well where I was and probably why I had left, but he stuck to the vanishing act story and didn’t shy away from telling everybody about it.
The urge to promote myself or the book didn’t return along with the urge to write it. I discovered the optimum working method for me: isolation and a mixture of fixed writing times, physical labour in the garden or the cottage and someone to drink with when I wanted to. My life played out within a fifteen-minute walk that contained the cottage, the shop and the beach where I strolled when I needed fresh air.
I needed nothing more, only my imagination.
A Bullet in the Chamber was a story about soldiers in Iraq. The book wasn’t at all political, but the foreign setting, the discipline and the secrecy between interpreters, soldiers and their superiors inspired me to write a Ten Little Indians-style murder mystery about a group of men who are isolated at a guard post at the Iraqi border. The deaths initially look like accidents, but the killings become more and more brutal and eventually the men can no longer ignore the facts. As their numbers diminish, an atmosphere of distrust builds up and accusations fly between the soldiers. The victims begin to be mutilated, suggesting a religious motive. The obvious suspect, the interpreter Maseuf, is lynched by the frenzied group who literally rip him to pieces, but when another murder is committed it becomes a fight for survival among the men who are left. When they are down to two, the real hero of the book, Bent Kløvermark, traps the killer in a minefield where he dies and Bent himself loses a leg.
When the script was finished, I was pleasantly surprised. It was quite a respectable pile of paper, 325 pages, and they proved I could at least still call myself a writer now that I had been stripped of the title of husband and father.
33
WHOEVER HAD LEANED the book against Linda Hvilbjerg’s front door – and it had to be the killer – hadn’t bothered wrapping it. No envelope this time and nor did I need to turn it over to know which book it was. I recognized my breakthrough novel, Outer Demons, from the back alone.
I took a step back and stared at the book. My heart started to pound. The sense of being under surveillance returned. It was as if someone was watching me from a control room with monitors everywhere to display every reaction of my body and face and microphones to pick up every sound I uttered. Graphs illustrated my pulse, sensors registered my sweat production and body temperature, and an emoticon conveyed the information about my current state of mind.
Right now the emoticon would signal horror. It would look like The Scream by Edvard Munch.
But I didn’t scream. I was too scared to scream.
Minutes before I opened the door, I had been ready to go to the police and tell them everything. I was prepared to run the risk that they might imprison me, suspect me of murder – not unreasonably – and I had braced myself for long painful interrogations in a dark interview room with bright lights, good cop/bad cop routines and all the other clichés.
The book changed everything.
Even before I opened it, I knew I couldn’t go to the police. I knew that whatever I was about to find out would mean I couldn’t talk to anyone. When I discovered the book with Linda’s photo at Hotel BunkInn, I had believed it would give me a head start, that I could anticipate the killer’s next move and would have enough time to do something about it, but now it seemed to me that I had fallen in with the killer’s plan. It had always been his intention that I would contact Linda and put myself in a situation where I would be the one to discover her body.
But the game wasn’t over yet. That was what the book was telling me. It signalled that I had no will of my own, but would have to keep on playing for as long as the killer was entertained.
Outside birds were chirping. A breeze wafted mild air through the hall, a welcome change to the smell of death in the living room.
I looked up from the book and across the street. There was no one around. The area seemed deserted by all other life forms except birds. Only the trees moved in the wind, scattering autumn leaves on the pavement.
Slowly, I took a step forwards and knelt down. Still looking across the street, I picked up the book and pulled it towards me. I stood up, stepped back, closed the door softly and locked it. The sound of birdsong disappeared.
I went back to the living room and sat down in the chair. Linda’s body was hanging with her back to me as if she had turned away in contempt. I turned the book over with shaking hands and realized I had been right. It was Outer Demons, a cheap paperback copy, but apparently unread, like the other greetings the killer had sent me.