Death Sentence

Back in the living room, I picked up the envelope and looked inside it. I hadn’t expected to find anything, but this time it wasn’t empty. A key nestled at the bottom. I turned the envelope upside down and scooped it up as it fell out.

As I had already guessed, it was the key to room 102, the room I normally stayed in, the room that was the crime scene in As You Sow.

I had a flash of inspiration. It could be a hoax. Perhaps Verner was setting me up. He was twisted enough to do something like that, but what would be the point? I looked at the photo again. The expression in his eyes looked like genuine terror and Verner was no actor.

There was only one way to find out.

It took two more whiskies before I summoned up the courage to leave my suite. On impulse I took the stairs, possibly because I didn’t wish to meet anyone, least of all Ferdinan, but also because I felt queasy and didn’t want to be trapped inside the claustrophobic lift.

I made sure no one saw me outside room 102. The corridor was empty. A ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign hung from the door handle. I inserted the key and let myself in.

The stench was overwhelming: a mixture of faeces, urine and a third substance I didn’t even want to think about. I had to swallow a couple of times in order not to throw up on the spot.

It was dark. The blinds were down and the curtains closed. My hand found a switch inside the door and I turned on the light. I was in the small hallway with access to the bathroom, then the room itself, which was mainly occupied by the double bed.

Though I knew precisely what awaited me, I still gasped when I saw Verner.

He was resting against the headboard, naked, with his arms stretched out as far as they could go and strapped to the brass frame with black cable ties. On the wall above the bed, someone had written ‘PIG’ in what looked like blood. His chin rested on his chest as if he were staring down at himself. His large body was smeared in blood and vomit, and his legs spread and tied to the under frame with nylon rope. The weight of his body had caused the mattress to sink and a large pool of blood and other bodily fluids had formed around him.

I ran to the bathroom and reached the toilet bowl just in time to throw up. When my stomach was empty, I collapsed on the floor and sobbed. No one deserved what Verner had been subjected to, but I wasn’t crying for him, I was crying for myself. I cried because I was powerless. I was the real victim here, punished for something I had yet to understand.

After some time, I don’t know how long, I got up. I spat into the toilet bowl a couple of times, blew my nose, washed my face and tried to rinse away the taste of vomit with water.

Then I took a towel and wiped down the taps, the toilet seat and the door.

Back at the bed I spent a moment studying Verner. Everything seemed to match the description in the book: the way he had been tied up, the mutilation of his genitals and the deep cuts to his abdomen. However, in the book I had stated that his hands had turned purple like a pair of gloves from having been tied so tight, but in reality they had the same pale colour as the rest of his body.

Everything suggested Verner was dead, but I had to check. I bent over and pressed two fingers against his neck. He was cold and stiff. I withdrew my hand and wiped my fingers on the towel as if I had touched something contagious.

There was no need for me to examine him closely. If I wanted to know what had happened to him, all I had to do was reread my own book. There I would learn that his testicles had been cut off and stuffed into his mouth, and there would be blunt force trauma to his head from pistol-whipping. The scalpel should be lying on the floor somewhere, tossed aside like a lolly stick. I knelt down and leaned forward to inspect the floor. The scalpel lay on the other side of the bed. Next to it was the Bible, which had served as the chopping board during the castration.

I felt queasy again and ran to the toilet to be sick, but nothing came up. Only a dry cough rang out between the tiled walls. I was incapable of thinking clearly.

All the same I managed to retain my composure long enough to wipe down any area or object I remembered touching. Afterwards I let myself out into the corridor, gave the door handle the same treatment and stuffed the towel inside my shirt. That left the key. I briefly considered pushing it under the door, but for some reason I changed my mind and hid it in a flowerpot on the way back to my room.

There was no whisky or gin left in the minibar so I drank some brandy straight from the bottle. The taste of vomit was forced out by the alcohol, but the nausea lingered. I was sweating profusely and wiped my face with the towel.

The sight of Verner refused to leave me alone. With a photo of him in front of me, it was impossible to think of anything else. He had contributed much of the background for As You Sow. The superintendent murdered in the book was based on a specific person as far as Verner was concerned, but to me it was someone else. For Verner, it was his boss. For me, it has always been Verner himself. I have never liked him. When I wrote his murder, I felt that he was atoning for his racism, his offensive jokes and his lack of tact and empathy. He was being punished for all the snide remarks he had uttered about Line and for his pathetic paedophile tendencies. Line and I had been divorced for some years when I wrote the book, but I still had a feeling that I was exposing him for her sake. An act of penitence for contacting Verner after she had told me what a bastard he was.

If Verner ever suspected the victim in the book was him, he never said so. He was content to punish his own tormentor, the superintendent in his department whom he regarded as corrupt and greedy for power, characteristics which in time had come to define Verner as well.

The question of who was really murdered in the book had now been settled.

It was Verner.

Friday

13

I SLEPT LITTLE that night. Instead I carried on drinking my way through the minibar, feeling increasingly sorry for myself.

I had no idea what to do next. Options whirled around my head, each one more unreal than the next. Several times I grabbed the telephone to call the police, but every time I chickened out before I had pressed all the numbers. What would I say? If I reported Verner’s murder, I would have to explain how I had come to have the key to the hotel room, and thus the envelope. This, in turn, would bring up the subject of the murder of Mona Weis and consequently the question of why I hadn’t contacted them earlier. I had no answer to this. It like an avalanche: impossible to stop it without someone getting hurt.

It was only a matter of time before the body in room 102 would be found. The smell in the room would soon spread and the staff would become suspicious. It would take Ferdinan seconds to recognize the method by which Verner had been killed. Besides, he was likely to remember Verner from the restaurant; other guests would testify we had dined together and that we had a row. It was only a short distance from there to the police knocking on my door.

I should have pre-empted them, contacted them immediately, regardless of the consequences, but something