Death Sentence

down, probably to support the weight of their huge stomachs, and the third looked up. He was the one holding the book and I now recognized him as my neighbour. He waved the book and erupted in a broad smile.

‘Got you,’ he said, grinning.

I think I smiled and shrugged, but I exchanged no words with them and hurried home without looking back.

The weather was growing milder and I could sit outside on the terrace most of the afternoon. That was what I was doing that day, lazing in a deckchair with a wobbly frame and perished fabric that protested every time I shifted position. In order not to have to get up too often, I would get three beers on every trip. I was sitting with one in my lap; the other two were within easy reach, shaded by the garden table until it was their turn. This number meant my urge to urinate corresponded perfectly with my need to fetch fresh supplies.

‘Hello, neighbour,’ a voice suddenly called out and the man with the book appeared around the corner of the house. He was carrying a plastic bag.

I was about to return his greeting, but discovered I couldn’t get a word out. Looking back, I couldn’t even remember when I had last used my voice.

‘I hope it’s OK, me barging in on you,’ he continued, as he came closer. He was limping slightly and he held out his hand to me.

I nodded, straightened up as the deckchair groaned and shook his hand. It was dry and warm and I realized I hadn’t been in physical contact with another person for several weeks.

‘But … as we’re neighbours and all that’ – he pulled the book out of the bag – ‘please could I have an autograph?’

I gestured to one of the plastic garden chairs.

‘Yes, please,’ he said quickly and sat down.

‘Would you like a beer?’ I asked in a croaky voice, pointing to my stock under the garden table. I was offering not because I wanted to, but because I felt I had to.

‘No, thank you. I’ve already got some.’ He rattled the bag and the bottles clinked invitingly.

A huge wave of relief washed over me. I’d been dreading he was yet another scrounger, just like the people I had fled.

‘By the way, my name is Bent,’ he said, taking out a bottle of Fine Festival beer.

‘Frank,’ I volunteered, nodding towards the book he had placed on the garden table.

Bent grinned. ‘Yeah, mate, I worked that one out.’ He produced a bottle opener, polished to perfection by frequent trips in and out of his back pocket. He opened the beer, put the bottle top in the plastic bag and carefully removed any foil left around the bottleneck.

‘Cheers, neighbour.’ He held out his bottle to me. I held out mine and we toasted. While I drank, I watched how his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed nearly half the beer.

‘Ah,’ he sighed when he finally removed the bottle from his lips.

I got up to fetch a pen and when I came back, Bent was busy opening the next beer.

‘I’m not usually much of a reader,’ he said. ‘But I just loved that shit. Bloody brilliant book!’

‘Thank you,’ I said, taking the book. It was a paperback, tattered and yellowed by the sun. My photo was on the back and I was struck by how serious I looked. My beard was trimmed with a ruler and my dark hair brushed back, smooth and a tad glossy like a 1930s crooner. However, it was the eyes that surprised me the most. They stared coldly and a little provocatively from the back of the book and I remember how hard it had been to look so aloof. There had been absolutely nothing to be cross about. After all, I had written a book Finn had assured me would be a bestseller, I was married to the loveliest woman in the world and had an angel of a daughter. The photo had been taken only four years ago, but it felt as if it was from a parallel universe, one where I was a successful author and not a bum.

‘A really good book,’ Bent repeated. ‘Gory details. Wicked descriptions of the murders, wicked!’

I flicked through the pages in my mind’s eye while he carried on praising the book. Several pages were dogeared. At the start, they were close together, but later in the book the distance grew and the last quarter had no folded corners at all. I signed my name and handed the book back.

‘Thanks a lot, Penpusher,’ he said holding it to his heart. ‘Viggo and Johnny wanted to borrow it, but I said no, and I won’t let them have it now, no way. They can buy their bloody own.’ He carefully returned the book to the bag as if it was as fragile as the bottles. ‘I’ve started another one. I can’t really remember the name of the guy who wrote it, but it’s not a patch on yours.’

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 Klovermark, traps the killer in a minefield where he dies and Bent himself loses a leg.