Death Sentence

After its publication I had received quite a few letters, but I couldn’t remember anyone complaining about specific details. Many felt it was a disgusting book they could barely bring themselves to read to the end, but this was because of the graphic violence, not because it was unrealistic.

I stared at the photo of my daughter. I was gripped with panic and it spread through my body. I placed the picture on the coffee table face down and concentrated on the book. I started flicking through it page by page. There were no notes, no marks or clues to guide me. When I had finished, I closed the book and pressed it to my forehead as if I could extract its secret through the power of my mind.

Outer Demons is a book about a monster, Henrik Booring, a rich man who has inherited the family fortune and need never lift a finger for the rest of his life. He can buy anything he wants – houses, cars and women – and he does so with no regard for the cost. Slowly, his tastes become more and more perverted and other people become his playthings. When he tires of straight sex, he pushes his limits with sadomasochism, sex with men and domination, but nothing really turns him on. After all, it’s only a game, an arrangement between consenting adults, and what he wants is the real thing, real pain, unadulterated horror. Booring’s first project is his neighbour’s daughter, a busty 15-year-old he has been spying on while she sunbathes. He tortures her in his newly built dungeon but, due to his inexperience, she dies far too quickly. Disappointed and dissatisfied, he starts to practise. He abducts several teenage girls and takes detailed notes during their torture to refine his methods. By closing up wounds quickly, transfusing blood, administering different types of medicine and even a defibrillator, he can keep his victims alive for longer, and he feels ready to attempt to crown his achievements: the Princess. He has become attracted to a 13-year-old beauty, the daughter of one of his domestic staff, and he knows instantly that he must possess her … fully.

In the meantime, the Flying Squad has started investigating the case. Inspector Kenneth Vagn is its public face, a thankless job as the media quickly lose patience and demand that the case is solved. Booring takes pleasure in the police’s frustration and taunts Inspector Vagn. Through a complex network of intermediaries and a series of riddles, a line of communication is established so that the two opponents can write to each other. Booring hints that soon he will be ready for the Princess, the object of all his efforts and the last girl he intends to abduct. He has perfected his methods of torture and thinks he can keep her alive for as long as he wants to. Inspector Vagn senses that time is running out and works on the case day and night. He is a walking zombie existing on coffee and pills. The Princess is abducted and Booring sends Vagn detailed descriptions of what he is doing to her, observed with the precision of a forensic examiner and a thriller writer’s talent for generating horrifying images. The inspector wears himself out following up every lead, no matter how vague or insignificant it appears, and in the end his persistence leads to the breakthrough. A builder who helped construct the dungeon in Booring’s house noticed several unusual features, including extensive soundproofing, air filters and a complex locking and alarm system. When the recent victim can be linked to Booring through her father who works for him, Inspector Vagn strikes. On his own, he pays a visit to Booring, and it ends with a showdown in the dark corridors of the dungeon where the inspector finally kills the murderer with a fatal shock from the defibrillator.

The Princess is still alive, but will never have a life.

Torture scenes and detailed descriptions of how the victims die made my career, but I was failing to make a breakthrough now and see where I had gone wrong.

The photo had been inserted on see here, roughly halfway through the book. I leafed back and forth a couple of pages, searching through my own words to find the hidden meaning.

This section didn’t, unlike the other passages the killer had selected, concentrate on the actual killing or the torture of the victim. It took some time before that particular penny dropped. This was significant, but how? Frantically, I flicked back and reread the whole section. My frustration grew. I stood up, went back to the start and read the text aloud to myself while I gestured with my free hand.

No matter how many times I read the passage, I couldn’t understand what I was looking for.

It was a description of the police tailing one of the go-betweens for the correspondence between Inspector Vagn and the killer, an operation that turned out to be a dead end as the courier knew nothing about anything. The physical handover took place via a PO box – a rather antiquated means of communication today, but the internet wasn’t particularly widespread when I wrote the book and an anonymous email address wouldn’t have provided the same possibilities for suspense.

I tossed the book aside.

Had I been mistaken? Was the place where the photo had been inserted irrelevant or had I just failed to find the clue? I sank into the armchair beside the coffee table, leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

The post office where the PO box was located was in Osterbro. It was a majestic-looking building with broad steps and columns either side of the oak front door. I tried to replay the scene in my head. Plainclothes police officers were watching the post office, a relatively straightforward task as the building faced F?lledparken. In front of the entrance was a large gravel square with several benches where the observers could sit down. The courier, a young man with horn-rimmed glasses and a ponytail, cycled down Osterbrogade and turned into the post office.

I opened my eyes. Something didn’t add up.

I leapt up and went to pick up the book, which had landed on the floor by the window. The title page had been bent after its flight. With shaking hands I found see here. The description of the courier was correct and he did indeed cycle down Osterbrogade.

However, in real life the post office was located on the corner of Blegdamsvej and Oster Alle, not Osterbrogade as in the book.

I frowned. It was an almost unforgivable mistake. The geography of my novels is always thoroughly checked so it was beyond me how this howler had slipped through proofreading and several editions. It was one thing that I had made a mistake, that was embarrassing in itself, but that no one had spotted it was unbelievable.

I went over to the console table where the telephone stood. In one of the drawers I found the telephone directory and opened it at the front, where there was a map of Copenhagen and the area of Osterbro. Ten seconds. That’s how long it took me to verify the location of the post office.

The description in Outer Demons was wrong.

36

MY COMEBACK NOVEL, A Bullet in the Chamber, was fairly successful, but it would have had more of an impact if I had been willing to promote it. I stayed in the cottage and let my editor talk to the press. Finn was unhappy. He preferred his authors to flog the goods. Let the punters see the rabbit.

He was, however, delighted with the book.

‘Great craftsmanship,’ he said several times and that was precisely how I saw it. I had no deeper feelings towards A Bullet in the Chamber than a builder towards a floor he has laid or a carpenter for a shed he has put up. Yet the publication marked a turning point in my career as a writer. If I had once kidded myself that I was destined to write world-class literature, A Bullet in the Chamber was my epiphany. I now knew that I would never write the great Danish contemporary novel, but I could easily see myself as the kind of bread-and-butter writer we had always despised back in the Scriptorium days. In a way, I was relieved.

My neighbour was downright chuffed. Bent threw himself into his own promotional tour around the holiday resort. In the months that followed publication, he always carried spare copies in his old Fjallraven rucksack. He was never modest when it came to explaining his role in the creation of the book, and many people must have got the impression that he was really my ghostwriter or that I had simply taken dictation from him. Not that I cared. Bent was due some of the credit that the book had been written at all, so he deserved a pat on the shoulder. I had certainly no need for attention.