Death Sentence
MIKKEL BIRKEGAARD
Translated from the Danish by
Charlotte Barslund
Prologue
Until recently I had only killed people on paper.
As it happened, I was good at it. Good enough to make a living from it and so experienced that I could refer to it as my job. Being able to write full-time in a country the size of Denmark is something of a privilege, but there are those who will argue that I’m not a ‘proper writer’ or what I write aren’t ‘proper books’.
I have had to put up with criticism, ridicule even, my whole career, and at times I have secretly agreed with my detractors. It’s not easy to admit, but when critics accuse me of laziness and cynicism, of resorting to shock tactics to make up for weaknesses in a plot, they are not altogether wrong.
But the story you’re about to read is something else entirely.
I know it will be unlike anything I have ever written. Normally I’m invisible, the anonymous narrator who reveals the story without drawing attention to himself. But this time I can’t hide. I have to reveal myself. And this introduction is primarily for my own benefit, a reminder of my project, a wagging finger, telling me what to do and on what terms. That’s what motivates me.
Because I must go on and I must do so alone.
I’m cut off from the world. There are no distractions. At night, the darkness and the silence are as dense as though I were in a bunker. No sounds or impressions can reach me.
But then again, I don’t need outside inspiration.
What follows here has already happened to me and merely needs communicating through my fingers and a keyboard to the computer. The events of the past week have forced me to train the spotlight on myself and document what’s happened while it’s still fresh in my mind and I have sufficient time left. There is no filter. No possible interpretation or perspective can show me or my role in the story in a better light. A shame, really, but no matter how tempted I might be to embellish the distressing and dreadful incidents I have taken part in recently, this time I can’t make it up.
In a way, it’s liberating.
I don’t need to lie.
The technique is different, too. I won’t have to resort to a range of literary devices to serve the plot or build the tension. I can write it as it is, without beating about the bush. The protagonist won’t need to look in the mirror to give the reader an idea of his appearance because the protagonist in this story is me, Frank Fons, a 46-year-old writer, of medium build and height, slim, with dark hair, a closely trimmed beard and a pair of steel-grey eyes which I have been told don’t blink very often.
There, that’s that out of the way.
Had it not been for the gravity of the situation, I would probably have relished my newfound creative freedom. I have some regrets I didn’t try this experiment earlier. Not that I haven’t launched into literary experimentation before, but I discovered early, too early perhaps, a formula that worked and I’ve stuck to it ever since.
But not now.
The rules of the game have changed.
I have been freed from my own and others’ expectations and conventions. I don’t need to worry about conforming to rules determining what a writer can or cannot do. Just as well, really, as I’m forced to start with one of the biggest cliches in the genre, the event that set everything in motion, a telephone call …
Tuesday
1
People who think they know me expect me to be hungover. Those who really know me know that I write in the morning and hate being disturbed. I was in ‘the Tower’, as my older daughter had once nicknamed our holiday cottage, and when the telephone rang, I wasn’t actually writing. True, I was at my desk, the computer was on and a mug of steaming hot coffee was next to the screen, but my thoughts were elsewhere. From my study on the first floor I had a view of the garden below. I was wondering if it was worth raking up the leaves today or whether I should wait until the autumn gales had shaken the last of them loose.
My gut reaction was to ignore the telephone. Calls at this time were never good news, or they would be unimportant, cold-callers or wrong numbers. I let the telephone ring five times before I grunted my name into the handset.
‘Your body has turned up,’ I heard down the other end.
It was Verner. He never introduces himself. Verner is one of the people who think they know me and yet hasn’t grasped that he can’t ring whenever he feels like it.
I was in no mood for games.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone has committed your murder.’
‘Which one?’ I asked, failing to suppress a yawn.
Verner worked for Copenhagen Police and he checked police procedures for me. He didn’t regard being a writer as a proper job, but he was still proud to contribute to the process. Sadly, pride had gone to his head and given him the impression he had the right to ring me at any time with ideas or suggestions.
‘The murder in the marina,’ he exclaimed. ‘They’ve found the body of a woman in Gilleleje Marina, mutilated and bound in chains.’
I closed my eyes and pressed two fingers against my temple. My mind was still drifting between thoughts of raking up leaves and guilt at not having produced that day’s quota of words. Verner’s news sank in only slowly.
