Death Sentence by Mikkel Birkegaard Page A

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