Copenhagen Noir (29 page)

“Really?”

“I preferred the stage. Sensing the audience in the theater, sitting in the dressing room, going out for a beer afterward with everyone. Film felt very lonesome to me. No, not lonesome, fragmented, you might say. You know: you show up, say your lines, walk off, and that’s it. You might meet with the actors at the premiere.” He inspected his well-groomed hands, the whiskey glass he had set down the chess table, a short and stout rook, golden brown. “But then you simply vanished that time, called in sick or whatever it was that happened …”

“When?”

“Playing the innocent, are we? That leading role in the Carlsen film was yours. Have you repressed that, man? You must think I’m senile. You disappeared off the face of the earth, so they called me instead.” Rützou flung out his arms again, theatrically, and there was nothing else he needed to say: that film was his breakthrough, the roles started pouring in afterward.

“You’ve performed at the Royal Theater between all the films, I know that much, Erik. Even at Kronborg! I think I’ve seen you in commercials too. And some really bad family films.” The kids loved them.

“Everything except the old bawdy films,” he laughed. “They were before my time. But you’re right.” He stifled a belch. “But anyway.”

“You raked in the roles and the money, man.”

“I have.” He nodded solemnly. “I have,” he repeated. “And ladies.” He tasted the word, stretched it out, lay-deeze. “But … what happened, really, back then?”

“Uh … yeah.” Another cigarette. “It was … it was nerves,” I admitted, after a second. I had nothing to lose. Maybe I even needed to talk about it; I had never told this to anyone, not even my wife back then, definitely not the kids. “The pressure was too much. I couldn’t handle it. The thought of playing that part, I couldn’t wait for it to start, I was so happy, and I was dying of fright. Not just performance anxiety, but real anxiety. The long and short of it is, I crashed.”

“And when you finally got up again, it wasn’t so easy to find parts,” he added sympathetically; that is, malevolently.

“No, it was easy enough, at first. Certain bit parts. Like the deranged bar type, and the disgusting apartment caretaker. Always halfway drunk. The guy nobody likes.”

“Oh yeah,” Rützou said. “It’s so tiresome playing yourself all the time. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s why I have always taken various parts. Hamlet one day, beer commercials the next. But listen, Klaus. You could have worked your way back, slowly. But you gave up.”

“Yeah, I did. It wasn’t fun anymore. And I couldn’t bring in enough to make a go of it, financially.”

“Financially! Bah! I have a good friend, a well-known writer. He’s not exactly swimming in money but he writes anyway. Because he can, won’t do anything else.”

“Does he have a rich wife?”

“No, Klaus. He’s got balls!”

I finished off the whiskey, hissed: “I’m groveling at your feet, Erik. You
are
the greatest. And the ride’s on me.” I got ready to stand up. “Thanks for the drink.”

“Plural, if I may say. You have put away two very serious drinks. Downed them. Doubt you can drive. You want to destroy your glorious taxi career too?”

“I was close to a Bodil for best off-meter driving, right?”

“Ooh, I had forgotten how screamingly funny you can be. Listen: you can still get it, Klaus.” He reached for the bottle of whiskey on the chess table between us, some expensive brand I’d never heard of. The Bodil stood there too, tall and elegant, as if it was silently listening. “Stay for a while, let’s have a nightcap.”

I sank down in the chair, held my empty glass out like some beggar. He had hit my weak spot. I’ve never been good at saying no. If I lost my driver’s license, then … Usually I drank only after work and on off-days. Except for the few drops of aquavit in my thermos.

“What can I still get?” I said, mad at myself.

“The lady here.” He stuck the statuette up in my face. I pushed his hand away, but he kept sitting there waving it around. “A special-award Bodil. For all you could have accomplished …”

Of course I wanted to smack him, but I had driven a cab for so long and met so many extremely drunk people or just plain brain-dead types that I had learned to control myself. People had vomited all over my gearshift and my clothes, they had put a stranglehold on me from the backseat, they had tried to run from the fare, even that stoned-out floozy from Skovlunde without any money who invited me up, yeah, I hadn’t even smacked her when she screamed that I’d raped her when her boyfriend suddenly appeared in the apartment, a big dude. I hit him, sure, but in self-defense. The judge couldn’t understand what I was doing in her apartment, and my wife couldn’t either.

Rützou fenced with the Bodil as if it were a sword or a scepter, right at the tip of my nose. I grabbed it and held it threateningly above him.

“What the hell are you doing, Erik?” Now it was me doing the acting.

“Getting you to wake up. You still have it in you. You are not a big zero. All this could have been yours. But you were an amateur. You blew it all. And look at yourself now, what you’ve become: a beer gut in a cheap leather jacket. It looks like something you bought on the black market in Moldavia. All that’s missing is the mustache. And by the way,” he added off-handedly, “you should do something about your eyebrows, they look like two goddamn bushes.”

He sat close to me now, leaning forward, a scruffy birdlike figure in a tux.

“What happened with your girlfriend?” I asked.

“Fuck her.”

“You threw her out, didn’t you? You’re throwing everything out, aren’t you? Cleaning house.” I laughed, pointed to the chaos in the room. “If you can call this cleaning house.”

“You blew it all, Klaus. When you pull out of here, I’m calling the police, you’ll be nailed for drunk driving. Fired, out of work. Maybe you can find a cleaning job.”

I sat the glass down carefully. I didn’t pity him, or only very little.

“It’s terminal, isn’t it? Where at? Lungs? Throat? Lymph nodes?”

“Life is terminal. Did you read the profile of me they published? Nobody will write about you, will they? You’re dead and buried. The papers haven’t been interested in you for a hundred years. I’ve even looked once in a while. Usually people show up in these ‘Where are they now’ type columns, but no. You are just a goddamn moving man driving humans around in an old diesel car. Meaningful work, eh? Challenging.”

“How long do you have left? Three months, six months?”

“I have a full calendar, Klaus. Lars von Trier calls me constantly, begging me. They call from Hollywood, goddamnit!”

“Yeah, I’m sure. But before long you won’t be able to answer the phone. You’re sick. You’re dying.” I threw the letter from the hospital in front of him, but he ignored it.

“Who calls you, eh? They call from offices and bars, say, ‘Yeah, hello, can we get a cab to Amagerbrogade, name’s Jensen.’”

I had put my glass down, but I still sat there with his Bodil. His idea was that I would use it to smash in his skull. That was his plan, however and whenever it had come to him. Invite me up, provoke me, humiliate me. Something like that. I set it on the chess table, and yes, he was still a great actor, for he didn’t bat an eye.

“I don’t know, Erik,” I drawled, because an idea had come to me. I stood up. My head buzzed a bit, too much whiskey in too short a time. But I was used to it. It would be all right. If he went for it, the revenge would be more than sweet. “Do you really want me to kill you, Erik? Just like that, without getting anything in return?”

For a long time he said nothing.

Then he cleared his throat and spoke with a surprisingly calm voice: “All right. I have a lot of cash on me. You can take some of the antiques. All the silver. Nobody saw us. You drove with the meter off. Nobody needs to know a thing. All you have to do is do it.” A crooked smile. “For once in your life just do it, Klaus.”

“Okay,” I said.

Surprised, Rützou stared at me.

After another moment of silence, I was afraid he was getting cold feet, but then, in the same composed, toneless voice as before, he said: “Do what you will, just do it quick. Goddamn quick. Understood?”

I nodded politely.

“One second.” He disappeared down the hall, rustled around in his office, and came back with a thick envelope that, excited now, he handed to me.

I looked. Nothing but large bills, lots of them. I stuck the envelope in my pocket and put the gloves on that I’d pulled out of my leather jacket.

Rützou had poured himself an extra large whiskey, and he drank so it ran down his chin and throat and stained the elegant white shirt under his tux.

“Let’s get it over with, goddamnit,” he gasped.

I started right in. Before any regrets came along. It’s not nearly as easy to strangle someone as you might think. It requires a lot of strength and grisly patience. But that I had! Rützou’s eyes started to bulge, the whites popped out, he gurgled and, I couldn’t believe it, turned an even more ghostly white than before. He put up a little resistance, but most likely that was a natural reflex. For the bastard really wanted to die. Though he wouldn’t be getting his wish, not yet.

“Shhoke harr-er, gaw-dammuh!” he babbled.

“Can you say please?”

“Puh-eeeze.”

His blue tongue hung halfway out of the preposterous, already putrefied chasm of his mouth, his eyes had shifted from white to violently bloodshot, life slowly faded from them; it was a fantastic sight, he hissed and gasped and drooled like a goddamn snake, and then I abruptly dropped my stranglehold.

“Did you really think I’d do it, you idiot?”

Rützou tumbled backward, grabbed his throat, and gasped deeply for breath. He stood and swayed in his ridiculous patent-leather shoes, completely groggy; he’d pissed his pants, I noticed, and I was already celebrating my little stunt when he suddenly threw himself upon me in a rage and bombarded my face with rock-hard punches, his anger apparently increasing his strength because I was starting to see black. Now it was me on the edge of being knocked unconscious. I had no choice but to hit back. I slugged him straight on the chin.

Rützou fell his entire length and banged his head on the sharp corner of the coffee table. It sounded ugly. My knuckles ached in my gloves. Rützou was on the floor, lifeless. I prayed that he was only unconscious, when I saw a thin trickle of blood appear. More of it came, and more, until it was a small, dark lake.

Desperate, I fell to my knees and shook him, but there was no doubt.

Rützou was dead.

The asshole had tricked me after all.

For several minutes I sat and stared into space, unable to think or act. Then I downed a shot and began removing all traces of my fingerprints: I was on file. One of the last things I did before leaving the apartment was to empty my glass and wash it carefully. It was like being in a film, or no, a grainy documentary …

Then I left.

Down the stairs, the wide, red stairs.

And there I sat. It was still pitch dark and incredibly cold. I took my gloves off and fumbled around for the pack of cigarettes, only two left. The moment the flame rose from the lighter, I saw a flash of my gaunt and battered face in the rearview mirror. It was the stupidest possible thing I could do, to sit here smoking; someone might see me. But I really needed that cigarette. The money in the envelope, I’d completely forgotten about it. What had I done with it? Yeah, the money was safe and sound in my pocket, and in a moment I would be gone, headed for the hills, nobody would connect me with his death. I stuck the key in the ignition.

But then another thought hit me, harder than Rützou’s fist. His girlfriend! They’d had a fierce fight earlier that evening. There were conspicuous signs of strangulation on his neck, anyone could see that he hadn’t just fallen down drunk. Suspicion would immediately fall on her. Maybe she had an alibi, maybe not. And if she didn’t, what would I do?

It was her or me. This would never end. Except for the one who was dead.

LAST TRAIN FROM
CENTRAL STATION

BY
G
UNNAR
S
TAALESEN
Central Station

(Originally written in Norwegian)