The Best Book in the World

CHAPTER 23


Now We’ll Get the Bastard!



Offender profile: Serial Salvador

Profiler: Detective Chief Inspector H?kan Rink. The most likely character features/functions/dysfunctions of the ‘art murderer’.

General description: pleasant appearance. Perhaps handsome, possibly even very handsome. Very likely to be young or youthful. Popular among both women and men. Primary driving force: does everything in his power to gain people’s confidence/admiration/appreciation/love.

Inside: chaotic. Hard to live up to his own tenderness. Troubled with evil thoughts. Regards these as hard to control and immoral. Secondary driving force: fighting his evil side. Primary and secondary driving forces contradictory. Explosive effect on personality.

Interests: art/culture/literature/eccentric impulses/bizarre ideas/crazy inventions.

Physical evidence from scene of crime investigation: long black hairs, possibly dyed/discoloured, cloth traces from clothing items in soft material: silk/raw silk/velour.

Database searches and comparisons with other serial killers: the offender has a very creative personality/eccentric appearance/obsessed with his appearance/sucks his thumb/sleeps in foetal position/continually looking for mirrors.

Analysis: the evil side of the offender is growing all the larger.

Look out for cracks in behaviour among the group of suspects we are interested in: exaggerated friendliness/unforeseen laughter/unexpected outbreaks of anger/missed meetings/sudden contact difficulties/apathy without any obvious explanation.

Now it’s war. Titus is not going to give in without a fight. If Eddie X has stolen Titus’ book idea, he has no choice. He shall render him harmless for all time. For an eternity of eternities. That is an author’s only real privilege: to be able to crucify the objects of his hatred as long as the paper and the printer’s ink in the book lasts.

Serial Salvador is going to borrow some features from Eddie. Or rather: Serial Salvador is Eddie X. When H?kan Rink really gets to know his adversary, towards the end of the book, he will pull his trousers down once and for all. He shall hunt him down, lock him up, humiliate him. Peel off his personality and put his rotting insides on display for general despair and amazement. The readers shall come to hate this beloved person. The handsome boy in the house next door shall be transformed into a bestial serial killer. Then the mob shall whip him to death. Shut him up in a torture chamber. A cold dug-out, a damp godforsaken abandoned earth cellar. Bury him alive. Stamp on his grave. Knock over his gravestone. Piss on him. Strip him of every last vestige of human dignity for all time.

These inspiring images drive Titus forward.

He sees himself as a victim of crime. Somebody has broken into his home. Somebody has tried to rob him of his brain, ideas and vital energy. The wrongs are unforgivable.

It would be easy to expect that these misfortunes would floor him and send him back to the haze of drugs, spirits and nicotine. But, strange though it may seem, he gains strength from adversity. Better to be obsessed than dependent, that’s his mantra. Titus delights in the force of the writers’ battle. Eddie can sit there and thumb through bestsellers as much as he wants. Try to copy styles and themes. An idiotic idea. Eddie hasn’t got a chance against Titus’ fury.

Titus is in the midst of his best period ever as an author. He writes in six-hour sessions without leaving his chair, for at least two sessions a day. During his breaks, he eats, exercises, goes on the sunbed, and sleeps. He flosses his teeth regularly, and is rapidly losing weight although his muscles are getting bigger. He likes himself more and more.

He searches the Internet and returns to the library to find information that supports his story. Not once does he sneak a look at how other bestselling authors have done it. It’s great to let yourself be inspired, he thinks. But to inspire, that is even greater. He is on the right track.

Titus and his manuscript are slowly but surely developing into magnificent specimens.

The weeks go by.

The oppressive heat of July turns into the more relaxed summer feeling of August. The old lady on the balcony next door sorts the mushrooms she has picked, or weeds her flower boxes.

The evenings start to get darker.

Titus works away.

The innumerable press conferences and all the easy-to-understand metaphors made H?kan Rink popular with the media and the nation. He had their full confidence even though Serial Salvador hasn’t been apprehended yet. But they knew that he was near. H?kan Rink was a man they could rely on. A father, a father of the nation even. Even the prime minister expressed his admiration. He was invited to talk shows and attended celebrity opening nights. And when, in his bass voice, he said that ‘they saw light at the end of the tunnel’, his eyes glistened in the camera flashes. He too knew they were getting close now.

Better to be obsessed than dependent. This is my job. Trees grow up towards the sky, birds fly through the air, waves lap against the shore. And me? I write masterpieces, Titus thinks.

Sometimes Titus wonders what Eddie is doing. How far has he got? Will it be good? Or is it only about love? Despite Titus’ growing self-esteem, there is every reason to worry about the situation. He must think realistically. Eddie is a skilled craftsman. He can perform tricks with the alphabet. At the same time, Titus wonders if Eddie has the ability to concentrate; a writer of novels must be able to shut himself in for long periods, with only himself for company. Can Eddie really manage that?

He wishes he could tell Astra that he is racing against Eddie when he writes, but of course he can’t tell her. When he sold her the idea, he hadn’t mentioned Eddie at all, he had simply said that he had thought up a brilliant idea for a book, not that it was something he had cooked up together with Sweden’s hottest contemporary poet during a very drunken night. And that the poet was published by Babelfish, one of Winchester’s fiercest rivals! If Astra had known that, she would never have got Evita to back him, and he would still be sitting at the Association Bar and smelling like an ashtray. Now it was too late, he must go through with it.

Besides, he can hardly prove that Lenny did the break-in at Eddie’s bidding. He can’t even prove that it was Lenny who was inside his flat, and now it was probably far too late to secure fingerprints. Plus the police were not nearly as alert in reality as Chief Inspector Rink and his colleagues – they would just yawn and laugh at his accusations. What crime had been committed, did you say? Some unauthorised person has blown into the breathalyser lock on your computer?

And as if that wasn’t enough, he is forced to play a double game hereafter. Astra and her computer demand total sobriety. He has come to appreciate that, it’s not a problem. But he did risk it all when he openly showed Lenny that he was sober and alert, talked about the writing he was busy with, mentioned how hard he worked. That sort of talk put everything at risk. No, he doesn’t need any more gold-diggers wondering what it was that had revitalised him. From now on, he must play the old faded Titus Jensen if he is going to manage to keep the competition at bay: tipsy, seedy-looking, lean and cold under the surface. That can work. He has learnt so much about himself this summer; if anyone can portray the tired old Titus Jensen, then it is the new strong Titus Jensen!

That’s how it must be. He has painted himself into a corner. Now he is standing there, surrounded, pushed up against the wall.

But he has a f*cking great manuscript on his hard drive.

Almost finished!

A bit too good to be true?