by Willow Rose
The worst part was that Morten let her.
19
July 2014
JESPER MELANDER COULD hardly take his excitement anymore. He was looking through the newspapers online, and couldn’t believe how far this had reached. All of the big newspapers had written the story, his story.
Finally, it had begun. Everything was going as planned. The island was in shock at the brutality of this killing, they wrote. He liked that word shock. It had such a wonderful ring to it, especially when you said it out loud. And it described precisely the state he wanted his fellow islanders to be in. That paralyzed state when you are unable to act. Oh, how he loved it. And the best part was that he had only just begun. The beauty of his plan was comprehensive. It was brilliant.
“Shock, shock, shock, people are in shock, it is shocking…” he said with a grin, while scrolling through the articles. Jesper hadn’t expected to feel this thrilled about executing his plan. But, somehow, it had made him feel alive, made him feel like his life finally had a purpose.
He was a man on a mission. Like Dorothy. She was on a mission too. Jesper started humming, and soon he was singing.
“…off to see the wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We hear he is a whiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was. If ever, oh ever a wiz there was, The Wizard of Oz is one because. Because, because, because, because, because. Because of the wonderful things he does…”
A second later, he was dancing on the floor. He grabbed the listing of the house on Niels Sorensensvej that he had printed out from the Internet. He knew they would love the house. Finally, they had decided on one. He had watched them as they looked at houses all over the island for weeks. Finally, it was closing time. And they moved fast, he was thrilled to discover. Before noon, they had put down an offer. Now, all he had to do was wait. The seller would surely accept the offer, wouldn’t they? Of course they would. The house had been empty for quite a while. It was a lot sooner than Jesper had expected to be able to strike again, but that was only to his advantage.
The sooner the better.
Jesper thought back to the faces of the couple he had surprised in bed…the gorgeous sight of the red blood spreading on the sheets…the screams of the wife…the crunchy sound of the knife going through the flesh. Oh, and that look the wife had given. Those wide fearful eyes.
It was better than sex.
“…Because, because, because, because. Because of the wonderful things he does,” he sang out loud.
Then he burst into laughter. He couldn’t wait to see that same look on the new couple’s faces. What were their names again?
Jesper searched in his notes. Ah, yes. There they were. Jacob and Christine Hansen.
What wonderfully ordinary names. Mr. and Mrs. Denmark.
They were so ordinary, it almost hurt. They would go on to live boring meaningless ordinary lives, wouldn’t they? No one would ever know about them. They would never do anything extraordinary, anything spectacular. No one in this forsaken country ever did. It was the country of mediocrity. Being ordinary was celebrated, encouraged even.
What a waste of life.
Well, now that was about to change. At least for this couple. The press would be all over the news in just a matter of days. Once he was done with them, their names would be forever burned into the minds of the Danish people.
20
May 2009
LOUISE WAS SHOWN inside a small room and asked to wait. She found a chair. It was quite uncomfortable. Maybe it was just her being edgy and wondering if she was making a mistake by coming here.
He had sent her a letter inviting her to come. Then, she had applied for permission to visit, and a week later, they had granted it. All she had to do was to show up with this letter and personal ID, it stated. And then they had sent her a list of things she couldn’t bring.
She had to put all of her stuff in a locker at the security entrance, and then walk through a metal detector. She had brought a cake. She wasn’t the type to bake, so she had bought it at the bakery.
She was allowed to bring food, it had said in the letter. She just had to be aware that they might search it for drugs or other illegal items. And, it had to go through a scanner, so they could see if she was hiding something in it.
She wasn’t. It was just an ordinary carrot cake. He had told her he liked carrot cake, and that he missed eating carrot cake. So she decided to bring one to him. That would give them something to do while visiting, in case they ran out of subjects to talk about. Louise feared that awkward silence more than anything. It always made her feel so insecure. She never knew where to put her hands when she was insecure.
She put the cake on the small wooden table in front of her. There was a gray bench against the wall. It was as long as a bed, and was padded. Louise wondered if that was for when a prisoner had many visitors, since it could fit a lot of people, but in the letter they had told her there could be no more than three visitors at the same time.
The door opened and Louise gasped. Two officers, or guards, or whatever they were called, escorted Bjarke inside. Louise rose to her feet.
The door closed behind him, and the guards disappeared.
They were alone.
Louise’s heart was pounding in her chest. There he was. Right in front of her stood Bjarke Lund. The man she had watched over and over again on her TV screen. The man the entire world outside of these thick walls called a dangerous psychopath.
He was looking at her. It made her nervous. Then, he smiled.
“Finally, we meet,” he said.
Her eyes met his. They were even deeper brown that she thought. She had always loved a man with brown eyes. He looked at her like he wanted to eat her alive. It made her feel special. This was the man everyone was talking about. Here he was. Here he was with her. Not with some beautiful tall model or actress, no, with her. With Louise.
His hungry look made her giggle.
“I’ve brought cake,” she said.
“I thought I smelled something good.”
Louise laughed awkwardly. “You want some?”
“Sure do.”
They sat at the table. Louise broke off a piece of the cake with her fingers and handed it to him. He took a big bite and closed his eyes.
“Oh, my God. I had forgotten how delicious carrot cake is. Oh. It’s wonderful. Thank you so much for bringing this. You’re my saving angel, aren’t you?”
Louise giggled again. “You told me you missed eating carrot cake, remember?”
Bjarke nodded with a smile. “I do remember that. Guess I’m just not used to people listening to what I have to say.”
His face turned serious. Louise knew why. It was so unfair that they didn’t listen to him. He had told her over and over again how they had judged him beforehand, because of the story with his mother, and there was nothing he could do to change their opinion of him. He was falsely convicted, and there was not a damn thing he could do about it. He had to accept the facts.
It’s all about making the best of what life hands you, he wrote in one of his letters.
Louise didn’t agree. She thought he should fight for his freedom. But he had told her when they spoke on the phone that it was no use.
“Unless they can find someone else to blame for this, unless someone else confesses to have done this, and can prove it, then I’m pretty much stuck here.”
Now, sitting in front of him in this small room, Louise wanted so badly to do just that. She wanted to help him get out.
Once he was done with his cake, Bjarke grabbed her leg under the table and pulled her closer. Louise shrieked. He put his face close to hers. She could smell his breath. She could feel his beard against her skin. She breathed hard.
“My God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered. “There are so many things I want to do to you.”
He stared at her intensely, while his hand climbed up under her skirt and touched her panties. “I dream about you every night, Louise. I have to have you. I have to taste you.”
Louise gasped for breath. Never had a man spoken to her in this way before. To her surprise, she realized she liked it. She enjoyed every word, and what it made her feel.
“I dream about you too,” she managed to say.
“I want to take you on that bench right now,” he said. “We’re allowed to have sex with visiting girlfriends.”
Louise really liked that he called her his girlfriend. No one had ever wanted her like this before. “But…but Bjarke…I’ve…I’ve never…”
“It would be an honor to be your first,” he said.
Bjarke Lund didn’t wait for her answer. He lifted her up and threw her onto the bench. With a madman’s grin, he held her down and made a woman of her.
21
July 2014
“YEAH, JUST AS I suspected, we’re not getting any help with this case from the mainland.”
Morten came out from the red brick-police station and jumped inside of the car where I had been waiting, writing some ideas down on the laptop.
By the time he came out of the meeting, I had almost finished the cake.
“What?” I said. “But what do they expect? That you do it all alone?”
“The chief said that we’re supposed to be able to deal with these kinds of things on our own. A double homicide doesn’t require an entire team to solve. That’s what he said.”
“Well, did you tell him that there are only four officers on the entire island? Four officers to cover two cities and a load of tourists who want to feel safe. Did you say it was going to be impossible for you to solve this on your own?”
Morten looked at me angrily. “What do you take me for? Of course I told him that. But his hands are tied, he said. There isn’t anything he can do. Plus they’re considering cutting us down to two officers. They’ll decide it this fall.”
“The press is going to be all over this as soon as the families find out. I mean, they want to know who did this. They want him behind bars. We all do.”
Morten sighed. “Don’t you think I know that? Can’t you just leave it alone? This is my problem, not yours.”
I scoffed. “Wow. And here I thought we were in this together. I thought we were a part of each other’s lives.”
“Well, I need to have at least some privacy,” Morten said. “If I am to keep being me, and not just be a clone of you, then I need to have some space, to have my own life as well. You’re kind of smothering me, and I’m losing myself and who I am here.”
Morten turned on the engine. I stared at him, completely baffled.
What the hell was going on here?
“You’re losing yourself? I’m smothering you?” I said.
Morten lifted his hands, annoyed, in the air. He made an irritated growl. “It’s like you’re swallowing me here, Emma. Like, for every day that passes, I’m losing myself. I have stopped living my own life and started living yours instead. All the things I used to do, I never do them anymore.”
I had no idea what to say. Those words coming out of him sounded nothing like him. He had never said anything about these things before. Why now, all of a sudden?
Jytte. It has to be coming from her.
It all made sense now. Of course it came from her. She had been giving him a hard time all night last night, telling him that he had changed, that he never did the things he used to, that he was losing himself, that he was living my life instead of his own, and so on.
Was she really that crafty?
I really didn’t like to think so. I really wanted her to be this innocent young girl who just missed her father, but lately, there had been a few too many examples of her trying to get between us.
The question was, what Morten would do about it? Would he choose her over me?
“I’m sorry, Emma,” he said, and looked at me. “It’s just all the pressure right now. I had to talk to the parents yesterday, and to be frank, it was awful. Luckily, I wasn’t the one to tell them the news, since the local police did that, but I spoke on the phone with them afterwards, and they were just so devastated. They didn’t understand how this could happen to their son. I…I…It broke my heart, Emma. And now this? What do I tell them when they call me to ask how the investigation is going? I gave them my cell number. I told them they could call me day or night if they had any concerns or questions. Once the first week has passed, they’ll start wondering when the killer is going to be caught. What do I tell them? That it might take months to get to the bottom of this, since I’m the only one on the case? When do I tell them that?”
I put a hand on Morten’s shoulder to try and make him relax. He was very tense.
“Let’s just go,” I said. “Let’s go talk to this guy who threatened Jonas Boegh.”
22
July 2014
I HAD FOUND the IP-address that the e-mail was sent from, and knew that Furious’s real name was Poul Beckman. He lived less than an hour’s drive north of Esbjerg.
Morten was quiet most of the way. I tried to speak and cheer him up, but had no luck.
While in the car, Morten’s phone suddenly rang, and he found a rest area to pull off at, so he could speak. Morten always followed the rules so neatly. Even though it was illegal to speak on the phone while driving, I always did it anyway.
I looked at him while he walked around in the parking lot and talked. His face was very serious. It frightened me slightly.
Once he was done, he stood for a few seconds outside the car, like he needed to catch his breath before he got back in. He was pale.
“Who was that?”
“Forensics. They wanted to give me a preliminary report.”
“So, what did they say?” I asked. His pale face made me fear for what would come next.
Morten looked at me. He looked like he was about to throw up.
“You’re scaring me here, Morten. What is it?”
“He took his heart,” he whispered.
“He did what?”
“The man’s heart is missing. It was cut out. Removed.” He sighed. “That’s why there was so much blood. The guy was still alive when it was done. Probably unconscious, but still.”
“Why the heck would someone take another person’s heart? A souvenir?” I said, feeling slightly nauseated myself. This thing sounded less and less like an assassination over money.
“I…I don’t know. I’m no expert…” Morten threw his hands in the air. “Maybe like a hunter taking the heart of its prey.”
“Like a trophy?”
Morten shook his head. He turned the key and started the car again. “I don’t know.”
“But now you have something you can use when interrogating Poul Beckman. This hasn’t been in the papers yet, so if he knows anything about it, then he knows a little too much.”
“Good point.”
Morten steered the car back onto the road, and we continued towards Tarm, the city whose name meant Colon in Danish, which I had always found to be strange…that you would call a city that.
Even if I was disgusted by the news, I did feel a little better. Finally, Morten and I were communicating again. We were talking and working together. I liked that.
“Anything else they could tell you?” I asked after a little while. “Any fingerprints, shoeprints, fibers, hairs?”
“Nothing. He was very careful.”
“A pro.”
Morten shrugged. “Or at least intelligent.”
“That too.”
“What about the shoes?” I asked.
“What about them?” Morten asked.
“They’re not your everyday shoes. Why don’t you try and track them? Where do you buy shoes like those?”
Morten looked at me and laughed.
“What?”
“Sometimes you’re just such a girl. The shoes.”
Morten took an exit and drove onto a small street, guided by his GPS.
“What is that supposed to mean? Those kinds of shoes you can’t buy in any ordinary store, I’ll tell you that much.”
“Well, that might be. But I don’t have time to call all the shoe stores in the area to find out where you can buy these. I would, if it wasn’t just me on this case, but unfortunately, it is. Now, I’ll go knock on the door to this house and hope to find this guy home. You stay here.”
“Go get him,” I said with a smile. I grabbed my laptop from the back seat and put it on my knees. I found an unprotected Wi-Fi-network from somewhere nearby and went online. “Don’t forget this.”
I reached across his seat and handed him the e-mail. “Don’t forget to find out how much he knows about a body’s anatomy. Not everyone would know how to cut out a heart.”
“I got this,” Morten said, slightly offended, and grabbed the e-mail. “Last time I checked, I was the police officer here.”
“Okay. You’re right. You’re the man.”
Morten leaned over and kissed my nose, then left the car. I pretended to be on the computer until I saw him walk inside the house. As soon as his back disappeared, I sprang out of the car and ran around the house. I wanted to see this guy in person. Luckily for me, he liked to leave the window open to the living room on such a warm summer day.
23
July 2014
“SO, WHAT CAN I do for you, Officer?”
The voice had to be Paul Beckman’s, I thought to myself. I didn’t dare to look in the window, in case either of them saw me. I felt ridiculous squatting underneath the window like this. But I was just so curious, I couldn’t help it. I promised myself I wouldn’t sit here for long. If Morten found me, he would think I had finally lost it.
“I’m sorry to disturb you like this, Mr. Beckman,” Morten said. “But I’m here because of this e-mail.”