by Willow Rose
“A crime magazine.”
”Too real.”
”The news.”
”Way too real. I’ve been avoiding the world the last couple of days. I am not working until tomorrow.”
We ended up on some documentary that I never quite figured out. My concentration was interrupted when my phone rang.
I picked it up. I didn’t recognize the number.
”Yes?”
”Rebekka Franck?”
”That is me.”
”My name is Caroline Gyldenlove.”
I sat op at once in the sofa and signaled Sune to turn off the TV.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if you remember me. We met when you interviewed my father.”
She talked with a distinguished voice and that made her sound much older than her twenty years.
“I remember you very well. You were with your father at the Riding Club in Klampenborg.”
“Mattssons. Yes. That’s where my father and I go for a ride every now and then. We like it there because it is so close to the park.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I am terribly sorry to disturb you and your family at this late hour but I am concerned about my father.”
“Why? What happened?”
”I don’t know where he went …”
“But?”
“But he seemed so out of it.”
“Is that unusual for him?” I asked remembering the sadness I detected when I walked with him in Dyrehaven.
“No, it’s not. He’s always carrying the sorrows of the world on his shoulders. A big sadness. But today he seemed different. Like something had changed him.”
”How is that?”
”Like he had made a decision. He was so decisive.”
”Is that a bad thing? Why would you worry about that?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s silly. But he looked at me before he left and said the oddest thing.”
“What?”
“He said he would leave now and if he never came back he wanted me to know that his company, the cars, the house, everything in his name, was mine and that I would have enough money to get everything I needed or wanted in this world.”
“Why would he say that?”
“I don’t know. At first I didn’t think much about it, but now I’m wondering about it. What if something is wrong?”
”Why call me?”
”At first I called the police here in Klampenborg, but they couldn’t do anything yet. For all they knew he would be back in an hour or two. That’s usually what happens in cases like this, they said.”
“I heard that one before,” I said and remembered how they reacted when my daughter was missing.
“So I found your number in my dad’s phone from when you called him to do that interview.”
“Your dad didn’t bring his cell phone when he left?”
“No. That’s another thing I found strange. He never leaves the house without it. He’s a businessman. His life is that phone.”
It did sound a little odd to me. I could only come up with two reasons to why he wouldn’t bring his phone. Either her dad had lost his mind and wandered off or he didn’t want the police to be able to track him.
“Have you any idea as to where he could have gone?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Anything. Just a little thing that you might think is unimportant but might be useful to me.”
“When I asked where he was going, he did say he had to finish some game.”
“What were his exact words? I want you to think carefully now and give me his exact words.”
”I am going to finish the game.”
“A Gentleman Hunt,” I murmured.
But who was the last gentleman he needed to hunt and kill? Everybody in the picture was already gone.
39
“What the hell do you want?”
Didrik Rosenfeldt Jr. stared at me with contempt in his eyes. Sune and I found his apartment at the port of Copenhagen, in one of the most expensive apartment buildings in the country. The complex was white as snow and all the apartments had views of the ocean and Sweden in the horizon.
Didrik wasn’t alone in the apartment. I heard a woman shouting from inside. She came to the door and stood behind Didrik. She was only in her underwear and stockings but that didn’t seem to bother her. Probably not the wife, I thought.
It was a long shot, I knew that, but by now he was the only one who might know where Ulrik Gyldenlove went to meet his last victim. That was why we were there.
But right now he didn’t quite seem to be willing to help us.
”Well come on, I am in the middle of something here. Tell me, why are you here? Have you come to ask me to fuck off again?”
I smiled. “I actually don’t have the time for that. But we need your help,” I said.
“My help?” Didrik snorted.
“To do what?”
“I would rather not discuss it out here. Can we please come in for a second?”
That obviously wasn’t quite his plan for the evening, so he hesitated for a moment before he let us in.
The view was spectacular. The penthouse apartment had an ocean view from every room. On the other side of the water I could see moving lights from cars driving along the coast of Sweden and on the bridge combining the two Scandinavian countries.
“So what is it that is so important that it can’t wait until the morning?” Didrik said.
First I told him everything about our investigation and then the call from Ulrik Gyldenlove’s daughter.
“It’s urgent that we find him,” I said.
After my explanation Didrik no longer had that same smirk on his face he had earlier. Luckily, he seemed to take me seriously.
“Could it be himself that was to be killed?” he asked.
“You mean he has gone to commit suicide? I had the same thought when his daughter told me about the phone,” I said. “I thought he was the last person in the picture to still be alive and he couldn’t go on living.”
“But no matter what, it’s important to find him,” Sune said.
“Yes, we need to stop him,” I said.
Didrik nodded pensively.
“But why do you think I can help you?”
“We don’t know. It was a wild shot. But maybe you know of some place your father and his friends used to meet, or a special place they talked about. Something. Anything.”
He nodded again. “I might know where he could have gone.”
40
The door to the school gymnasium at Herlufsholm Boarding school was locked when we arrived an hour later. It was dark and there was no light anywhere except from the lamps outside the dorms. The gymnasium was in a secluded building a distance from the main buildings of the school.
Didrik Rosenfeldt Jr. had told me that his father and his friends used to meet there at night. They would smoke cigarettes in the boys bathing area and they would climb the ropes and beat each other up for fun on the gym mats.
This was their place to hang out.
The school itself was secluded in a forest far away from everything and the young boys never had anywhere else to go. Didrik Rosenfeldt Jr. explained he had been a student at the school too.
Now Sune and I stood, outside the main door to the gymnasium trying to find a way in. We had seen a car parked in the grass not far from the building and now I spotted another expensive-looking one in the parking lot. Maybe a Jaguar or a Mercedes. The one on the grass was an old and ordinary Toyota.
“There’s no one here,” Sune said.
“I’m not so sure.” I pointed at the expensive car at the parking lot.
“That could belong to one of the teachers at the school.”
“Wouldn’t that teacher park the car near the school entrance then? It’s a pretty cold night.”
Sune nodded. “You might be r
ight.”
“If the boarding school boys used to meet in the gymnasium, they probably wouldn’t have used the main entrance where they could be seen.” I said.
“Probably not. They risked getting kicked out of school if they went outside after lights out.”
I nodded. That was what Didrik Rosenfeldt Jr. had told us.
“So what you are saying,” Sune continued, “is that there must be another way in.”
“Exactly.”
I started walking around the building when Sune stopped me.
“We don’t need that,” Sune then said.
I looked at him with surprise.
“What do you mean?”
He took out a screwdriver from his jacket pocket.
“I learned a lot in juvenile prison that every once in a while comes in handy.” He started working on the door.
I was impressed. Less than a minute later, the door was open.
We went in. It was totally dark and we couldn’t see anything. But as we moved forward I suddenly heard voices. Two men were talking. They were standing on a platform at the end of the gym. Face to face but with distance between them. Sune and I moved closer and soon we could see them. I had a hard time recognizing their faces in the darkness. But I knew their voices.
“Thank you for your call,” one said.
I recognized the voice as the one of Ulrik Gyldenlove.
“The last time we saw each other, Zenia was still alive,” the other one said. Everything inside of me froze. I knew that voice. It belonged to Michael Oestergaard. The detective at Karrebaeksminde Police department. Michael, I thought. Michael Clausen. He must have changed his name. Of course. Bjorn Clausen’s younger brother. The one who married Zenia Petersen when she got pregnant after the rape.
“It was at that party,” Ulrik said. “At the school. Here in this gymnasium. The band was playing on this stage, remember?”
“You and your friends were graduating. I was a sophomore. The whole school was at that party,” Michael said.
“It was 1986.” Ulrik sighed. ”Seems like forever ago.”
”And yet still so diabolically haunting and crystal clear in our memories,” Michael said.
“She danced with me right here on the floor,” Ulrik said while he was pointing. “So young, so beautiful.”
“So alive,” Michael said.
Ulrik nodded.
”She might have been dancing with you, but she was looking at me, while she was in your arms,” Michael continued.
“I remember that very well. That made me so furious.”
“And that’s when you and your friends decided I needed to be taught a lesson, right? I was, after all, only a sophomore.”
“So was Zenia.”
“Yes, but she was a girl. A very pretty one too. And popular among the seniors. Especially you. And no one messes with a senior’s girl, right?”
“That was the hierarchy. That’s just the way things were.”
I heard Ulrik sigh deeply and then he sat down on a chair with his head bowed. Michael took a step in his direction. His voice was filled with anger and hate when he opened his mouth again.
“You made me watch it.”
Ulrik hid his face in his hands.
Michael continued, “You beasts made me watch while you … raped her.”
Ulrik looked up. “I can still sometimes hear her screams at night,” he said.
“So can I. I tried to help her. But Bjorn held me. I couldn’t move, no matter how much I fought.”
“The endless remorse I have felt over the years can never wipe out the torment Zenia must have carried,” Ulrik said.
He looked up at Michael who was now standing right in front of him.
“Do what you have to do,” Ulrik said.
In the faint light I saw Michael Oestergaard raise his hand with the claw. I stepped forward.
“Tell me, when you cut through the chest of your victims is it enough to just do it once or do you need to do it several times before he dies?” I asked.
Sune had found a light switch and turned it on.
The two men looked at me.
“What a strange question,” Michael Oestergaard said.
“Just trying to make conversation.”
“I don't have time for your games,” he said and lifted the hand with the claws high up in the air.
“Just do it,” Ulrik said.
Sune stood right behind me. I tried not to show it but I was really scared. What if I didn’t stop him in time? Would he kill him? Would he kill us afterwards?
“Is this what you think Zenia would have wanted?” I asked in another attempt to buy us some time. Sune had called the police and they would be here any moment.
The claw came down to his side. I took in a deep breath and tried to calm myself. He was talking to me now. If I could only stall him for a few more minutes.
“They made me watch them as they …” he said with hatred spitting out of him. “I couldn’t do anything. Bjorn was holding me.”
“He always was the strongest one,” Ulrik said.
“That must have been horrific,” I said.
“They even held my eyelids open with their fingers so I would see everything. And I did. She looked me right in the eye while Ulrik did this to her. He was on top of her back holding her hair, riding her like a horse while Henrik and Bertel held her arms and legs. She looked me straight in the eyes. And I was helpless. After that she had nothing left to live for. She couldn’t bear to see her own child. She didn’t know who the father was. And then she killed herself … and him. Now I have nothing left. After she died, I tried everything to forget her. I even changed my last name to my mother’s maiden name. I got into the police force but nothing ever replaced her. So one day I decided to start planning my revenge.”
“What’s with the claw?”
“My brother had it. I found it when we cleared out his room after he died. He made it for them back then. He was a farm boy like me, remember. We both knew how to make stuff like that on my dad’s welder.”
“So that was where he made the glove and that’s where you made the cross to put through Bertel Due-Lauritzen’s skull?” I asked.
He nodded and then continued.
“My brother and his friends used to bring the glove when they would rape girls on their boat. It was Didrik who was fascinated by the horror movies, my brother had told me. One of them would dress up like Freddy Krueger and scare their victims by singing the song and threatening to kill them with the claws. I thought it would be the ultimate way to get my revenge by using their own glove.”
“What happened to your brother?”
“I found out a short time later that it had all been his idea. When he was with Didrik he became an animal. He wanted to impress him and be like him. He enjoyed seeing me suffer that night. He liked holding me, he told me. So I killed him six months after his graduation. I had to. I couldn’t stand looking at him anymore. It was so easy. I knocked him down and pushed him over the bridge so he landed on the tracks. Then I waited for the train to do the rest. After that I thought I had gotten my revenge, but a few years later Zenia killed herself and then there was no turning back. I had to kill them all.”
“But would Zenia want you to do this? Is this the solution?” I asked.
“At least it will finally all be over. She was all I had. They destroyed her. I loved her and I even loved the child. I thought of him as mine. And now they are both gone.”
“Do it. Just do it!” Ulrik ordered.
Michael looked at him then lifted the claw again. My heart pounded. How could I stop him? I heard sirens outside. It was only a matter of seconds.
“Don’t do it. It doesn’t bring Zenia or your child back,” I tried one last time, but no one was listening to me anymore. It was all between the two men and their past.
They were no longer sensing anyone else. They didn’t care. It was time to finish what they had started. And they would do it here where it a
ll began.
”I’m the last one. Everybody else is gone. Just do what you have to do,” Ulrik continued. He stood up in front of Michael.
“Nine, ten, you will never sleep again …” Michael sang as he swung the hand with the metal claw and it went straight into Ulrik’s chest causing him to tumble on to the floor.
“No!” I screamed.
Less than one second later the building was filled with uniforms and guns, pointing at everybody and everything. I put my hands in the air to signal I was unarmed and Sune did the same. Then I saw two policemen throw Michael onto the floor.
Ulrik was still lying motionless on the stage floor.
41
A week later I was on my way to Enoe. I drove, thinking about the last couple of weeks and how crazy it had all been. Ironically, I wanted to come here to get a more quiet life for my daughter and myself. Meanwhile we had the first serial killer on the loose in the history of our small country and my daughter had been abducted by her own father, who had almost killed her with sleeping pills.
Wow! It had been a crazy couple of weeks.
Michael Oestergaard was now in police custody and would get his punishment. Under interrogation he had admitted that he was the one who trashed my dad’s place. A detective had told my father Michael wanted to scare me after he had seen me in Christian Junge-Larsen’s apartment.
The media was all over it, but I had been the one to break the story. It was mine. It was a solo. And my editor had loved every step of it.
Luckily, Ulrik Gyldenlove had survived. His daughter said he was in pretty bad shape, but he was going to survive. I don’t quite know who would consider it lucky. I would and his daughter, but he probably wouldn’t. He wanted to die. He went to the gymnasium to die that night.
The case was closed and that had a nice feeling to it. I had done my part to solve it and now the rest was in the hands of the police. The only thing I couldn’t quite figure out on my own was why the pastor had tried to find Zenia Petersen. The answer came by itself. I talked to Irene who explained to me that she got a visit from him a few years ago when he just began ministering. He wanted to apologize for what they had done. Since he now was a pastor, he said, he needed to repent for the past.