by Rose, Willow
”Peter, you can’t just leave her. At least say goodbye before you go.”
“Tell her I’m sorry.”
I felt like I could explode. Who the hell did a thing like that? I wanted to scream at him, yell that he was being so selfish and his daughter would cry her heart out after this. I wanted to beat some sense into him, tell him Julie already had forgiven him, and tell him that as long as he got professional help everyone would forgive him. If that didn’t work I wanted to ask him if this was really the way he wanted Julie to remember him, as the dad who took her without my knowledge and then sedated her so she almost died. That was all she would remember of him. That and the fact that he later abandoned her while she was waiting for him in the hospital bed he put her in. I wanted her to know the dad I used to know. Because he was awesome. And it wasn’t too late if he really wanted to. He could change.
Those were the things I was thinking about. Those were the things I wanted to have said. But I never did. Peter was already on his way. He just shook his head, then turned around and walked away.
Gone. Out of our lives. Out of Julie’s life. As I watched his back disappear down the hall I wondered if we would ever see him again.
36
A couple of days later I finally got to take my baby with me back home to my dad’s house in Karrebaeksminde. She had gotten the color back in her cheeks and smiled widely when she saw my dad standing outside his house. She almost jumped out of the car while it was still moving and jumped into his arms.
I was glad to see her smiling again. She had been crying a lot when I told her that her dad was very sorry but he wouldn’t come and see her in the hospital.
“Will he come another day, then? Will he come and visit me at Grandpa’s again?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
I never was much of a liar and had a hard time keeping her from the truth that he had left and I wasn’t sure we would see him again.
I wasn’t sure I even understood why Peter had reacted the way he did, so how could I explain it to her? Should I say that it was guilt? That he couldn’t face her because he was so afraid because it was his fault that she almost died? That he was embarrassed? That he was a soldier and they don’t make mistakes, they don’t endanger other people’s lives? They protect people. He was supposed to be able to protect his own family. And he failed.
I couldn’t explain that to a six-year-old. But I sensed she somehow understood anyway.
“Did you tell him I’m not mad at him for giving me those pills?”
“Yes I did, and he was very happy to hear that. But he just needed to take a little time to think about what happened. He told me to tell you that he loves you very much.”
My heart had almost broken. She had forgiven him. But he couldn’t forgive himself. Of all of us, she was the adult one.
Sune and Tobias came over later that same day. Tobias had made a whole bunch of drawings for Julie and brought her a box of chocolates. The kids ran screaming upstairs and I sat down in the kitchen with Sune and opened the chocolates. Julie wasn’t much of a chocolate eater, but I was.
“So how are you?” Sune asked.
”Heartbroken. But otherwise just hanging in there. And you?”
He smiled. ”Loving every day of my freedom.”
“Any news about your case?”
“Nope. My lawyer called me yesterday and said the police had another suspect now, but they didn’t have anything concrete on this guy yet.”
“How does she get all that information?”
“She told me she has a contact in the National Police.”
“I see. Did you get a name?”
“Of the suspect or the contact?”
“The suspect, naturally.”
“No, but I have a way of finding it out if you want me to.”
I smiled and took another piece of chocolate. “Of course you do.”
I poured myself a glass of red wine while Sune had a beer. We were pensive for couple of minutes while enjoying the noise of two happy kids playing together upstairs.
“So … do you want me to find that name for you right now?” He read my mind. I was so curious.
“Yes! Let’s do it now,” I said and cleared the table of stuff like my dad’s word puzzles, old radio, and letters. All except my wine and Sune’s beer.
Meanwhile Sune got his laptop from his car.
The old cat stared at us over her bowl of food while we hacked into the National Police server one more time. Sune had gotten good at this, I thought. But that was when it got dangerous. When hackers thought they had done it so many times it was a piece of cake, then they got sloppy and left a trace. Sune told me that in the beginning. Now I told him to remember it.
“I know, I know,” he muttered.
I drank a sip of my wine and waited. Even if I tried to focus, I didn’t get what it was he did on that computer. I could never do it. He was a magician, I thought.
And a pretty good one. A few minutes later he had the name.
“Ulrik Gyldenlove,” I read out loud.
“I knew it,” Sune said.
“You and me both,” I said and wondered what they could have on him that made him a suspect.
“What does it say about him? Why is he a suspect?”
Sune clicked the mouse and read, “He used to be friends with all four of the deceased. He went to the same boarding school and he was the last in a gang of rich boys from the school who used to hang out together and was accused of raping a local girl in 1985.”
“All things we already know.” I leaned back in the chair. Didn’t they have anything besides what we had already figured out?
“It also says they have all this information from the rape-victim Irene Hansen.” Sune continued.
“So they talked to her, just like we did, and now they know about the gang and the game they played.”
“A Gentleman Hunt?”
“Yes. But they must have something else on the guy. Look some more.”
Sune’s eyes returned to the screen. “They brought him in for questioning.”
“Okay. What did that give them?”
Sune read again. ”It seems as though he was open and honest with them. Just like he was with us. He told them everything in detail about what the group did and to whom. It’s not pretty.”
”They must have broken him during the interrogation,” I said as I got up from the chair. I felt like we were close to the answer right now. Ulrik Gyldenlove had killed the rest of the gang. Why? Because they each witnessed something that would harm him if it got out in public? No, then he would have done it long before. And he wouldn’t tell the police all these details. Then what? What was it? I could only come up with one motive. It had to be revenge. I looked at Sune.
”What was it Gyldenlove said to me? Do you remember? I told you about it in the car on our way back,” I said to him.
He looked up.
“Which part?”
“The part when I asked him if the gang had ever picked on him?”
“Oh yeah. Something like you only pick on someone who won’t fight back. Is that it?”
“That is exactly it. He is fighting back for something. Something they did to him back then.”
“Like what?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know. But it must have been something really bad. Enough for him to plan this type of revenge over the years and then execute his old friends one by one.
“So you think that Bjorn Clausen was the first one and then he waited twenty-four years to kill the next?”
“Something like that.”
I stared at Sune with great excitement. We were almost there. I felt it.
“Maybe it’s the rape. I mean they were all in that picture from that night. Maybe he and Irene are in on it together.”
Sune nodded.
”But why would she tell the police that he was there? Why would she tell us?”
Sune was right. Some things didn’t add up yet. I sat
down when my phone vibrated on the kitchen table. It was my sister returning my phone call from the other day.
“I’m so sorry for not calling you before but I knew from Dad that Julie was in the hospital, so I thought it was better to wait.”
My sister, the perfectionist. Always thinking of others. That’s just how she was.
“So how is Julie?”
“Better. She is playing upstairs with her friend.”
“I am glad to hear that. I wanted to call you while you were up there but Dad said you had shut off the phone to better concentrate on being there for Julie.”
“That’s right. Don’t worry about it.”
My sister and I had never been close. There were ten years between us and we never had an intimate relationship, so I would never have expected her to call me in the hospital anyway. But I was glad she said it.
“So you wanted to know something about Zenia?”
“Yes, do you know her?”
“I’ve heard about her.”
“Great! Anything you remember would be a help.”
I looked at Sune, intensely reading his computer.
“She was a girl at the boarding school. Her parents were rich like most of the kids. They lived in London so they put her in that school, which is the story of a lot of the kids there.”
“I heard about that.”
“Anyway it was a mess that ended in tragedy as far as I know. She was a couple of years younger than Didrik Rosenfeldt and the gang, I heard Ulrik Gyldenlove was one of the boys in the gang had quite a crush on her. But she was in love with Bjorn Clausen’s younger brother, Michael, who also went to the school.”
“Whom she later married,” I said.
“Yes. Much against her parents’ protest. He wasn’t good enough for her in their eyes.”
“Because he wasn’t rich. He was there on a scholarship.”
“Exactly.”
“So she rejected Ulrik Gyldenlove?”
“Yes. Well not at first. The story goes that she played them both. Then she became pregnant at seventeen but no one knew who the father was. It was a big scandal at the school and she was expelled. Her parents disowned her. The only one who took care of her was Michael Clausen. He married her when they both turned eighteen, not knowing if the child was his.”
“Wow. And I bet Ulrik Gyldenlove wouldn’t have done that.”
“No. His parents would have cut him off if he did that. He tried to pay her off. To get her to have an abortion, but she refused. He would have lost everything if he had married her. His inheritance, his status, his future, everything. He didn’t dare risk that.”
“But Michael Clausen had nothing to lose.”
“No. But he was expelled from the school too because they were sure that he was the one who got her pregnant since he was the one who married her.”
“So he did lose something?”
“Yes. But he loved her like crazy.”
“Then what happened?”
“She killed herself … and the child.”
“Wow. That was tough.”
“I know.”
“What happened to Michael Clausen?
“Beats me. I haven’t heard about him in ages.”
I thanked my sister and hung up, promising to keep in touch and see each other soon, like we always promised, but never followed through.
I looked at Sune who hadn’t touched his beer since I picked up the phone.
“Zenia killed herself and her kid,” I said. “She didn’t know who the father was. It was either Michael Clausen, whom she married, or Ulrik Gyldenlove. Apparently she loved them both.”
Sune looked up. “That’s not how I would put it.”
“What do you mean?” I took a sip of my red wine and almost choked on it when he answered me.
“It says here Ulrik Gyldenlove admitted raping her.”
I got up and went to look at the police report from the interrogation of Ulrik Gyldenlove. In it he stated he and the other boys raped a lot of girls. One of them was Zenia Petersen, who later became Zenia Clausen.
My head started spinning. Not because of the wine but the thoughts made me dizzy. Had Ulrik Gyldenlove killed Zenia and her child to make sure no one ever knew what he had done? Perhaps he didn’t want the boy seeking him out later claiming he was his dad. Was money a motive? And then did he kill his friends because they knew as well? Because they would blackmail him? If that was true, he knew if his family found out he would lose everything. But most of the boys in the gang had their own money. Like Didrik Rosenfeldt. He didn’t need to blackmail anyone. Maybe he killed them because they raped her too. Maybe he wanted vengeance because he loved her. Was that the reason?
And where was Michael Clausen? Could Gyldenlove have killed him too out of jealousy but the body was never found?
I was tired and sat down in the chair. I ate a piece of chocolate and drank the rest of my wine.
Ulrik Gyldenlove was still a free man. If he was the killer, who would be his next victim?
37
Ulrik Gyldenlove was not a happy man. He never had been and probably never would be. Not even when he married his beautiful aristocratic wife, Sacha, much to his parent’s satisfaction. Not even when his daughter Caroline was born and he got to hold her in his arms for the first time. He just wasn’t cut out to be a happy man.
For that he carried too much baggage.
And the last couple of weeks, seeing his old friends die one after the other didn’t seem to make him any happier. He had thought it would, though. He had always thought they deserved exactly what they were getting now.
Why would he want them to die? Because they made him do it. They pushed him. He never wanted to rape Zenia. He loved her. But Didrik—that bastard—thought she needed a punishment for rejecting Ulrik. And Ulrik had enjoyed the idea of having her suffer a little bit for all the heartbreak she had caused him, for refusing to love him even though he had tried everything. He tried buying her things. He would take her out to nice places for dinner. He even bought her a ring, but she didn’t want it. She didn’t love him the way he loved her. For that he in a way wanted what happened to her.
But he could never have imagined what would happen next.
Ever since that night at the boarding school gym when he raped her on the floor while the others held her down, he had a sadness inside—one that never would go away.
And it grew in him when he heard Zenia was pregnant. It grew even bigger when he tried to pay her off to get an abortion. Another one of Didrik Rosenfeldt’s bright ideas.
But the worst part was when she married that boy, Michael Clausen. Not that Ulrik could have married her himself. That never would have been even considered. It simply was not an option. But that she would choose him, that little good-for-nothing boy who had no money. Ulrik would never understand.
And it broke his heart.
Now they were all gone. Bjorn Clausen, Didrik Rosenfeldt, Henrik Holch, Bertel Due-Lauritzen, Christian Junge-Larsen, and even Zenia Petersen. He would have thought that would have given him some peace of mind. That it would maybe even give him some sort of happiness to see them go.
But it didn’t.
He was still sad. He’d been like that for years now. Twenty-five years to be exact. And it didn’t seem like it was about to change for him. It was as if his life only got worse as the years went by. He had suffered trying to escape his past for too long now. It was time to face the music. Especially now since his wife had died a couple of years ago. Now only he and his daughter, Caroline, were left. She would go to London next year to business school.
Then he would be all alone.
Alone with his own miserable self. The person he loathed most in this world. The only one he could never escape.
Was it worth it? Was anything he had done in his life worth it? No. None of it had been. But that was life, right? A series of events that happened to you while you were busy making plans for your future. And then life came along and
all the dreams would be gone. Crushed into pieces. Eventually they would be forgotten and people learned that life was all about getting by. Coping. Surviving.
Nothing else.
It was called growing up, his father had said.
Ulrik was thinking about all that when he got himself ready for the evening. It was going to be an important night. Maybe the most important one in his miserable little life. Then he picked up the phone.
It was finally time to finish it all off.
38
Sune and Tobias stayed for dinner. Julie convinced Sune that Tobias just had to have another sleepover. She needed him in order to get really well, she said. Fortunately for her, he agreed.
My dad made a traditional Danish dish called frikadeller, meatballs with potatoes and a brown gravy. It was horrible. My dad had never been the best cook and even though I helped him make it, he put too much salt in it, which made it almost inedible. But no one said anything during dinner and I appreciated that. I didn’t like to see my dad’s feelings get hurt.
So when he asked if we liked it everybody—even the kids—said it was delicious. And Dad was very happy when he went upstairs to go to bed.
Sune and I laughed and I drank some more red wine while Sune had a Coke. Then we tucked the kids in and turned on the TV.
I liked Sune’s company. And he seemed to like mine. We were ten years apart in age and very far apart in personality, but still we enjoyed being near one another. He was so easy to be with. Always relaxed and happy and never demanding anything from me. With the age difference, there was no sexual tension at all that I could tell. We were just two colleagues, friends and parents hanging out together.
“What do you want to watch?” Sune asked with the remote in his hand.
I yawned. “I don’t care, just something relaxing. What’s on?”
“Some American series. ‘Desperate Housewives’ is probably the best I can do.”
I yawned again. ”I don’t care much for shows like that. Anything else?”
”An old Danish movie.”