by Willow Rose
“You only pick on someone who won’t fight back.”
I nodded.
“But I could have stopped them,” he then said. “I should have.”
We began to walk back to the riding club. I had promised Sune I wouldn’t take too long since we had a long drive home, and he had to pick up his son.
“You have a son?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes I do.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“Well, you didn’t ask.”
His son was apparently seven years old. Sune was only nineteen when he got him. The boy’s mother had been young too, and she didn’t want the child. So he was a single dad.
I was stunned at the way people kept surprising me lately and wondered what else he had kept from me as we walked back in silence. I also wondered about this group of boarding school kids who had terrorized the whole school for years without any consequences. I wondered what role Ulrik Gyldenlove had in it and how I was supposed to put it all in an article without putting Irene Hansen’s life at risk. I would have to discuss it with Ole, my editor, when we got back., We reached the riding club where Sune was waiting for us together with Ulrik’s daughter.
“Can I see the picture again?” Ulrik asked just as we were about to leave.
I got it out of my pocket and handed it to him.
He stared at it and I saw sadness in his eyes.
“These two are dead now,” he said and pointed at Didrik Rosenfeldt and Henrik Holch.
I nodded.
“Then there are only three of us left.”
I looked surprised at him.
“You mean four, right?”
He put his finger on another boy’s face in the photo.
“No. This guy, Bjorn Clausen, killed himself in 1987. That means there are only three left.”
CHAPTER 15
SO ONE of the boarding school boys was already dead. But how did he die? I searched the internet when we got back to Karrebaeksminde and in all the newspapers at the library. And I had Sune find anything he could on Bjorn Clausen and his suicide in 1987 from the Internet and the police archive. But all we got was a small note in the local paper and an old report from the police of what was a closed case, a definitely suicide.
Jumped out from a bridge in front of a train
I had run dry of ideas. Who was that guy? I asked myself and looked at the picture. Brown hair, blue eyes. Tall, muscular. He looked a bit familiar too me, but I couldn’t quite place him.
I decided to let it go and concentrated on my article while Sune went to get his son. I told him he could drop his son off at my dad’s and he would take care of him while we were working.
Sune called me after he had dropped off his son. I learned his son was Tobias, Julie’s new best friend in school, so that turned out to be a very popular decision. I was getting quite good at this small-town life I asked Sune to bring pizza when he got back.
Jumping out from a bridge, getting hit by a train was certainly an effective way of killing yourself. But why? He was nineteen. He had just graduated from high school six months before. Was it just teenage depression? Ulrik Gyldenlove had described as a cold-hearted player of a game where they would beat the living out of kids that were younger than them and rape a local girl just for the fun of it Had he had some regrets? Some kind of conscience? Was he unable to keep on living knowing what he and his friends had done? It sounded a bit unlikely to me.
“Maybe the killer had already begun looking to get revenge back in 1987.” Sune said with cheese from the pizza on his lip.
I signaled with my finger on my own lip, and he removed it.
“That‘s possible. But why wait twenty-four years before killing the next?”
“I don’t know,” Sune said with his mouth full.
“Maybe the killer has been away. Maybe he was sent to college somewhere out of the country. Maybe in England or in the U.S.?”
Sune nodded. ”That sounds likely. A lot of these kids went on to become big-shots later in life and often they would have to go to foreign countries in order to get the best education money could buy before they came back and took over the family business.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“But that doesn’t help us much,” he said with a grin.
”What do you mean?”
”After what you told me today, almost every kid in that school could have a potential motive for killing them. A lot of kids were beaten and harassed and would like to get their revenge at some point.”
“You’re right,” I said a heavily. “There could be hundreds of potential killers out there wanting to get rid of Didrik Rosenfeldt and his gang.”
Sune took another piece of pizza from the box.
”So what do we do now?” He leaned back in his chair while eating.
“What is there to do?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“First I will write my article on the boarding school boys and where they are now. And then I will write another article on the harassment. I made a deal with Gyldenlove that I wouldn’t use his name and thereby tell the rest of the gang he is the one who ratted them out. I will just call him an anonymous source from the school. Then I am going to e-mail the articles to my editor in Naestved. He is waiting for them and promised to read them right away and then put them in the paper.”
“And then?”
“Then I will be going home to my family. My daughter is supposed be sound asleep by then, but since Tobias is there with her she will most likely be fully awake, running around having the time of her life. I will then tuck her in, after saying goodbye to you and Tobias.”
“Then what do we do with the case?”
“What is there left to do but to wait for the killer to strike again?”
An hour or so later the door suddenly buzzed to the editorial room. Sune got up and let someone in. It was Giovanni Marco. He had come to get his picture taken for the article. He had made the appointment with Sune since he was already in town doing some other business.
I smiled at him, and said hi, but didn’t pay any more attention to him. I was busy with my articles. Sune asked him to stand against a wall and then he took a lot of different pictures of him.
Then they went outside to get some photos of him with some of his work displayed in town. Before they left Giovanni approached me.
I looked up and into his blue eyes. He smiled his handsome smile.
“I am sorry you threw away my phone number,” he said with that cute irresistible Italian accent.
“Who said I threw it away?”
“I just figured, since you didn’t call me back.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Okay, then,” he said and turned away.
“Okay.”
He stopped himself and looked at me again. “Then maybe you would consider having dinner with me some day?”
I blushed and hoped he didn’t notice.
“I might consider that.”
“I will call you, then.”
It was late when Sune and I got to my dad’s home. Sune had been researching Bjorn Clausen for hours while I wrote the stories for the newspaper. The editor had read them and loved them right away. They would be in the morning paper, he said.
When we came inside we both had quite a scare. Inside in the living room stood two men twice the size of Sune. My dad was sitting on the couch looking at us with fear in his eyes.
“Dad, are you okay?” I yelled and ran across the room. I kneeled in front of him and looked him in the eyes.
He nodded and took my hand.
“I am fine, sweetheart. I am fine.”
“Where are the kids?”
“They are upstairs. They are sleeping. Don’t worry about them.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and got back on my feet. I looked at the two guys staring at me and started yelling at them. ”Who are you? And what the hell are you doing here?”
One of the men looked at me. “Peter sen
t us.”
I froze. Sune looked at me. He grabbed my arm.
”Are you okay? Who is Peter?”
I looked at the tall bald guy with broad shoulders. I knew his type. He didn’t scare me.
”Well then you can tell Peter to just butt out of my life. Out of our lives. I don’t want anything to do with him ever again.”
”Peter wants to see his daughter.”
“Tell him I don’t care. I don’t want her to be among criminals. I want her to have an ordinary life of an ordinary girl.”
I stepped a couple of steps in the big guy’s direction while I kept yelling at him. The worst I could do right now was to show fear. Peter could never know that I was afraid of him. He would use it against me. Manipulate me into coming back.
I opened the door and showed the men out.
“You go tell him that.”
CHAPTER 16
“YOU HAVE some explaining to do, young lady.”
My dad stood by the stove in the kitchen the next morning when I came down. Julie had been sleeping when I woke up, so I let her sleep a little longer. After all, it was Saturday and she didn’t have school.
I sat down at the table. I felt like I was thirteen years old again and my parents had caught me smoking.
“Can’t it wait?” I said looking at my watch. I had promised Sune to go to the newspaper and look at the pictures he had taken of Giovanni Marco and choose three of them for the article about him.
My dad looked at me with discontent.
”I need to know. What happened to you two? You and Peter were so happy?”
I sighed. My dad poured me a cup of coffee and put it in front of me.
“It is really a long story, Dad …”
He sat down with his own cup. ”I have nothing but time.”
I sighed again and took his hand. I smiled. How I loved my talks with him when I was younger. I used to be able to tell him everything. He was nothing like my mom and sister who would always be so judgmental.
“You know we met in Iraq, right?”
My dad nodded.
”He was a soldier?”
“Actually he was an officer. I went there as a reporter and lived on the base. That’s how we met. He took care of me, helped me get my stories for the paper, knew who I should talk to, and got me different interviews with the local people. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere on my own. That was way too dangerous, with all the kidnapping of foreign journalists going on at that time. So he his soldiers arranged to escort me everywhere I needed to go.”
“And then you fell in love?”
“Yes. We grew fond of each other. He actually saved my life at one point.”
My dad looked seriously at me. “You never told me that!”
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Well it’s a little too late for that.”
“I know. I never meant for you to be concerned.”
“Then you shouldn’t have gone to Iraq in the first place,” he said with smile.
I smiled back and drank my coffee.
“Anyway, through my Iraqi interpreter I got promised an interview with one of the leaders of Al-Qaeda, a general high up in the hierarchy. It was a really big scoop for me. I had already become a big name from my previous articles about the war, but this one would put me over the top. My career would have been secured after that. But Peter wouldn’t let me go. He said it was too dangerous because I had to go there alone without any protection.”
“Well, of course, it was too dangerous. Are you kidding me? Did you really consider going?”
“I didn’t just consider. I went. Without Peter’s approval.”
“You always were a stubborn little girl.” Dad laughed, yet with obvious seriousness in his eyes.
“I know. No one could tell me what to do, right?”
“Right.”
“Anyway, I went and of course it was a setup. There was no general there. Instead I got a black hood over my head and thrown into the backseat of a car. I kicked and screamed, but in a town like Bagdad, no one would hear, and if they did, no one would react.”
“More coffee?” Dad stood up and poured us both a second cup. I could tell it was hard for him to hear this story.
“I felt the car moving and tried to listen to the sounds around me, trying to locate where we were going. I knew they would probably take me to the mountains and hide me in a house far away until my ransom was paid. That’s what they usually did. But I also knew the chances of anyone paying the ransom were very small, since all nations participating in the war had agreed not to cave in to the pressure of terrorists. And then the kidnappers would probably have to kill me.”
“Wow, I am glad I didn’t hear about this until now,” Dad said.
“Me too.”
“So what happened? How did you get away?”
“The car didn’t get far from the town when it crashed. I couldn’t see what it was, but it felt big. I heard my kidnappers yell a lot but didn’t understand a word, except the Arabic word for soldiers they kept yelling to each other. I sensed that hope wasn’t all lost. I started yelling that I was in the car on the passenger seat and I heard the door open and someone dragged me out and took the black hood off me. It was Peter. They followed me anyway to the meeting with the alleged general and saw me being dragged out in the car. Then they crashed a van into the car carrying me and scared off the kidnappers.”
My dad leaned back in the chair. “I always knew I liked the guy.”
I smiled. Dad got up, got the toast and put it in front of me. I buttered it and put cheese on it. The way I always liked it.
Dad looked like he enjoyed watching me eat. He had a fried egg and poured a lot of salt on it.
“Easy on the salt there,” I said. “I need you to stay alive for a little while.”
“You are beginning to sound like your mother.”
“That might be, but you had a stroke, remember? At the top of the stairs. The stroke didn’t finish you off but you could easily have killed yourself falling down instead.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t eat salt. That just mean I should stay away from stairs,” he said with a big smile and took a bite of the egg.
I laughed and ate.
“But you still haven’t explained why things went wrong with you two,” he said after a little while.
“Well, I got pregnant while we were still at the base and that complicated things. I told the paper and they sent me home. Peter came back after two months and we got married.”
“That I remember. I am glad your mother got to see you in that white dress before she died. You looked so happy.”
” I was.”
”So what the hell happened to you?”
“I had the baby and everything was perfect until Peter had to go again.”
“To Iraq?”
”Yes, he was deployed for another six months. When he got back something horrible had happened to him. I couldn’t recognize him any longer. He screamed and cried at night. He got raging mad over small things and he couldn’t take being home in boring little Denmark. It was like he didn’t know how to live a normal life any longer.”
“PTSD?”
”Something like that. I’m not sure, but he wasn’t himself anymore. I couldn’t rely on him. And he wouldn’t talk to me about it. He cried when he thought I wasn’t listening, he could get so mad he would throw things around and he even hit me a few times. Not hard, just slapped me a couple of times.”
”He did not!”
”It’s okay, I wasn’t hurt, but I started speculating about Julie. Was this the kind of upbringing that I wanted for her?”
“So you came down here?”
“Not yet. First he went away again to Iraq. I pleaded and begged him to stay home but he said he had to go, that it was his duty. And I just gave up on him. I thought I at least would have six months of peace and a quiet normal life for me and Julie. And we did have almost a normal life for a couple of months until
I found something. I hadn’t heard from him in a long time so I wondered what he was up to. I opened his e-mail account and read all of his latest e-mails. I thought I would see letters from a woman or discover he was having an affair or something.”
“But that wasn’t what you found?”
“What I found made me so scared and so mad at him. It appeared that he wasn’t in Iraq as a soldier in the Danish army. He had started his own private security company in Iraq with several of the soldiers from his battalion who had left the army with him.”
“So, what was the problem?”
“Peter told me before about these so-called security companies. The name is just a cover up. They don’t secure anything or keep anyone safe. They are mercenaries. They kill people for money.”
My dad stopped eating and looked at me. “That can’t be true. Peter wouldn’t …?
“Apparently he would.”
“So what did you do?”
“I confronted him when he got back. And he didn’t take it well. He locked me and Julie in the basement for a week. That was his answer. He didn’t even defend himself.”
“Oh my God, sweetheart,” he said and held my hand.
“It’s okay, Dad, don’t worry. We’re fine now, remember?”
“How did you get out?”
“Eventually he opened the door and let us out. We had to promise never to bring it up again or he would have to lock us again in the basement. I was really afraid of him after that and realized I couldn’t live like this. He was a ticking bomb. So one day when I was supposed to be at work, I packed all I could and Julie and I came down here. The rest of the story you know.”
My dad had a tear in the corner of his eye. I got up and gave him a hug.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you. I thought you were just having the usual problems couples go through when they have kids. I’m so glad you came to me.”
”Me too,” I said still hugging him.
“What are you doing?” Julie had sneaked up on us in the kitchen.
I wiped a tear from my eye and let go of my dad.
“Nothing sweetheart. Grandpa is just so glad we are here,” I said.