by Willow Rose
“Then what is important?”
“Why I am here.”
Pastor Bertel felt his throat constrict. The feeling of suffocation overwhelmed him. “I have read about you in the paper. You killed Didrik and Henrik. I figured you would come for me too. In a way I have been waiting for you.”
Bertel had an urge to get up and pull away the curtain to see his perpetrator’s face. But something kept him from doing it. Some force bigger than himself forced him to stay in his chair. The same force that the boys in the juvenile prison had come to know after the nightly visits with the prison’s pastor. The same force that would keep them awake night after night staring anxiously at the door to their cell. Afraid that it would open and they would once again lose a finger, an ear, be blinded, or even castrated.
It was fear.
“I suppose there’s nothing I can do or say to make you change your mind?”
“You suppose right.”
“So it is over?”
A long motionless silence. For an instant the pastor in the armchair thought the man behind the curtain was gone.
“Can I please at least see your face?”
Another silence from his perpetrator before the sound of the curtain being pulled aside filled the air. A face appeared on the other side. The glove from his past was pointing right at him. The pastor wasn’t afraid any longer. But he was indeed surprised.
“So it is you?”
“Yes.”
“But why? Why now after all these years?”
“Because your time is up. The game is over.”
The pastor was content with the answer. He had always known that the past that he had too long been running from, would one day catch up with him.
And this was it. His time was up. After all he was a priest. He wasn’t frightened by the end, only by the pain.
“Will I suffer?”
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 21
SUNDAY IS supposed to be a day of rest. A day to spend with your loved ones. And so this Sunday began. But shortly after I hung up after talking to Giovanni, my phone rang again. This time it was Sara.
“There’s been another one. Another murder, they say on the police radio.”
She sounded so excited. They had never had a murder in this area before and now they had three in week.
“Aren’t you supposed to have the day off?”
“I am. I’m at my house.”
“So you have a police radio at your house too?”
“Well of course. Most things happen on the weekends.”
That was true, I had to admit.
“So tell me about the murder.” I waved at my daughter who wanted me to come back and do the rest of the puzzle with her. I signaled both her and my dad that this was important.
“You are never going to believe this. It’s a priest this time.”
“A priest?”
“In the juvenile prison.”
“Where is that?”
“Roedvig Stevns.”
“Now where is that exactly?”
“About an hour drive from here. Just on the east coast of Zeeland.”
In the middle of nowhere, that is, I thought.
“How do we know it is the same guy?”
“We don’t. But the police keep talking about his chest being ripped apart. Using words like “almost looks inhuman, beastlike, messy, blood everywhere.” I just thought you might like to check it out for yourself.”
“You thought right,” I said and got the address of the juvenile prison. Now all I had to do was call Sune and then the hard part: tell my family that our Sunday was ruined.
They didn’t take it well. Julie cried and said she missed me. My dad gave me one of those looks that strongly indicated I was not making the right choice. I felt bad for Julie, but I had to go. I promised her we would get ice cream when I got back. But I also knew it would probably never happen. I wouldn’t be able to get back in time. Luckily for me she forgot all about it when I told her that Tobias was coming because his dad, Sune, was going with me. So I got out of the house without anyone crying. Which was quite an accomplishment.
At least Sune was in a great mood. Well, until I told him where we were going, that is. Then his smile froze and he looked mad.
“I didn’t choose the location,” I defended myself, thinking he was mad because it was so far away and he wouldn’t get to spend any more of the Sunday with Tobias.
Sune stepped angrily on the gas pedal and we drove off.
“So what happened?” he asked a little later with a less angry attitude.
“Some priest was killed in a juvenile prison.”
He looked at me with worry in his eyes.
“What juvenile prison?”
“Stevnsfortet.”
Sune was quiet for a while.
“What’s wrong?” I asked after some time. We were almost there and I could see the prison on the top of the hill. I looked at Sune’s face. He looked scared, as if something he just saw had frightened him. He didn’t answer my question. Instead he stopped the car in front of the crime tape. We got out.
A lot of people had gathered outside the prison, but no journalists just yet. Mostly police officers discussing and forensic people working. An officer talked to some of the employees, taking their statements. The blue van from Copenhagen was there again. This had to be big stuff.
Sune started taking pictures without saying a word to me, while I tried to contact with some of the employees who had already given their statements.
I spotted a cleaning lady still wearing her uniform as she was about to walk away. Her head was bowed and she was crying. She passed the crime tape and I caught up with her.
”Do you know what happened?” I asked.
She stopped and stared at me with a frightened look.
”Hi, I am Rebekka Franck with Zeeland Times,” I said and gave her my card. “Would you mind making a statement for the newspaper?”
She sniffed and dried her eyes with the back of her hands. “Sure.”
”Great.” I found a new page in my notebook. ”Tell me what you know.”
“Someone killed the prison pastor.”
I nodded and wrote it down. “Do you know his name?”
“Pastor Bertel … we called him… his last name was Lauritzen.”
I stopped and looked at her. I remembered the name from the picture where Irene had written the names of the boys who raped her. I found the photo in my pocket and read the name out loud.
“Bertel Due-Lauritzen?” I showed her the picture and she pointed at one of the boys in the middle. Right behind Irene. Next to the handsome Bjorn Clausen.
“Yes, it was him.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
She shook her head heavily. “No. We found him on the floor in the church when we came to clean as we always do after Sunday service.”
I wrote the details in my notebook.
“Could you tell what had killed him?”
She shook her head and started crying again. “No. It was like … he was … there was blood everywhere. And his chest was ripped … like if a beast had … and he was nailed to the floor.”
“Nailed?”
“Yes, a big cross had gone through his head. Through the skull,” she said and put a finger to her head.
“It must have been a sharp cross?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Of course you don’t.” I figured I would need ask Sune one more time to get the autopsy report. I couldn’t figure out how a cross could go through a skull.
“The man who did this is not human,” the woman said. “He can’t be.”
She was the second one to tell me that and I was beginning to think she was right.
Sune was still moody when we got back at the newspaper. He downloaded the pictures to the computer, while I wrote the article about the third killing. I spoke to the police shortly after the cleaning lady, but they had no comments as I predi
cted. And as earlier, they wouldn’t say if they considered it to be the same killer.
The question in my mind was: Did Denmark have its first serial killer? There was no doubt in my mind that we did. So far he had killed three out of the six people in the picture I had gotten from Irene. A fourth person had supposedly killed himself. Could it be Gyldenlove who killed the others? Or could it be Irene getting her revenge from the rape so many years ago? Or maybe it was a third person seeking revenge for something the gang did back then. Or maybe the last guy from the picture I had yet to meet? What was his name? I looked at the back of the picture. Christian Junge-Larsen. Maybe it was about time that I paid him a visit.
Sune got up from his seat and was about to leave, when I stopped him.
“I need you to do something for me,” I said.
“It’s Sunday. It’s going to cost you. I get paid by the hour, you know. Weekends cost extra.”
“Actually it is going to cost the newspaper, but they won’t mind since we are getting a lot of new readers because of this case.”
He sat down at his desk. “So what do you want from me?”
“First I need you to find Christian Junge-Larsen for me. The address and where he works. Next I want more details on the killing of the prison pastor. The autopsy report is not going to be ready until at least tomorrow, so we can’t find that. But I am interested in knowing more about the cross. By now the officers must have made at least a report of the killing and a description of the crime scene. Could you try to find that?”
“Sure.”
I got up and poured both of us a cup of coffee. I placed his in front of him. He didn’t even look at me.
“The kids are having a blast at my dad’s,” I said. “So don’t worry.”
Sune looked at me and smiled for the first time in hours. “I know they’re fine.” His eyes went back to the screen.
“So what is the matter?”
He sighed. “Nothing. Just a little personal stuff. Could we leave it at that?”
I nodded and looked out the window. It was still Sunday and the town of Karrebaeksminde was sleepy. People stayed indoors, where they could keep warm. Watching TV, playing cards or board games, and just relaxing and getting new energy for the next week of work. The streets were empty. I only saw an elderly man walking his dog. And all of a sudden it struck me. Wasn’t it my duty as a reporter to tell people the truth? I had kept my knowledge hidden from them. Out there in the normally quiet little kingdom was a killer on the loose. It wasn’t three random killings as the police had told the public and wanted me to write in the newspaper. Like they had said to all the other reporters. Not to scare the public, yes I knew. But that was wrong. People were entitled to know the truth. That we did in fact have a serial killer. A seriously dangerous beast.
I sat down at my desk and made my decision. I was going to write the truth in the morning paper. I was going to tell the public that the three killings were related. That the victims had all known each other at the boarding school.
CHAPTER 22
“THE CROSS looks like it was made of big iron spikes,” Sune said after a while. I had just begun my new article and it was coming along nicely.
“Take a look,” he said and pointed at the screen.
I stood and went to his desk. I looked over his shoulder and saw a picture taken at the scene.
“It looks like it was welded,” I said and pointed.
“Yes, it looks very homemade.”
“Like someone had taken two spikes and welded them together so it looks like a real cross.”
“Exactly.”
“And the spikes are sharp on the end, so they could easily penetrate the skull,” I said, thinking now all we had to do was to figure out who would have spikes like these at their disposal. Maybe the killer worked with this kind of thing.
“So what do you think?” I asked Sune.
He shook his head. ”I really don’t know.”
”A welder?”
”Or someone who builds houses?” he suggested.
I nodded. That was a good idea. This kind of spike could be used to keep panels or planks together. But the killer would also know how to weld. So they were looking for a craftsman or a contractor of some kind. Not a nobleman like Gyldenlove and probably not a woman like Irene.
“There was something else,” Sune said.
“Yes?”
“I got a little more information on Bjorn Clausen, the guy who killed himself in 1987.”
I looked with interest at him.
“Well, according to the school archive, he was at the school on a scholarship. It’s not something the boarding school normally does, but his mother apparently knew the headmaster.”
“How do you know that?”
“I talked to him.”
”The headmaster?”
”Yes, I visited him. He’s in a nursing home now. Waiting to die. Sick from some sort of cancer. Anyway he felt like confiding in me, and since his wife had passed away long time ago, he said he thought it was about time to tell someone.”
“I can’t believe you visited him without telling me.”
“I did it Friday after work. I thought it was a long shot, since he was probably senile, but he wasn’t.”
“So what did he tell you?”
“That he had an affair with Bjorn Clausen’s mother. It lasted several years. He loved her and he believed he might have been the father of her sons. But she rejected that idea and he never did know if they were his kids.”
“Wow. That’s brutal.”
“I know. But he told me that he let Bjorn and his younger brother in on a scholarship. It was a fictional scholarship, though. He had made it up and paid for the boys out of his own pocket. He wanted them to have the very best education they could get without anyone knowing the truth.”
“So Bjorn was a local boy who got accepted in the fine company of the noble?”
“Precisely.”
”But that doesn’t explain why he killed himself.”
“No. If he killed himself,” Sune said.
I looked at him. We had discussed it earlier. Both of us couldn’t quite get rid of the thought that maybe Bjorn Clausen was the killer’s first victim back in 1987.
“What are you saying?”
He shook his head again. “I don’t know.”
“You must believe something, or you wouldn’t say it. I know that much about you.”
“It is just that …It’s probably nothing.” Sune hesitated.
“What? You’re killing me here.”
“Well, it’s about the report the police made back then. The conductor’s statement was a little strange, I think.”
“Why?”
Sune clicked the mouse a few times with his hand with only had three fingers and found some documents he showed me.
“Look. In the first statement made on the scene the conductor of the train says that Bjorn Clausen was already lying on the ground on the tracks when he hit him with the train. But in the second one he states that Bjorn fell from the bridge as the train came by and he hit him while he was in the air. And if you look at where the body hit the train, Bjorn was pulled under the train. The body didn’t hit the train on the way down from the bridge.”
“It was already on the tracks, like he said in the first statement.”
We were both quiet for a moment. We didn’t know exactly what this meant.
“I just know that if I was going to kill myself by jumping in front of a train,” Sune said, “I would make sure to hit the train at full speed while in the air so I would die quickly.”
“Well maybe he miscalculated. Maybe he jumped too soon and hit the tracks first and then the train arrived.”
“That’s possible. As I said, I don’t know. I just found it odd.”
“It is odd and I don’t believe in coincidences. Either Bjorn Clausen was killed by the same killer who is murdering right now or he killed himself because of all the things they did back then
. That’s my theory. I don’t know if we will ever find out.”
As we sat there talking quietly, we sensed something was wrong. We couldn’t put a finger on what it was until the editorial room suddenly was filled with police officers. Men in uniform approached Sune. I got up.
”What the hell are you doing here?”
A voice answered in the doorway. I looked and saw Michael Oestergaard.
He too approached Sune.
“Sune Johanssen?”
Sune looked at me and I felt a shiver. It was my fault for pushing him into hacking again. Oh my God. What had I done?
“You are under arrest for the murder of Pastor Bertel Due-Lauritzen earlier today.”
My eyes wideness. What?
“Are you kidding me? He was with me all day.”
Detective Oestergaard looked at me. “Was he with you between 10:45 and 11:30 this morning?”
I went silent. We hadn’t met until three.
“But there is no way …”
The detective stopped me.
“As I said earlier this week, let us do the police work.”
I was so mad I could have punched him. But I kept my calm and quieted down. While they took Sune away I yelled that I would take care of Tobias and help him get out.
“Whatever it takes,” I said but I wasn’t so sure of anything anymore.
CHAPTER 23
IT WAS Sunday night so there really wasn’t much I could do to help Sune until the morning. So I finished my article and sent it to my editor, who loved it.
“This will sell a lot of newspapers,” he responded.
But it didn’t make me happy at all. Nothing could. I didn’t understand a thing. How could the police think that Sune had anything to do with the murder of that priest? He could never do a thing like that. Had everybody lost their minds over night?
I went home promising myself that I would get Sune the best lawyer in the country once I woke up. I had some money put away and could afford to help him.
The kids were in bed but not yet asleep when I got home, so I got to tuck them in. I love doing that. My dad had put an extra mattress on the floor in Julie’s room. They were both smiling widely when I came in.