by Inger Wolf
* * *
Trokic laid the drawings on the table. The winter cold had seeped all the way into his bones.
Could Lukas have followed the older boy? Maybe out of curiosity, or maybe as part of a game? He might even have discovered what was going on, gone down into the cellar, and then something went terribly wrong. A fight? Somehow, Lukas managed to escape. But by then it had already gone too far for Frederick. Lukas would have run straight home, screaming and crying, and even if he’d been warned to keep his mouth shut or else, the burn marks made it clear. Only the final silence could prevent that.
* * *
Trokic sat for a moment and let this grim scenario sink in. He had to speak to Frederick. Then he began thinking again about Muspelheim, and suddenly he felt weak. The cellar was under the house, and the entrance must be outside and covered with snow. Sidsel didn’t know what was in there. He grabbed his phone and called her, letting it ring three times, the entire ringtone, before giving up. Then another thought came to him: if Frederick came back, he would know they’d found the drawings because Trokic had had to take them as possible crucial evidence.
"We need to have a talk with Frederick," he said to Lind. "I’ll have someone look for him. And detain him if he shows up here. Another thing, there’s a yellow scarf in his room. It needs to be bagged and sealed."
Out in the car, he said to Jasper, "Call the dispatcher, have him send a few officers out to look for a boy with Frederick’s description. And when they find him, detain him."
"What about us? Are we staying here too?"
"No, Morten stays. We’re going out to have a look at a cellar."
Chapter Fifty-Five
Sidsel was close to panicking. The gas fumes nauseated her; she held her collar up to her mouth to keep from vomiting. And she was horribly aware that the person above was about to set the house on fire to get rid of all the evidence. And to kill her. She was trapped, no way out, and her scream stuck halfway up her throat.
Then it started. The fire raced down the small railing and at once began consuming the rotten wood. A few seconds later, it was attacking the steps. Next came the smoke. She strained to remember everything she’d learned in her first aid course about smoke inhalation injury or inner suffocation, actually, carbon dioxide blocking off oxygen. Her collar might protect her against the steam and burning embers, but it couldn’t do anything about the poisonous gases. The best thing to do was to stay close to the ground. The only way out, however, was above her.
Instead, she hurried over to the farthest corner of the cellar. Some of the smoke was drawn upwards and out the cracks around the hatch. Was this really going to end with her meaningless death in a strange cellar? For a split second, she saw her life from a distance, and she felt impoverished as never before. She’d seen much of the world and experienced more than most, and yet in many ways her life had been emotionally barren, passionless.
Suddenly, she recalled Annie Wolters’ burned face, her singed eyelids and charred skin, and she shivered. Moments later, she heard a noise far away, a murmuring just above the fire’s rumbling. Was it an engine, getting closer? Could someone spot the smoke from outside? Now she felt the heat from the fire. The sound of the car vanished. Did it stop, or did it drive by?
Chapter Fifty-Six
The muffler took a beating as he flew over the bumps on the first stretch of Bedervej. In his mind’s eye, Trokic saw Sidsel’s open, friendly face. Worry gnawed at him; he hated the thought of her in such a dangerous place. The street stretched out endlessly in front of him.
"But what about Annie Wolters?" Jasper said. Belatedly, he fastened his seat belt after another brutal bump. "How does all this fit?"
"You had the feeling she was lying when you questioned her, right?"
"Yeah. Just a quick something, how she looked away. The tone of her voice. She must’ve seen Frederick at the creek that day. Maybe she told him later on. If she’d only told us back then."
They both noticed the thin, swirling column of smoke on the horizon. It looked as if it might be at the house. Jasper echoed Trokic’s thoughts.
"Oh, my God, something’s burning! This isn’t good, Daniel; I just hope we’re not too late."
"Call the dispatcher; we need the fire department."
Trokic drove as fast as the weather permitted, or faster–he felt the car’s tires losing traction on stretches of melting ice. Finally, they pulled up at the hedge in front of the house. His heart shot into overdrive when he glimpsed the shadow of someone crossing the yard. On a sudden impulse, he grabbed the folder with the drawings. The story was starting to fall apart, and it threatened to take more victims with it.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The boy watched the blue and white car brake hard, slide a few feet on the ice, and come to a halt in front of the brown house. His heart froze when two officers jumped out of the car on the other side of the hedge. For the first time, he felt the cold from the snowdrifts around him; somehow, they’d discovered what was going on. He glanced over at the now-visible entrance to the cellar where the long-haired woman was trapped. She’d stopped her long, shrill screaming, and for the last two minutes, it had been quiet except for the cold, totally beautiful roar of the fire that had taken hold of the old wood.
A wave of rage passed through Frederick. He hadn’t meant to kill Lukas. But the pushy little creep had snuck after him. Snooped into his things again. Earlier, Lukas had almost seen him set the scooter on fire. He’d given the kid a warning by killing that stupid looking long-haired pet at the club, which he’d actually enjoyed doing, but the kid didn’t get it. Finally, the kid managed to trail him to the deserted house Frederick had picked out. His first house. What he’d been fantasizing about for months. Lukas had surprised him in the middle of the most magical moment when the fire started. When the flames flickered, and finally there was peace. When the screams he felt inside him died down, and everything turned perfectly silent.
And in that moment of violent rage, his inner world blinding white, the voices shrill in his head, he’d grabbed Lucas and thrown him down on the cellar floor. Up to then, he’d had a way out, he could have stopped, but the boy lost his balance. If only he hadn’t hit the ground exactly where he did. When the boy screamed and reached for him with his burned fingers, he panicked. And when Lukas ran out of the cellar, Frederick realized it was all over, that all was lost. The voices had taken over. The boy had to be stopped.
* * *
The two officers froze when they saw him, the whole world froze, as he tried to anticipate their next move. Would they shoot him? A flash of scorn bubbled up inside; no way they would shoot a minor, that was almost ridiculous. A child. For a second, he even considered just standing there; he could say he’d been walking by, and really, what did they have on him?
He noticed the folder in the cop’s hand. It looked familiar, like the one he’d last seen…where? He remembered: in his school bag. Could they have found it? He spotted the bookstore’s small sticker on the folder, and he understood. The black-haired cop in the big leather coat he’d seen at the house several times held something that belonged to him. His drawings. At once his world, everything that held his life together, began crumbling like a house of cards. And behind it all, he saw what was waiting. An inner landscape where everything was burned to ashes from years of helplessness, where only the most horrible, unbearable, painful emptiness ruled. And the voices. Evil tongues from years of abuse began booming out somewhere in his consciousness. Voices from when he had been locked in the closet.
His scream caught in his throat as he grabbed the gas container’s light plastic handle with both hands. Four liters or so of gas was left that he’d stolen from nearby cars and lugged up to the shed. The moment the two officers began running, he turned and headed for the fields behind the house. For the creek.
"Jasper, open the cellar door!" the black-haired cop yelled, then: "Police! Stop!"
The cold creek across the field was in Frederick’
s sight now, and he heard Lukas’s muffled screams, saw the sharp fishing line, his moss-colored eyes bulging out of their sockets, arms flailing in the air.
He stopped. The gas container was slowing him down, but suddenly he realized why he’d brought it. He stared back at the cop, who had rounded the corner of the house and was running toward him. The cop seemed to hesitate as if he’d guessed Frederick’s intentions.
"Stop!" He held his arm out in front of him.
Frederick smiled. He knew what he had to do. He lifted the gasoline up and poured it over his head. The cold, stinking liquid ran onto his hair, his face, and his coat, and though it stunned him, he felt right somehow. As if he belonged. The fumes stung his eyes and nose, and he was close to throwing up. Somewhere in his vision, he saw the cop’s startled face, his mouth opening and closing as he realized what was happening. Frederick found his lighter in his pocket, and for one last nauseating second before lighting himself and watching the world around him disappear, the sense of power was back in all its majestic might. They would never learn the whole truth.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Friday, January 12
Outside the district hospital’s spacious windows, the world was clean. In keeping with the season’s unpredictability, two days of rain had washed the mountains of dirty snow away and overloaded the city’s drainage system with a massive flood of water. In the bed closest to the door, Sidsel smiled faintly at her visitor. Trokic dragged a chair from the wall over to the bed and sat down.
"Are they treating you okay?"
"Yes. But all I have to read are women’s magazines. I asked them about getting someone to bring my thesis in, but they wouldn’t even talk about it."
The comforter on the empty bed beside her had been thrown to the side.
"But I’m taking care of myself." She nodded over at the other bed. "My neighbor inhaled a poisonous gas at work; it burned away some of her windpipe. But now she’s out smoking. Isn’t that incredible? They offered her nicotine patches, but she’d rather smoke cigarettes, even though it must be excruciating."
"I’m sorry we didn’t discover the cellar the first time we searched the place. You wouldn’t be in here if we had."
"Don’t worry about it. They’re releasing me tomorrow. And I think I’ll stay home to write my thesis instead of going back to Mårslet. How’s Frederick Riise?"
"He’s been transferred to the National Hospital’s burn center, but the last thing I heard was that his condition is stable. He’ll survive, and there’s a chance he’ll get off with only superficial markings from his little stunt."
"I read in the paper that you tossed him into the creek?"
"Yes, after I threw my coat over him and smothered the fire. But the cold creek water is probably why it wasn’t worse than it was."
"So, what’s going to happen to him?"
"The social services will take over because of his age. They’ll make an assessment of what steps to take. My guess is he’ll get psychiatric treatment, along with whatever they do to change behavior. And, of course, he’ll be removed from his home."
"What about his mother?"
"She’s in custody. She shouldn’t be making any plans for a while. According to the national IT center, there’s enough material on her computer to put her away for a very long time."
Sidsel shook her head; she could hardly believe all that had happened. "The things those children were put through, the horrible humiliation and shame."
"The oldest son, Mathias, broke down when we confronted him with it. He said it had been going on for several years. An extensive abuse of all three kids. A man stopped by regularly; she sold the photos on the net. The same way her parents sold pictures of her when she was a kid. They’re all damaged by it, but Mathias says that Frederick was always the most sensitive."
They sat a few moments in silence. Trokic could still see the shock on the faces of his colleagues when he told them, how their expressions turned from alarm to disbelief. The level of depravity in someone so young was astonishing. But Trokic had glimpsed the boy’s helplessness, the vast emptiness and pain, and he had understood how it could happen. Later, he’d told Lukas’s parents, and he saw it wasn’t the answer they wanted to hear. It was a difficult answer, a new crime unfolding before them. Suddenly, they were part of a broader tragedy. More tears flowed, but they slowly began to come to grips with it all. The town would lick its wounds too; it would move on, but questions would remain. For instance, he would never find out if Lukas really had fallen on the stone steps in front of the house. Maybe it wasn’t so important any longer.
"Would you like to have dinner sometime when I get out of here?" Sidsel said. "After everything has settled down."
Trokic studied her pale face as he felt around for a spark of interest. It should be there inside him somewhere, for she was definitely an interesting woman. It was just that things always seemed to get in the way. She was part of Lukas’s story now; the terror of the fire would always be with her. And he needed some distance, time to prepare himself for whatever came next. Or maybe he’d spend some time looking into the tip about Sinka in Serbia. Or maybe he was just looking for excuses again.
He knew he’d waited too long, which was an answer in itself. "Could I get a rain check on that?"
She looked up at the ceiling a few moments then smiled. "I don’t know. What’s wrong with going for it now?"
Trokic looked out the window. The city looked scrubbed down, the rainbow of colors beaming off the roofs again. Dry weather, clear, the temperature up to a more comfortable five degrees C. He stood up and pushed his chair back where it belonged.
"Yeah…maybe another time."
He turned and walked out.
Afterword
Dear Reader,
* * *
Thank you for purchasing Frost and Ashes. I hope you enjoyed it.
* * *
This book is a reflection of my worst nightmare. When I started writing this book, my daughter, Cecilie, was eight years old, and as any parent, I was always worried that something bad would happen to her. One day, we passed a small frozen lake close to our house, and Cecilie said, “What if there’s a dead boy lying underneath the ice?” Her comment got my imagination going, and what you just read is the result of that.
* * *
The research for this book was rather gruesome. I interviewed a Danish police officer, Lars Underbjerg, who had worked with the FBI in the hunt for online predators, and he helped me get all the details right. I was and still am grateful that we have people who dedicate their lives to this immensely tough work. If you want to know just how amazing these people are, I recommend the book One Child at a Time: Inside the Police Hunt to Rescue Children from Online Predators by Julian Sher.
* * *
The picture on the cover of the book was taken by me this winter. It’s a lake close to where I live and not that far from the village of Mårslet. The weather that day was exactly what it was like when I wrote Frost and Ashes.
* * *
You can see other pictures from my beautiful neighborhood on my Instagram profile. https://www.instagram.com/ingerwolf/
* * *
Thank you for all your support. Don’t forget to leave a review; it means the world to me.
* * *
Take care,
Inger
About the Author
Inspired by the Darkness
* * *
Inger Wolf is an International Bestselling Danish mystery and thriller writer.
Her first mystery novel, Dark Summer, for which she was awarded the Danish Crime Academy's debut prize, was published in 2006. Since then, her bestselling books have been translated into several languages.
She loves to travel and get inspiration to her books from all over the world, but lives in the outskirts of the town of Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark, close to the forest and the sea. In this beautiful place, she got a degree in English and worked as a translator for man
y years.
Today, Inger Wolf works as a full-time author. The household also includes a dog called Harry Hole, named after one of her favorite detectives, and a cat called Mis (Kitty).
* * *
Connect with me here:
www.ingerwolf.com/us
[email protected]
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Books by the Author
On the Side (Danish)
Dark Summer (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German, Dutch, French, Spanish)
Frost and Ashes (Danish, Norwegian, German, Dutch, Spanish, English)
The Song Bird (Danish, Dutch)
The Wasp Nest (Danish, French)
Evil Water (Danish, French)
Under a Black Sky (Danish, English)
Dark September (Danish, English)
The Perfect Place to Die (Danish)
