Where the Wild Roses Grow

by Willow Rose

  “I must have passed out at some point,” Irene continued, “because when I woke up I was lying in an old fishing boat at the port. I was bleeding everywhere. Some fishermen found me and called for an ambulance. I was at the hospital for four months.”

  I sighed and looked at her. She didn’t indulge in self pity.

  “I understand that you were pregnant?” I asked.

  “Yes. The doctors discovered I was pregnant and removed it while I was still at the hospital. I haven’t been able to have children since.”

  I nodded and thought again about my daughter. How fragile life was and how easy someone could just rip it apart.

  ”Then what did you do?”

  “The police came to the hospital and took a report. I told them who had done it and what happened. They immediately arrested the six boys, including Didrik Rosenfeldt. But only a few hours later they were all freed. My parents told me they had dropped the charges against them. They had gotten a visit from a couple of the parents and received a big check for three million dollars. I was told never to talk about it again. My dad closed the store and we all moved away from Karrebaeksminde.”

  “That must have been difficult for you. That your parents dropped the charges without asking you?”

  All of a sudden, I thought about my sister. Had they paid off my parents too? Was that why they refused to report the rape attempt to the police? I didn’t like the thought.

  Irene shook her head. “It was tough, yes, but I understood why. We would never stand a chance against the rich families in court. They would have the biggest, most expensive lawyers money could buy, and they would have won. Money can get you out of anything. They would find a way and we would be left with nothing but the shame. At least we got enough money that my parents never had to work again.”

  I nodded but felt everything inside me scream. What about the fact of trying to stop these guys from doing the same to someone else? Didn’t that count for anything? Was money really that important? But of course I kept it to myself. I knew that to a lot of people in this world money meant everything.

  Irene looked at me after wiping away a tear in her eye. “That’s it. That’s the story,” she said.

  I nodded again.

  “I never saw them again, and hopefully never will.”

  I smiled and thought that while she had to live with the scars for the rest of her life, the boys from the boarding school continued their lives as if nothing had happened. That was the power of money. I was disgusted and more than ever I wanted to print the story in my paper. I wanted to disgrace Didrik Rosenfeldt’s name and I didn’t care what his son would say.

  Irene interrupted my thoughts. “By the way, I actually have a picture from that evening, “she said while she stood up and left the room. She returned after a little while with an old photograph in her hand. She handed it to me.

  “Didrik took it just before we got on the boat. The camera had a timer on it, so we could all get in the picture.”

  I took the picture. It showed six boys in white and blue Lacoste polo shirts. They all smile with their arms around each other. And in the middle of them stood Irene in her white summer dress. Smiling with her bright white teeth. Off to have the time of her life. At least that’s what she thought at the time.

  “How did you get this?”

  “Didrik sent it to me while I was still in the hospital.”

  What nerve that prick had.

  “Can you please tell me their names, and can I borrow this?” I asked.

  “Keep it.”

  Chapter Eleven

  We got back at the newspaper about lunchtime and I sent Sune to a nearby café to get some sandwiches. I opened my computer and started typing when I sensed something was going on with Sara. She was so quiet, sitting there with her headphones on, just staring with an empty look in her eyes. I stood up and walked to her desk. She lifted a finger and put it over her lips to ask me to be quiet. She was definitely onto something. I waited a few seconds until she took off the headphones. She looked at me with excitement in her brown eyes.

  “There has been one more,” she said.

  “Another murder?”

  “Yes. The police are freaking out. They have never seen anything like this before, they keep saying.”

  I sat down on the corner of her desk. “I’ll be damned …”

  “You can say that again. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a real serial killer.”

  I nodded speculatively. “Any names, yet?”

  “Victim's name is Henrik Holch. Son-in-law of the creators and owners of DECCO shoes. He was the CEO of the company.”

  I got up in a hurry and rushed over to my desk. In my bag I found the picture Irene had given me. I looked at the back where she had written the names of the six who raped her that night on the boat.

  Henrik Holch was the last guy on the right. A slim blond boy with lots of pimples and a bright smile. And a bright future to go with it, I thought. I felt dizzy. I had actually found a connection between the two murders. So I picked up the phone and called Michael Oestergaard. He was busy, he said. But he would love to talk to me another time, just not right now.

  “I have a connection between the two murders,” I said.

  He got quiet in the other end. “How do you even know there has been another murder? We haven’t told the press yet. I just got here myself.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The two murders are linked. They used to go to the same school. Herlufsholm boarding school. And they used to hang out together all summer. Down on Didrik Rosenfeldt’s parents’ boat. They were both accused of raping a girl in 1985 on that boat.”

  Michael was very quiet in the other end, and then he spoke with a little harshness in his voice. “Let us do the investigating, okay? I don’t know where you get all that from, but we don’t think the murders are related. They are too different in modus operandi, in the way the victims are killed. There doesn’t seem to be any link between them according to our investigation. You are a reporter, so write that in your paper. Goodbye.” He hung up.

  I put the phone back in the cradle, stunned at his sudden change of attitude. Why didn’t he want to see a connection between the murders?

  Sune entered the editorial room with sandwiches. I explained everything to him while we ate.

  “Maybe he’s afraid you will write there’s a serial killer on the loose, and that would create a lot of panic in the little town of Karrebaeksminde.” Sune spoke with his mouth full and made me smile.

  “You might be right. It would cause a lot of disturbance and anxiety among the locals.”

  “And keep the tourists away.”

  I nodded. He was right. Spring was on its way and with that came a lot of tourists and all the rich people living up north came to live in their summer residences. People came in their boats and ate fish on rye bread at the port, drinking beer and schnapps That was a big deal for the small town. A lot of businesses survived only because of them. It would be a disaster if they stayed away.

  But inside of me the thoughts buzzed around. Who was killing the boys from the picture? Could it be Irene Hansen finally getting her revenge?

  I wrote my article about Didrik Rosenfeldt, another one about the other murder of a high-profile businessman and a small story about who he was. I didn’t mention the connection between the two killings I had discovered since I didn’t want to scare the people and I certainly didn’t want to make detective Michael Oestergaard mad at me. I needed a good contact at the police. That was worth a lot.

  Sara had left me a note on my desk that Giovanni Marco had called three times while I was with Irene Hansen. I decided not to call him back. He probably just wanted to know when the article about him would be in the paper and frankly, with all that was going on, I didn’t know when there would be room for it in the paper. I just told Sara if he called again to tell him we needed a picture of him and to make an appointment with Sune to go take it.

  After that I went home early and
spent the rest of the day with my beautiful daughter and my beloved old father. That was a very popular decision at home. We really enjoyed each other's company, playing games, talking, eating, and laughing. Julie said she had a great day at school, and that melted my worried heart. She had gotten a new friend in her class. His name was Tobias. While she told me everything about her new friend, I thanked God for my daughter. No matter how angry I was with her dad, he had given me her, and for that I was eternally grateful to him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Julie had nightmares that night and she climbed in to my bed. I hugged her and lay close to her until she fell asleep again, but didn’t get much sleep myself after that. My mind wandered.

  I lay still in the bed looking at the ceiling just as I used to do as a kid. It hadn’t changed. I knew every crack, every line in that ceiling and they were all still there. I smiled to myself, feeling happy about some things staying the same. And then I thought about the murder cases. I was excited about having found the connection. But how did I move on from here. Should I just let it go and let the police do the work, like detective Michael Oestergaard wanted me to? But how could I? I felt strangely attached to the case, and I knew something important. What if I could stop the killer from striking again? What if I could follow the investigation so closely I would be the only journalist to break the story about the first serial killer in Denmark? The thought excited me.

  And I knew exactly how I was going to do it.

  After dropping Julie off at her school the next morning I drove to the nearest furniture store before I drove to the newspaper. I bought a desk and a chair and brought it all with me in the car. Then I bought a laptop in another store and called Sune and asked him to meet me in front of the newspaper. When I arrived, he stood outside and was waving at me. I asked him to help me get it all up the stairs.

  Inside in the editorial room we put the desk and chair down and unpacked it. It needed to be put together, so Sune helped me, while Sara looked at us in disbelief.

  Finally when it was done we placed the desk next to mine and I smiled at Sune.

  ”Congratulations, this is your new workspace,” I said to him.

  He looked at me.

  ”What?”

  ”I want you to work with me on this case.”

  “How?”

  ”I need you to monitor the police work. Check the files, read the autopsy reports and so on.”

  His eyes were now big and wide. ”Are you kidding me?”

  ”Nope.”

  “You want me to hack into the police’s main server and look at their files. Are you insane?”

  “I might be.”

  Sune sighed loudly.

  ”I would love to—you know I really love that stuff—but I can’t … I mean if the police caught me … Once is one thing but several times makes the possibility of being caught so much bigger.”

  “How would they ever know? You said so yourself, that you were good at it, that you could do it without leaving a trace. I bought you a brand new laptop. It belongs to the paper, so we will all get in trouble if anyone found out.”

  Sune scratched his head. ”I don’t know…”

  I suddenly felt bad pushing him into doing something illegal. I didn’t want him to get in trouble because of me that was for sure.

  ”You know what? It was a bad idea.” I closed the laptop. I sat down at my own desk. “Just forget it.”

  I opened my own laptop and checked my e-mails. Sune stood for a long time and stared at the empty desk. Then he sat down.

  “Okay, but only on this case,” he said. “Never again.”

  I smiled and handed him the laptop. “That’s a promise.”

  It didn’t take Sune long to find the autopsy reports of the two murders. He opened the files and showed it to me. Starting with Didrik Rosenfeldt’s. It made me sick to my stomach. I was about to vomit when I saw the pictures of Didrik Rosenfeldt’s body. The housekeeper had been right in her description. It did look like a wild beast had ripped his body apart. It didn’t look like something a human being would be capable of doing. The body was almost unrecognizable. Only the red hair revealed it was Didrik Rosenfeldt.

  I studied the pictures for awhile and Sune helped me, even though I could tell his stomach had a hard time too. It took us a little longer than it probably should have, but finally we looked at each other.

  “Look at the cuts,” I said and pointed at Didrik Rosenfeldt’s chest.

  ”It looks exactly like …” Sune said but stopped.

  “I know. Like the ones on Irene Hansen’s chest. Except these seem deeper.”

  “Exactly.”

  ”What does that mean?”

  Sune shook his head. ”I don’t know. Could it be the same guy, maybe? The same one who dressed up like Freddy Krueger and mutilated her body?”

  “That sounds possible. But why? As far as her story goes they were all very good friends on that boat.”

  “I know.”

  ”Let’s look at Henrik Holch’s file.” I noted on a piece of paper the cause of Didrik Rosenfeldt’s death was described in his file as death by stabbing.

  With a few clicks Sune found the other file.

  ”This one is not much better,” he said before opening it.

  I nodded. I figured that.

  The pictures on the screen were awful. But it didn’t look like Didrik Rosenfeldt’s or the cuts on Irene Hansen. That disappointed me. Maybe the police were right after all. Maybe there was no other connection between the two killings than the fact that they went to the same school. Could that really be a coincidence? I didn’t believe it one bit. The killer had just changed his pattern. His modus operandi, as the police called it. Maybe he had a reason for doing it. I asked Sune to let me read the rest of the file and he found it for me.

  Apparently the killer had cut off Henrik Holch’s private parts, castrated him so to speak. And then he had left him tied up to a chair, bleeding to death.

  I leaned back in the chair. What a way to leave this world. But why did the killer choose that exact way of killing Henrik Holch? Why not just rip his body like Didrik Rosenfeldt? Did he have a reason? I scrolled in the file and found my answer.

  “Bingo,” I said.

  “What?” Sune looked at me.

  “He was a pedophile.”

  “How do you know?”

  I pointed at a line on the screen.

  “He was killed while watching child porn on his flat-screen TV.”

  Sune looked impressed.

  “So you think the killer chose a different way of killing Henrik Holch because he was into having sex with children? “

  “Yes.”

  “Like a punishment?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So the first one was a bastard treating people poorly, having several affairs and just being a real prick all of his life, while the second one was a disgusting pedophile. Both of them had been involved in the rape of Irene Hansen.”

  “Exactly.”

  ”So someone is actually doing the world a favor?”

  “You can put it like that, yes.”

  I paused before continuing. “The question is, which asshole will be next?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  In my mind, Irene Hansen could definitely be a suspect. She had the best motive for killing these guys, eliminating them one by one as revenge. But somehow I couldn’t really see that skinny quiet woman being able to take down these men all by herself. Maybe she wasn’t alone? She had a husband. Maybe he could have helped her. It was certainly a possibility.

  My plan now was to find the rest of the men in the picture. To my surprise, headquarters loved my story about Didrik Rosenfeldt and wanted to run it in the morning paper. I expected to hear from Junior immediately after that. I cleared it with my editor and told him about the unpleasant visit the other day, but he said that I shouldn’t be thinking about that. The Rosenfeldts did own the company that owned the newspaper, but they weren�
�t supposed to be meddling in the editorial decisions. They had to go through him first, he said.

  So I promised him another story about the six boarding school boys who raped Irene Hansen, a follow-up story to the first article. A “where are they now?” kind of article. I liked the idea. They raped a local girl, got away with it, and now they were living the sweet life of rich men.

  “Make a small profile of each of them. The public will be interested in knowing who we have running around in our country, who they really are, especially since they all are very influential,” my editor said.

  So I was free to go after the boarding school boys.

  I couldn’t ask them about the rape. I had promised Irene not to blow her cover. She was hiding from them and told her story anonymously. But I could ask them about the two guys who were already dead.

  It didn’t take Sune long to find the first one, Ulrik Gyldenlove. He lived in Klampenborg in northern Zeeland, north of Copenhagen the richest part of the country. I called him and told him I was doing a story about two of his old friends from school. I wanted to talk to him about them, and much to my surprise, he agreed to meet with me.

  We were to meet at Mattssons Riding Club next to Dyrehaven. It took about an hour and a half to get there. Dyrehaven was a famous area in Klampenborg. It was a big forest and had the richest animal wildlife in Denmark. It was famous for its many kinds of deer and especially for a big hunt that takes place every first Sunday in November. Hubertusjagten, as it was called, was an old traditional hunt that was more than a hundred years old. It was inspired by the old traditional English hunts in England, with the riders wearing red jackets using of fox hounds. Nowadays they didn’t use the hounds any more or chase a real fox. Instead they had equipped two riders with a fox tail on the shoulder and then the rest of the riders were supposed to catch the tail.