by Rose, Willow
When I went back to Sune I brought two cups of fresh coffee.
“Here you go,” I said when I put it on the desk in front of him. He didn’t notice it. He stared in the screen.
“You better see this,” he said.
I went behind his back and looked at the screen. He pointed at a date.
“Zenia Clausen died twenty years ago. In April 1991.”
My head was spinning. Was it another death related to the five others? Was she killed? In the register it said Zenia Clausen had committed suicide in 1991. It said she had a child in 1987. A baby boy. In ‘87 she would have been only 17. The father was unknown.
The last important thing I got out of the register was that she wasn’t born Clausen. Before her marriage to a Michael Clausen in 1987, her last name was Petersen. So she wasn’t a sister or a cousin. I remembered Sune’s conversation with the boarding school headmaster. Bjorn Clausen had a brother who went to the school as well. Michael Clausen. It must have been him. She married Bjorn’s brother.
So what did it all mean?
The pastor was looking for her, but why? Didn’t he know she was dead? Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t even know she had married Michael.
“Pastor Bertel Due-Lauritzen was gay,” Sune said suddenly.
I looked at him with surprise.
“What?”
“Everybody knew he was gay,” he said. “He tried to hide it but we all knew.”
“How did you know?”
“You can’t hide a thing like that in a prison filled with young boys.”
“I see. So he didn’t search for Zenia because she was his old school flame? It was something else that made him look for her,”
Sune nodded. “It must have been.”
33
We had a late lunch at the restaurant at the port. I was so happy to have Sune back, I wanted to treat him and Sara to a nice lunch. I had cleared it with my editor. The newspaper would pay.
We each had a stjerneskud, fish on rye bread with shrimp and remoulade on top. It was very good. We all enjoyed a beer with it. It was too cold to sit outside but we enjoyed the view of the old fishing boats from inside. An old fisherman with orange overalls worked on his boat. I remembered how I used to love coming down here as a child and watching the different people. There were fishermen on the old boats, rich people in the yachts, and drunkards sitting on a bench drinking beer all day. People fished from the pier, nicely dressed ladies walked their dogs with big hats, and joggers ran by. A port always attracted a lot of life, especially in the summer when all the tourists and rich people came from up north. Just a few months from now the place would be crawling with them again.
I had grown to like the quiet. I was glad I had come back. The big city wasn’t for me anymore. And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t for Peter anymore as well. Maybe I could get him to move down here if we were to become a family again. I would like that. I had given it a lot of thought. If he was willing to change and we could go to a counselor, I might be willing to consider getting back with him. Maybe.
In the middle of lunch my phone rang. It was my dad. I got up and took it.
“Is something wrong with Julie?”
He was breathing heavily in the phone. Something was definitely wrong. It wasn’t good for his heart to get agitated.
“She wasn’t there when I went to pick her up at school.”
My heart was pounding so I almost couldn’t breathe.
“What … why … where is she then?”
“The school said she had already been picked up.”
“Picked up? My head started to spin. ”By whom?”
I could hear my dad trying to catch his breath.
“Her dad.”
Sune looked at me when I got back to the table. “What’s wrong?”
I sat down. I felt like the whole restaurant was spinning around me.
“It’s Julie.”
I looked for Peter’s number under my contacts in my cell phone.
“What happened?” Sara asked.
“Peter took her from school.”
“Who is Peter?” Sara asked.
“The ex,” Sune whispered to her.
I found Peter and tried to call. No one answered. Just as I expected.
“That son of a …” Sune said with an angry voice.
“I am going to kill him,” I said while trying to call him again. Still no answer. Just the machine. I left an angry message and hung up.
“How could he pick her up from school if the teachers didn’t know him?” Sara asked. “They have never seen him before.”
“They told my dad he came to her classroom. When she saw him, she got all exited and yelled out ’Dad,’ so they had no second thoughts about letting her go with him.”
“They should still have called you,” Sune said. “Did you call the police?”
“My dad did, but there’s not much they can do right now.”
“Well maybe he just missed her and took her somewhere nice,” Sara said. “Like to get ice cream.”
My heart still pounded and the thoughts lined up in my head. Why would he do this to me now? If he wanted to win me back, this was the stupidest thing he could do. So maybe Sara was right. Maybe he just wanted to spend time with her. But why didn’t he call me first? He’s not that stupid and he would know I would worry. No, I knew Peter. This was either a warning or he had actually taken her. That was the scary part. Where would he take her? He wouldn’t be so stupid as to take her with him back to Aarhus, would he?
I called him again. Still just a machine. I left another message, trying to tone myself down a little and talk nice.
“Julie is missing, Peter. If you have her, please call me and let me know that she is all right,” I heard myself say in a gentle voice, as gently as I could given the circumstances, that is.
A second later a text came on my phone: I have her. She’s fine. She will stay with me from now on. She’s my daughter too.
I felt like all the blood disappeared from my face. What the hell was he thinking? If he wanted custody of Julie why didn’t he just hire a lawyer and drag me through the system? What had happened to the man I used to love? Had he totally lost it?
The two others noticed my pale face.
“Now what?” Sune asked and grabbed my hand.
I showed them the text. Sune got an angry expression on his face.
I felt so anxious. I knew he wouldn’t harm her, but would I ever see her again?
“Would you help me find her?” I asked and Sune nodded without hesitation.
I went to the local police station and talked to my friend there. Detective Michael Oestergaard greeted us and we sat down in his small office. On his desk he had a picture of a beautiful woman and a boy a little younger than Julie. Probably his wife and kid, I thought and almost started crying thinking about what had happened to my family during the last year.
Detective Oestergaard was very nice and sympathetic and all, but he couldn’t do much, he said.
“Your ex-husband will probably bring her back within the next twenty-four hours. That’s how these cases normally go.”
“Maybe with a normal husband,” I said.
“Listen, Rebekka.” The detective leaned back in the chair with an annoyingly arrogant smile I hadn’t noticed before. Maybe it was just because of the situation and the pressure but suddenly I didn’t like him so much anymore. He seemed a little creepy.
“On paper you and Peter are still married, so he is entitled to pick your daughter up from school as long as he doesn’t hurt her. It is a fight between two people in a marriage. As a police officer I have no right to interfere. That's just the way it is.”
“But he is not allowed to keep her from me, right?”
“That’s right. But you have to fight him through the system. Take him to court. The police can’t do much as I already said. Unless you think he is harming her in any way, of course.”
I got up from the chair feeling helpless
.
“I’m sorry,” Michael Oestergaard said as Sune shook his hand.
So was I. I knew I had to get her back on my own.
34
Sune had to drive. I was too upset. My hands shook and my heart wouldn’t stop pounding. I was scared. Where was she? I had only one place to look for her—our old house in Aarhus where Peter now lived alone. The same house I had run from not long ago, the same house where my husband had locked us in the basement.
“Why didn’t you just get a divorce?” Sune asked.
“I don’t know” I sighed. ”I didn’t think he would give me one. I just wanted to get away in a hurry and deal with everything later. Maybe I hoped that he wouldn’t find us. That he wouldn’t look for us.”
Sune looked at me and smiled.
”I know. I was stupid.”
”I know how you felt. You just had to get away, right? Start all over.”
I smiled a little. He was exactly right. If anyone understood it was Sune.
It was dark when we drove into Aarhus, the city of smiles, as it was called. There was not much to smile about right now. We hit the beach line and neared my old house on L.P. Bechsvej. It was close to the ocean, but not oceanfront, as I had always wanted. We paid more for it than many of the oceanfront houses, but Peter wanted this one. It was old and big. A white house with a black glazed-tile roof. It was beautiful and even majestic, but it wasn’t me.
I felt a chill up my back as we drove over the gravel in the driveway. This had once been my personal prison. Was Julie in there now? Was he keeping her in that same basement?
I ran out of the car and rang the doorbell. Then I got impatient and knocked frantically on the thick old black wooden door. I really longed to hold my daughter in my arms.
“Peter!” I yelled. ”Open up!”
It took awhile for the door to open. Peter stood in the doorway. He smiled a weird manic smile and I froze. He wasn’t well. That I was sure of. The Peter I had seen the day before in my dad’s living room was gone again. Or had this crazy Peter been there all the time? Had he just been manipulating me into thinking he was doing better?
“Where is she?” I asked and pushed him aside as I ran into the hall. “What have you done to her?”
Peter turned around and kept smiling at me.
“Where is she?” I yelled.
Then he hushed me. “Shh. She is sleeping.”
“What? It’s seven thirty. Why would she sleep?” I stopped and looked at him.
“Unless you sedated her? Did you do that, Peter? Did you?”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have too.
“Peter!”
”She was crying so loud in the car when I told her we were going back to our old house and she wanted her mother and yada yada yada. So yes I slipped her a sleeping pill in her soda on the way.”
His eyes and hands could not hold still. I backed up a bit. Sune stood in the doorway.
“You’re high on something.” I studied his large pupils.
“So what? Little miss high-and-mighty?”
“So I don’t want you to be near my daughter like this, not ever!” I yelled. “I can’t believe I almost trusted you again. I was even willing to give you a second chance. And now you do this?”
“So why did you?”
“Because maybe I saw something in you, maybe I saw that Peter I used to know, that sweet husband and amazing father, who I used to love.”
I ran up the stairs. When I reached the bedroom I opened the door and was at once relieved. In her old bedroom Julie was asleep in her childhood bed. My heart stopped pounding for the first time in many hours. There she was. Safe and sound asleep.
I went to her and put my ear to her chest. I wanted to hear her little heart, and feel that she was alive and well. But as I did I knew right away something was very wrong. It was beating too slowly. I checked her pulse on the throat. It was weak. Had Peter given her a sleeping pill for adults? I knew he used to take pills like that when he had problems sleeping. But they were way too strong. That was too much for such a small body.
I was scared and took her in my arms to carry her out of the room.
Then I heard turmoil in the hall and when I got to the stairs I saw Peter and Sune fighting on the marble floor.
“Are you kidding me?” I yelled. ”Call for an ambulance immediately!”
Both of them stopped and got up from the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Peter asked.
I walked down the stairs carefully with Julie in my arms. I heard Sune call for an ambulance. His voice sounded desperate and that made me even more scared.
“You gave her too much,” I said, almost crying but trying to hold it back. I had to keep my head clear and not let the emotions run away with me.
I saw Peter’s expression change at once. He was scared now too.
I gently put Julie down on the floor while talking to her and caressing her head. Trying to wake her up.
“Please don’t die on me,” I cried. “Please God, save her.”
35
It seemed like it took forever to pump my baby’s stomach. Peter sat with us in the waiting room at the ER at Skejby Hospital. He hid his face in his hands.
“I just wanted to spend a little time with her,” he constantly mumbled. His hands kept dancing around his face and hair. He definitely wasn’t well, I thought. Maybe this could be a wake-up call for him. Maybe now he would realize he needed help. Whatever happened to him during his time in Iraq, he had to do something about it now.
Either that or he would lose everything. I had recently read in a newspaper that several men, all former soldiers, were now living in the forest in Denmark. They didn’t want to be a part of society any longer. They didn’t know how. A lot of others became criminals and drug addicts because they missed the excitement, the thrill of being in a war zone. The adrenaline was like a drug for them. And they had a hard time functioning without it.
And they were too proud to ask for help. Soldiers fight and kill. They’re not supposed to be running back home having problems. They are heroes.
Peter was just like that.
“Rebekka Franck?” The voice belonged to a doctor in a white coat. She was tall and serious looking.
I got up from my chair. “Yes?”
The doctor cleared her throat. “Your daughter is stable now but we have to keep her for observation.”
The weight of the world fell off my shoulders.
“Oh, my God. Thank you,” I said.
The doctor kept her serious look. It made me a scared. Julie’s condition was life-threatening, she said.
“We pumped a lot of Demerol out of her stomach. It is a strong sleeping drug that is known to have serious side effects. I must say it’s very dangerous to give to a little child as small as Julie.”
“What kind of side effects?”
“They are very addictive and if used for a longer period of time they can cause psychosis a strong mental disorder.”
I looked at Peter. He’d been taking these pills as long as I could remember. With both the pills and his mental problems from the war it was a dangerous cocktail. I began to understand his condition.
“So what about Julie? Has it caused her any damage?”
“I don’t think so.”
Once again I felt relieved, but worried.
“Will she have any withdrawal symptoms from having the drug even when it was only this one time?”
The doctor nodded and that made my heart jump.
“Probably a little bit for a day or two. But then she will be fine. She might be a little cranky and have trouble sleeping, but after a couple of days she will be back to her own self.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“But I have to say that I have contacted Social Services and told them about Julie’s condition. They will be in touch with you soon. . It’s very serious to drug your kids.”
I looked at Peter again. I could tell he was listening to
the conversation. He had started crying. I saw no need for me to tell that it was him. In some ways I had a responsibility for this too. I had seen him take these pills for years and not stopping him. How could I have been so blind?
”I know,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”
“I sure hope it won’t,” The doctor disappeared down the hall again.
Julie looked so small and weak when I went into her room a few hours later. She was pale and exhausted.
“Can we go home now?” she asked with her tiny voice she always had whenever she was sick.
“Soon sweetheart.” I kissed her forehead and looked into her bright blue eyes.
“Daddy didn’t mean to drug me. It was an accident, Mom,” she said.
I kissed her again. “Of course it was.”
“So I get to see him again, right?”
“Of course. He’s waiting outside. He wants to say hello to you.”
She smiled and showed where the two front teeth had fallen out.
“Is it okay with you, Mom?”
“Of course it is. But be gentle with him. He’s very sad about what happened.” I kissed her again and went outside.
“She’s all yours,” I said to Peter.
He got up from the chair. Then he stopped and took a step backwards. I saw it in his expression but couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe what he was about to do.
“Peter?”
“I’m sorry.”
He held his coat between his hands and took another step away from me.
“Peter, damn it. She is waiting for you!” I pleaded and begged him not to do this, but he had already made up his mind. He was going to abandon us.
“I can’t face her,” he said backing even more up.
I felt desperate. There had to be something I could do to stop him from breaking Julie’s fragile heart.
