by Willow Rose
“Can we talk to her?”
“Well, I guess I can ask her.”
I had to pinch my arm. I’d never met this kind of cooperation from the police. Were they always like this or was it because he knew me? Anyway, he left me for a second and came back with a small Philippine woman with an empty look in her eyes and an expression like she had seen the devil himself and lived to tell about it. It seemed she was still in shock and I knew I had to be careful.
I greeted her with a handshake and introduced myself. The detective left us, his duty calling. I waved at Sune and signaled I wanted him to come and take her picture. He came right away.
“So, that must have been real horrible for you,” I began.
“I … I just walked in, like I normally do. Normally he isn’t in the house. I didn’t expect … I mean, how could I know?”
“Of course you didn’t know. Can you tell me a little about what you saw?”
She didn’t look at me but stared into open air.
“He was dead. Blood everywhere. On all the floors in the living room. All over the parquet. It was like a slaughterhouse. He was shredded to pieces. Ripped apart like an animal would kill its prey. No man could have done this. Only a demon.”
Chapter Six
“Did you write this article about my father?”
The chubby redhead man in front of me looked like his father back in the days when I used to see him down at the port hanging out and drinking with his boarding school buddies.
He had been waiting for me at the entrance when I arrived at the newspaper the very next morning. He held the paper with a picture of Didrik Rosenfeldt on the front page.
“Yes, I did.” I opened the door into the editorial room.
Didrik Rosenfeldt Jr. followed me all the way to my desk.
“Can I help you, sir?” Sara said as she came out of the kitchen bearing a cup of coffee and a piece of cake on a plate.
“I want an apology from the newspaper. A formal one.”
I looked at him. “For what?”
“For publishing this,” he said and pointed at the interview with the housekeeper. “This line, where she says that a demon killed my father. Giving all kinds of details that the public shouldn’t know about. I don’t want you to write any more about this case. Do you understand?”
Sara placed a cup of coffee in front of me, and I took it.
“Did you want one too?” I asked.
He snorted and pointed at me with shaky finger.
“Do you know who I am, and what my family is capable of?”
“I think I might have an idea.”
“I warn you …”
“Or what?”
”Or …”
I put down my coffee cup and leaned toward him. I wasn’t afraid of anybody, least of all of him.
”Listen. You don’t scare me one bit, mister. I have faced a lot worse bastards in my time in Iraq. And by the way, last time I checked we have freedom of speech in this country. Besides, they were the housekeeper’s words, not mine. I just printed them. That is not illegal. So just fuck off.”
I hadn’t noticed Sune who had come in the room. Now I saw him smiling for the first time.
Didrik Rosenfeldt Jr. snorted again, very loudly this time, but soon realized that he was defeated. Blushing he turned around and walked quickly towards the door. Before he left he turned around and looked at me.
“This is not the last word in this case.” He disappeared out of the room. I shook my head and sat down starting my computer.
“What a prick. Just like his father,” I mumbled.
The two others in the room kept staring at me. Sara sat down and Sune started clapping.
“Way to go, Rebekka.”
“It was nothing.”
“Nothing? You just told the owner of the newspaper to fuck off.”
I looked up. “He’s the owner of the newspaper?”
“Well not directly. But his family owns the corporation that owns the newspaper.”
I felt my body getting heavier in the seat. “So he could have me fired for doing that?”
Sune sat down at the corner of my table. ”He probably wouldn’t, I guess.”
Sune looked at Sara.
“You’ll be just fine,” she said, not too reassuringly.
Moving through the day, I wanted to write a follow-up article about the murder. I couldn’t stop wondering about the case. And I didn’t want to. Now that I had risked my job and was probably going to get fired anyway, it didn’t matter if I upset Didrik Rosenfeldt’s son any more. I wanted to figure this case out.
A man like Didrik Rosenfeldt probably had a lot of enemies who wanted him dead. It could be for financial reasons. He was good for over $6.2 billion. That was 6.2 billion reasons to kill him right there. But he was also about to fire three thousand people in his company. That could have ticked someone off. He also had an investment company that may have made a bad investment for someone. Maybe he cheated someone for a lot of money.
And then there was the wife angle. He was known around town to be having affairs with a lot of women and bringing them to the summer residence. Maybe his wife simply had enough and she wanted him to suffer, to die a merciless death as revenge for humiliating her.
It had been seen before, but mostly in foreign countries. Denmark was a small country with only 5.5 million inhabitants. We didn’t have that many killings or even that much crime compared with many other European countries. And almost every murder case was solved. Ninety-six percent of the cases to be exact according to the police department’s own records.
I was very intrigued—and somewhat disgusted—by what the housekeeper said about the crime-scene and how the body looked when she arrived, and I wanted to know more. Maybe there was something in the way he died or in the way they found him that could tell me what kind of killer we were talking about. Could it have been a sex game that went wrong?
I picked up the phone and called my detective dance school friend at the police station, who was thrilled to hear from me, but he was of no help. They still hadn’t gotten the autopsy report yet, so they didn’t know exactly what had killed him.
Surprisingly, he ended the conversation by asking me out.
“Like a date?” I asked loudly.
Apparently it was so loud that Sara looked surprised at me with her headphones on. I smiled and pretended it was nothing, so Sara wouldn’t spread the word. She was information central around here. No doubt about that. And I had to be very careful what I let her know about me if I didn’t want the rest of the town to know it a few minutes later.
“I’m sorry, Michael. But I just got away from a bad marriage, and I need time to get back on my legs. And my daughter needs stability for now. But thanks. I’m flattered that you would ask.” I tried to let him down politely.
“But maybe another time then?” He sounded so disappointed. I never liked rejecting someone.
“Maybe. Let’s wait and see.” I said goodbye and put the phone down.
So they didn’t even know what killed the guy yet. Nothing new to put in the paper then.
I was beginning to get irritated and frustrated when I suddenly thought about my sister in Naestved. She used to date the Didrik and she and her friends hung out with him. I remembered how they hated him for not treating women well. My sister especially seemed to be angry with him after she dumped him. And it was more than just a normal hurt and anger after a breakup. She loathed him. Detested everything about him and his friends. Maybe I could make a sort of portrait of him.
I called headquarters and they loved the idea. So they hadn’t spoken to Junior yet. Fine by me. I would continue. Go out with a bang. Didrik Rosenfeldt was a respected business man and well known in the jet-set society; he came from a noble family one of the few left. He was one step from royalty.
But he was also a prick, and I was going to tell the world the truth about him.
Chapter Seven
Henrik Holch gave his credit card to the cate
rer. He had brought in the staff of the world famous Noma restaurant to cater the party. Everyone knew they had just won the world’s best restaurant award last year. It had cost him a small fortune, but since he had a big one he hardly blinked when they gave him the bill.
“Just charge it to this card.”
Long after they all were gone he could still taste the oysters and reindeer tongue with Jerusalem artichoke and marjoram along with the 2007 Chataeuneuf-Du-Pape “Les Vielles Vignes” from Domaine de Villeneuve Rhone-sud.
As always, his party had been a huge success. Now he needed some time alone, doing what he liked to do.
He crossed the living room with remains of the party everywhere. His housekeeper would take care of that in the morning, before his kids came for the weekend. Not that he particularly enjoyed their company. They had become annoying over the years, just like their mother. He laughed to himself, as he opened a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a large glass.
For now he preferred to be alone, without the fear that anyone might interrupt him and find out what he was doing. Some things were to be kept to one's self, like his father said once, when he walked in on Henrik masturbating in his room.
In order to get rid of the stench of cigars he opened the big French doors that led out in the garden. Outside his landscaper had made a beautiful play of lights for the guests to enjoy when they gazed out the windows. It was indeed beautiful. He unbuttoned his white shirt under the Armani tuxedo and took a deep breath of the cold fresh February air. Everything around him was proof of his success and power. Yes he had been somewhat of a party boy who wouldn’t grow up, as his soon-to-be ex-wife called him. But so what? He deserved it. Yes he liked to do a little cocaine every once in a while, and yes he often had a few strippers attend the party and had sex with them afterwards.
So what?
He had always been like that. A real party boy. She knew that when she married him.
So what if he had turned 46 and still just played around? His wife’s parents invented the shoes sold all over the world, and naturally he became the CEO of DECCO shoes when he was done with business school. Not that he ever spent as much time working as he did golfing and yachting and taking trips to Thailand. But wasn’t life supposed to be lived? Who knew when it was over?
Henrik closed the French doors and went back into the living room and took the remote control and pushed a button. Then he turned off the lights with another remote. He was alone, finally. It was time for him to dedicate himself to his real pleasure.
Of course he did enjoy the company of all the Danish actors and models and even occasionally the royal prince and his adorable wife. But to him they were all just faces and words to be forgotten. He wasn’t a handsome man by nature but with a little plastic surgery over the years he had become quite attractive. With the fortune he was to inherit he had no problems getting women and sex whenever he wanted it.
But to Henrik, sex with a woman was strictly for the stupid. He enjoyed it, yes, very much, but it wasn’t exactly a pleasure the way his trips to Thailand gave him pleasure. The way his movies gave him pleasure.
He opened the drawer that was locked by key and took out a DVD. He put it in the player and leaned back in the sofa. No, he certainly didn’t know who those kids in the movies were. How could he? Or how they ended up doing what they did to each other and the adults in the movies. How should he know? Why should he care? People did all sorts of things for money. They even killed for money. Why shouldn’t they be willing to have sex for money? All Henrik knew was that he paid a gigantic amount of money for it.
The Asian kid in the movie was giving an adult man a blow job and Henrik was just about to reach into his pants, dreaming that it was himself getting taken care of by the sweet children in Thailand, when he felt a violent blow to the head and, instead of pure sexual pleasure, felt nothing but pain in a sea of stars.
Chapter Eight
The song. The song. He knew it, Henrik Holch thought to himself, halfway dreaming, and halfway getting back to reality. There it was again. He couldn’t escape it. It sent chills down his neck.
“Three, four, better lock your door,” someone hummed. Who was it? And why was it so hard for him to focus? He tried to move his arms but he couldn’t. He squinted to regain his focus and see that figure standing in front of him, humming away. What was this? Why did his head hurt so badly? Finally he succeeded in opening his eyes and focusing, just to discover that he couldn’t move. He was tied to a chair in the middle of his own living room. Tape covered his mouth.
In front of him a man sat in a chair, staring at him in silence. A brown briefcase sat on his lap. They stayed like that for what seemed like an eternity. He didn’t recognize the man at first, but little by little memories came back to him. Some even overwhelmed him and brought tears to his eyes. Memories that had been blocked out of the brain by the alcohol and cocaine over the years. Memories that he was so certain he had escaped and never had to deal with again.
It gave him the chills to discover that he was wrong. Boy, was he wrong.
He wanted to ask what he wanted from him. Henrik wanted to offer him money to leave him alone and not rip up the past. Some things are better kept to yourself, he thought. There is no need to bring back that old story now. Why now? But he still couldn’t talk and the man in front of him had decided not to.
The man continued to look at him in silence, and all Henrik could do was groan and moan. Moan over the past and all its cruelty. Moan over the future he was afraid he would never get.
And the man let him do it. He even looked like he enjoyed it.
Was that the purpose of all this? To make him moan? To make him regret and ask for forgiveness? If it was, he would do that in an instant. He would crawl on his knees and plead for mercy if it was necessary. And it would be sincere. Heartfelt. Because the fact was he really truly did feel badly about what they did back then. And he understood why he was about to pay for it.
Finally the man in front of him spoke. The sound of the voice again after all these years felt like needles ripping through his flesh.
“Hello, Henrik.”
Henrik groaned behind the tape.
“Don’t try to speak, because I won’t understand a word anyway. And not to be rude, but I don’t give a shit about what you have to say.”
The man now opened the briefcase and took something out. Henrik’s eyes grew wide. He tried to twist himself in the chair and get free from the wire tied him. But he had no luck. The man in front of him smiled while he put on the glove. Then he got up and went behind him. Henrik hyperventilated through his nose, while he tried to wring himself out of the chair.
“Nice house you’ve got here,” he said and laid his hands on Henrik’s shoulders. The four claws lay gently on the right one. Carefully he caressed his cheek with one of the claws.
“And you were about to watch a movie just when I disturbed you?” he said and looked at the big flat-screen on the wall, where he had paused the movie in a close up of the Asian boy with his lips closed around an old white man’s dick. The boy’s brown eyes were open and looked frightened.
The man put his lips close to Henrik’s ears.
“You just got to the good part. I paused it so you wouldn’t miss anything while you were out cold.” He paused and stared at the screen.
“So that is still what you like. The younger the better, right? Isn’t it so? And you have taken it even further than you did back then. They have gotten even younger. How old do you think this boy is? Six? Seven?”
Henrik didn’t make a move or even a sound.
“You like that frightened look in his eyes, don’t you? That’s what turns you on, right? That’s what used to turn you on back at the school. The fear painted all over their faces. And you were about to have some fun with yourself,” he said and stepped around Henrik and now stood in front of him looking down at his crotch.
Henrik Holch looked down too and saw that his pants were still open.
The man reached down and took out his dick with his claws. Henrik Holch shuddered.
“See now you have that look in your eyes. That same look the little boy has,” the man laughed. Then he leaned over and put his face next to Henrik’s ear.
“Game over.”
After that there was nothing left but Henrik’s hysterical moaning, a muffled scream of pain from behind the tape.
Chapter Nine
She was so mad at him, she had not slept all night. All she could think about was the things she wanted to tell him, when she got hold of her husband. Once again he had let them down, and both kids were crying and didn’t want to go to their dad’s house for the weekend. It had become a habit of his to disappoint them and forget about them.
The night before they had a family party at the school. They were supposed to go, all four of them, as a family. As one unit. For the kids’ sake. They weren’t getting a divorce, she had told them. They were just living apart until they got their problems solved. That was the plan. They had gone to counseling together. Just the two of them and once with the kids. They were trying. At least the three of them were. It seemed Henrik wasn’t doing anything to solve this. Again and again he let them down. He forgot to pick the kids up, he forgot all their appointments, and sometimes he would disappear for two or three days and she couldn’t get hold of him. But she knew where he was. He was in the house or at the golf club, getting drunk and high and not answering the phone. And now she had found out that he had thrown a big party last night, when he was supposed to go to a family event at the kids’ school. She had waited for him for two hours and then just taken the kids by herself. She had made excuses for him in front of the other parents.
“Henrik is just so busy lately with the company moving the factory to China and all. You know what it’s like.” She had laughed gently and the other women laughed back.
All big-shot husbands were busy and put the business before the family. That’s just the way it is, they had all agreed.
