One, Two ... He Is Coming for You (18 page)

I looked at him with anticipation. “Really?”

“Really.”

I went to his desk. “So what is it?”

Sune clicked the mouse and a list of names showed on the screen.

“What am I looking at? I don’t get it.”

“Look at the names.”

I read them out loud.

“Zenia Damsgaard, Zenia Larsen, Zenia Emborg, Zenia Busck, Zenia Peterson.”
I stopped. “It just goes on like that, the same first name, different last
names.”

“These are names he has been searching for on the internet. On Google
and the yellow pages. So what does that tell us?”

“That he’s looking for someone named Zenia?”

“Very good. Yes, that’s exactly what he has been doing. From his internet
history I can tell that he has been searching a lot for Zenia and found nine
girls with that name in Denmark. I have gathered all of them.”

“So?”

“So why would he search for a girl for whom he only knows the first
name?”

“Because he met her in a bar maybe and she only gave him her first name.
Since it’s a relatively rare name, he thought he could find her on the
internet. Maybe he was in love. Who knows?”

“That’s one theory. But what about this? Maybe it’s because he used to
know her when she was younger and still in school, and now he figures she has
gotten married and therefore changed her last name.”

I nodded. It sounded like a possibility. But I didn’t quite see how it
helped us.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Sune said. “But I just feel like it might
have something to do with our case.”

“Look,” I said and pointed at one of the names.

“Zenia Clausen,” Sune read out loud.

Our eyes met.

“Clausen?”

“Could that be …?” Sune looked back into the screen.

“Like in Bjorn Clausen?” I said.

“A sister?”

“He didn’t have a sister as far as I know,” I said. “Maybe it could have
been a cousin? Can you find her on the yellow pages and maybe get a name or a
number?”

Sune typed, then leaned back and touched his Mohawk with the tip of his
fingers.

“Nothing.”

I thought for a second.

“Try to look her up in Folkeregistret, where the Danish government keeps
everybody registered.”

“Great idea,” Sune said and leaned forward. Now he was typing again with
great eagerness.

I went to have a cigarette at the window in the kitchen. I thought about
my sister as I looked out at the people in the street in their long coats. If
Bjorn had a sister, she probably knew her. She knew all girls her own age from
this town back then. So I called my sister, but she didn’t answer the phone. I
left her a message and killed my cigarette.

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?”