One, Two ... He Is Coming for You (20 page)

“So you think that Bjorn Clausen was the first one and then he waited twenty-four
years to kill the next?”

“Something like that.”

I stared at Sune with great excitement. We were almost there. I felt it.

“Maybe it’s the rape. I mean they were all in that picture from that
night. Maybe he and Irene are in on it together.”

Sune nodded.

”But why would she tell the police that he was there? Why would she tell
us?”

Sune was right. Some things didn’t add up yet. I sat down when my phone
vibrated on the kitchen table. It was my sister returning my phone call from
the other day.

“I’m so sorry for not calling you before but I knew from Dad that Julie
was in the hospital, so I thought it was better to wait.”

My sister, the perfectionist. Always thinking of others. That’s just how
she was.

“So how is Julie?”

“Better. She is playing upstairs with her friend.”

“I am glad to hear that. I wanted to call you while you were up there
but Dad said you had shut off the phone to better concentrate on being there
for Julie.”

“That’s right. Don’t worry about it.”

My sister and I had never been close. There were ten years between us
and we never had an intimate relationship, so I would never have expected her
to call me in the hospital anyway. But I was glad she said it.

“So you wanted to know something about Zenia?”

“Yes, do you know her?”

“I’ve heard about her.”

“Great! Anything you remember would be a help.”

I looked at Sune, intensely reading his computer.

“She was a girl at the boarding school. Her parents were rich like most
of the kids. They lived in London so they put her in that school, which is the
story of a lot of the kids there.”

“I heard about that.”

“Anyway it was  a mess that ended in tragedy as far as I know. She
was a couple of years younger than Didrik Rosenfeldt and the gang, I heard
Ulrik Gyldenlove was one of the boys in the gang had quite a crush on her. But
she was in love with Bjorn Clausen’s younger brother, Michael, who also went to
the school.”

“Whom she later married,” I said.

“Yes. Much against her parents’ protest. He wasn’t good enough for her
in their eyes.”

“Because he wasn’t rich. He was there on a scholarship.”

“Exactly.”

“So she rejected Ulrik Gyldenlove?”

“Yes. Well not at first. The story goes that she played them both. Then
she became pregnant at seventeen but no one knew who the father was. It was a
big scandal at the school and she was expelled. Her parents disowned her. The
only one who took care of her was Michael Clausen. He married her when they
both turned eighteen, not knowing if the child was his.”

“Wow. And I bet Ulrik Gyldenlove wouldn’t have done that.”

“No. His parents would have cut him off if he did that. He tried to pay
her off. To get her to have an abortion, but she refused. He would have lost
everything if he had married her. His inheritance, his status, his future,
everything. He didn’t dare risk that.”

“But Michael Clausen had nothing to lose.”

“No. But he was expelled from the school too because they were sure that
he was the one who got her pregnant since he was the one who married her.”

“So he did lose something?”

“Yes. But he loved her like crazy.”

“Then what happened?”

“She killed herself … and the child.”

“Wow. That was tough.”

“I know.”

“What happened to Michael Clausen?

“Beats me. I haven’t heard about him in ages.”

I thanked my sister and hung up, promising to keep in touch and see each
other soon, like we always promised, but never followed through.

I looked at Sune who hadn’t touched his beer since I picked up the
phone.

“Zenia killed herself and her kid,” I said. “She didn’t know who the
father was. It was either Michael Clausen, whom she married, or Ulrik
Gyldenlove. Apparently she loved them both.”

Sune looked up. “That’s not how I would put it.”

“What do you mean?” I took a sip of my red wine and almost choked on it
when he answered me.

“It says here Ulrik Gyldenlove admitted raping her.”

I got up and went to look at the police report from the interrogation of
Ulrik Gyldenlove. In it he stated he and the other boys raped a lot of girls. One
of them was Zenia Petersen, who later became Zenia Clausen.

My head started spinning. Not because of the wine but the thoughts made
me dizzy. Had Ulrik Gyldenlove killed Zenia and her child to make sure no one
ever knew what he had done? Perhaps he didn’t want the boy seeking him out
later claiming he was his dad. Was money a motive? And then did he kill his
friends because they knew as well? Because they would blackmail him? If that
was true, he knew if his family found out he would lose everything. But most of
the boys in the gang had their own money. Like Didrik Rosenfeldt. He didn’t
need to blackmail anyone. Maybe he killed them because they raped her too. Maybe
he wanted vengeance because he loved her. Was that the reason?

And where was Michael Clausen? Could Gyldenlove have killed him too out
of jealousy but the body was never found?

I was tired and sat down in the chair. I ate a piece of chocolate and
drank the rest of my wine.

Ulrik Gyldenlove was still a free man. If he was the killer, who would
be his next victim?

37

Ulrik Gyldenlove was not a happy man. He never had been and probably never
would be. Not even when he married his beautiful aristocratic wife, Sacha, much
to his parent’s satisfaction. Not even when his daughter Caroline was born and
he got to hold her in his arms for the first time. He just wasn’t cut out to be
a happy man.

For that he carried too much baggage.

And the last couple of weeks, seeing his old friends die one after the
other didn’t seem to make him any happier. He had thought it would, though. He
had always thought they deserved exactly what they were getting now.

Why would he want them to die? Because they made him do it. They pushed
him. He never wanted to rape Zenia. He loved her. But Didrik—that bastard—thought
she needed a punishment for rejecting Ulrik. And Ulrik had  enjoyed the
idea of having her suffer a little bit for all the heartbreak she had caused
him, for refusing to love him even though he had tried everything. He tried
buying her things. He would take her out to nice places for dinner. He even
bought her a ring, but she didn’t want it. She didn’t love him the way he loved
her. For that he in a way wanted what happened to her.

But he could never have imagined what would happen next.

Ever since that night at the boarding school gym when he raped her on
the floor while the others held her down, he had a sadness inside—one
that never would go away.

And it grew in him when he heard Zenia was pregnant. It grew even bigger
when he tried to pay her off to get an abortion. Another one of Didrik
Rosenfeldt’s bright ideas.

But the worst part was when she married that boy, Michael Clausen. Not
that Ulrik could have married her himself. That never would have been even
considered. It simply was not an option. But that she would choose him, that
little good-for-nothing boy who had no money. Ulrik would never understand.

And it broke his heart.

Now they were all gone. Bjorn Clausen, Didrik Rosenfeldt, Henrik Holch,
Bertel Due-Lauritzen, Christian Junge-Larsen, and even Zenia Petersen. He would
have thought that would have given him some  peace of mind. That it would
maybe even give him some sort of happiness to see them go.

But it didn’t.

He was still sad. He’d been like that for years now. Twenty-five years
to be exact. And it didn’t seem like it was about to change for him. It was as
if his life only got worse as the years went by. He had suffered trying to
escape his past for too long now. It was time to face the music. Especially now
since his wife had died a couple of years ago. Now only he and his daughter,
Caroline, were left. She would go to London next year to business school.

Then he would be all alone.

Alone with his own miserable self. The person he loathed most in this
world. The only one he could never escape.

Was it worth it? Was anything he had done in his life worth it? No. None
of it had been. But that was life, right? A series of events that happened to
you while you were busy making plans for your future. And then life came along
and all the dreams would be gone. Crushed into pieces. Eventually they would be
forgotten and people learned that life was all about getting by. Coping.
Surviving.

Nothing else.

It was called growing up, his father had said.

Ulrik was thinking about all that when he got himself ready for the
evening. It was going to be an important night. Maybe the most important one in
his miserable little life. Then he picked up the phone.

It was finally time to finish it all off.

38

Sune and Tobias stayed for dinner. Julie convinced Sune that Tobias just
had to have another sleepover. She needed him in order to get really well, she
said. Fortunately for her, he agreed.

My dad made a traditional Danish dish called frikadeller, meatballs with
potatoes and a brown gravy. It was horrible. My dad had never been the best
cook and even though I helped him make it, he put too much salt in it, which
made it almost inedible. But no one said anything during dinner and I
appreciated that. I didn’t like to see my dad’s feelings get hurt.

So when he asked if we liked it everybody—even the kids—said
it was delicious. And Dad was very happy when he went upstairs to go to bed.

Sune and I laughed and I drank some more red wine while Sune had a Coke.
Then we tucked the kids in and turned on the TV.

I liked Sune’s company. And he seemed to like mine. We were ten years
apart in age and very far apart in personality, but still we enjoyed being near
one another. He was so easy to be with. Always relaxed and happy and never
demanding anything from me. With the age difference, there was no sexual
tension at all that I could tell. We were just two colleagues, friends and
parents hanging out together.

“What do you want to watch?” Sune asked with the remote in his hand.

I yawned. “I don’t care, just something relaxing. What’s on?”

“Some American series. ‘Desperate Housewives’ is probably the best I can
do.”

I yawned again. ”I don’t care much for shows like that. Anything else?”

”An old Danish movie.”

”That’s more my dad’s thing.”

“A crime magazine.”

”Too real.”

”The news.”

”Way too real. I’ve been avoiding the world the last couple of days. I
am not working until tomorrow.”

We ended up on some documentary that I never quite figured out. My
concentration was interrupted when my phone rang.

I picked it up. I didn’t recognize the number.

”Yes?”

”Rebekka Franck?”

”That is me.”

”My name is Caroline Gyldenlove.”

I sat op at once in the sofa and signaled Sune to turn off the TV.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if you remember me. We met when you interviewed my
father.”

She talked with a distinguished voice and that made her sound much older
than her twenty years.

“I remember you very well. You were with your father at the Riding Club
in Klampenborg.”

“Mattssons. Yes. That’s where my father and I go for a ride every now
and then. We like it there because it is so close to the park.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I am terribly sorry to disturb you and your family at this late hour
but I am concerned about my father.”

“Why? What happened?”

”I don’t know where he went …”

“But?”

“But he seemed so out of it.”

“Is that unusual for him?” I asked remembering the sadness I detected
when I walked with him in Dyrehaven.

“No, it’s not. He’s always carrying the sorrows of the world on his
shoulders. A big sadness. But today he seemed different. Like something had
changed him.”

”How is that?”

”Like he had made a decision. He was so decisive.”

”Is that a bad thing? Why would you worry about that?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s silly. But he looked at me before he left and
said the oddest thing.”

“What?”

“He said he would leave now and if he never came back he wanted me to
know that his company, the cars, the house, everything in his name, was mine
and that I would have enough money to get everything I needed or wanted in this
world.”

“Why would he say that?”

“I don’t know. At first I didn’t think much about it, but now I’m 
wondering about it. What if something is wrong?”

”Why call me?”

”At first I called the police here in Klampenborg, but they couldn’t do
anything yet. For all they knew he would be back in an hour or two. That’s
usually what happens in cases like this, they said.”

“I heard that one before,” I said and remembered how they reacted when
my daughter was missing.

“So I found your number in my dad’s phone from when you called him to do
that interview.”

“Your dad didn’t bring his cell phone when he left?”

“No. That’s another thing I found strange. He never leaves the house
without it. He’s a businessman. His life is that phone.”

It did sound a little odd to me. I could only come up with two reasons
to why he wouldn’t bring his phone. Either her dad had lost his mind and
wandered off or he didn’t want the police to be able to track him.

“Have you any idea as to where he could have gone?”