Edwina

  She refused to give him the divorce he wanted. It wasn’t acceptable in her family. They would work things out, or get separate bedrooms in the house and maybe they could be like her own parents, who just stopped talking and lived their separate lives. As long as they showed up to the right parties and charity events and were looking like a successful married couple who everybody envied, they were fine, and could do whatever they wanted once they were inside their own house again. Christ, their mansion was big enough for both of them to live there without ever having to have anything to do with each other again. They just didn’t get a divorce.

  “Not in our family,” her mother had said, when she had cried her heart out in front of her and told her about her husband’s increasing abuse of drugs and alcohol and the many trips to Thailand and strange videos he would sneak down to watch in the living room when he thought they were all sleeping.

  “Learn to live with it; that’s what we women do,” her mother had snorted and made it very clear that this was not something she was to bring up again. She was supposed to deal with it.

  Then she had begun to threaten him. The company he worked for belonged to her family. He would lose everything if they got a divorce. She would get the house, the kids—everything. But it didn’t seem to frighten him one bit. He wanted out, he said. He wanted to go away for good. Move permanently to Thailand.

  “To do what?” she had yelled desperately. “So you can pay young boys to give you pleasure all day? That’s not love, Henrik. That’s disgusting.”

  But he said he didn’t care what she thought of him.

  “I just want out of this marriage,” he said.

  But he was not going to get off that easily, she thought as she reached the driveway of her old home. The yard looked nice. The landscaper had done a nice job. She would remember to give him an extra bonus this month.

  It was only six-thirty in the morning and she knew that it was time to take out the trash. She was going to put him in rehab. First she would take away his drinking habit, and then she would find some way to remove the other addiction that was destroying their life. She opened the front door with her key. The smell of cigars and strong alcohol hit her in the face. By the mess in the hall she could tell that a lot of people had been there. Probably models and actors as usual. Getting high, acting out, having sex in the bedrooms.

  “Henrik?” she said out loud.

  He was probably passed out in the living room as usual, she thought, and wondered how she would get his sorry ass out in the car. Maybe it wasn’t too bad if he was passed out. Then he wouldn’t be able to resist. She could just drag him out there. But she did bring her gun in her purse. Just in case. That would make him go willingly if he was awake. Or she could threaten to call the police on him. Whatever did the trick.

  She never finished the thought, but froze in a scream when she saw the huge pile of blood.

  Chapter Ten

  I spent a couple of days researching the story, “Didrik Rosenfeldt’s hidden past exposed.” With a little help from my sister I had found out he and a couple of his friends were arrested in 1985, accused of having raped a local girl. My chances of finding the girl were slim. But Sune, our photographer stepped in. He told me he might be able to find the girl. He used to do “stuff like that.” I told him to knock himself out and let him use my computer. It didn’t take him long to find the girl’s name and discover that she had gotten married and now had a new name, that she lived in Holme-Olstrup not very far from Karrebaeksminde.

  The drive would only take eighteen minutes. I took Sune with me.

  “So how did you know how to find her?”

  He shrugged. “I just know a little about computers. I do stuff. Or I used to.”

  “Like a hacker?”

  “You might call it that.”

  “Is that why you went to juvenile prison?”

  He looked at me, surprised.

  “Well I know a trick or two,” I said. “Journalists can do things with a computer too. Like look people up and check their background. Or find somebody in the police who can.”

  Sune nodded. “Well it isn’t like it’s a secret. But yes, I used to hack myself into a lot of government stuff and one day I got arrested.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  ”So what happened?”

  “I did my time. And when I got out I couldn’t get a job anywhere. I made some bad friendships that weren’t doing me any good. So I thought I had two choices. Either I stayed in Copenhagen and got into even more trouble with the law and became a real criminal or I get the hell out of there.”

  “And now you’re supposed to stay away from hacking, right?”

  He nodded. “They will never know I used your computer to find that girl’s name.”

  “But you hacked in to the police database, right? And found the file from back then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So now I could get in trouble?”

  “You won’t.”

  I looked at him. He smiled.

  “You have got a lot of confidence, don’t you?” I said.

  “Well, I am good. I don’t leave any trace.”

  “Good. So why did you get caught when you were sixteen?”

  “I was young and not careful. I know better now.”

  “So what happened to your fingers?” I asked and looked at his hand where he was missing the two fingers in the middle.

  “Juvenile detention.” He stared out the window. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  We had a long pause and reached the city limit of Holme-Olstrup.

  “So, you never told me. What you are doing down here in the middle of nowhere?” Sune said, when I had parked the car.

  I looked at him and opened my door. “The same as you are, I guess. Hiding from my past.”

  Holme-Olstrup is a town mostly known for its amusement park called Bonbon-land. It was born when a man named Michael Spangsberg, who was a candy maker, got the idea for candy with funny names: seagull droppings, dog farts, and pee diapers. The candy became so popular that many schools came to visit the factory located in Holme-Olstrup to see how the candy was made. But because of the hygiene requirements, the factory couldn’t have visitors, so the founder decided to open a park, with a candy shop, a movie theater, and four boats in a pond. Today that had grown into one of the most visited parks in the country with more than sixty roller coasters and other attractions. It had put the city of Holme-Olstrup on the map.

  I had been there once with Julie and her dad, when she was younger, and we were visiting my parents. I remembered the day and felt a little pinch in my heart. We used to be so good together. Better than all the others. We used to care for each other. Now he had ruined everything. How could I have been so blind? Love is blind, my dad would say. It was so true.

  Irene Hansen opened the door. She was small and skinny with dyed blond hair. When I saw her face, I remembered her from back then. I just never knew her name. Her parents owned the shop at the port in Karrebaeksminde. We used to buy beer and cigarettes at their store on Friday nights when we were hanging out at the port doing nothing but meeting up with boys. She was my sister’s age, about ten years older than me. I remembered her as a wild girl, always flirting with the boys, talking dirty, smoking and drinking. My sister told me the rape had changed her. After that her parents had been overly protective and never let her go out at night. They accused her of being promiscuous and said it was her own fault the boys raped her. If she hadn’t been flirting this wouldn’t have happened; if she didn’t dress like a whore they wouldn’t have done it. They had then dropped the charges against Didrik Rosenfeldt and his friends, but that only made everybody think the parents must have been right. She was to blame. Maybe she even led them on, and just regretted it afterwards when she faced the consequences. She got pregnant and had to have an abortion. My sister was one of the only people in the whole town who believed her story.

  “Why?” I
asked her.

  “Because he tried to do the same to me,” my sister said.

  “What happened?”

  “I went with him and his friends on his parents’ boat one evening when we were still dating and he …” she sighed before she continued. “He and his friends from the boarding school tried to rape me.”

  “Why have you never told me?”

  “You were just a kid. I’ve tried to forget it ever since.”

  “How did you escape?”

  “I jumped off the boat in time to get away. It was summer so the water was warm and we weren’t far from the coast, so I managed to swim all the way to the beach.”

  “Did you report it?”

  “No.”

  That didn’t seem like something my sister would do.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “Dad convinced me that it would only mean trouble for the family.”

  I was so confused. That didn’t seem like something dad would say. What had happened to him?

  “Why?”

  She sighed again.

  “I don’t know why. Please just forget about it, okay? There is no reason to be digging in the past now.”

  When Irene opened the door I saw a different girl than the one I remembered. This one was shy and timid. She looked at us with surprise. Normally I would have called first, but since this was a delicate matter I wanted to look her in the eyes when I asked her if she would give the interview for the article. I wanted her to see who I was and that I didn’t mean to cause her any harm. I just wanted the people to know the truth. That’s what I told her and she just stared at me in disbelief and shook her head.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She was about to close the door when I stopped her.

  “Listen, Irene, I know this must be hard for you. But the guy is dead. Murdered. And a lot of people think the world of him. That he was a big-shot business man. And of course it is a tragedy that he was killed, but I want to tell the world what kind of man he really was.”

  “I’m sorry, but …”

  “You can be anonymous, if you want. No one has to know that it was you.”

  She looked at me with mistrust.

  “There is a lot you don’t know about these kinds of people. They will know and come after me. Someone will.”

  “Please. Just let me hear your side of the story. Or Didrik Rosenfeldt will take it to the grave and you will never have your name cleared. Don’t you want that?”

  Irene was silent for a long time and I could sense she was debating within herself. Her mind was a battlefield right now, and I just hoped the right side would win.

  After a few more seconds she stepped back into the house and opened the door and let us in. I smiled at Sune who smiled back.

  Irene offered us coffee and we accepted. Sune was really polite and gave her a lot of nice compliments on the house and the décor. It wasn’t something I would have thought he knew anything about but sometimes people just surprise you. And it was helpful. Getting to talk about something that interested her, she relaxed and got comfortable. Sune took some discreet pictures of her for the article, from the back and looking out the window. And by the time we got to the interview she seemed ready to talk. We all sat down.

  “Tell me how it happened. How did you get to know Didrik Rosenfeldt?”

  She sighed, preparing herself for the emotions and memories about to flush out of her like a big ocean wave.

  “I had known Didrik and his friends from the boarding school for a long time. In the summertime when their school was closed, they always came down to Karrebaeksminde to stay at Didrik’s house on the water or go sailing in his parents’ boat. The parents were never there anyway and he and his friends were free to do what they wanted. And so they did.”

  “So they came in your parents’ store at the port?”

  “Yes, every time they went out on the boat, which was most days during the summer. They had to get supplies. Mostly cold beers and chips and stuff. So they came to my father’s store and there I met them. Didrik always talked so nice to me, being a real gentleman. He knew how to talk to women. But he had his appearance against him, you know, he was a little chubby and ugly. So no one ever wanted to be with him. But I thought he was nice and had money and that attracted me.”

  “But the other boys had a lot of girls, I bet.”

  “Oh, yes. The boys always had girls with them out on the boat. And I always stared at them, jealous as I was. I remember that I really wanted to be one of the girls going with them out on the ocean, drinking, partying, and having a good time. I wanted to be one of the chosen ones. But I didn’t come from a rich background as they did. I didn’t go to boarding school, so I thought they would never take me.”

  “But they did?”

  ”Yes. One day. I was always flirting with Didrik because I knew he was the one making the decisions of who would go and who would not. Girls never really wanted to be his girlfriend. They would always choose one of the other boys. And that bothered him. So I chose him to be my ticket to have fun on the water. And one day, when they came into the shop to buy their beers, he asked me politely if I wanted to go with them and eat dinner on the boat and watch the sunset. I would be the only girl aboard. But that was meant as a compliment to me, he said. Because if they brought any other girl she would be jealous of my beauty. I was thrilled. The one and only. I was to be treated like a queen and I could choose to kiss whoever I wanted of the rich boys.”

  Irene sighed deeply.

  “I was so young and stupid.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I got on the boat and the guys were so nice to me, like real gentlemen. I remember wearing a white summer dress and the wind was warm, unlike a normal Danish summer breeze. I was hot and we all cooled down with cold beers all afternoon. Admitted, I got a little dizzy from the beer and the heat. By dinnertime I was a little drunk, but not so much that I didn’t know what I was doing. So I turned up the music and started dancing. The boys ate steaks and fish fillets they had brought from a restaurant on the port. We had champagne and real Russian caviar and I felt like I was in heaven, and then I just started dancing. The boys watched me and I closed my eyes for a second, enjoying the moment. When I opened my eyes I saw an expression on Didrik’s face I had never seen before in any man. In any human being. He was like an animal getting ready to eat its prey. His nostrils were distended, and he breathed heavily. His eyes were filled with lust. And he was not the only one looking at me like that. All six boys were staring at me with that same look. The sun had begun to set, and the hunting was about to begin.”

  Irene shook her head and had tears in her eyes. I reached out and held her hand for awhile. I waited for her to be ready to speak again. I really didn’t want to pressure her. After a few minutes she was ready again. I took a deep breath sensing that what was about to come would be very unpleasant. And I was right.

  “They closed in on me. They got up and walked slowly towards me, smiling. I asked them if they wanted to dance, and they laughed. ‘It’s time to dance, all right,’ one said and grabbed my wrist in an iron fist. It hurt. ‘We will do the leading,’ he whispered in my ear. I was scared and tried to pull away, but he held me and I suddenly felt a hand under my dress. Someone ripped off my panties and I started crying, pleading with them to let me go. Then they threw me to the deck of the yacht and took off my dress. They held my arms and legs. They were laughing and singing.”

  “What did they sing?”

  She started humming. “That song from the horror movies popular back in the eighties. The one with the guy who had knives on his hands,” she said.

  “Freddy Krueger?” I remembered the movies. There were a lot of them as far as I knew. I wasn’t allowed to watch them until I was older and by then they weren’t that interesting anymore. But I remembered my sister talking about them and teasing me, telling me just before bedtime that Freddy Krueger would come in my dreams with his long claw
s and kill me.

  “Exactly. They had a thing for that. They kept singing. ‘One, two, he is coming’ … And then he came.”

  “Who did?”

  “Freddy.”

  “How is that?”

  She shook her head and looked down. “One of them must have dressed up exactly like him. He was there in front of me. The same clothes, the red and black striped shirt, that brown hat and the glove, with the claws on the fingers. The person even wore a Freddy Krueger mask, so he looked exactly like him. I started to scream, and they said we were out in the ocean so no one would ever hear me. It was like they wanted to hear me scream. They encouraged me to do it. So I did. That was all I could do—cry and scream. They told me they would stab me with the claws, that they would rip my body open. And then they cut me with them. ”

  She lifted up her shirt. Long stripes of scars all over her chest were a constant reminder to her of that night of horror. She could never escape it.

  “And then they raped me. All night. One at a time. They just kept going until I was numb.”

  Irene was quiet for a long period of time. I just stared at her and didn’t know what to say. I’d never heard a story like this before. For a moment I thought about my daughter and wanted to lock her up until she was thirty. I tried to put myself in her parent’s place but it was too unbearable.

  “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.