"Urgh," he said.
"I know. It's nasty. What can you tell me about him?"
"I'd go after the lobotomies. It's highly unusual. Why would he choose that exact method? Find that and you have the reason why he is killing."
"That's what I thought. I actually found the killer but he escaped and the police are looking for him. But I wanted to know if you could help explain his behavior to me. It was quite strange."
James Wickham was quiet while I told him everything, all the details about my night with Christian and his sudden change in character.
"He kept referring to himself as Victoria," I said. "He acted like he was in fact his sister and Christian was a completely different person."
"Which he probably is when he acts as her," James said.
"What do you mean?"
"It sounds like your friend has invented a superior self to perform his deeds, his killings. He becomes her when he goes out to kill. Is she dead? Is his sister dead?"
"Yes! As a matter of fact she is. He told me that he was sort of revenging her death. That she had asked him to."
"That makes sense. See he has sort of recreated her in his mind. She is alive in his fractured psyche. They must have been close. How was the relationship to their parents?"
"According to Victoria she killed them. First she asked Christian to do it, but he couldn't so she did it herself."
"So she was the dominant one, he was weak and her puppet while growing up. And he was probably a constant source of disappointment, which he still is in his mind, in his recreation of their relationship. He has brought her back because he needs her. He can only kill when he thinks he is her. He has brought her back in his mind and given her new life and maybe even a higher level of cruelty than when she was living. When he is his sister he acts, talks and dresses as she did or would do. He has developed a split personality in which he is two persons. And he can switch between them whenever necessary. He doesn't need to be dressed up. When he is the brother he can live guilt free and normally not affected by what he does and thinks when he is the sister. He is also the type who takes delight in his own achievements. He is proud of his killings."
"And the type who shows up to look at the police working at the crime scene?" I asked. "Looking like nothing but a spectator?"
"Oh yes. He would definitely do that."
I noted everything James told me on my notepad while thinking of Christian who had been so nice and sweet to me and in the next second tried to kill me. It gave me the chills.
"So how do we find a guy like this?"
"He - or she - will not stop now. He is too close to the goal, too close to the revenge he has been seeking. The question is what is it he is revenging? Why did he choose those exact victims? I would take a closer look at the sister. How did she die?"
"I think he killed her," I said.
"That makes sense too," James said. "By resurrecting her in his mind he sort of erased the crime of killing her. My guess is that the lobotomy is somehow linked to his sister's death. Find out who she was and you'll find out why he became who he is."
"Will do," I said. "Thank you so much."
"Anytime Rebekka. You know that."
I hung up and stared at my computer screen without even seeing it. An idea was forming in my mind. I got up and found the files I received from Mogens Holst. Sara took off her headset and stared at me while I placed all the folders in small piles on the floor. Then I looked at her.
"I think I might need your help to go through these," I said.
She got up from her chair and waddled towards me. "I think so too," she said and grabbed a file.
CHAPTER 40
SUNE BROUGHT US LUNCH around noon and chipped in on going through the files and piles of paper-works from Lundegaarden. We all read through the material in silence. It was truly horrific. It seemed Mogens Holst had been right. Lundegaarden had been a sort of experimental center for criminals who were too young to go to prison and were sentenced to a life in a closed institution. As far as I could figure it was a place where they placed young people they had no idea what to do with. Then they experimented on them. Lobotomy was performed on more than a hundred young people there and every report stated the surgery somehow improved their lives by removing the pain and discomfort they suffered and turning them into apathetic vegetables. The doctors believed that they had somehow helped society and spared them from many years in prison and spared human lives because these young people were nothing but ticking time bombs who would surely explode if they were released into society. This was being done to help society as well as the young people. It was a gain for everybody.
Among the names of patients I found Victoria Lonstedt. She had a lobotomy performed on June 23, 1993. She had been sentenced to a life in custody when she was only nine years old after killing her parents in their beds at night. According to the papers she had tied them to the bed and stabbed them with a kitchen knife while they slept. Then she set the house on fire and helped her brother to get out while she watched her parents go up into flames. She had taken all the blame and told the police that her brother had nothing to do with it. She was placed in one institution after another but got herself in trouble everywhere. Finally they placed her at Lundegaarden where they were known to take care of difficult troublemakers. After the lobotomy she calmed down and no longer caused any problems. Then she was released to a nursing home in Northern Zeeland.
I leaned back and told Sune and Sara what I had found. They were both shocked.
"So you think that Christian killed her in that home and then he went to get revenge?" Sune asked.
I got up and looked at the whiteboard with all the information about the victims. "Listen to this," I said and pointed. "The first victim, Susanne Larsen was a nurse. She was in Palliative care, helping people recovering from brain tumor."
"Yeah, so?" Sune asked.
"Linda Nielsen commonly referred to as 'Fat Linda' was unemployed and lived on welfare. But before that she was a nurse too. Before the depression that led her to overeat. The last victim Martin Frandsen was a doctor before he retired. Do you see it?"
"So they were all doctors and nurses," Sune said. "But what about Anders Hoejmark? He was the president of the local badminton club."
"Not only," Sara said and got up. She went to her desk and found a notepad. She flipped a couple of pages. "When I researched his background I remember finding a similar story. I just didn't think it was important since it was so far back in time so I didn't put it up there. There is it. Yes. He was also a doctor from 1982-1993. Then he stopped and in 1995 he became president of the badminton club here in Karrebaeksminde."
"So they have all been nurses and doctors," I repeated while walking back to my computer. "Now we need to see if at any point in time they worked at Lundegaarden."
It didn't take long for Sune and Sara to find out that they all worked at Lundegaarden in 1993 when Victoria was lobotomized, and by looking through her file and the report about the procedure, we quickly realized that all four were present in the operating room on June 23, 1993. Dr. Martin Frandsen performed the procedure, while Dr. Anders Hoejmark assisted. Linda Nielsen and Susanne Larsen were the surgical nurses.
"So those were the four who turned Victoria into a vegetable," Sune said. "Now Christian is taking revenging by acting as her, is that it?"
"Sounds like it," I stated.
"So how do we find him?" Sara said.
"We find his next victim," I said and grabbed the report again. I found the paper recommending a lobotomy for Victoria Lonstedt. I scanned the paper and looked at the signature. The doctor who had signed the paper and doomed Victoria to a life of apathy was not unfamiliar to me.
It was Dr. Irene Hoeg.
CHAPTER 41
DR. IRENE HOEG WAS an unsatisfied woman. She always had been but now she was more than ever. Things weren't going exactly as planned. She was swearing and cursing as she packed her suitcase. The day’s events had made her
miserable. Everything was falling apart now. Ever since that nosy journalist from Zeeland Times had been at her house and started talking about the procedures they had done back then and mentioned the name of that irritating Mogens Holst, she had known that it was time to act. She tried what she normally always did, she abused her powers.
First she had someone follow the journalist as she visited Holst whom Irene thought she had managed to shut up for good two years ago by discrediting his name in public. Dr. Irene Hoeg knew many people in high positions and once her private investigator had found the papers stating that Mogens Holst was mentally unstable it hadn't taken much persuasion from her to convince people funding him to stop sending him money for his research and his publisher to have him withdraw the book. Plus she had leaked the story of the insane historian and his ridiculous insinuations that was all a hoax to all the media and even threatened the news-director at the national television that she would reveal his dirty secret of screwing the intern if he didn't do it. It had cost Mogens Holst his job and his family but that only goes to show him that you don't mess with Dr. Irene Hoeg.
But apparently he hadn't been scared enough to not let Rebekka Franck leave the place with plenty of information and documentation to write the story.
Irene Hoeg pulled a dress angrily from a hanger in the closet and threw it in the suitcase. It was going to be warm where she was going and she needed only to pack light clothes like dresses and shorts. The rest she would have to leave here. The pictures of Rebekka Franck leaving Mogens Holst's place with her arms filled with files and papers were on the bed next to her. How she cursed them.
"Little nosy annoying bitch," she hissed.
Next thing she had done was to send someone to shut Rebekka Franck up. He had gone straight to her weak spot, her daughter and threatened her. Her guy had even hurt the daughter by scaring the horse and caused her to fall off. Dr. Irene Hoeg didn't agree much with those kinds of methods but as long as it did the job, she was happy.
She wasn't happy now. The private investigator she had following Rebekka Franck and watching her from the building across the street had just called interrupting her lunch with someone important to the cause of her political party. The investigator said Rebekka Franck and her co-workers had opened the files after all and were now reading them.
That was when Dr. Irene Hoeg dropped her fork into the foie gras at the nice restaurant and told the important politician she was meeting with, that she was very sorry but it was time for her to go now.
"An emergency has occurred."
Then she left the restaurant knowing she wouldn't come back. She had to leave the country. This journalist wouldn't be discredited. Irene had tried to find dirt on her but hadn't succeeded yet to her great frustration. Rebekka Franck was someone people believed in. What she wrote was highly respected even if it was just in a small newspaper. All the other newspapers would jump in on the story as well. When the story broke it was certain to create a furor, an outrage about her personality and her past in the media that she didn't need right now. It would hurt the party and the cause they fought for. The Prime minister would be made responsible and she would drag Irene Hoeg with her in the fall. The cause for which she had worked in years would be destroyed and she couldn't have that. Her dreams about a clean Denmark where wrong people with issues that caused them to be criminal or even just a burden to society because of their flawed brains had to be put down for awhile. It had to wait. The Danes weren't ready for it yet. They weren't ready for Irene Hoeg.
She picked up the photos of Rebekka Franck and looked at them one last time before she threw them in the trash where they belonged.
Once she was done packing she would burn down the house. She had a nice place in Mallorca where she would hide for the next few years until things calmed down a little and it was time to come back. She would return, stronger and wiser and with even greater dreams for a great nation. She wasn't going to give up this easily. Dreams were always hard to realize and Irene knew she had to fight for them to make them come true. Maybe it wouldn't even be in her lifetime, but she had her crown-prince in the party that she could pass the torch to. He could run the party while she was gone and into the future, she could control him from her hideout and help him get more power. All the great generals and strategists through history had fought their battles far from the battlefield. She could do that too.
Dr. Irene Hoeg smiled by the thought. It wasn't over yet. The fight was far from lost. They were only experiencing temporary opposition. This was acceptable, nothing but a bump in the road.
Irene Hoeg sighed with a slight satisfaction. Accepting things for what they were was the only way to remain peaceful in a situation like this. So that was exactly what she was going to do. When it all came down to it she was actually looking forward to spending more time on the island of Mallorca in a milder climate where people didn't question her motives or threaten to destroy her.
Yes it was going to be a nice recreation where she could get ready for the second act of her plan undisturbed, Irene thought as she turned on the water in the bathroom. She would take one last shower in this house and then leave it forever.
Hardly had she stepped in and got her hair soaking wet before someone knocked on the front door.
CHAPTER 42
DR. IRENE HOEG PULLED the front door open with a very aggressive expression. "What?" she yelled even before she looked at the person standing outside at the doorstep. She was wearing nothing but a bathrobe and a towel around her hair.
She had considered not opening it at all but the person ringing the doorbell had been very persistent and it had quite frankly become too annoying so she had finally given up and walked downstairs ready to give whoever it was quite the scolding of a lifetime. Dr. Irene Hoeg was tired of people interfering with her life and business. People should learn to mind their own business and not disturb decent people when they were trying to get out of this forsaken country where everybody was oh so proud to be caring about each other and no one was forgotten and left out and where poor helpless people could kill someone in a weak moment because they weren't well and then just get away with it because they were too young to be punished or declared mentally ill or psychotic at the moment of action. That was nonsense to Dr. Irene Hoeg. She did believe that some people couldn't help it because they had a defect in the brain, because they weren't wired right, but she also believed in evil. Some people were just cruel and needed to be hidden from the world and sedated or even pacified if necessary. She believed she had the cure for both.
But right now Dr. Irene Hoeg was standing in front of pure evil, and knew there was no way she would escape it.
"That dress," she stuttered.
"Pretty, isn't it?" the person replied.
"I ... I ..." but there were no more words. Irene Hoeg had run out of things to say. "I gave that to her," she mumbled.
"Yes you did," the voice replied.
Irene lifted her head and eyes from the sparkling blue dress and stared into the eyes of the person wearing it. To her disappointment the eyes resembled but didn't belong to the person she had given the dress to. She looked like her but Irene Hoeg knew it wasn't her.
"What do you want? Why are you ringing my doorbell?" she said.
The person in front of her giggled. "Well you locked the door. Normally I would just walk in."
Dr. Irene Hoeg sighed. So many memories came back to her in that instant. So many happy hours she had spent with this girl. She reached out and touched her cheek, stroked it gently. It didn't feel like her skin had felt. It was too rough. Had it only been her, could she just see her one more time, just touch her soft skin and kiss those red lips.
"Victoria ...," she said, her voice trembling from the memories that now overwhelmed her. The emotions were powerful, devastating, crushing. For the first time in twenty years, Dr. Irene Hoeg cried. She felt a tear in the corner of her eye and she didn't stop to wipe it away.
"You know she loved you, didn't
you?" the person in the blue dressed looking so strikingly like her asked.
Dr. Irene Hoeg nodded. "All she wanted was a pretty dress to wear. She never had one she told me. So I bought this one for her. She looked stunning in it."
"She spent her life in one institution after the other," the person said. "Until you did that to her, until you made her into nothing but a vegetable." The person in the dress was shaking. "Why? Why would you do this to her?"
"I used to bring her to my office. I fell in love with her. She was so beautiful, so perfect. I could hardly believe it. I felt frustrated. I wasn't supposed to be with the youngsters, with my patients but I couldn't help it. I fell in love with her. I had the nurses bring her to my office late in the evening where I had sex with her. I used her. To compensate I gave her special favors at the institution. She was allowed to smoke cigarettes in her room, cigarettes that I gave her. I brought her better food on special days and celebrated her birthday with a nice dinner in my office. I even took her to the beach every now and then under the pretense that I was taking her to see her parent's grave and keep her focused on what she had done. I thought I was giving her a better life, but it was eating me alive."
Dr. Irene Hoeg was crying now. Tears were rolling down her cheeks as she stared at this woman from her past. The only real love she had ever experienced in her long life.
"So why kill who she was? If you loved my sister so much then why would you sign the papers stating that a lobotomy was the best cure for her?"
Irene Hoeg was bent forward in pain, overpowered by emotions she had tried so hard to escape for many years, dirty disgusting emotions that she thought she had under control.