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 8
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 9
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 l
iving 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.
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 10
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 re
membered 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?”