Easy as One Two Three (Emma Frost) (28 page)
Read Easy as One Two Three (Emma Frost) Online
Authors: Willow Rose
“So, that must have been real horrible for you,” I began.
“I … I just walked in, like I normally do. Normally he isn’t in the house. I didn’t expect … I mean, how could I know?”
“Of course you didn’t know. Can you tell me a little about what you saw?”
She didn’t look at me but stared into open air.
“He was dead. Blood everywhere. On all the floors in the living room. All over the parquet. It was like a slaughterhouse. He was shredded to pieces. Ripped apart like an animal would kill its prey. No man could have done this. Only a demon.”
C
HAPTER 6
“
D
ID YOU
write this article about my father?”
The chubby redhead man in front of me looked like his father back in the days when I used to see him down at the port hanging out and drinking with his boarding school buddies.
He had been waiting for me at the entrance when I arrived at the newspaper the very next morning. He held the paper with a picture of Didrik Rosenfeldt on the front page.
“Yes, I did.” I opened the door into the editorial room.
Didrik Rosenfeldt Jr. followed me all the way to my desk.
“Can I help you, sir?” Sara said as she came out of the kitchen bearing a cup of coffee and a piece of cake on a plate.
“I want an apology from the newspaper. A formal one.”
I looked at him. “For what?”
“For publishing this,” he said and pointed at the interview with the housekeeper. “This line, where she says that a demon killed my father. Giving all kinds of details that the public shouldn’t know about. I don’t want you to write any more about this case. Do you understand?”
Sara placed a cup of coffee in front of me, and I took it.
“Did you want one too?” I asked.
He snorted and pointed at me with shaky finger.
“Do you know who I am, and what my family is capable of?”
“I think I might have an idea.”
“I warn you …”
“Or what?”
”Or …”
I put down my coffee cup and leaned toward him. I wasn’t afraid of anybody, least of all of him.
”Listen. You don’t scare me one bit, mister. I have faced a lot worse bastards in my time in Iraq. And by the way, last time I checked we have freedom of speech in this country. Besides, they were the housekeeper’s words, not mine. I just printed them. That is not illegal. So just fuck off.”
I hadn’t noticed Sune who had come in the room. Now I saw him smiling for the first time.
Didrik Rosenfeldt Jr. snorted again, very loudly this time, but soon realized that he was defeated. Blushing he turned around and walked quickly towards the door. Before he left he turned around and looked at me.
“This is not the last word in this case.” He disappeared out of the room. I shook my head and sat down starting my computer.
“What a prick. Just like his father,” I mumbled.
The two others in the room kept staring at me. Sara sat down and Sune started clapping.
“Way to go, Rebekka.”
“It was nothing.”
“Nothing? You just told the owner of the newspaper to fuck off.”
I looked up. “He’s the owner of the newspaper?”
“Well not directly. But his family owns the corporation that owns the newspaper.”
I felt my body getting heavier in the seat. “So he could have me fired for doing that?”
Sune sat down at the corner of my table. ”He probably wouldn’t, I guess.”
Sune looked at Sara.
“You’ll be just fine,” she said, not too reassuringly.
Moving through the day, I wanted to write a follow-up article about the murder. I couldn’t stop wondering about the case. And I didn’t want to. Now that I had risked my job and was probably going to get fired anyway, it didn’t matter if I upset Didrik Rosenfeldt’s son any more. I wanted to figure this case out.
A man like Didrik Rosenfeldt probably had a lot of enemies who wanted him dead. It could be for financial reasons. He was good for over $6.2 billion. That was 6.2 billion reasons to kill him right there. But he was also about to fire three thousand people in his company. That could have ticked someone off. He also had an investment company that may have made a bad investment for someone. Maybe he cheated someone for a lot of money.
And then there was the wife angle. He was known around town to be having affairs with a lot of women and bringing them to the summer residence. Maybe his wife simply had enough and she wanted him to suffer, to die a merciless death as revenge for humiliating her.
It had been seen before, but mostly in foreign countries. Denmark was a small country with only 5.5 million inhabitants. We didn’t have that many killings or even that much crime compared with many other European countries. And almost every murder case was solved. Ninety-six percent of the cases to be exact according to the police department’s own records.
I was very intrigued—and somewhat disgusted—by what the housekeeper said about the crime-scene and how the body looked when she arrived, and I wanted to know more. Maybe there was something in the way he died or in the way they found him that could tell me what kind of killer we were talking about. Could it have been a sex game that went wrong?
I picked up the phone and called my detective dance school friend at the police station, who was thrilled to hear from me, but he was of no help. They still hadn’t gotten the autopsy report yet, so they didn’t know exactly what had killed him.
Surprisingly, he ended the conversation by asking me out.
“Like a date?” I asked loudly.
Apparently it was so loud that Sara looked surprised at me with her headphones on. I smiled and pretended it was nothing, so Sara wouldn’t spread the word. She was information central around here. No doubt about that. And I had to be very careful what I let her know about me if I didn’t want the rest of the town to know it a few minutes later.
“I’m sorry, Michael. But I just got away from a bad marriage, and I need time to get back on my legs. And my daughter needs stability for now. But thanks. I’m flattered that you would ask.” I tried to let him down politely.
“But maybe another time then?” He sounded so disappointed. I never liked rejecting someone.
“Maybe. Let’s wait and see.” I said goodbye and put the phone down.
So they didn’t even know what killed the guy yet. Nothing new to put in the paper then.
I was beginning to get irritated and frustrated when I suddenly thought about my sister in Naestved. She used to date the Didrik and she and her friends hung out with him. I remembered how they hated him for not treating women well. My sister especially seemed to be angry with him after she dumped him. And it was more than just a normal hurt and anger after a breakup. She loathed him. Detested everything about him and his friends. Maybe I could make a sort of portrait of him.
I called headquarters and they loved the idea. So they hadn’t spoken to Junior yet. Fine by me. I would continue. Go out with a bang. Didrik Rosenfeldt was a respected business man and well known in the jet-set society; he came from a noble family one of the few left. He was one step from royalty.
But he was also a prick, and I was going to tell the world the truth about him.
C
HAPTER 7
H
ENRIK
H
OLCH
gave his credit card to the caterer. He had brought in the staff of the world famous Noma restaurant to cater the party. Everyone knew they had just won the world’s best restaurant award last year. It had cost him a small fortune, but since he had a big one he hardly blinked when they gave him the bill.
“Just charge it to this card.”
Long after they all were gone he could still taste the oysters and reindeer tongue with Jerusalem artichoke and marjoram along with the 2007 Chataeuneuf-Du-Pape “Les Vielles Vignes” from Domaine de Villeneuve Rhone-sud.
As always, his party had been a huge success. Now he needed some time alone, doing what he liked to do.
He crossed the living room with remains of the party everywhere. His housekeeper would take care of that in the morning, before his kids came for the weekend. Not that he particularly enjoyed their company. They had become annoying over the years, just like their mother. He laughed to himself, as he opened a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a large glass.
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.
E
ND OF EXCERPT
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