One, Two ... He Is Coming for You (15 page)

He saw the wheel spin and the ball jump and dance around and, like so
many times before, he didn’t win. The croupier mechanically swept his bets off
the table with that same professional look every croupier had. The look didn’t
change even if a player was sobbing and crying and telling him that this was
his life savings, his last money. The same look that didn’t distinguish between
a hundred-dollar win and a million.

Things had gotten really bad over the last couple of months. He had lost
everything, including his lucrative job as a CEO of the company his father had
built. Over a period of five years he had stolen about ten million dollars from
the company without them knowing it. But over the years he had gotten too
careless, and one day he got caught. Because it was his father’s company, they
didn’t turn him over to the police, but threw him out instead.

Maybe he would have been better off in prison, he often thought to
himself.

The big mansion on the water was next to go, then the car and finally
the wife and the kids left. Now he lived alone in an apartment where he hadn’t
paid the rent in two months. No housekeeper, no gardener, and no chauffeur. It
was just him and his own damn mess.

Fuck them
, he thought. Everything was about to change. It had to.
He just needed to get his luck back. Then maybe one day he would get his
beloved wife back too. She had tried to stand by him, but it was like living
with a drug addict. He would promise he would stop, that this time was the last
time. And then he would stay away from the casino for a couple of days until he
felt the urge again, that alluring and deceitful feeling that this time he
could actually have a win, that it was possible. He knew it was, because in the
beginning he had won several times. And he always would win a little when he
first sat down at the table. He would also lose a little, but mostly win. And
then he wouldn’t know how to stop. He always just needed one more try and then
he would lose. Then one more and he would eventually lose it all. That was his
curse.

And so it went this night just like every other night. He lost and by
four o’clock in the morning he would leave the casino drunk and out of money.
The worst part was he knew the casino wouldn’t open again until six in the
evening the next day.

He had to walk home. He was cold in his white shirt and black Armani
jacket he always wore when he went to gamble. Once he used to own hundreds of
suits like this. But now he only had the one left. He kept it clean and nice so
it would always make him look like he still had a lot of money. Otherwise they
wouldn’t let him into the casino.

He had borrowed some money from his brother who had complained a lot but
eventually given him ten thousand dollars to get back on his feet again. Then
he had told Christian he had reached his limit. The money would have been
enough to pay his rent and patch up a number of critical emergencies with his
financial situation—like paying off that scumbag Brian who kept stalking
him for the money he borrowed six months ago and kept threatening to send a
couple of Hell’s Angels rockers after him. But Christian never paid off his
debt with the money from his brother. Instead he spent it in the casino under
the excuse that he was attempting to make more.

But his fate was always to see others strike gold. He never failed to be
there if someone got one of the big wins. The ones, they all were longing so
desperately for. The kind which just might have hit him instead if only he had
been at the right place at the right time.

It started to rain just as Christian reached his apartment lobby. He got
inside just in time. Maybe he hadn’t totally run out of luck, after all.

Inside the apartment he sat down on his bed. He looked around. He still
couldn’t believe that he lived like this. He, who grew up never having to do
anything by himself. He, who had gotten a Porsche when he turned eighteen, when
he could get his license in Denmark. He, who was friends with some of the
richest and most influential people in the country, or at least he used to be.
He, who used to be the one bossing people around, telling them what to do. He,
who used to have people respect just because of who he was, just because of his
name.

“Forty-six years old,” he murmured while he rested his exhausted body on
the bed. “I might as well be dead.”

27

“Seven, eight, better stay up late … “

The voice whispering in Christian Junge-Larsen’s left ear was gentle and
familiar. He was still lying on the bed fully clothed. He thought it was just a
part of his dream. His breath was calm and peaceful. Then the voice was there
again with that song. His dream suddenly changed. Indecipherable images
agitated his sleep.

He is alone in a dark place. Then he hears voices, singing and laughing.
Singing that same old song from the movies they used to watch at the boarding
school when the lights were out and everybody was supposed to be a sleep.

That is where he is, he figures. In one of the dorms. And these are the
voices. He knows them. They have been haunting him.

All of a sudden he sees a light and he walks towards it. It is a door
that leads into another room. He opens the door and sees what he believes are
his friends. He can’t really see them or their faces. They stand in the middle
of the room with their backs turned toward him. They are looking at something
on the ground. Or is it someone?

He walks closer. An anxiety rises in him. He can hear his own heavy
breath. His friends are hitting and kicking someone on the floor. The screams
are horrible. He stops and wants to run away and suddenly he is climbing
stairs, running up and up while his friends are beneath him. Still laughing and
singing, almost chanting. The stairs continue and seem like they will never
end. A light shines at the top, but he doesn’t seem to be able to ever reach it
no matter how hard he tries to climb the steps.

He looks down and feels like the stairs are floating in the air. The
height makes him dizzy and he almost falls but gets his balance back just in
time. The voices from beneath are getting louder and louder as does the
screaming and the beating. The sound of fists hitting flesh, breaking bones and
crushing lives. The worst sound in the world.

Christian is running again. He climbs another step and tries to get
away, to get to the top. Away from the laughing and beating and the screams.
But every time he succeeds in climbing another step three more appear at the
top. Then four, then five. His breathing gets even heavier as he climbs
reluctantly.

He sees the light at the end and runs even faster up the stairs. He sees
a door at the end and reaches for the handle. He can almost feel it in his
right hand as he tries to grab it. He can feel the warmth of the light behind
the door that is about to greet him and give him the peace he so desperately
needs.

But instead he slips and falls.

All the way back down the stairs. Hitting every step on the way that he
had just climbed. Bruising his back and the head.

Why? Why?
he keeps thinking.

And then he finds himself on the floor in the dorm. Surrounded by all of
his friends. They are still singing and laughing and now he knows why.

He is their victim. He is the one they are kicking and beating.

Christian woke up. His hand raised in the dark, reaching for the floor lamp.
He turned it on and a dim light was spread through the bare room.

The voice came at once from the man sitting in front of him.

“Today is a good day to die, don’t you think?”

Christian got up from the bed and ran past the man sitting in the chair.
Just like in the dream, he ran for his life, feeling the door handle, but never
reaching it. Instead he felt an arm grabbing him from behind, throwing him on
to the floor and then he was kicked in the face. Christian opened his mouth to
scream but the man covered his mouth with his gloved hand and the sound leaving
Christian’s mouth was now more of surprise and fear.

When the killer slit his throat a red spurt came out so fast it hit the
yellow lampshade. Then the lifeless body of Christian Junge-Larsen slumped down
onto the cheap carpet.

Then there was a noise on the stairs outside. Steps of a person
approaching the apartment. As he cleaned the sharp blades of the glove in a
jacket lying on the floor the killer smiled again.

28

I had spent the rest of the Monday trying to reach the last guy in the
picture, Christian Junge-Larsen, at his home in Elsinore, but apparently his
phone was out of order and he apparently had no cell phone. Maybe Sune could
have done a better job with his skills on the computer but I was on my own for
now. So I decided to go to Elsinore alone the next day.

I was sitting in my car on the highway when my phone rang again. I
picked it up but put it down after one quick look at it. It was Giovanni, again.
He’d called me at least eight times the night before and this morning. I hadn’t
answered any of the calls. Why? Simply because I had no idea what to say to
him. What could I say? That I thought he might be a vicious killer? Either that
would be true and he certainly wouldn’t tell me but maybe just get rid of me
instead or it was not true and then that would probably be the end of our
relationship. With trust issues like that, I would be sure to scare any man
off.

I wasn’t sure of anything right now and I really liked the guy so I was
determined to stay away from him until everything was solved. I had to know the
truth and I had to find it myself.

My hope was that Christian Junge-Larsen had some answers that could help
me.

I parked on the street in front of the address that Sune found. It was
still pretty early. I had left at six in the morning to get there and catch him
before he went to work. The city was quiet but awake. People bicycled to work
or school; some waited for the bus at the stop close to the building that
Christian Junge-Larsen lived in. Kids with their big schoolbags passed me. They
were wearing big jackets and winter hats. When I got out of the car I spotted
Kronborg in the background, the castle where the Prince of Denmark in
Hamlet
discovers that his father—the king—did not die a natural death, and
later on finds out his own brother, the new king of Denmark, killed him.

Even back then the crime mysteries interested people
, I thought
to myself while staring at the red brick castle with the green oxidized-copper
roof. It was beautiful lying there with the ocean surrounding it.

From my history classes I remembered in the basement was a big statue of
an old legend named Holger Danske. The myth went that whenever the kingdom was
threatened by an enemy from the outside, the stone statue would become flesh
and bone and Holger Danske would emerge and defend his country.

I liked those kinds of stories and for some reason I remembered them.

It was a really cold morning. The sun shone but the wind was freezing
and going right through my jacket. I hurried into the building and found the
stairs.

There was no name on the door but I rang the bell anyway hoping
Christian Junge-Larsen was still living there. I was really surprised that a
man of his status would live in a dump like this. I had googled him before I
went there and he had been quite the big-shot for a lot of years, living the
high-class jet-set life and marrying some Czech supermodel with cheekbones that
went straight up under both ears, and legs as long as most of my whole body. It
was of course his parents who had started the company and made their name big. All
Christian Junge-Larsen had to do—after finishing boarding school and his
business education in London—was to run the family company as the CEO and
live the sweet life that his parents worked their butts off to give him.

But for some reason he was fired by the company’s board some years ago
and he then seemed to have vanished into thin air after that. I had found his
model wife and the kids living at another address now, so I figured they had
separated.

No one answered when I rang the doorbell so I tried knocking instead,
but as I did the door came open. I took a step back. I didn’t want to intrude.
But then curiosity got the better of me and I gently pushed the door a little
more until it was half open.

A second later I wished I had never done so.

I felt the blood turn to ice. I had to force myself to breathe deeply. A
trail of blood continued along the floor and disappeared through an open door.
As I walked into the apartment I was hit by the sweetish smell of blood.

I don’t know why I didn’t turn around and run at that point but
something urged me to follow the trail of blood into the next room of the
apartment. It was a messy place—clothing all over the floor, mixed with
old beer bottles and half-empty pizza boxes.

When I got to the door of the next room and could see inside, I felt the
ice spreading throughout my body. Lying on the bed was the body of a man. His
throat was ripped open by what looked like four knives.

“Or the claw of a beast,” I mumbled to myself while stepping closer to
the horrific scene of slaughter.

I tried to control my breath and not panic. Blood was everywhere in the
room. It seemed almost impossible that one person had contained so much blood.
I forced myself to look at the face of the body. It was badly beaten but I
still recognized him from the photo. Now there was only one of them left. The
question was, was he the next victim or the killer himself?

I looked away. I couldn’t bear all that blood. And then I had a strange
feeling. When did this murder happen?