One, Two ... He Is Coming for You (5 page)

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.

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.

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 living 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.

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.”