Seven, eight ... Gonna stay up late (Rebekka Franck #4) (10 page)

Allan had a
great Sunday morning. He enjoyed the morning coffee and reading the paper next
to Sebastian, before he sent him on his way with a smile, a kiss and a
"see you tonight."

Sebastian had promised to visit his parents all
day and take part of the usual Sunday lunch where he would sit and pretend not
to be gay in front of the entire family even if they all knew that he was. It
was a charade that Allan was very pleased with not having to take part of.
Besides he had so much more to do this Sunday that Sebastian didn't need to
know about.

Once he closed the door Allan ran upstairs and
got dressed. He looked forward to finally being alone with the girls. And now
it was time to have some fun.

He had been plotting his next move all night. It
wasn't part of his original plan, but he was entitled to some fun on his own,
wasn't he? Allan thought so.

As he ran downstairs to get ready, he kept
thinking about that woman, Rebekka Franck. Ever since she approached him in the
parking lot, he hadn't been able to get her out of his head. She was so
striking. A perfect specimen. He just had to have her somehow. He had to fit
her in. But how? How could he make her a part of all this? Maybe she could play
a role somehow? Oh how he loved his twisted little games, he enjoyed plotting
them as much as he enjoyed executing them. Well almost.

He walked to the garage and pulled out a tall
jar covered with a red dishcloth. He felt the chill of excitement as he brought
it with him to the kitchen. In the cabinet he also found the chloroform for
later. Then he took the jar and the chloroform and walked towards the door
leading to the basement.

He heard them move once he opened the door. Not
that they could move much in those small boxes. He lit the light and looked at
the fear filled eyes staring back at him from behind the plastic. Then he
smiled.

"Good morning, ladies."

Both girls started yelling and hitting the sides
of the boxes, while Allan calmly put the jar and the bottle of chloroform on the
table next to them.

"Let us out of here, you sick
bastard," Princess Amalie said.

He approached and looked at her inside of her
box. "Tsk. Tsk. Now is that a way to talk for a young royal lady like
yourself?" He said.

She hit her hand hard into the plastic while
grunting. She seemed feeble, weak from starvation and thirst. That was good.
Once he began what he had prepared for her, she would long to feel like that
again.

Camilla grunted and started hitting the box with
her fist.

"Don't bother. You'll only wear your pretty
little self out," Allan said to her while taking down the body hanging on
the hook. Camilla gasped when she realized what it was. Allan threw the body in
the corner of the room, and then covered it with a black plastic bag. Then he walked
to Camilla's box and knocked on it. "It's armored plastic. A bullet won't
even be able to go through it. Cost me a lot of money to have it made, but it
was well worth it."

"What do you want from us? Why are you
keeping us in here?" Amalie yelled.

Allan turned his head like an owl and smiled.
"Because I can," he said.

"Please," Camilla pleaded. It was pure
music to Allan's ears. How he loved and craved the sound of a pleading victim.
How he dreamt about it at night.

"Please let us go. We'll never tell anybody
who you are or what you look like. We'll do anything you want us to."

Allan lit up and grinned. He liked the sound of
that. "Well I don't need to set you free to get you two to do exactly what
I want," he said. "All I want you to do, or rather all I want to do
to you, is right in here. There is no need to get you out of those boxes."

Then he giggled and picked the jar up from the
table. Like a magician he removed the dishcloth while exclaiming
"Ta-da!"

Allan grinned as he watched the girl's eyes
become big and wide. Then he closed his and enjoyed the sound of what came
next. The sound of both of them screaming for their lives.

"I had to
do it, I'm not going to be sorry for it," I said into the phone. "I
didn't want to leave this town and the two girls without at least letting the
world know what happened to them."

I held the phone far from my ear while Jens-Ole
yelled in the other end. "No documentation ... whatsoever! No police
statement, no nothing. Now I have to explain to the entire world ... explain
what to them? I don't even know! What the hell is going on?"

"Those girls were kidnapped. I'm positive.
I had no way of finding their parents since I didn't know Camilla's last name
and I don't believe I would be given permission to talk to the royal family,
being stark raving mad as the entire world thinks I am. This is my way of
helping the girls, I just pray that some good will come out of it. That's it.
You can fire me if you want to."

Jens-Ole grunted a couple of times in the other
end. "You know I'm not going to fire the damn best reporter I have,"
he said. "I’ve been called upstairs to explain myself to the big bosses
later today. I'll fight for you, but can't promise you anything."

I smiled and looked at Sune. He was sitting next
to his backpack with his phone in his hand waiting for me to be done so we
could drive home. He looked like a little boy waiting for his mother.

"I can't ask for anything more," I
said.

"Hmf." Jens-Ole went quiet. I was
about to say goodbye, when he spoke: "But it is a damn good story, if it
turns out to be true," he growled. "Is it true?"

"Yes. The kidnapper called me last night. I
think he wanted to brag or something. He said he had the girls."

Jens-Ole inhaled sharply in the phone. He was
thinking hard, I could tell. "You should try and contact the police again.
Tell them he called. Yes, do that, then drive back home. We might need to send
you back to Roskilde again soon if there's a development in the case."

"Does that mean we're on the case?"

Jens-Ole grunted again. "It's all yours.
Make me proud."

Then he hung up. I looked at Sune. "Sounds
like your plan worked," he said. "It was what you wanted, wasn't
it?"

"I had hoped for it."

"It's all over the news agencies," he
said and handed me his phone. I scrolled through the news bulletins and found
several related stories under
Breaking
.
Apparently they had bought the story after all. They were all quoting
Zeeland Times
for the story since they
didn't want to get their hands dirty in case it turned out it wasn't true after
all, but the story was too good to ignore. This was good, I thought. The best
development I could think of. Now the police had to take it seriously and the
parents would be informed. There really wasn't much more I could have hoped
for. Pictures of the girls would soon be all over the medias and the public
would be talking about it, looking everywhere for the girls.

"So we're going back now?"

I bit my lip. "I guess we have to. Julie is
coming home tomorrow from Aarhus. She has camp next week, Tobias too, right?
That riding camp?"

Sune nodded. I only paid the nanny for four
days. I can't afford anymore."

"Okay. Let's go home, then." I grabbed
my backpack and swung it across my shoulder. "We need to go past the
police station first. I have to tell them about the call last night."

This time we were taken a lot more seriously when we
walked into Roskilde police station. An officer showed us into a room and soon
another officer joined us with a stack of papers in his hands. He greeted us
and told us his name was Richard Brandenburg. He was dressed as a civilian and
told us he was with the NEC, the National Investigation Center. He was very
pleasant to talk to. He lifted his fairly bushy eyebrows as he pulled out my
article from the stack of papers and looked at me. "We have contacted the
parents," he said. "Just as you explained in the article, they didn't
know that the girls were at the festival and they were very surprised at all
this, especially since they read about it in their morning paper."

"Well, that was unfortunate," I said.
"But I felt it was necessary since I had no idea how else to contact
them."

The officer nodded. "I get it. I think it
was great you did it. The parents have since contacted the captain on the boat
they were supposed to be on and confirmed that they were not there and no one
has any idea as to where they can be. If you hadn't written the article no one
would have discovered their disappearance for several days and that could be
fatal in a case like this where time is of the essence. It has sure awoken some
people up in here. This morning has been a true inferno at the station. Not
something they are used to. They have an entire team of three people just to
handle the press. It's quite the circus. But as long as it helps the girls, right?"

"Right."

"Now. I know you have written everything in
your article, is there anything else we should know? Anything about the girls
or maybe something you saw while looking for them? Anything would be a huge
help right now."

He leaned back and poured a cup of coffee from a
thermos next to us. "Anyone?" he asked and pointed at some empty
cups. We both shook our heads. We just had breakfast at the hotel. Officer
Brandenburg put sugar in his cup and stirred it with the spoon.

"There is something," I said. "I
think I might have spoken to the kidnapper."

The officer almost choked on the coffee.
"You spoke with him?" he exclaimed. "How? When?"

"He called me. Well actually he called
Camilla. See I have Camilla's phone, she gave it to me, so I could charge it for
her in the press area where we have access to electricity since we need it for
our phones and laptops.  You can't get electricity on the campground of
the festival. So as I was charging it, it rang. Since the display said Amalie,
I thought I'd pick it up in case she was looking for her friend. That's when I
spoke to him. He was using Amalie's phone to get to Camilla. That's how I knew
that he was coming for her, but I was too late. I tried to run to warn her and
get her out of there, but she was gone when I arrived."

The officer nodded as he wrote down on his pad.
"Yes, yes, good. Continue, please."

I felt Sune's hand in mine under the table. He
knew how bad I felt for not being able to save Camilla, and for telling the
kidnapper exactly where she was.

"Then last night he called again," I
said.

The officer looked up and our eyes locked for a
second. His were very serious. "What did he want?"

"He said he couldn't stop thinking about
me, that I could come and see the girls if I wanted to. Something like that."

"So he told you that he has the
girls?"

"Yes. And I believe that they're still
alive. He spoke about them as if they were."

Officer Brandenburg nodded and wrote on his pad.
"Okay, that's good, yes," he mumbled. "Anything else?"

"He knew my name," I said.

The officer lifted his head and stared at me
again. It scared me slightly.

"Do you think she should worry?" Sune
asked.

The officer stared at him. He didn't answer.
"We don't know much about this guy yet," he said. "But I would
advise the both of you to be careful. We can provide police-protection if
that's what you want?"

I shook my head.

"My guess is he's just teasing you, you
know playing with you," the officer continued.

"Why?" Sune asked. "Why would he
want to tease Rebekka?"

The officer sighed. "Well maybe he gets a
kick out of it. If he knows your name, then he most likely also knows that
you're a journalist. Maybe he wants to be famous, to have his name in the
paper. It's all a lot of guessing at this point in the investigation. Right now
we're focusing on finding these two girls alive and then taking care of the
press, naturally. The story of the abducted princess will go around the world
in a matter of hours."

"Do you think that's what he wants?" I
asked. "Could that be why he chose Princess Amalie?"

"That is very likely the motive,"
Officer Brandenburg said. "That or money."