Easy as One Two Three (Emma Frost) (17 page)

"So you say you haven't seen your daughter since April 2012?" Rebekka asked.

"That's correct. She got married and went off on her honeymoon. I never saw her after that."

"So, don’t you worry that she is alright?" I asked, startled. How could a mother not worry? I worried constantly about my children. Even when I knew they were just in school. Even when they were sitting right next to me.

"Not really."

"They haven't seen her at the hospital where her husband is lying in a coma. Don't you worry that something might have happened to her as well?"

"No."

Her coldness was terrifying. I couldn't believe her.

"You do know that her marriage didn't work out, don't you?" I asked.

"I don't really care," she said. "Signe is a big girl."

"I spoke to her husband's family, his sister to be precise. She told me she was certain Signe went back to live with you when they came back from their honeymoon and they split up," I said.

"Well, that's not true."

I looked at Susssanne Bo for a long time to try to detect if she was lying. I was usually very good and spotting a liar, but there was nothing on her face indicating she was one. Yet there was something that simply didn't add up.

"Have you remarried?" I asked.

The woman laughed. "No. I'm not falling into that trap again."

I found that to be very strange. How on earth could she afford to live like this?

"So, what do you do for a living?"

Susssanne Bo chuckled. "I don't."

"Excuse me?"

"I don't do anything for a living. Now, if you'll excuse me…your time is up."

I looked at the clock on the wall. We had only been there ten minutes. There was something in what I had asked her that made her want us to leave. I was on to something here.

"Could I use your bathroom before we leave?" Rebekka suddenly asked.

"Of course. There is one right next to the kitchen down the hall," Susssanne Bo answered.

Rebekka left and I was now alone with this woman and all her crystals on the counters everywhere.

"So you're that author, aren't you?" she asked. "You're Emma Frost?"

"Yes I am."

"So will this be a book? Will you write about me?" she asked with a grin. "’Cause it might cost you."

I felt appalled by the woman's greed. "Well, I probably won't. I'm just looking for my daughter. She drove the car that hit Mads Schou and I'm trying to figure out what happened to her afterwards."

"Ouch. She's the runaway? That sounds more like something Signe would do. Well, you think you know them, huh?"

I had to really restrain myself from yelling at this woman. I wanted to tell her my daughter was nothing like that. Nothing at all. Luckily, Rebekka returned.

"Let's go," she said. "I think we have what we need."

I got up and we started walking towards the entrance when Rebekka suddenly stopped and turned to look at the woman. "Oh, by the way…who have you had locked up in the basement?"

Susssanne Bo went pale. Her mouth turned downwards. "Excuse me?"

"I was just wondering. There was a huge lock on the door from the kitchen to the basement so I walked down there to have a look and found a bed and some clothes in a closet. So I was just wondering who’s been living down there with the door locked?"

Susssanne Bo seemed perplexed. She was about to lose it now. I was afraid she would try to hurt us, but the anger soon dampened and sadness replaced it. Suddenly, she changed her expression. Tears were in her eyes. I was now standing in front of a real human being.

"You kept her down there, didn't you?" Rebekka asked. "You locked her up when she returned from her honeymoon. Why?"

Susssanne Bo's voice shivered as she spoke. "To keep her out of trouble. She had completely lost it. It was for her own good."

I shook my head. "I don't believe you. I think Mads' family paid you to keep her away from him. Am I right? How else could you afford a house like this? They gave you this house to keep her locked up in, didn't they? How else could you afford to live in it without working?"

Susssanne Bo didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Her silence confirmed my theory. The woman was beyond greedy.

"I wasn't being a monster. I didn't treat her like a prisoner. I let her have contact with the world. I gave her a laptop and fed her well every day."

I looked at Susssanne's arm and spotted two large purple bruises. "But she escaped, didn't she? How did she escape? Is that how you got those bruises?"

Susssanne looked down at her arm and rolled up the sleeve so we could see. It looked really bad. "Somehow, she got ahold of an iron bar from the basement. I don't know how…she attacked me with it. I haven't seen her since. That's the truth."

"How long ago was this?" Rebekka asked.

"It was on Saturday the 19th. The day the accident happened to Mads. I am so afraid she had something to do with it. You have no idea what she is capable of."

45

April 2012

T
HEY COULD HEAR CHILDREN'S
screams and voices of joy when they approached the front door of the mansion. Signe grabbed Mads' hand as they took off their helmets and rang the doorbell.

"Let me do the talking," she whispered.

Her pulse was loud and roaring in her ears. The drugs had started working and she sensed nothing, no fear anymore, just thrill and excitement. She felt like all her senses were intensified. Like she could hear every insect in the bushes, see every light in the darkness of the night.

"Shouldn't the kids be in bed?" Mads whispered anxiously. She looked into his eyes. He was wearing a blissful smile. The drugs were doing the trick and, in a few moments, he wouldn't care about the kids anymore.

There was movement behind the door and it opened. A man appeared. He looked angry. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" he asked. "How did you get past the gate?"

Signe giggled. "We climbed the wall," she said. "Right down there by the end of your yard."

"You did what?" The man's face was turning red.

Mads and Signe both giggled.

"I'm calling the police," he said.

"We have something for you," Signe said.

The man looked strangely at them. "You have something for me? What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means we have something we need to give to you," Mads said. "It's urgent."

Signe could tell the man liked Mads. He didn't look like someone who would ever do anything bad, he was one of them, he was wealthy like him. The man could somehow see that, or maybe they could smell it on one another. Signe didn't know, but she had been around wealthy people long enough to know that they always knew who was one of them and who wasn't.

"So, what is it?" The man asked impatiently.

Signe looked at him with her eyes heavy with mascara and eyeliner. She had painted them almost black. She liked to think of it as war-paint. She knew he was confused by her, so she let Mads take over. The man stared at Signe's cleavage. She liked it. She liked that he was watching her, devouring her with his eyes.

"He has it," she said and pointed at Mads.

"It's in my pocket." Mads reached down and the man turned to have a look. That was when Signe pulled out a small rubber baton that she had bought to be able to defend herself. She hit him on the back of his head and the man sank to the ground with a loud thud. Her leather gloves were squeaking as she put the baton back inside of her jacket and signaled Mads to enter.

They could hear the children screaming with joy even louder as they snuck inside, making as little noise as possible. Signe felt the joyful thrill once again and enjoyed the moment. This was what she lived for. This was worth losing all the money, just to get to experience this ecstasy again.

They dragged the man inside by pulling his legs and closed the door gently after them. They sneaked through the hallway, across a living room till they reached the entrance to an indoor-pool area. Two young girls were in the water splashing at each other and screaming, while a woman was sitting in a chair reading her book with a glass of red wine on the table in front of her.

Signe watched them with an odd feeling inside of her. She couldn't put words to it; she didn't know what it was, she only knew that she hated these girls instantaneously. She hated this family more than anything in this world. She loathed them and their happiness and their family life. A life she had once known and lived, until the day when it was suddenly taken away. Until the day when her dad, for the first time, entered her room one night and showed her how much he really loved her. Until the day he showed her how painful real love was.

That was when everything changed and she had tried all of her childhood to get the happiness and the family life back…desperately tried to mend the broken pieces and make her parents happy again. She had thought she was somehow to blame for things changing. She had thought it was her duty to fix it again and desperately tried to for years and years. Until the day when they came for him. Until the day when the police knocked on their door and took her dad away and doctors and teachers tried to make her understand that her father was a sick scumbag and his love for her was wrong.

Staring at the happy faces playing in the water tricked something inside of her. It opened a door she hadn't dared to open before. With the drugs rushing in her veins, she suddenly felt an urge to show these young girls that happiness like this was an illusion. It would always be taken away at some point. The world was unfair and they might as well learn that now.

46

April 2014

"
S
O LET ME GET
this straight," Morten said.

We had come back to the office where he and Sune were sitting at the computer, going through the profiles of each of the women who said they would attend the party's profiles for the third time, to see if anything came up as important.

"She kept her daughter locked up in her basement because Mads Schou's family paid her to?"

"That's what she basically told us," I said, and sat down in front of Rebekka's computer.

"Basically?" Morten asked. "You mean to say she didn't say it, but you just concluded it or what?"

"Well, she didn't deny it," I said. "And she did admit to having locked up the girl since they came back from their honeymoon."

"Wow," Morten exclaimed.

"I know. It's really sick," I said and turned on the computer.

"But you can't just conclude that she was paid to do it," Morten said using his professional police voice. I hated when he did that. When he tried to teach me how to work like a real policeman. I wasn't one and I was never going to be.

"You need to get your facts straight. You need proof," he said.

"Yeah. You don't really know that she did it for money," Sune continued. "Not for sure, that is."

So apparently, the boys were ganging up on us now.

"No, but you should have seen the house she was living in," Rebekka said and grabbed a chair next to me.

I tapped rapidly on the keyboard. Rebekka looked at me. "I swear it's just like looking at Sune," she said. "He does the same thing with the fingers. It's creepy. You're just like him."

I shrugged and continued. Sune and Morten looked at me from their desk.

"What are you doing?" Morten asked and got up from his chair. He came closer and looked over my shoulder.

I kept my fingers running across the keyboard.

"What are you doing, Emma?" Morten asked again.

"Just getting my facts straight," I said and hit a key. Numbers rolled across the screen.

"No you didn't," Morten said. "Tell me you didn't just hack yourself into her account? Oh my God, I'm going to lose my badge over this, aren't I?"

I chuckled and scrolled through the numbers from two years ago. Then I stopped. "Here it is. See, here and here." I pointed at the numbers. There was no doubt. Huge transfers of millions of kroner several times during the second part of 2012. The money came from a company called Lundbit.

"I think I want to marry you," Sune said.

Rebekka laughed.

I ignored them. We were onto something big here and I was really excited. "Lundbit is Mads Schou's family business, right? I asked. "You said so the other day, Rebekka."

"That's true," she replied.

I leaned back in the chair. "I'll be damned. There’s your proof."

Morten shook his head and looked at me. "What am I going to do with you? You're going to cost me my job."

"As long as it brings my daughter back somehow, I don't mind," I said. "I just don't quite see how it will, yet. But we're getting closer. I can feel it."

Just as I said the words, my phone rang. I picked it up. It was doctor Faaborg.

"Emma, darling, I have great news. I thought you'd like to know that we have detected brain activity in Mads Schou."

"Brain activity?"

Darling?

"Yes. We don't know much yet, but his brain is definitely working."

I almost dropped the phone. Brain activity meant he was alive, it meant there was hope for him. It also meant he wasn't going to die and that meant my daughter wouldn't be accused of murder. This news meant the world to me. Finally, things seemed to be shaping up for us. Finally.

47

April 2014

M
ADS WAS FILLED WITH
such a profound relief. They had seen him. They knew he was in here and that he wasn't brain dead. He would have laughed with joy and let tears roll across his cheeks, if only he could.

Voices were blending in the room. Lots of voices, most of which he had never heard before. They were agitated. Among them, he could hear the doctor. The doctor had sent Mads' mother and sister to stand by Mads and talk to him.

"It helps to hear familiar voices," he said.

So now they were holding his hands and talking to him while nurses and doctors were chatting in the background. It all blended in and confused him slightly. He tried to squeeze his mother's hand, but didn't succeed. Then he went back to moving the tip of the pinky and his mother soon saw it.