Eleven, Twelve ... Dig and delve (Rebekka Franck Book 6) (3 page)

Once his ex-girlfriend went missing, the police had, of course, asked questions afterwards. Who could blame them after the poems were published? But no one in their right mind believed that the most famous poet in the country could really be a killer. A little disturbed, maybe, but he was an artist. Artists were allowed to be quirky, even a little mad. They had to be. And there was never a body. Only a missing person’s report. Her own father ended up taking the fall when they found the bloody axe in his garage with his fingerprints on it and the DNA that determined that the blood belonged to Rikke. Thomas wasn’t sure if he had dreamt it, but he thought he remembered placing the axe back in the garage. It could have been a dream. It might have been. He would never know. But he thought Rikke would be happy that her dad finally got what he deserved for treating Rikke like he did, the drunk.

“It was all for you, my love,” he whispered out in the darkness of his room with the heavy curtains pulled to keep the world out. He had bought the house on the quiet street outside of Viborg to get some peace for his writing. And to get away from people and his many strange images.

Thomas looked at the girl on the bed. She seemed to be real. He couldn’t remember her name. But it didn’t matter. He slapped her across the face. The girl cried. Thomas slapped her again. She was definitely real. But, then again, maybe not. He had been tricked before. It was right after Rikke had broken up with him, telling him she was now with Jon, a super pumped guy who worked out at her gym. That was when the many visions started. It began with him imagining all the things he would like to do to Rikke. Once she was gone, he started seeing many other bloody girls in his house. Some would fall out of his closet when he opened it, others would be in his bathtub when he went in the bathroom, soaking in bloody water. He never knew if they were really there or not. Sometimes, he remembered hurting them; other times, he didn’t.

The girl whimpered again, and Thomas stared at her. Blood was running from her nose. Thomas wiped it off and smelled the napkin afterwards. Then he slapped her again. He still wasn’t sure if she was real or if he had imagined picking her up. The girl tried to scream.

This first Monday in October got off to a bad start for many of the people in the small neighborhood on Blegevej, but only few had it as awful as this girl.

7

M
ALENE
P
EDERSEN WAS
screaming behind her gag, but nothing but muffled sounds came out into the dark room.

He’s crazy. I gotta get out of here somehow before he kills me.

The man she knew as the famous poet had that look in his eyes again. Those black eyes were flooding with fury. He was biting his lip while watching her between slaps. When he stopped biting himself, his teeth left a mark. Malene’s body was hurting from all the beating.

How had she gotten herself into this? How could she have been so stupid to get into a car with this guy? Wasn’t this what her mother had always warned her about? How could she have been so stupid? Stupid!

Malene sobbed, feeling sorry for herself, while the poet stared at her and kept talking to her like she was someone else.

“Why did you do it?” he asked. “Why did you have to hurt me like that?”

Malene didn’t understand. She tried to talk, but couldn’t because of the gag. What did he want from her? He hadn’t raped her as she thought he would. What was he going to do to her? She had been asking herself that question all night, while waiting for him to make his move. Was there any way she could get out of here alive? She didn’t even know where she was. As soon as she had gotten into the car last night, he had slammed his fist into her face and she hadn’t seen anything until she opened her eyes and found herself tied to this bed. He had beaten her, then sat by the computer staring at the blank page for hours. That scared her even more than the beating. His silence. The staring at the screen. He hadn’t even written anything. Not a word.

“Why did you do it, you
bitch
!?” He now yelled at her and punched her in the stomach.

It blew the air out of Malene and she gasped behind the gag. She moaned in pain and cried heavily. Who could have thought that the country’s most highly regarded writer was this insane?

Please, stop this. Please, someone stop this. Oh, God. Please. Don’t let him hit me again. Don’t let him kill me. I have so much to live for. I want to go home to my family. I want to see my mom again. I want to hold my baby brother. Please, do something. I don’t care what it is. Just do something.

“I’m gonna teach you to never cheat on anyone again!” he yelled, then slammed his fist into her face once again.

Malene cried in pain. But as she was almost about to give up all hope, she felt something. The poet had tied her hands to the bed with a piece of rope, and now it seemed that she was able to move them a little more. She looked at the poet while he was yelling at her, telling her what a
liar
she was, what a
cheating bitch
, she was.
A whore
! Meanwhile, Malene was able to twist and squirm her wrists just enough to feel the rope loosen. The poet didn’t seem to notice, and soon her arms were free. She was free. Quicker than he was able to react, she sat up and swung her fist into his face. He fell backwards from the blow, and Malene untied the belt that he had used to hold her feet together. While removing the gag, she jumped off the bed and started running, but the poet managed to grab her leg and pull her down. She screamed and landed face down on the wooden floor. She kicked him in the face, and he yelled and let go of her leg. Malene climbed to her knees, her body aching from the beating, and reached out for the door handle. She managed to open it and rush out into the kitchen, where suddenly she was grabbed around the waist and lifted into the air. She struggled and screamed. The poet laughed and threw her against the counter, knocking the air out of her. Then he laughed and picked her up again. She kicked him in the stomach, and he bent over with a moan. Then he dropped her to the floor. She got up and tried to run, but he kicked her in the back, and she flew across the floor and landed head first into the stove.

Please, God, let me get out of here before he kills me. Please, help me!

In the distance, the ground underneath the entire neighborhood was moaning, some called it weeping. But Malene never heard it. All she heard was the poet’s scream as he grabbed her hair and pulled till her head slammed into the counter and she could taste blood.

He laughed again, and she could tell that he enjoyed it, the sick bastard. Malene moaned and blinked her eyes to better focus. Just as she was about to lose all hope again, just as the poet grabbed her by the hair and was about to hit her once again, the ground beneath them
—oh the horror
—opened up and they were sucked into its infinite obscurity.

Just as Malene thought the day couldn’t get any worse, it did.

8

“
S
O, WHERE TO?”

The taxi driver looked at me in the rear-view mirror as I got inside his car.

“The train station. My train leaves in half an hour.”

“The train station it is,” the taxi-driver said, and turned the car around in the small street.

I rolled the window down and waved to my friend, Lone, who was standing in the doorway of her house on Blegevej, number fourteen. She was still in her bathrobe. I had spent the weekend at her house while Sune took care of the kids alone back in Karrebaeksminde. I had missed them all like crazy. William had turned a year and a half, and it was the first time I had been away from him this long.

I couldn’t wait to get back. Two days with my friend crying over her life was more than enough. I love Lone, that’s not it; I just really looked forward to seeing my family again. It had been a depressing weekend. My friend was so devastated. I felt bad for her. Her husband had left a week ago, telling her he was fed up with everything, and using the d-word.

Divorce.

I hated that word. But nevertheless, it kept showing up more and more often in my circle of friends. It was just that time in our lives when people split up, I guess. We knew it when we got married, didn’t we? That half of us would end up in divorce. Those were just the statistics, the coldhearted facts. In my friend Lone’s case, there wasn’t anything left to save, the way I saw it. They had both given up. She was a nurse and had slept with one of the doctors while on conference in Germany a couple of weeks ago. So, in that sense, I didn’t feel sorry for her, but it was still a horrible thing when it came to this. Once she told him about her little escapade, her husband also admitted to having slept with some woman from his office, so I guess it’s true that it takes two to divorce.

“So, you were just visiting?” the driver asked, trying to make small talk.

“Yeah. I have an old friend from high school living here. I live in Karrebaeksminde. It’s been awhile since we last saw each other.”

“That’s nice,” he said. “That you keep in touch.”

“Yeah, I guess it is kind of neat.”

“And rare these days,” he said.

“Well, Facebook makes it a lot easier,” I said, and found my phone in my pocket. I looked at it. I had forgotten to charge it. Only twenty percent left.

Damn it! Well, I can charge it on the train.

It was my plan to get some work done on my way back. I had an article that was due the next day for my newspaper
The Zeeland Times
and I hadn’t been able to write a word all weekend. My head was hurting slightly from all the red wine we drank while talking about her miserable marriage, but I had to ignore it.

I called Sune.

“Hey, babe.”

“I’m in the taxi now, going to the station. If all goes well, I’ll be in Karrebaeksminde around one o’clock. Could you pick me up?”

“Sure,” he said. He worked as a photographer at the same newspaper as me. He had taken the day off and was now cleaning the house, he told me, after a weekend of fun and kids. Sune didn’t look much like a family-man with his Mohawk and black make-up on his eyes, but he was. He was one of the best dads you could find. He had been amazing with William when we first had him. Changed every diaper he could, and enjoyed every moment of it. He had even taken a ‘daddy-leave’ for six weeks while I went back to work after my year of maternity leave was over.

My dad was feeling better. I believed having a new grandson had a lot to do with it. He had taken care of William when Sune went back to work, just for a couple of months, until I found the right daycare for William.

I enjoyed immensely getting back to work. I wasn’t really much of a stay-at-home-mom. I got restless. A year was a long time. I had, of course, written a couple of articles for the paper here and there. They had ended up giving me a column where I wrote about anything I liked, mostly about baby stuff and so on. Once I got back, I lucked out and landed a great story about the famous writer Emma Frost, who was looking for her daughter who had disappeared near Karrebaeksminde after running a stolen car into someone and leaving him in a coma. It had turned out to be an amazing story. That was nearly six months ago. The summer had been slow on stories, so I needed something good soon.

“So, how’s Lone?” Sune asked. I could hear William babbling in the background, and held the phone closer to my ear. I hated being away from him. 

“She’ll be fine. How’s William?”

“Everything’s fine here. The big ones are driving me nuts, though. So glad to be able to send them off to school in a few minutes. I’ll take William to his daycare later.”

I chuckled. I knew Julie and Tobias, our children from earlier marriages, could be a little much. They loved each other, but ever since we had all moved in together, Julie and Tobias had started fighting over things. It had been a little hard on Julie with all the changes in her life. She was used to being alone with me, and suddenly she had to share me with not only Sune, but also William, and even Tobias. Tobias enjoyed having a mother figure in his life for the first time, and I tried hard to be one, with the result that Julie became really jealous of him and asked if I loved him more than her. I would have to spend some time with her alone once I got back, I thought to myself, while Sune explained this morning’s fight.

“I mean, Julie hasn’t been acting very nice towards me lately either,” he continued, while the taxi slowed down.

“She’s doing her best, Sune,” I said, annoyed. I hated when he blamed her. After all, we grownups were subjecting her to all these changes. It wasn’t easy for a child. “It’ll get better. We knew there would be some sort of reaction from the kids.”

The taxi came to a complete stop. “Why are we stopping?” I asked the driver.

“But Tobias isn’t reacting nearly as badly as she is,” Sune continued. I hardly listened. I was busy looking out the window to see why the driver had stopped in the middle of the street.

“He’s no saint either,” I said.

There seemed to be some people gathered in the street. Two cars were blocking the road.

“I can’t get past them,” the driver said with a shrug.

“I have a train to catch!” I said. “I can’t be late.”

One car was in the hedge, while another was parked across the street, blocking everything. The taxi driver got out.

“That might be, but he certainly isn’t acting as bad as Julie,” Sune continued. “She has been really bad. The things she says to me. You have to talk to her when you get back…I won’t…”

“Hold on, sweetie,” I said. “Listen. I have a situation to deal with here. We can’t get past some cars that have been in an accident, I guess. I only have fifteen percent left on my phone. I’ll charge it on the train, then call you, alright?”

I didn’t wait for his answer before I hung up, put the phone in my pocket, and got out.

“Hey! Could you please move your cars? I have a train to catch,” I said.