Read Itsy Bitsy Spider (Emma Frost #1) Online
Authors: Willow Rose
Half an
hour later, I arrived at the scene. As I got near the address, I immediately
knew this was no heart attack or just a drunken man. Four police cars were
parked in front of the same house, two of them called in from Naestved, the
biggest city nearby. I recognized a big blue van as one the forensic team from
Copenhagen used.
This was big stuff.
The entrance to the house was blocked by crime
tape. On the other side of the tape policemen searched wearing suits and
gloves, writing in their notebooks, marking trace evidence, dusting for
fingerprints, and marking shoeprints.
According to the radio report Sara had heard on
the scanner, the victim was a white male, 46 years old. But I already knew that
when I got there. I recognized the house and knew that it could only be Didrik
Rosenfeldt. The house used to belong to his parents when I was a kid. And
Didrik would come down here on summer vacation from boarding school. He was my
sister’s age, and I remembered them hanging out together one summer. But
something happened and she dumped him and never spoke of him again. He was a
real asshole as far as I knew. He used to come down here and flirt with almost
anything that had a pulse. He spent his time hanging out on his parent’s yacht
in the port, drinking with his friends from the boarding school, harassing
people who were different than they and had less money. A real prick, I would
call him. That probably hadn’t changed a bit.
I looked around at the small crowd of
neighborhood kids who had gathered in front of the house, peeking in. In the
middle, a tall skinny guy stood out. He had a green Mohawk and wore a leather
band with spikes around his neck, a leather jacket, and several piercings in
his eyebrows, lips and nose. He wore black make-up on his eyes and lips. He
stood out in stark contrast to this crowd of high society upper-class kids. In
his hands he held a camera that never left his eyes, constantly taking a series
of pictures. As I got close to him I noticed that he was missing two of his
fingers on his right hand.
“You must be Sune,” I said when I approached
him.
He didn’t look down at me, just kept on taking
pictures non-stop.
“Mmm …”
“I’m Rebekka Franck. Did you see anything yet?”
“Nope.”
“Has the body been taken out yet?”
“Nope.”
Great
,
I thought. Then there was a chance we could get a picture of the covered body
on the way into the ambulance. That was always a good shot for an article of
this kind.
“Don’t you think it’s weird, since the
body was found at six o’clock this morning?” Sune asked me.
Now that he said it, I did. It was three in the
afternoon. Weren’t they in a hurry to get the body to the lab right away and
find the cause of death?
“Yeah, what does that mean?”
“That the body has been hard to get out. Maybe
it was lying under something or was tied to something.”
I nodded. This guy knew how to use his head. Not
many could do that these days without getting hurt.
“Sounds likely.”
“It must at least be a messy crime scene since
it has taken them so long. There are a lot of people in there.”
I nodded again. This guy had been at a crime
scene before. And it probably wasn’t here in Karrebaeksminde where he got that
kind of experience.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” I asked.
“Nope.”
”Copenhagen?”
”Christiania. Have been and always will be a
Christianite.”
Ah, a free spirit from Christiania. Also known
as “fristaden,” the free-state. It was an area in Copenhagen that had around a
thousand inhabitants. They lived by what they liked to call a collectivistic
anarchy. Some called it a socialist anarchy. It meant that everybody living
there got to take part in all the decisions. To the Christianites, as they
called themselves, it meant they were different from the rest of the society
and that they lived by their own rules. To the rest of the world it meant that
this was a place you could go and buy pot on the streets of Christiania where
they sold it out in the open even if it was illegal in the rest of the country.
They were a state within the state that the police didn’t touch. They even had
their own flag, red with three yellow dots. Today things had changed though.
The liberal government had sent in the police and tried to fight the illegal
drug trade, and they wanted to remove all the houses that the Christianites had
build themselves.
My guess was that Sune wasn’t too thrilled about
the police in general. I guessed right.
I kept a close eye on the activities behind the
crime-scene tape and soon I spotted the detective who seemed to be in charge.
He came out of the house and headed towards one of the police cars, and I
yelled at him.
“Excuse me. Rebekka Franck, reporter at
Zeeland Times
.”
He stopped and stared at me. He then approached.
“Rebekka Franck?”
“Yes.”
Surprisingly he smiled at me.
“You don’t remember me?”
I really didn’t but wouldn’t disappoint him.
Besides, I really needed his comment for my article.
“Well, of course I do,” I lied.
“Michael Oestergaard. You used to take dancing
lessons at my aunt’s dance studio. Jazz ballet.”
“Miss Lejrskov’s class. Michael. Oh yes, I do
remember.”
I really still didn’t, but I remembered my dance
teacher. Michael looked to be at least eight or nine years older than me. How
could I have remembered him?
“Exactly. I used to hang out there with my
brother and look at all the pretty girls. So you are a big-shot reporter now? I
must admit I have been following your career. It has brought you around the
world?”
“Sort of.”
“And now it has brought you to Karrebaeksminde.
I heard from the old Miss Jensen in the tourist-information-desk down on Gl.
Brovej that you had come back.”
“And she was right.”
That woman did a little more than informing the
tourists around here.
“So you work for the newspaper down here now?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And you probably want a comment for your
article?”
“I would love that.” I was stunned. I couldn’t
believe his courtesy. Normally I wouldn’t get a single word out of the police
until they had a press conference, and then I would only get what all the other
reporters got.
“Well, I can’t say much.” He lowered his voice
and got closer. “But it ain’t pretty, I can tell you that.”
“But what can you tell me about what happened
here. Is it a murder?”
“No doubt about it. Someone broke in through the
back door and killed the guy.”
“Do you have any suspects?”
“No, but we might begin with his wife,” he
laughed. “He wasn’t exactly known as one of God’s better children, if you know
what I mean.”
“I don’t, I’m sorry. So you will be questioning
the wife in the near future?”
“Sure, but don’t write that. That would be
interfering with investigative information. You know that.”
“Then please just tell me what I can write.”
“Write that the victim has been identified as
Didrik Rosenfeldt, CEO and owner of the world-known company Seabas Windmills,
and known as a part of the famous and very wealthy Rosenfeldt family. He
apparently was killed by an intruder in his summer residence, there is an
ongoing investigation, and that … is it, I think.”
I wrote everything he said in my notebook.
“Why hasn’t the body been removed from the house
yet?” I asked.
The detective sighed deeply.
”I really can’t get into that.”
Sune had probably been right.
“How did he die?”
The detective got an occupied look on his face.
“We don’t know yet. That’s for the crime lab to
figure out. I am sorry but I really have to get on with my job …”
“But surely you must have an idea?”
“We do, but we won’t share it with the public,
yet.”
I nodded. That’s what I expected. The crime
scene must have been messy just as Sune said. I spotted Sune out of the corner
of my eye. He took pictures of the body as it was finally removed from the
house in a body bag and transported in an ambulance.
“Who found the body?” I asked Detective
Oestergaard.
”The housekeeper found him this morning, when
she came to clean the house.”
“At what time?”
”She called us at six.”
“Can we talk to her?”
“Well, I guess I can ask her.”
I had to pinch my arm. I’d never met this kind
of cooperation from the police. Were they always like this or was it because he
knew me? Anyway, he left me for a second and came back with a small Philippine
woman with an empty look in her eyes and an expression like she had seen the
devil himself and lived to tell about it. It seemed she was still in shock and
I knew I had to be careful.
I greeted her with a handshake and introduced
myself. The detective left us, his duty calling. I waved at Sune and signaled I
wanted him to come and take her picture. He came right away.
“So, that must have been real horrible for you,”
I began.
“I … I just walked in, like I normally do.
Normally he isn’t in the house. I didn’t expect … I mean, how could I know?”
“Of course you didn’t know. Can you tell me a
little about what you saw?”
She didn’t look at me but stared into open air.
“He was dead. Blood everywhere. On all the
floors in the living room. All over the parquet. It was like a slaughterhouse.
He was shredded to pieces. Ripped apart like an animal would kill its prey. No
man could have done this. Only a demon.”
Get
One, Two ... He is coming for you
(Rebekka Frank #1)
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two ...