Miss Polly had a Dolly (Emma Frost #2) (12 page)

Naturally
Officer Morten couldn't answer
my question so I took
it home to my computer. Maya went to her room to get some sleep while I started
researching the missing children of Fanoe Island. That was when a title popped
into my head.

"Lost: The story of the missing children of
Fanoe Island," I said out loud and smiled. It needed a little work, but as
a working title it was great. Something told me there was a story here to be
told. Maybe if I interviewed the families whose children had gone missing I
could start to piece it together? It was definitely a start.

I searched the Internet for missing children and
Fanoe and soon found two articles dated back to 2005—one in the local
paper and one in a paper from the mainland—about the loss of Helle's
daughter

Vadehavet demands another
child
and
Fanoe
loses yet another child to the sea.
According to the articles it had
been several years since the ocean last took a child, not since the late
nineties, it stated. The coast guard was quoted saying that it was very
important for parents to watch their children constantly to avoid these kinds
of accidents from happening.
Only a fool
doesn't fear the ocean
, the coast guard officer was quoted saying.

Then there was a discussion whether or not the
Danish beaches should have lifeguards, something they still hadn't established
for some reason and something they still discussed from time to time but never
agreed upon. It always came down to the money. Who was going to pay for it? The
cities? The counties? The government? Denmark was nothing but beaches all over
and it was going to be an expensive affair to provide all of them with
lifeguards. No one wanted to take the responsibility upon themselves. I had
never understood that. They could tell us not to smoke and how to eat right by
putting extra taxes on cigarettes and fat in the food and even forbid people to
smoke anywhere, but put up a few lifeguards to prevent people from drowning
(which someone did every year, especially German tourists who didn't know the
ocean) they wouldn't do.

I sighed and leaned back in my chair wondering
if there could be any connection between the disappearance of the little
Countess and the brutal killing of a teenager in a kiosk last night. I chuckled
and shook my head. How on earth should that even be possible? No, the bowtie
killer was long gone, Officer Morten was probably right about that. But the
girl was still missing and there was something not adding up about all these
children supposedly drowning.

The phone rang and I picked it up. It was
Officer Morten.

"I kept thinking about what you asked me
this morning," he said. "I have enough to do today as it is, but it
kept haunting me so I looked into it."

I sat up straight in my chair sensing something
interesting was coming now. "Yes. And what did you find?"

"Well, you were right. We don't have
records leading further back, but in 1997-1998 four children went missing and
were later declared dead by drowning. And then there was the one in 2005. All
of them were girls. And get this. All of them were six years old when they went
missing. And all of them had long blonde hair and blue eyes. I have the
pictures here from their files and they look very much alike."

I almost dropped my jaw. "That can't be a
coincidence," I said.

"Something tells me you're right."

"I mean a lot of Danish children have
blonde hair and blue eyes, but to have all five kids looking like that? And
then have the same age and gender? It's a little too obvious if you ask
me." I wrote everything down while talking to the Officer. I had
butterflies in my stomach. We were definitely on to something here. Something
big.

"Someone has been stealing our
children," he said. "And probably killing them, too. The worst part
is they have gotten away with it so far since no one saw the connection."

 "The question is, does that someone
also have Josephine?" I asked.

Officer Morten exhaled into the phone.
"That's what we need to find out now. And we need to do it fast."

"You made
the front cover
again," Hanne said and threw a
newspaper on the table next to the croissants that Patrick was eating. They
were in his room and he was wearing nothing but a bathrobe and sunglasses.

Patrick looked above his sunglasses and scanned
the front page with a grin. It showed a huge picture of him standing outside on
the balcony the night before balancing the railing on the three-story building
with his arms stretched in the air, not holding on to anything.

"Well, the producers are very pleased that
you're creating all this publicity. But please don't be foolish, alright?
Attention is good, but not if it means we lose you."

Patrick gulped down his coffee and stopped
listening to what she said. Instead, another article on the front page had
caught his interest. It was just a small one and there was no picture, but the
headline drew him in.

Kiosk girl killed by bowtie killer.

Patrick smiled widely and read the article
discreetly while Hanne was still babbling on about ratings and shares and the
importance of the coming days. He felt a spark of thrill in his body as he read
about the girl who had allegedly been stabbed to death and had a bowtie sewn
into one breast, the signature mark of the bowtie killer. The police were
quoted saying that if anyone had seen anything around the time of the girl's
death they would be most grateful to know, even the smallest thing might be of
importance, the Officer said. Patrick laughed out loud and leaned back in his
chair thinking he had once again done it without leaving a trace behind.

They' re never gonna catch me.
I'm always ahead. Stupid morons. I'm just too freaking smart.

Hanne stopped talking and looked at him.

"Are you even listening to what I'm
saying?" she said curtly.

Patrick looked at her behind his sunglasses and
could hardly see her in the darkness. Then he grinned while imagining snapping
her throat again. It always put him in a better mood thinking how easily he
could kill her, how little an effort it would take on his part.

Women are so feeble, so weak
and faint. Useless, really. Can't even put up a fight. So easy to hurt. How I
loathe them. All of them. With their pretty faces and swaying hips, always
trying to make me like them, to flirt with me. As if I cared. If only they knew
what really turned me on.

Hanne snapped her fingers in front of Patrick's
face. "Hello? Are you there?" she asked.

Patrick growled. Her attitude towards him was
starting to get really annoying. Didn't she know that without him she had no
job? She was nothing without him, this show was nothing.

Patrick grinned and looked up at her.
"Sure," he said. "I'm always here, aren't I? It's not like there
would be anywhere else I could go."

"Good," Hanne said. "It's an
important day tomorrow and we need to get things up and running smoothly. Today
you rest, alright?"

"You got it," he said and took a huge
bite of his croissant. He leaned back and put his feet up on the table.

"Good," Hanne said and took her
notepad. "Oh yes, and the police wants to see you, they're waiting
outside. I told them to keep it brief since you need your rest."

Patrick almost choked in his croissant. Hanne
opened the door and two police officers entered the room. Patrick got up from
his chair.

"This is Officer Gammelgaard and Officer
Nyberg. They're with the National homicide team in Copenhagen," Hanne
said.

They shook hands. Patrick was still fighting the
food stuck in his throat. He couldn't stop coughing.

"Are you alright there?" the younger
one of the two, Officer Gammelgaard asked.

"I'll be fine," Patrick said still
coughing. "Just got a little something down the wrong pipe"

Hanne patted him on the back and soon Patrick
was able to stop coughing. "Sit down gentlemen," he said and showed
them to the couches in his suite. He glanced one last time at the story of the
girl on the newspaper cover before he turned to face them. Patrick put on his
famous smile and looked at them.

"So what can I do for you gentlemen?"

The floor of
the dog
cage was hard and after almost two days in it,
Josephine's body had started to hurt badly. She tried to move around, but it
was so small that there weren't many positions she could use and stretching her
legs was out of the question. The bucket, she used as a toilet was beginning to
smell and it left her with constant nausea. She hadn't seen the old lady all
morning and hoped that she would bring her food today since Josephine was
really hungry now. All she had gotten up until now was the water in the bowl
that she had to drink like a dog. At some point the lady had to bring her some
food, didn't she?

Josephine whimpered feeling awful, her stomach
hurting from starvation, her breathing complicated by the strong odor emanating
from the bucket. She grabbed the door to the cage once again and tried to shake
it, but she knew it was useless. She wasn't strong enough to break the lock or
even bend the door. She had tried everything, even hammering her fists into it
as hard as she could and she didn't even make a dent in the bars. They barely
even rattled at all.

Finally the door opened and the woman walked in
with her dog behind her. She was humming that awful nursery rhyme about a woman
and her sick dolly that Ms. Camilla had sometimes sung for Josephine when she
was younger. The woman closed the door and locked it as soon as the dog was
inside. Django walked over to Josephine and sniffed her through the bars.

"Phew, you're right, Django," the old
lady said and held her nose. "It does stink in here."

With a stick in her hand, the lady unlocked the
cage and opened the door. With her heart in her throat Josephine thought this
was it, this was her moment to escape. But as soon as she tried to move, the
lady poked her with the stick in the stomach hard and it forced her to fall
backwards.

"Django," the woman yelled. "Make
sure it stays in there."

Django became alert. He walked closer to the
opening, then growled at Josephine, snapping his teeth at her. Josephine was
gasping for air while the lady leaned in, grabbed the bucket and removed it.
Barely had Josephine caught her breath from the blow before the old woman was
out again and had closed the door.  Django was still standing outside,
staring at her, like he was making sure she didn't move. Josephine cried and
whimpered.

"Please give me something to eat. I'm so
hungry. Please," she begged while the woman disappeared with the bucket in
her hand. Django was still watching her. The woman returned a little while
after with the bucket in one hand and a hose in the other.

"Let's get rid of that awful stench, shall
we, Django, huh?"

Then she hosed Josephine down with a river of
water that made Josephine believe she was going to drown. She gasped for air
and swallowed loads of water. She was still coughing when the hose was turned
off. Then the lady opened the cage again and threw in the bucket.

"There. That should keep you clean for a
little while," she said and locked the door again. Josephine watched as
the lady rolled the hose back, then left and returned with a towel and
something else in her hand. She knelt in front of Josephine and seemed to be
examining her. She reached in and grabbed her arm and pulled it out through the
bars to better look at it. Josephine gasped and started to cry again.
"Please don't hurt me," she said.

The woman didn't answer. She studied her skin
closely and turned her arm in the light. "Yes, Django. I do believe you're
right. The baby doll's skin has become looser." The lady now threw in the
towel and the other thing she had in her hand.

"Dry yourself up and then apply this lotion
to your skin," she said to Josephine.

She grabbed her chin and looked her in the eyes.
Then she smiled. "So soft the skin is on my darling baby doll," she
said and stroked her cheek. "Yes, we need the skin to stay that way, to
stay soft and smooth, don't we, Django? Yes we do."

The woman got up and walked away, then returned
with the box of fake eyes. While Josephine applied the lotion to her skin, the
woman found a pair of eyes and held them up. Then she signaled Josephine to
come closer to the bars. Thinking that maybe if she was nice to the woman she
would give her something to eat, Josephine obeyed. She put her head against the
bars and let the lady study her eyes closely while holding a pair of fake eyes
up next to her face.

Then she shook her head. "No, you're right,
Django. Not quite the right color. Let's see if I have another one that will
fit better. How about this one?" she said and found a new pair that she
held up.

"Yes, those are the ones," she said
with a shrill voice. "They will be perfect for my new baby doll."