One, Two ... He Is Coming for You (11 page)

When they came to confess their sins, he would nod and ask them to
repent and ask for forgiveness and then they would be off to do more damage.
But they seemed to keep on getting themselves into trouble. Again and again he
had to ask for God's forgiveness in their lives, but nothing seemed to change.
And he had a difficult time coping with the teasing behind his back. They would
laugh at him when he gave them a Bible to read or when he would give them a
Bible quote he thought might get them through the day.

“Remember you are all children of God. He will forgive you and love you
if you ask him to,” he would say. But they wouldn’t listen. No one would.

He had given up on his old lifestyle. He had to. Give up his rich and wild
life where everything was possible. Where the cars were big and the boats even
bigger. After boarding school, he told his parents he didn’t want to work for
their company. He didn’t want to end up like them. He told them he was gay and
wanted them to accept it.

They had slammed the door right in his face. Called him a disgusting
faggot and told him they never wanted to see him again. He was no longer their
son.

After that he had to get by without his parent’s money for the first
time in his life. He found love and helping hands at the gay bars of
Copenhagen. Men brought him home and gave him money to have sex with them and
sometimes he even got to spend the night. He lived on the streets, selling his
body to whoever wanted it, eating only whenever one of his clients was kind
enough to buy him something at a bakery or a hotdog stand. And he thought he
had deserved that life. He loathed himself. He hated that his sexuality had
brought him into this mess. Why couldn’t he just have oppressed it? Why did he
have to blurt it all out in front of his parents?

One day he had sex in an alley with a man who turned out to be a priest.
He proved to be a really nice guy and they started talking afterwards. He told
him he had known ever since he was a kid that he liked men. But he had learned
not to express his sexuality in public.

“As a priest, no one would ever ask you why you don’t have a wife and
kids,” he said. That gave Bertel an idea. Not only could he hide his ugly
disgusting, impure thoughts from the world, maybe he would also be able to help
someone else out of their miserable lives. Maybe even young kids who needed to
be saved, as he had needed it, when God came along in form of a priest.

After getting an education, with a little help from his friend from the
alley, he got a job working at the juvenile detention. But very soon he realized
he didn’t make much difference in their lives. He reached out to them but they
didn’t change. God didn’t work in them and make them better. So he went to his
altar and prayed about it.

“Why won’t they change, God?” he asked. “Why do they keep laughing at
me? Why won’t they listen to your words?”

And he had gotten his answer. In God’s own words.  “So if your eye—even
your good eye—causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away. It is
better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be
thrown into hell. And if your hand—even your stronger hand—causes
you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”

Jesus had said it like that. So it had to be, then.

Pastor Bertel had then gone to one of the kids in the middle of the
night and put acid in both of his eyes. Of course, he had sedated the kid
first. He wasn’t a monster. And then he had left him there for someone else to
find. No one ever knew how it happened but the kid never looked at a woman with
lust again. And he never raped anyone again.

That’s how he began his real work for God.

Sometimes he would just teach the kids a lesson by beating them
senseless and threatening them with death if they told anyone, and sometimes he
had to go to more extreme methods in order to reach the youngsters. Sometimes
he had to castrate someone to keep him from raping.

After a while, it had become even better than back at the boarding
school when he and his friends used to beat other kids up, because this wasn’t
meaningless. This was to make someone’s life better; this was working for God. And
in the end, when it was all over, all that would matter was what he had done
for him during his time on earth.

20

Pastor Bertel Due-Lauritzen had just ended his ten o’clock Sunday service 
As usual, he would tell the juvenile criminals to come to the confession chair
afterwards and tell him their sins. Now he was sitting in his chair waiting for
someone to show up on the other side of the curtain. He waited for a long time,
but knew nothing would happen. Pastor Bertel sighed deeply. It was always the
same.

In the calm of the prison church that day in February he thought about
the summers of years past. The smell of the sea, the laughter, sailing in the
open water with his friends, the look on Bjorn’s face just before he jumped
with the other boys in the water naked. Sitting on the deck wanting to kiss
Bjorn and touch his soft skin. The lost desires in the light summer night. The
unfulfilled longings. The torture of being so close to someone you love and not
being able to express your emotions. Because he knew they would have resented
him for it. They would have hated him if they knew how he felt.

And Bjorn would have been the worst. He would have hated Bertel more
than any. Bjorn always was the strongest among them. He was the one with all
the ideas. He came up with the Freddy Krueger rape. He even made that glove
himself. He could do stuff like that.

Bjorn wasn’t quite like the average boy on the boarding school. He
wasn’t rich and he could make things with his hands. If they ever were deserted
on a desert island he would have been the only survivor. Not because he could
have build a hut or caught food, but because he would have killed the others
and eaten them. He was like that. He was a beast. The evilest among them. And
Bertel had loved him. He had loved his strong muscular arms and his beautiful
strong face. He had even loved the beast inside of him.

And then Bjorn killed himself.

A few months after their graduation he jumped off a bridge and was hit
by a train. Bertel could never understand why he would do such a thing. It was
incomprehensible. He had cried for days when he heard it. That was when he had
decided to tell his parents the truth about himself. He couldn’t hide it any
longer. At least that is what he thought.

Boy, had he been young and naïve.

Bertel touched the rough fabric on the armchair and thought about the few
times he would reach out and touch the skin on Bjorn’s arm without him knowing why.

Suddenly, he felt the solitude was broken, that he was not alone in the
church. A light step, almost noiseless moving across the floor. Then calm,
regular breathing behind the curtain. Pastor Bertel waited for the person
behind the curtain to be ready. He looked under the curtain and saw the shoes,
as he would always do. He would memorize anything he could about them. Their
color and shape or even brand. Then he would later find them in the dining hall
and know the face of the owner. But these shoes were different than the ones he
normally saw under the heavy red curtain. Mostly the youngsters wore sneakers
or Converse. But these were shoes like the ones Bertel would wear. Like a man
of his own age would wear.

Bertel smelled the perfume of clean skin mixed with good cologne. And
all of a sudden he recognized the smell. That exact cologne that only his long
lost love would wear.. Bertel widened his eyes at the sound of the song long
forgotten.

“Five, six, grab your crucifix …”

“Who are you?”

A moment of silence, and then the man answered in a deep resonant voice.
“Does it matter?”

“Yes it does.”

“Who I am is of no importance.”

“Then what is important?”

“Why I am here.”

Pastor Bertel felt his throat constrict. The feeling of suffocation
overwhelmed him. “I have read about you in the paper. You killed Didrik and Henrik.
I figured you would come for me too. In a way I have been waiting for you.”

Bertel had an urge to get up and pull away the curtain to see his
perpetrator’s face. But something kept him from doing it. Some force bigger
than himself forced him to stay in his chair. The same force that the boys in
the juvenile prison had come to know after the nightly visits with the prison’s
pastor. The same force that would keep them awake night after night staring
anxiously at the door to their cell. Afraid that it would open and they would
once again lose a finger, an ear, be blinded, or even castrated.

It was fear.

“I suppose there’s nothing I can do or say to make you change your
mind?”

“You suppose right.”

“So it is over?”

A long motionless silence. For an instant the pastor in the armchair
thought the man behind the curtain was gone.

“Can I please at least see your face?”

Another silence from his perpetrator before the sound of the curtain
being pulled aside filled the air. A face appeared on the other side. The glove
from his past was pointing right at him. The pastor wasn’t afraid any longer.
But he was indeed surprised.

“So it is you?”

“Yes.”

“But why? Why now after all these years?”

“Because your time is up. The game is over.”

The pastor was content with the answer. He had always known that the
past that he had too long been running from, would one day catch up with him.

And this was it. His time was up. After all he was a priest. He wasn’t
frightened by the end, only by the pain.

“Will I suffer?”

“Yes.”

21

Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. A day to spend with your loved
ones. And so this Sunday began. But shortly after I hung up after talking to
Giovanni, my phone rang again. This time it was Sara.

“There’s been another one. Another murder, they say on the police radio.”

She sounded so excited. They had never had a murder in this area before
and now they had three in week.

“Aren’t you supposed to have the day off?”

“I am. I’m at my house.”

“So you have a police radio at your house too?”

“Well of course. Most things happen on the weekends.”

That was true, I had to admit.

“So tell me about the murder.” I waved at my daughter who wanted me to
come back and do the rest of the puzzle with her. I signaled both her and my
dad that this was important.

“You are never going to believe this. It’s a priest this time.”

“A priest?”

“In the juvenile prison.”

“Where is that?”

“Roedvig Stevns.”

“Now where is that exactly?”

“About an hour drive from here. Just on the east coast of Zeeland.”

In the middle of nowhere, that is,
I thought.

“How do we know it is the same guy?”

“We don’t. But the police keep talking about his chest being ripped
apart. Using words like “almost looks inhuman, beastlike, messy, blood
everywhere.” I just thought you might like to check it out for yourself.”

“You thought right,” I said and got the address of the juvenile prison.
Now all I had to do was call Sune and then the hard part: tell my family that
our Sunday was ruined.

They didn’t take it well. Julie cried and said she missed me. My dad gave
me one of those looks that strongly indicated I was not making the right
choice. I felt bad for Julie, but I had to go. I promised her we would get ice
cream when I got back. But I also knew it would probably never happen. I wouldn’t
be able to get back in time. Luckily for me she forgot all about it when I told
her that Tobias was coming because his dad, Sune, was going with me. So I got
out of the house without anyone crying. Which was quite an accomplishment.

At least Sune was in a great mood. Well, until I told him where we were
going, that is. Then his smile froze and he looked mad.

“I didn’t choose the location,” I defended myself, thinking he was mad
because it was so far away and he wouldn’t get to spend any more of the Sunday
with Tobias.

Sune stepped angrily on the gas pedal and we drove off.

“So what happened?” he asked a little later with a less angry attitude.

“Some priest was killed in a juvenile prison.”

He looked at me with worry in his eyes.

“What juvenile prison?”

“Stevnsfortet.”

Sune was quiet for a while.

“What’s wrong?” I asked after some time. We were almost there and I
could see the prison on the top of the hill. I looked at Sune’s face. He looked
scared, as if something he just saw had frightened him. He didn’t answer my
question. Instead he stopped the car in front of the crime tape. We got out.

A lot of people had gathered outside the prison, but no journalists just
yet. Mostly police officers discussing and forensic people working. An officer
talked to some of the employees, taking their statements. The blue van from
Copenhagen was there again. This had to be big stuff.

Sune started taking pictures without saying a word to me, while I tried
to contact with some of the employees who had already given their statements.

I spotted a cleaning lady still wearing her uniform as she was about to
walk away. Her head was bowed and she was crying. She passed the crime tape and
I caught up with her.

”Do you know what happened?” I asked.

She stopped and stared at me with a frightened look.

”Hi, I am Rebekka Franck with
Zeeland Times
,” I said and gave her
my card. “Would you mind making a statement for the newspaper?”