Rebekka Franck - 03 - Five, Six ... Grab Your Crucifix (23 page)

“Let me help you,” he said and together they put down the heavy tray with the cups from Royal Copenhagen.

The young man set the cups in front of the guests. Bjarne Larsen was sweating heavily now.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “The wife’s out of town and it’s hard to try and do it all on my own.”

Officer Knudsen that Bjarne had known for years nodded and smiled. He grabbed a cookie from the platter and started eating. The crouching sound was loud in Bjarne’s head and he felt his heart race faster. His eyes remained fixated on the officer’s mouth where crumbs landed on his lips and he used the tongue to remove them. His mouth looked dry when he chewed with it half open. Bjarne sat down with a sigh. Then he nodded slowly.

“Have some coffee,” he said.

The young reporter woman, Rebekka, leaned over and grabbed the pot. Bjarne Larsen felt a pinch of excitement. This was the first time he was actually present when the powder was ingested. He wondered how long it would take for them to have actual symptoms. Minutes? Hours? Days? He didn’t know and neither did the people who gave him the powder. They just knew it would kill, painfully eating the victim’s internal organs one by one. The best part was that it only killed if you inhaled or ingested it. It wasn’t dangerous to you if you accidentally touched it. That was very unique for a radioactive material. Bjarne had found it perfect to kill by using a radioactive material when revenging Edwina. Oh the joy he had felt when he realized that the church members actually had thought that it was the devil that had possessed the victims. He had wanted so badly to be present to watch their faces trying to rebuke the devil, he wanted to feel their fear when they thought it might have been Edwina coming back from hell to take them. He didn’t doubt for one second that all four of them had seen her when they died. His Afghani friends had told him they would have hallucinations once the polonium attacked the brain. Some might even have experienced paranoia, seeing and hearing things, thinking someone was after them. If there was anything Bjarne knew about, it was hallucinations and paranoia caused by drugs. They would always show your worst fear, displayed like a living nightmare. Bjarne almost laughed out loud just by thinking about it. Served them well, he thought to himself. For doing what they did to Edwina.

“So given the circumstances of the deaths we are naturally worried about you and your son, since you used to be a part of the leader group at the time,” Officer Knudsen said.

Bjarne hadn’t been listening to what the officer said. He didn’t have to. Bjarne nodded and smiled and told them to drink some coffee or have another cookie. Still none of them had touched it.

It will come, he calmed himself down. He sensed how his hands and legs were shaking heavily now. It will come. They have to drink at some point. The cookies are making them thirsty.

Bjarne smiled while he watched the officer lean over and grab another cookie. “These are really good,” he said.

Bjarne smiled and nodded. “The wife’s recipe.” He watched as crumbs landed on the officer’s chin. His mouth looked so dry now. It would only be a matter of seconds before he would drink some coffee. Then the others would follow. Of course they would. They had to. They weren’t going to leave this house alive. Bjarne would make sure they didn’t.

A sigh of relief burst out of him as he watched the officer lean over and lift the cup between his fingers. Then he smiled and nodded as the officer dragged it closer to the mouth and tipped it. Bjarne Larsen felt a thrill inside as he watched the black liquid disappear into the officer’s broad mouth. It almost made him want to clap his hands in excitement.

One down, only two more to go.

Chapter 51

I felt strange sitting in Bjarne Larsen’s couch watching Officer Knudsen tell him about the killings and our concerns. It was like Bjarne Larsen wasn’t listening at all. It was like he was in a world of his own and wasn’t interested in what we were telling him. It worried me. His manic eyes stared at Officer Knudsen drinking his coffee troubled me. It was like he enjoyed watching him drink his coffee a little too much. What about the sweating and the shaking? Something was off here, even for him. I looked at Sune. He didn’t touch the cookies nor the coffee. I had warned him in the car driving there, following Officer Knudsen in his police car.

“Whatever you do, don’t drink the coffee,” I said. “It’s horrible. Almost killed me the last time I was here.” Then we laughed. If there was one thing Sune and I agreed upon it was that life was too short for bad coffee.

“Thanks for the warning,” he said as we left the car.

Now I kind of regretted it looking at Officer Knudsen drinking it and slurping it. Maybe it was better this time? Maybe he was getting the hang of it? I thought. I stared at the cup. It looked just as thick as the last time. I poured in some milk and started turning my spoon. I was really in the mood for coffee. I could really go for it, I thought, but then again I really didn’t want it if it tasted anything remotely like what I had the first time I was there. I put in a teaspoon of sugar and turned again. It still looked bad. Bjarne Larsen was watching me. His eyes were strange, almost feverish. I couldn’t quite figure him out.

“Do you have any idea on who would want to kill all the members of the leader group from back then?” I asked him thinking maybe he could shed some light on the case that we hadn’t thought of on our own. “Did you make any enemies?”

“I guess most people never cared much about us,” he answered. “The locals wanted us out, especially back when the Priest was very active in the media and often appeared on TV. They thought we brought bad publicity to the area.”

“So why did you leave the church?” I asked.

“I guess we went in different directions. I wanted something for this church. Anders, the Priest wanted something else. We had to part ways.”

He didn’t want to talk about what had happened, that was fair enough, but I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easy, I thought. He could provide me some of the answers I was missing.

“There was a girl,” I said. “Edwina, I believe she was called. She was at your camp, but then disappeared. Do you have any idea what happened to her?”

Bjarne’s face froze. He stared at me with agitated eyes. Sune leaned over. “It’s okay. We know the story about what they did to her,” he said. “We also heard that you left the church because of what they did to her.”

“We’re not interested in your part in this,” Officer Knudsen said. “But your testimony could turn out to be very important to us and I’m sure you could make a deal if you chose to talk, a deal so you wouldn’t be prosecuted if you told everything. We’re extremely interested in the leader, Isabella Dubois and her involvement in what happened.”

Bjarne stared, still frozen solid.

“What happened to the girl?” Officer Knudsen asked. “Where is she?”

Then something truly awkward and weird happened. Bjarne Larsen began to laugh. Not a normal laughter, but a frantic, hysterical one. I was beginning to think he was losing it.

“Well it seems you know everything, don’t you?” he said. “I might as well tell you.”

“That would be nice,” Officer Knudsen said.

“First let me pour you some more coffee,” Bjarne said and grabbed the pot. He filled up Officer Knudsen’s cup. I declined stating I still had enough in my cup. Sune didn’t want anything either. Officer Knudsen drank more from his. We all waited expectantly for him to begin talking.

Bjarne Larsen exhaled deeply. His eyes dropped to the ground, then he looked at me. “She died,” he suddenly said. “On the night that she gave birth to the baby I went back to the forest to save her. I knew what their plan was. I had decided not to interfere anymore, but as the night progressed and I heard her screaming through the forest I realized I couldn’t let this happen. I had to do something. But when I arrived she was dead. She had lost a lot of blood from the birth. There was a pool underneath her. Apparently she hadn’t stopped bleeding after giving birth, so she bled to death.”

“So she is dead?” I asked quite startled. I was so certain she was alive and revenging herself. “But what about the baby?”

Bjarne looked at me. That was when it finally clicked.

“Ole is the baby, isn’t he?” I asked. “Ole is Edwina’s son.”

“I went back and got him. Edwina was dead. I threw her body in the fjord thinking she would turn up eventually and the police would come after the church members. If I had left her they would have just buried her and no one would know what they had done. I had hoped that they would get what they deserved once the body was discovered. But it never turned up. I have gone down there often to see if I could find it, but it’s gone.”

I leaned back in the couch. “So you have been killing them, haven’t you? You’re the one trying to get rid of all the group leaders from back then. You’re avenging Edwina and Ole?”

“Someone had to do something before they did it again. I waited for years for the police to discover the body but that never happened. I waited for them to screw up otherwise, but they never did. I realized I had to get rid of them on my own.”

I looked at Officer Knudsen. He was pale and didn’t seem well. A fear struck me. Sune leaned over and grabbed his coffee cup and lifted it up to his mouth. I pushed it out of his hand, causing it to tumble on the carpet.

“It’s in the coffee,” I said.

Sune gasped and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Officer Knudsen looked at me with fear. He was even paler now, almost greenish in his face.

“We need to get you to the hospital,” I said and got up from the couch.

Then I heard steps on the stairs behind us and turned around. Ole was walking down slowly with a rifle pointing directly at us. My heart started racing.

“The doctors say he has a slight brain damage,” Bjarne said. “They don’t know why, but I know. I have talked to specialists about it. His mother had it too. It’s from the radiation Edwina was exposed to when she was in her mother’s womb. Ole won’t get old. He’ll probably die from leukemia in ten or fifteen years. He is not going to spend them in jail. He is the only thing I’ve ever done right in this world. When I asked God to forgive me after that night when we made Edwina pregnant, he told me to go and make things right again. That’s what I’ve done. I’ve taken care of Ole and now I have avenged his mother.”

Ole walked closer still pointing at us with his hunting rifle.

“He is a very skilled hunter,” Bjarne continued. “He never misses a target, so I wouldn’t try anything if I were you.”

“You had Ole do it, didn’t you?” I continued. “He knows how to climb the fence and get into the property. He knows his way around and how to avoid the surveillance cameras. He put it in something, the food or something they drink. He did the dirty work.”

Bjarne nodded. “He wanted to. I had to let him do it. My hands are not what they used to be.” He lifted his hands. They were shaking heavily.

I turned and looked at Ole. “You spilled some didn’t you? You got it on your fingers and were scared of what it might do to you, you ran through the forest and found a water post. You washed it off there, am I right?”

Ole nodded. “I spilled some on my finger where I had a wound. I was afraid it would penetrate the skin through it and get into my bloodstream. So I washed it off. All it left was this small rash,” he said and showed his finger.

 “What do you want to do with us?” I asked Bjarne. “We need to get officer Knudsen to the hospital immediately. He will die if we don’t.”

“I’m afraid you all have to die,” Bjarne Larsen said. “As much as I want to, I can’t let you leave here knowing the things you do. I just can’t.”

Chapter 52

Ole came all the way down the stairs still pointing at us with his rifle. Officer Knudsen tried to stand up, but felt too sick and had to sit back down. I spotted his weapon in his belt. He tried to grab for it, but had to bend over and throw up on the couch. Bjarne approached him and took his gun. Then he put it to his head and fired. I screamed as Officer Knudsen sank onto the couch, dead.

Then I looked at Sune. His eyes were suddenly filled with fear like I’ve never seen before. These people were serious, I realized. They weren’t bluffing. Killing a police officer in cold blood like that meant they had no remorse in killing us as well. I turned and looked at Ole. I was breathing frantically now. I knew I had to react within seconds or they would shoot us. Frantically my eyes searched across the room, the dresser, the stairs, the hallway. I spotted the switch behind Ole’s back. Then I grabbed a lamp and threw it as hard as I could towards Ole. He bent his head and as he did I sprang for the light switch. When I flipped it the entire room went black. Long live the dark Danish winters, I thought as I felt Sune grab my arm and we ran up the stairs. Bjarne was standing near the main entrance so up was the only way out for us. We jumped the stairs and heard shots being fired behind us. Then we turned the corner and ran into a room. Sune found a dresser and blocked the door with it.

I was hyperventilating, finding it hard to even draw in a breath. My head was pounding with fear. There was one window in the room, that seemed to be an office of some sort. And underneath it stood Bjarne pointing the sheriff’s gun at us. When he spotted me he fired a shot that hit the roof right above us. I jumped backwards. Then I heard knocking.

Ole’s voice was right outside the door. “There is no way out,” he said almost giggling.

I gasped and clung to Sune. “Don’t answer him,” he whispered. “We’ll find a way out.” He began searching the room desperately. “There has to be something in here we can use,” he said going through closets and looking under the desk.

“Can’t we call for help? We have our phones,” I asked.

“I’m afraid we’ll be dead before they get here,” Sune said.

“I’ll try it anyway.”

I found my phone and just as I was about to dial 911 Bjarne fired another shot that went straight through the glass and left a perfect little whole through the shattered glass. I screamed and dropped the phone as I watched the bullet land in the wall and leave a small but deep hole.