Søren leaned forward, intrigued now.
“Someone calling himself YourGuy sent three e-mails to Johannes in the last four weeks.” Sten read aloud from a sheet:
“I want to see you again. Don’t you get it? Call me! And the next one: I’m crazy about you. I’m beside myself with desire because of what you let me do to you. Call me!” Søren and Sten exchanged knowing glances. Sten read on:
“Hi, Jo. I crossed a line the other day. Sorry. I lost the plot because you’re so gorgeous. I’ve tried getting hold of you all week, but you won’t come to the door or take my calls. I respect you don’t want to, but can we talk, please?” Sten lowered the sheet.
Søren drummed his fingers on the table and looked out of the window.
“What can I say,” he said eventually. “Some kind of gay fling?”
“Take a look at this,” Sten said as if he hadn’t heard Søren and handed him a printout of a photograph. It showed an androgynous person, which Søren took to be a man due to the flatness of the chest underneath the corset. The hair was scraped back in oily furrows, the clothes were tight-fitting black leather, and he wore fishnet stockings. The lips were painted scarlet and the lipstick was smeared on one side, as if the lips were bleeding or had just been kissed. The eye makeup was theatrical. Thick lines of kohl and a decorative spider’s web spread its silvery threads toward the left temple.
“Who’s that?” Søren asked.
“I’m convinced it’s Johannes,” Sten replied. And now Søren could see it too. In a flash, Johannes’s features grew visible behind the make-up. Søren gasped.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said.
“Johannes is a goth,” Sten explained.
“A goth?” Søren frowned.
“It’s a subculture. I read about it on the Internet. Men and women worshiping the darkness and dressing up as everything from Count Dracula to dominatrixes in leather corsets. They love black-and-white makeup, and they have tons of piercings. The photo is from the Red Mask, which appears to be the most active goth club in Copenhagen. The club is open the first Friday of every month, and as far as I can see, its fame extends beyond Denmark. Photos are always published on the club’s website. The caption below the photo simply says ‘3rd September 2007.’ That’s why I thought it had to be him.” Sten smiled wryly before he continued: “Elsewhere on the website he calls himself Orlando, but his alias doesn’t appear to be an attempt to disguise his identity, more like a part of the game that goths appear to be playing. Seriously!” he added, when he saw the skeptical expression on Søren’s face. “They act out Count Dracula parties. It seems rather appealing. A club that practices tolerance, acceptance, and community. The goth scene, as far as I’ve been able to establish, appears to be a reaction to 1980s punk. Punks must have a particular look and share the same views. The goths have no time for that. No code, no core, no truth. That’s their slogan. The unique, personal expression is everything.”
“Is it a gay club?” Søren asked.
“No. Like I said: no code, no rules,” Sten said. “Gays are welcome as are straight people. Many people show up in normal clothes and never reveal which team they play for.”
“No sex?” Søren asked.
“No, no sex. That’s probably why nobody bothers to disguise their identity. Johannes isn’t the only one whose name is published. All that’s kept secret is where events take place. If you want to take part, you sign up to a text message list. You get a text informing you when the next event is taking place, a few hours before doors open. The venue changes every time. Probably to avoid interfering neo-Nazis and other troublemakers.” Sten shrugged.
“I don’t get the impression that anything shady happens there,” he went on. “We’re talking about a group of adults with a penchant for horror, thrills, and darkness; who like to dress up. However, there are many overlappers on the goth scene.”
“Overlappers?”
“People who are part of the goth culture and also active on the fetish scene, and let me tell you something. The goth scene may be open, but the fetish scene is hermetically sealed, like a frightened oyster. That club is called Inkognito. The same people are behind the monthly club events, but strict rules govern fetish arrangements. There’s a total ban on pictures. Fetishists are usually older than people from the goth scene and typically more established with families and senior executive jobs, so consequently they’re more protective of their privacy. The fundamental difference between the goth and fetish scenes is obviously sex. Fetish events take place in dark rooms where people can enjoy themselves anonymously. The sexual activities are fairly hard-core. You can be spanked, have clamps attached to your nipples, be suspended from the wall by pulleys and weights, there’s Japanese bondage and things I had—obviously—never heard of until I read about it on the net late last night.” Sten grinned at Søren. “But anyway, everyone’s anonymous, even when they’re having sex. You find a partner and do your thing. Johannes received several e-mails announcing fetish events, so I believe there’s a good chance he was active on both scenes. I imagine Orlando met YourGuy at an event in one of the two clubs and has now gone missing because he’s hiding from YourGuy. He sounds creepy to me,” Sten added, snapping his fingers against the printouts.
Søren pondered this. “And you don’t think YourGuy is just suffering from a regular crush and his tone is a bit rough because people on that scene talk to each other like that?”
Sten nodded. “You may be right, but what really got me thinking is that YourGuy’s address is anonymous, or fictitious. He lists it as ‘Donald Duck, 2200 Ducktown.’ You can do that with free e-mail accounts. You can create an anonymous address, just like the person who e-mailed threats to Helland, and you can call yourself anything, Donald Duck or Bill Clinton, and if you also use an Internet café, well, then you’re completely untraceable. The account was created on the eighth of September this year, and only three e-mails were ever sent from it: on the twelfth and the sixteenth of September, and four days ago, on the seventh of October. Of course I’ve spoken to the owner of the Internet café, whose server I’ve traced the e-mails to, but he just laughed when he heard my request. The café has twenty computers spread across three small rooms and has approximately two hundred users per day. They’ve no idea who comes and goes, so anyone could have written those e-mails. All we can be sure about is that he definitely didn’t want to be identified, but why be secretive if it’s just a regular crush?”
Søren nodded slowly.
“Why do you think that Johannes is gay? You’ve suggested this a couple of times.” Sten wanted to know.
“It hasn’t been confirmed yet. I think he might be, but Anna Bella Nor says he isn’t. Why?”
Sten looked pensive. “I googled Orlando. It’s the name of the central character in a novel by Virginia Woolf, written in 1928. Orlando is a young man who lives for four hundred years and is transformed into a woman along the way…”
“And?” Søren looked at Sten.
“I don’t think Johannes is gay at all,” Sten replied. “Members post comments after parties on the homepage of the Red Mask. Johannes is clearly a big hit among the women, and he flirts so much the temperature rises in cyberspace. I think he’s experimenting with his feminine sides, and we’re sufficiently ignorant to confuse it with homosexuality.”
There was a knock on the door. Sten rose and Henrik entered.
“I think we’re done, anyway,” Sten said and nodded to Henrik. He stopped on his way out.