The Stolen Angel

by Sara Blaedel

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017, 2018 by Sara Blaedel

  Translated by Martin Aitken, translation © 2017 by Sara Blaedel

  Excerpt from The Undertaker’s Daughter © 2017 by Sara Blaedel

  Cover design by Elizabeth Connor

  All photos from Arcangel: background © Sally Mundy, house @ Ayal Ardon, woman @ Savannah Daras

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  Hachettebookgroup.com

  First Edition: January 2018

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-5975-2 (trade paperback edition); 978-1-5387-5977-6 (ebook edition)

  E3-20170913-DANF

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More Sara Blaedel

  About the Author

  Praise for Sara Blaedel

  Also by Sara Blaedel

  For Kristen

  The smell of acetone was so pungent it tore at his nostrils, seeping out through the cracks of the door and bleeding into the dark cellar.

  The space was lit only by the ceiling lamps. He had bricked up the windows so their empty frames were flush with the wall.

  He stood there for a moment in the passageway, then put the mask in place over his mouth and nose before carefully wriggling his long, slender fingers into a pair of tight latex gloves.

  As meticulous as ever.

  Listening to the sound of his own breathing, he sensed the dampness that clung to the cellar walls. He found it odd that the ventilation system with its charcoal filters wasn’t more efficient, but dismissed the thought from his mind as quickly as it had arisen. The system had been running twenty-four seven, but the muggy smell of the cellar lingered still. He was getting used to it by now. He pulled the three keys from the pocket of his lab coat.

  He was pleased that there was no direct access from the ground floor. A person had to go outside into the garden in order to find the steps leading down. One of the first things he’d done after moving in was to have separate keys made for the cellar.

  The yellow key opened the cold store where the freezer was; the blue one was for the room containing the two-meter-long shallow bath with the vacuum suction unit. The last key was red and gave access to the back room. The exhibition, as he called it, with its three rectangular glass display cases lined up in a row.

  He had taken particular delight in arranging the lighting that illuminated the three women in their transparent open caskets. The lamps were positioned with all the fastidiousness of a portrait photographer, their light falling so softly that no shadow was too dark and no detail remained anything but crystal clear to the viewer. He had already begun to prepare the lighting for the next display case, which would soon be ready for the new woman, and had rearranged the space to make room.

  Standing there now, he beheld the three naked women.

  How beautiful they were, with their different shapes. It was all exactly as he had planned.

  The first was thin. He considered the next one to be of normal build. And then came the pride of the collection, the one with the perfect womanly curves, the heavy, pendulous breasts and chunky thighs. Smoothing his hand over her hip, he felt the tingling rush of blood through his body as his erection swelled.

  He always took such care to restore the original shapes. Before commencing work on a corpse, he’d photograph it in detail. From the front, back, and sides, noting the rise of the chest, the line of the waist.

  His inspiration had been Gunther von Hagens’s exhibition Körperwelten and the worldwide touring exhibition Body Worlds. He had become fascinated with the thought of being able to preserve the beauty of a woman for all time.

  The blond girl was hardly a feast for the eyes. She lay there in the empty steel bath under the glare of the neon lighting, her naked body fallen in on itself. Over the last few months, the acetone had done its job, expelling all water from her body to the very last drop.

  And yet a shiver ran down his spine. This was the final phase. The room was cold and sterile, the walls clad with white tiling, a stainless steel table installed at the rear for the chemicals and silicone. Next to the plastic tubs were the tubes and the wooden box.

  He stepped closer but could not stop himself from glancing away. This was the least flattering stage of the process. The eye sockets were empty, the face collapsed. Muscle and bone were the only things left inside the sheath of skin. But although the outer covering lay loose around the skull, he thought he perceived the beauty he would now set about restoring. Her long hair was protected from the liquid by a tight-fitting cap. She would be so beautiful with her hair tresses about her perfect shoulders, he thought. Like an artist, he felt the love for his work well inside him with every step he took toward completion.

  It had been most surprising to him the first time. He simply hadn’t prepared himself mentally for the transformation into such a magnificent and wondrous specimen. He knew, of course, that the body consists of 70 percent water, and that the same amount plus an additional 10 to 15 percent would vanish in the acetone bath. Nevertheless, he had been astounded, and it had been some days before he again felt ready to return to the cellar and complete the work.

/>   On the other hand, he could never in his wildest dreams have imagined the euphoria he’d feel when at last the silicone had hardened and he had finally returned her comely curves to her, perhaps even having exaggerated them slightly to accord with his taste.

  Stunned, he had stood there feeling like the creator of the universe.

  * * *

  He stepped up to the stainless steel table and picked up the tubes. Lifting the heavy tubs of silicone onto the cart, he pushed it over to the shallow bath. Two tubes ran from each tub. He glanced up at the clock. It would take less than half an hour to fill the bath. When it was done, he would put the lid in place and switch on the suction unit. Then all that was required was for her to simply lie there as the silicone gradually seeped into her cells and filled her body.

  With a small knife, he sliced away the protective caps and broke the seal, allowing the silicone to flow. Slowly and reluctantly to begin with, though he had made sure to warm the substance so as to quicken the process, but then it began to run, a fluid thicker than water gradually pouring into the bath, spreading itself to the four corners.

  The whole operation required patience and the greatest of accuracy.

  His women were small masterpieces. Perhaps even grand masterpieces. He closed the door now, ready to devote himself entirely to the blonde. He owed it to her.

  1

  No, I’m afraid not, Fru Milling. As far as I’m aware, there’s still no news about your daughter,” Louise Rick said into the phone, with regret. She was sweating in her training gear and had just gotten back to Police HQ after six hours with the rest of the negotiation unit.

  The exercise had been planned for some time; the theme was suicide. At seven in the morning, Louise had met the others out at the city’s Zealand bridge, and although by now she was reasonably experienced, she was never exactly going to enjoy dangling from a bridge trying to talk a fictional suicide candidate into giving up their bid to depart the world. It had been a good day, nonetheless, and Thiesen, who was in charge of the unit, had heaped praise on her, telling her she was getting better all the time. Next up was the Storebæltsbroen, the monumental suspension bridge that spanned the Great Belt between the islands of Zealand and Fyn.

  “I certainly do understand your concern. You haven’t heard from her in months.”

  Louise sank back in her chair and unzipped her jacket. The office was boiling hot, the air stale and clammy. The radiator was on full blast to banish the winter’s cold, and the grimy floor was streaked with slush from outside. She had only just walked through the door and was already on her way out again when fru Milling had called.

  Hardly a week, certainly never two, passed without a phone call from Grete Milling. The retired woman’s daughter had disappeared more than six months earlier while on a package vacation to the Costa del Sol, and since then there had been no trace of Jeanette Milling anywhere. Spanish police were dealing with the case on the ground, while the Search Department of the Danish National Police was handling the investigation. Nevertheless, the old lady continued to phone Police HQ to ask if there was any breakthrough.

  Louise looked up at the clock. She had to pick up Jonas from school today for a dentist appointment.

  “I’m sure the police in Spain are still out looking for Jeanette,” she comforted the anxious mother, but of course she wasn’t sure at all. The Spanish authorities were all too familiar with amorous women getting carried away with their vacation flings, so it was no wonder they didn’t take such cases seriously—especially when the woman in question was over thirty, childless, and still single.

  The only thing that could possibly point toward a crime in Jeanette Milling’s case was the fact that her bank account hadn’t been touched since the day she went missing.

  As if Grete Milling somehow could sense through the phone that Louise wasn’t paying full attention, she cleared her throat and repeated what she had just said:

  “I tried to get in touch with that journalist again, the one who wrote about Jeanette at the time she disappeared.”

  She explained that it was to satisfy herself he hadn’t dug anything up the police might have missed.

  “But he wasn’t employed there anymore, and the man I spoke to had never heard of Jeanette. It’s as if everyone’s forgotten about her.”

  * * *

  Jeanette Milling had flown with Spies Travel from Billund to Málaga, where a guide had been waiting to receive the group of vacationers at the airport. The guide remembered the tall woman with the long, blond hair, but his only contact with her had been in pointing her to the bus that would drive the package guests to Fuengirola, where Jeanette was staying. He never saw her again.

  The Morgenavisen newspaper had described how Jeanette had arrived at the hotel and been given a room with a partial sea view. It had been established beyond doubt that she had stayed at the hotel for four days, her name being crossed off the list each morning when she appeared for breakfast. But after the first four days she had not visited the restaurant at all.

  She had bought provisions at a small supermarket adjoining the hotel. Police had ascertained as much by going through her bank statement. Several guests had seen her, at the pool and in the hotel restaurant. They described her as smiling and outgoing and remembered her having been chatty with almost everyone.

  But then all of a sudden she was gone. From that moment on, there was no trace. The Jeanette Milling case had received massive media coverage in the days after her disappearance became known. After she was reported missing, Morgenavisen had dispatched a reporter and photographer team to the Costa del Sol to see if they could retrace the young woman’s footsteps leading up to the time she had seemingly vanished off the face of the earth.

  Interest in the story had long since gone the same way. No one cared anymore about Grete Milling’s disappeared daughter.

  * * *

  “We should also at least entertain the possibility that your daughter might not want to be found at all,” Louise ventured cautiously.

  There was a silence at the other end, and Louise lowered her gaze to the floor.

  “No,” came the reply after a moment, softly and yet with conviction. “She would never leave me on my own with that uncertainty.”

  Jeanette Milling had been living just outside Esbjerg, and after her disappearance her mother had kept up her rent so her daughter might still have her flat to come home to. For the six years prior to her disappearance she had been working as a secretary and receptionist for two physiotherapists, but apart from that Louise knew very little about the woman who had booked and gone on a package tour for a two-week vacation in the sun.

  Nor was it a high-priority case, not anymore. Certainly not today, she thought with another glance at the clock above the door.

  And yet she could hardly bring herself to ignore fru Milling’s phone calls, since the woman invested so much hope in them.

  “You’re welcome to call again, of course,” said Louise before saying good-bye and ending the call.

  She sat for a second, struck abruptly by a sense of the woman’s desolation at her daughter’s disappearance. It was touching indeed, the way Grete Milling steadfastly held on to the belief that Jeanette would be found despite the months that had already passed. At the same time she could hardly bear to think of the day someone would have to extinguish that hope and tell her that the lease on her daughter’s flat could now be terminated.

  “Want a coffee?” Lars Jørgensen asked. Her work partner had gotten to his feet and was already on his way out the door.

  Louise shook her head. “I’ve got to get Jonas to the dentist, so I’d better be off,” she said, checking the text message that popped up with a ping as she spoke.

  Got off early, her son wrote. Pick me up at home.

  “See you in the morning,” Louise said, smiling as Lars Jørgensen tunelessly mumbled the lyrics of some vaguely memorable song about a woman’s work never being done.

  2

  It wa
sn’t there!” Carl Emil Sachs-Smith almost screeched as he marched right past the receptionist. He barged into attorney Miklos Wedersøe’s office in Roskilde on Thursday morning, with no regard for whatever he might be interrupting. “There was just an empty space on the wall!”

  Carl Emil could feel the perspiration trickle down his back underneath his high-necked sweater as he tossed his coat on the floor and dumped himself heavily in the chair in front of the attorney. The celebrated glass icon had hung there as long as he could remember. He sat for a moment with his eyes closed and felt that his blood seemed to have difficulty reaching his head despite pumping through the rest of his body so fast, it made him dizzy.

  “I can’t understand it,” he added in a whisper, as if the notion were incapable of sinking in. “It’s always been there, above my father’s desk.”

  It had been six months since he had confided the family secret about the Angel of Death, as they called it, to his attorney. One evening in late summer following a meeting of the Termo-Lux board of directors, he and Miklos Wedersøe had dined together at Roskilde’s Prindsen restaurant. His sister had gone home early to be with her daughter, and as the two men sat enjoying a cognac after their meal, Carl Emil told him about how the fabled icon had fallen into the hands of their paternal grandfather.

  As a young glazier in Roskilde, the grandfather had been commissioned to do some restoration work in the cathedral. The job had required some consignments of old church glass from Poland and there, among the great iron frames with their centuries-old stained glass covered in dust, he had found the Angel of Death.

  At first his grandfather had been unaware that what he had discovered was a thousand-year-old treasure, but he had sensed right away that it was a very special piece of glass. Having pored his way through various religious history books he realized the icon had been part of the decoration in the Hagia Sophia, the principal basilica of the Byzantine Empire until Constantinople fell to Ottoman forces in 1453 and the sultan turned the Orthodox church into a mosque.

  Carl Emil told him, too, that the myth of the unique icon made it a highly coveted piece for collectors all over the world. During the time it hung in the Hagia Sophia—whose name apparently translated from the Greek as “Holy Wisdom”—the Angel of Death had been part of a stained-glass window in the side aisle, above the poems carved into the curvatures of the half domes that to this day rose over the marble peacock tails. The clear blue colors of the icon were said to cast a ring of light down onto the church floor between two thick pillars inlaid with glass that stood flanking the window.