The Stolen Angel

by Sara Blaedel

  According to legend, a poor peasant went to the church one day to pray for forgiveness after accidentally having taken the life of a common thief. Under cover of night the thief had attempted to make off with the peasant’s two cows. The peasant had caught him red-handed, and when the thief took to his heels the peasant had picked up a rock from the field and hurled it after him. To his misfortune, the rock struck the thief in the head and killed him on the spot.

  And so it was that the peasant had stood in the church, in the ring of light, his eyes directed upward at the icon as he prayed for forgiveness. Afterward he told of how the light had grown brighter and still clearer, and the Angel of Death had spoken to him.

  “Your sins shall be forgiven.”

  Relieved and more than a little shaken by the experience, the peasant journeyed home. The legend said he would never be prosecuted for the death he had caused.

  The tale of the poor peasant and the thief spread quickly, prompting pilgrims in the thousands to flock to the Hagia Sophia in order to receive forgiveness for their sins.

  * * *

  The attorney gathered together the documents that lay spread out over the desk in front of him. He put them away in a folder, then pushed it to one side before giving Carl Emil his full attention.

  “Who else knew of its existence?” he asked gravely, wiping his shiny bald head with a handkerchief.

  “No one, besides the family,” Carl Emil replied, distraught. “There’s been no shortage of art historians and antiques dealers trying to track it down over the years. My father was contacted on a number of occasions by a German art historian who believed he was on the scent. He claimed he’d been able to map the Angel’s journey from Constantinople after 1453, up through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia, then on into Poland. He even had the particulars of where and when. But on each occasion my father managed to convince him he had reached a dead end. Various scholars and other experts have written articles and presented papers airing their theories about what might have become of the icon since it disappeared from the Hagia Sophia. As yet, however, none has succeeded in locating it. But maybe now someone has. We’ve given them the perfect opportunity, leaving the house empty for so long.”

  He ran his hands despairingly through his fair hair then buried his face in his palms, silently shaking his head.

  After their dinner at the Prindsen restaurant, Wedersøe had offered to investigate how much the treasured Angel might be worth on today’s market. They agreed that he would at first put out some feelers, to get an idea of what kind of sum they might be talking about if the right buyer came along.

  Wedersøe’s contact in New York had acted in the strictest confidence, inquiring within a few highly exclusive circles of fabulously wealthy, and in some cases rather eccentric collectors. These were the individuals who would have enough cash on hand to easily permit the illegal purchase of vanished artifacts and treasures categorized by the auction houses as priceless. Eventually, shortly after three o’clock the night before Carl Emil’s sudden entrance into his attorney’s office, Miklos Wedersøe had received a phone call from his American contact informing him that he now had a serious bid for the Angel of Death. A dizzying $175 million US, amounting to more than a billion Danish kroner.

  This information had prompted Carl Emil to leap into his black Range Rover, with the astronomical figure still buzzing in his ears, and drive out to his parents’ large and magnificent property, a manor farm outside Roskilde, to fetch the icon.

  The house had stood unoccupied for almost half a year since their father had vanished in the days following their mother’s suicide. Most people guessed that after a lifelong marriage Walther Sachs-Smith had elected to follow his wife into death, but his body had yet to be found, so the manor by the fjord felt almost like an unvisited museum.

  “What do we do?” Carl Emil burst out, immediately falling silent and staring feebly at his attorney, the man’s bald pate, the expensive suit, the lip salve on the desk in front of him.

  That evening at Prindsen, Miklos Wedersøe had responded to Carl Emil’s confidence by telling him about his own upbringing as an only child. His mother was Russian, his father a Dane passing through the country when Communism was at its height. Miklos retained no recollection of his father at all, the man having abandoned his mother even before Miklos was two years old, leaving nothing behind but a photograph and his surname, which always sounded so out of place during roll call at school. His mother died when he was only fourteen, and after her death he decided to continue his education at a boarding school in Denmark.

  Miklos’s decision had very much been prompted by the thought of his father; Carl Emil understood that. But at the same time it was a decision made not with the purpose of finding him; more to demonstrate that he was able to look after himself and get by without his father’s help. Carl Emil admired him for that. And he felt compelled to say that Miklos Wedersøe had turned out rather well, with his own established law firm and seats on the boards of a number of very good companies.

  Right now, however, Carl Emil had difficulty comprehending how the attorney could remain so calm. In lieu of a fee, they had agreed that Miklos Wedersøe would receive a commission of 20 percent of the sale, since it was he who had incurred the rather considerable risk involved in alerting his American contact.

  Wedersøe produced a plastic folder and nudged it across the desk for Carl Emil’s perusal. On top was an illustration of the Angel of Death.

  Carl Emil recognized it immediately, the angel with the lily in her hand, her great wings behind her. And though it was little more than a sketch, the colors were nevertheless bright and clear: silver, pale blue, and a deeper, darker navy. It was an exquisite representation of the icon his father had kept on display on the wall of his office.

  “It says here that the archangel Gabriel is considered to be the Angel of Death. He is linked with magic and works by way of the human subconscious,” Wedersøe explained. “This is from that German art historian who’s been trying to track the icon down for quite some time.”

  He placed his hand on the folder and explained how the documents had turned up while he had been going through some older files in Carl Emil’s father’s archive.

  “It was filed together with the correspondence they seem to have kept over the years.”

  He opened the file and removed the documents.

  “Take a look at the dimensions noted here in the margin,” Wedersøe instructed.

  Carl Emil stared but failed to fathom what the attorney was getting at.

  “How big was the icon your father kept on the wall?” Wedersøe asked.

  “Certainly not sixty by eighty centimeters,” said Carl Emil. “It was smaller, quite a bit smaller.”

  Miklos Wedersøe nodded. “But those are the dimensions of the real icon. Which makes more sense given the size of the basilica, if, as we believe, it took pride of place in the side aisle.”

  Carl Emil slumped back in the chair and folded his hands behind his neck, ruffling his hair at the nape. For a moment he closed his eyes and tried to fight the desperation that had engulfed him.

  “You mean that what my grandfather found back then was a smaller copy?”

  Miklos Wedersøe shook his head. “I think your father had a copy made of the real icon.”

  Carl Emil’s eyes snapped open. He leaned forward attentively.

  “This was attached to a receipt from an acknowledged glass artist. Unfortunately he’s no longer alive, but the receipt is from 1986 and I’m convinced that was when your father had his copy produced.”

  Carl Emil straightened up. “So what you’re saying is that what’s missing from my father’s office is just a reproduction?”

  “Indeed,” Wedersøe confirmed. “That would be my assessment. However, since the copy is gone it would appear that someone is trying to track down the real one. The question, of course, is who will find the original first.”

  All of a sudden Carl Emil co
uld no longer think straight. The fact that they had no idea who was behind the theft made him feel extremely vulnerable.

  “Who has had access to your parents’ home?” Wedersøe asked.

  “No one.”

  Carl Emil shook his head. As far as he knew, no one.

  “The alarm’s switched on and only my sister and I can get in. We’ve changed the code, not knowing who my parents might have shared the old one with. They had a housekeeper and a cleaner who came in several times a week.”

  “Does that mean your father wouldn’t be able to get into his own house if he happened to turn up again?” Wedersøe went on.

  Carl Emil sighed and sank back again.

  “He’s not coming back. It’s been too long now. I don’t even think of it as a possibility anymore,” he replied, feeling an immense sadness come over him. “We had the choice of either removing everything of value from the place, which would be most of the contents, and in any case we’re not allowed, not before the estate has been divided. Or else we could safeguard the house with a new alarm code and a CCTV camera that registers every time the alarm is deactivated.”

  Wedersøe nodded. “Have you spoken to your sister?”

  “She’s on her way,” Carl Emil said, nodding. He felt his chest tightening already.

  3

  I can’t go anywhere looking like this,” Jonas grumbled when they got home from the dentist.

  Louise smoothed a hand across his cheek.

  Train tracks. She wasn’t surprised that a twelve-year-old boy wouldn’t think braces were cool. It had been ten days since they had fitted his lower teeth with a permanent retainer, and now he had this to contend with, too. A mouthful of metal.

  “You’ll get used to it, I promise,” she said, trying to be comforting. She had the good sense to stop herself before uttering any more clichés. It wouldn’t do the boy any good to be told he would appreciate it in the long run. “For now, it’s only Camilla and Markus who are going to see you. They went to get some ice cream at Paradis, they’ll be here in a minute.”

  “I don’t want ice cream, and I don’t want them coming here to stare at me.”

  At that moment, they were interrupted by a flurry of canine paws bounding across the living room floor, and a second later Dina came hurtling out into the hall, tail whirring like the rotor blade of a helicopter. The yellow Labrador was so overjoyed that they were home, she hardly knew what to do with herself. Although the puppy was deaf in both ears she could always sense when someone was there. Now she leaped about, jumping up at Louise’s legs, until Jonas, beaming, sat down on the floor to play with her, baring the full array of armor in his mouth.

  Louise’s foster son would soon be thirteen and hardly a year had passed since she had become his closest kin under the most tragic of circumstances. Jonas had no one else. No family, no distant relatives. His mother had died of a blood disease when he was only four, but when Louise first met him it was clear to her that he had adjusted to the loss and was living a full and happy life together with his father. Then, only a few years later at the age of eleven, his world fell apart when his father was gunned down and killed in front of his eyes.

  To Louise’s great surprise, when the authorities were looking for a suitable foster family, it had been Jonas himself who had asked if he could come and live with her. They had met while she had been working on a case involving the church where his father had been a priest, so they hadn’t known each other that well at the time. And yet they had made a bond, and in the time after the tragedy it was Louise to whom Jonas attached himself, still hospitalized and in therapy to help him cope with the trauma. Furthermore, he was in the same class at school as Camilla’s son Markus, so while the most obvious step might have been to approach the families of his school friends, Louise had nonetheless been his first choice.

  To begin with, Louise had seen it as a purely temporary solution, having been unable to find it within her to reject the boy. She had always made a point of keeping her independence and appreciated being in full control of her time. But suddenly all that had changed.

  She knew how much happier she felt when Jonas was there. His new family comprised Louise, Melvin—their elderly neighbor downstairs—and Dina, the yellow Labrador pup Louise’s ex-boyfriend Mik, much against her will, had lent the boy for as long as he wanted.

  Now Jonas spoke about his past with diminishing frequency. Whereas to begin with they had talked a lot about the things he could remember, the good things from his early childhood, he seemed now to have settled into his new life. At least that was what Louise had thought until quite recently. Jonas, the happy, adorable boy who had seemed so grateful to be living with her, had suddenly become surly and introverted. Louise understood him only too well. So much had happened during the past year, and apart from losing his father he had also lost a good friend from school in a tragic accident that autumn. It was no wonder he would have some kind of emotional reaction at some point, Louise told herself.

  But she was unused to him withdrawing, unused to his sudden irritability, the sullen behavior. Perhaps it was time for a follow-up session with Jakobsen, she thought, the therapist the Homicide Department used when necessary.

  She went out into the kitchen. Her arms were aching after the day’s training exercise, though given their infrequency it was only to be expected. She had been attached to the negotiation unit since 2006, and Willumsen, her team leader in Homicide, still seethed over the fact that their training took place during his hours, despite it having been his idea in the first place that she apply to go on the special training program after two FBI officers had been drafted in as instructors. The unit numbered thirteen in all, and although it had no direct bearing on her work in the Homicide Department, it was something she continually carried with her in her mind, not least because she never knew when they would be called out next, and she made sure to have her negotiation phone with her at all times. While she had been under no obligation and could easily have passed the opportunity on to one of the others on the team, she nevertheless had the good sense to realize that it would be beneficial to her to make herself available when Thiesen called, especially if she wanted to be involved in potentially rewarding negotiating jobs.

  She needed to start running again, she told herself. It was a grind to drag herself out in the winter, but she could make a habit of taking Dina with her, even though Jonas against all expectations had been good at taking her for walks.

  Ice cream, soup, and yogurt the first couple of days, the dentist had instructed, preparing Jonas for the fact that to begin with it could hurt a bit and his cheeks would be sore from chafing the edges of the metal braces. They had been given a tube of wax to rub on the braces so they wouldn’t feel as abrasive against the tender skin inside his mouth.

  Louise set the tube down on the kitchen table before putting the kettle on so the coffee would be ready when Camilla and Markus arrived with the ice cream.

  Immediately the entry phone buzzed.

  “Get that, will you?” she called out. But when there was no reply, she went out into the hall herself.

  The door was wide open. Both boy and dog were gone, and the leash that hung on the wall wasn’t there, either.

  The entry phone buzzed again, and she pressed the button to let Camilla and Markus in.

  “You didn’t see Jonas on the stair by any chance?” Louise asked when they eventually appeared on the fourth floor.

  They shook their heads.

  “I wonder where he’s gone,” she said, mostly to Markus. “He can’t be far. You make yourself at home in his room until he gets back, Markus. The TV’s on, I think.”

  MTV around the clock, almost. Not loud, just all the time.

  Louise went back into the kitchen. She picked up the cozy for the coffeepot and asked Camilla to grab some bowls for the ice cream, then they took everything into the living room.

  “I met with Nymand today,” Camilla said once they sat down.

 
“Really,” Louise replied, increasingly annoyed at Jonas for disappearing like that. Granted, he would soon be a teenager with all the self-centeredness that entailed, but he couldn’t swan off without a word just because he’d gotten braces on his teeth. “How did it go?”

  “It went fine. Thanks for all your help.”

  Camilla had known the chief superintendent for a number of years, from the time she worked as a journalist on the Roskilde Dagblad, but had felt the connection to be too flimsy for what she wanted to discuss with him now. Her inquiry needed more weight behind it if he was going to take it seriously. Which was why she had asked Louise to call him.

  “He probably thinks I’ve gone crazy, but I’m sure it meant something, you putting a good word in.”

  “Can’t blame him if he does. Maybe you have,” Louise replied with a smile.

  “Perhaps,” Camilla acknowledged, picking up her mug. “Not in this case, though. I really do think Inger Sachs-Smith was murdered and that someone is very close to getting away with it.”

  Louise shook her head. “How can you be so sure?” she asked, though she was already aware that during her two-month sabbatical, Camilla had run into Walther Sachs-Smith, supposedly vanished without a trace, at a beach house in Hawaii that she and Markus had borrowed. But she still failed to understand how her friend could be so convinced by the elderly man’s claim that his wife’s death had not been suicide, or indeed why she seemingly harbored no suspicions that he himself could have been involved.