The Stolen Angel

by Sara Blaedel

  The detective jotted down some notes. Carl Emil had yet to comprehend how what had started out as a routine meeting to inform them of a new development now seemed to have taken a turn toward interrogation.

  He straightened his shirt, which now clung to his back.

  Their mother had been devoted to Isabella, her only grandchild, and when Rebekka’s ex-husband moved out of their big house on Frederiksborgvej, their mother had started picking up the girl from school a couple of times a week. It had surprised him somewhat, the mood in the family at that time being best described as icy after their father’s exit from Termo-Lux, but their mother had apparently decided her grandchild should be shielded from the family strife.

  Their father had disappeared, leaving no letter. Nor had he drawn his business matters to any kind of close. He had said nothing in the days leading up to his disappearance that had indicated what might be about to happen. Everything had been focused on their mother’s funeral. Then all of a sudden he was gone, and after they started to get worried Rebekka discovered that his cell phone and wallet were still on the desk in his office.

  They had been placed neatly next to each other, a fact she had taken as a sign that his actions had been deliberate. No one knew exactly when he had vanished. Following the takeover they no longer maintained any kind of day-to-day contact. It was mainly his sister who believed it to be a positive signal to the nearly one thousand employees of the company that the new leadership was making a clean break and reshaping company values for a new day and age.

  She was probably right in assessing that it would have been difficult for their father to remold what he had built up by his own hand in very different times.

  Carl Emil missed his father, yet he could not say he regretted going behind his back. The only thing he regretted was having trusted his sister.

  “We need to speak to people who were close to your parents,” the detective went on, jolting Carl Emil back to the reality of the chief superintendent’s office.

  He sat for a moment and stared blankly at her without answering, feeling the need to bring his emotions under control.

  “Our father did not kill our mother,” he stated with studied composure. “They loved each other, they spent their whole lives together. He has an alibi, he was at a board meeting on Fyn. As everyone else who was there will corroborate, if you bother to check. This just isn’t good enough. Find another line of inquiry!”

  “That may be so,” said Nymand from his place over by the window. “But in principle he could have administered the injection before he left. In most murder cases we find the victim and perpetrator to be closely related. Your mother was certainly not killed in some heated exchange. All indications are that whoever did this sought to carefully camouflage his actions.”

  “We need a motive,” the woman detective added, listing some examples: “Jealousy, revenge, lust, profit…”

  “Who might your mother have let into the house?” Nymand cut in.

  “It could have been anyone,” Rebekka replied, now seated again. “Normally it was the housekeeper who went to the door. If she was off, my mother would go.”

  “And the housekeeper didn’t arrive for work until after your mother was dead,” the detective continued. “The report states it was she who called the ambulance after finding your mother in the bedroom.”

  Carl Emil nodded. The day their mother died she had been alone on the property. Their father had driven off to Fyn early in the morning for the board meeting.

  “Whoever killed her, it wasn’t anyone she knew,” said Rebekka. “She was very well liked by everyone.”

  She paused for a second before skewering Nymand with a glare.

  “But then you wouldn’t know, because you didn’t know her.”

  The chief superintendent shifted uneasily in his chair.

  “I did know your mother, as it happens,” he said unassumingly. “She was a very great asset to the community.”

  Carl Emil managed to control himself despite the rage he immediately felt rise inside him. An asset to the community! His parents had generously donated to the chamber of commerce every time they were out looking for sponsors for their summer events on the square or their Christmas lights in the high street. The taxes they paid kept half of Roskilde running. Damn right his parents were an asset. But apparently not so much that they couldn’t be dragged through the mud the minute they were no longer there to protest.

  He took a deep breath and tried to dismiss his anger.

  “What do you need from us?” he asked, restlessly getting to his feet and going over to the window.

  “A list of names, whoever was close to your parents. And we need access to the house,” Nymand replied.

  “In that case, I need to speak to my attorney first,” Carl Emil said abruptly, precipitating a nod from the chief superintendent.

  “Of course.”

  Carl Emil waited with impatience while the attorney’s phone rang, but didn’t have time to say anything when eventually it was answered.

  “Listen, you’ve caught me at a bad time. Let me call you back,” Wedersøe stated curtly.

  “No, you listen to me,” Carl Emil rejoined. “I’m at Roskilde Police Station. The police say they can prove our mother was murdered. They suspect our father.”

  He heard Wedersøe excuse himself to whoever he was with, then the sound of a door being closed.

  “What do you mean?” the attorney asked, now fully attentive.

  “They found a large amount of insulin in the tests they took when she died. Now they want to know all about our parents’ relationship, who their friends were, everything.”

  “Let them have all they need, nothing to worry about there,” Wedersøe said.

  “They’re asking for access to the house. What do I do, go with them or just give them the code for the alarm?”

  “Give them the code, save yourself the inconvenience,” Wedersøe replied. “I’m in conference the rest of the day, but don’t worry, I’ll make time to get in touch with Nymand myself. He needs to tell us what grounds he’s got for suspecting your father. Technically, at least, I’m still your father’s attorney.”

  Carl Emil stepped up to Nymand’s desk and wrote the six-digit code down on a sheet of paper before calling his parents’ estate manager and instructing him to furnish the police with a set of keys.

  He had just picked up his sweater from the back of the chair when Nymand stood up.

  “I must ask you both to accompany me next door. I need you to account for your movements on the morning of your mother’s death. And before you go we’ll need to take your fingerprints, too, I’m afraid. I do hope you understand,” he added, showing Carl Emil the way.

  “I gather you have access to insulin, is that right?”

  9

  Driving home from the police station, Rebekka talked nonstop. That morning, when Carl Emil had collected her outside Termo-Lux’s main entrance on his way to the police station, she had hardly bothered to look at him. It was obvious she was giving him the cold shoulder after their meeting in Wedersøe’s office, but now she was indignant, animated by the accusations the police had leveled against their father.

  “At least he’ll never know,” he offered. “He might never have recovered if he’d known they suspected him.”

  She turned to look at him and shook her head.

  “Is he the only one you can think about?” she burst out angrily. “What about how all this is going to fall back on me? How do you think people are going to react when it gets out? People may be sympathetic about a suicide in a family, but a murder accusation’s a different thing altogether. There’ll be gossip, and the papers are going to have a field day.”

  Speechless, Carl Emil took his foot off the accelerator, glanced quickly in the side mirror, and pulled the big Range Rover up on the other side of the cycle lane.

  “So what’s important here is how it all rubs off on you, is it?” he spat, barely able to contain his dis
gust. “Doesn’t it make just a tiny impression on you that the police actually suspect our father of having killed our mother?”

  “I won’t be treated like this,” his sister snarled back. “If the police want anything else you can deal with them. I’ve got a business to run.”

  Carl Emil stared out of the windshield without comment, staggered by what she’d said. He flicked the signal light and turned the car back onto Fredriksborgvej. No wonder Jeffrey had walked out on her. Their marriage had lasted barely four years before the Englishman had had enough and moved into an apartment on Kongens Nytorv in the center of the city.

  He hadn’t exactly enjoyed it himself, the bombardment of questions surrounding his comings and goings on the day their mother was found dead. And then there was the matter of the insulin. He could hardly deny he always carried some with him: He had diabetes. What’s more, he kept a stock at the house, too, so in principle his father could easily have made use of it. Throughout the interview he had tried as best he could to remain composed, but he couldn’t help becoming rattled at the accusations, and above all utterly confused.

  The only thing he could remember with any certainty from that day was that he had been lying in a young woman’s bed amid a near-suffocating aroma of roses when they called and told him his mother was dead. Fortunately he remembered where the woman lived and was able to furnish the police with not only her address but her name, too.

  He pulled up at a red light and recalled exact nuances of the physical well-being that had rippled through his body before he had answered the call on his cell, and then the sense of sheer desolation when he was informed of his mother’s suicide. It was as if his whole being had been gripped by an immense cold that left him paralyzed and helpless. It was there still, in the marrow of his bones.

  “Dad didn’t kill her,” he said without looking at his sister.

  “Insulin,” Rebekka hissed after a moment. “What’s your response to that?”

  He declined to answer and concentrated on his driving instead.

  “So the Angel of Death is just coincidence, is it?”

  Murder made out to look like suicide, the police had said. He had difficulty taking it in. Right now, Carl Emil was wholly incapable of fathoming the consequences of this new turn of events. He stared at the road ahead, unable to look at his sister but sensing her eyes glaring at him.

  “Grandfather and Dad could keep a secret. Why doesn’t it surprise me you’re the one to break it? Why couldn’t you just keep your mouth shut! It’s so typical of you! Enough is never enough, is it?”

  Behind her dark sunglasses and with the garish scarf around her neck she looked pale and fragile, but the anger in her voice made his blood run cold. He had to acknowledge he found it hard to grasp the events of the last few hours. The accusation against his father. The suspicion he himself was now under. It wasn’t until he was ushered into the detective’s office next door to Nymand’s own that it had occurred to him he was actually being interviewed in a murder investigation and that the whole family was now involved in the case.

  They drove on for a while in silence until she took a deep breath as if collecting herself to say something to him.

  “How many people have you let in on the secret of the Angel of Death?”

  He sighed and signaled left, waiting for a gap in the oncoming traffic before turning into the driveway of his sister’s mansion on the shores of Roskilde Fjord. The gravel crunched under the Range Rover’s chunky tires as he slowly pulled up next to her smart little Mini Cooper convertible. Her big Audi was still parked in her dedicated space in the company parking lot.

  “No one besides Miklos,” he replied with a shrug. “But I can’t guarantee the rumor didn’t get out while he was investigating the market.”

  “You big idiot,” she spat.

  He nodded, surveying the fjord. He had no way of knowing how many inquiries had been initiated. He had written two emails himself to auction houses inquiring as to their expertise regarding an artifact such as the icon, and both had replied that if it really did concern such a treasure they would have to decline to be of assistance and could only urge that it be returned to Istanbul, to the museum of the Hagia Sophia basilica.

  As he speculated, the door of the big white house opened and his eight-year-old niece came running toward the car in her pink Crocs. He jumped out and gave her a big hug before Rebekka intervened. He held the child tightly before yielding and planting a quick peck on each cheek.

  “Hi, my little princess!” he said. “How’s the dancing coming along?”

  “Fine,” she said, beaming proudly. “I’m going to be dancing first in the spring show, and I’ve sewn the dress myself. Do you want to come in and see?”

  Carl Emil shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t have time today. But next time I come I’d very much like to. Then you can show me your dance, too.”

  The girl nodded eagerly.

  Rebekka stepped between them and gave her daughter a kiss. Her arm was around her as they turned and started toward the front door. Carl Emil put his hand on his sister’s shoulder and held her back.

  “Bekka, for crying out loud. That icon’s not giving us any pleasure, is it? And it looks like we haven’t even seen the original, so we’re hardly going to miss it, either. Help us find it.”

  He heard the pleading in his voice and hated himself for it. But she had no right to decide on her own what was to become of their parents’ property.

  She shrugged him off and without looking at him replied:

  “The Angel of Death belongs to our family’s history. We’re not selling.”

  And with that she walked up the steps to the door, holding her daughter by the hand.

  10

  I’ll take fru Milling to Esbjerg for you,” Melvin offered when Louise came home to pick up the car after her meeting with Rønholt. She had explained to him rather hastily why she had to be leaving again in such a hurry.

  Jonas and their downstairs neighbor were sitting in the kitchen engrossed in one of their thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles. Happily, they had started doing them on a big wooden board they could pick up and move somewhere else if the need arose.

  NINE MAGNIFICENT LIGHTHOUSES OF BRITTANY said the lid they had leaned on its edge up against the wall. They had also sorted all the pieces according to color. Louise thought they obviously had too much time on their hands if such mind-numbing trivialities were all they could occupy themselves with, but they seemed to be enjoying it and that was the main thing. The schoolboy and the pensioner. The project had already been under way for a couple of days by the looks of it; Jonas was doing the edges while Melvin had the lighthouses and the sea spray.

  Dina was lying on the floor with her head resting on Jonas’s feet.

  “She’ll have to get a moving company to pack everything up and send it into storage,” said Louise. “She won’t be able to manage herself, I’m sure.”

  “Let me go with you, then,” Melvin repeated. “If everything’s going into storage, I’m sure there are some of her daughter’s things she’d like to bring home with her.”

  Louise nodded. It seemed reasonable. She had grabbed a few minutes on her own in the living room to skim through the case file. There was nothing in Jeanette’s emails or her phone’s call history to suggest contact with anyone at all in Spain before she left. The missing woman had not, so it seemed, contrived to take off with anyone local.

  Louise had gone through the reports, too. The Esbjerg police had spoken to Jeanette Milling’s co-workers and people she knew. None of them offered anything of interest—there was no suggestion of a Spanish lover, nor had she ever obviously been particularly depressed. No one who knew her had the slightest reason to believe she could have taken her own life.

  “It’d be such a shame if all her stuff got packed away without her mother having a chance to go through it first,” Melvin maintained. “I can go with her, let her see if there’s anything she’d like to put aside.” />
  Melvin Pehrsson had lost his wife some years previously. She had spent her last many years in a coma in a residential care home, and having her things around him while she was artificially being kept alive had clearly meant a lot to him.

  “But, Melvin,” Louise said with a smile. “You don’t even know the woman!”

  “There’ll be plenty of time for us to get to know each other on the train on the way over,” he rejoined.

  “Can I go?” Jonas chipped in.

  “The only place you’re going, young man, is school. And you can make sure you stay there, too, until the bell’s rung after the last lesson,” Louise snapped back, regretting her words immediately.

  They hadn’t had a chance to talk about it yet. She had been reluctant to bring the matter up over the phone, and seeing him having such a nice time with Melvin when she got home had relegated it to the back of her mind.

  The reaction came promptly. A shadow came over the boy, his eyes disappearing from view behind his floppy bangs as he lowered his head and looked down at the table in front of him.

  Melvin was just about to say something, but Louise shook her head at him discreetly and stood for a moment not knowing quite what to say next.

  She had no idea what was going on with him. Right now he was as sweet as ever, with not the slightest hint of the brooding defiance she had seen when Camilla and Markus had been there. A good thing it was the weekend; it would give him a chance to get used to the braces before school again on Monday, she thought to herself.

  “So my job’s turning into a family outing all of a sudden, is it?” she said, with a smile designed to get the mood back on track.

  Her original idea had been to drive Grete Milling over to her daughter’s flat so they could be there before the moving men got started. That would also give her the chance to see how Jeanette had been living, as well as how she had left the place before going off to Spain. Louise was convinced that if Jeanette had had any intention of not returning home again then something in the flat was bound to give her away.