by Sara Blaedel
Carl Emil rolled forward a few meters, his heart pounding in his chest, and felt the sweat emerge on his brow. He pulled up alongside the parked cars at the curb, jumping out and forcing a smile as he called to his niece. “Where’s my little dancer, then? Have you had a nice time?”
“Calle!” she exclaimed with obvious delight, immediately running up to him. “I was really good today and I’ve got new shoes.”
He opened the door on the passenger side and helped her up into the tall vehicle, taking her bag and tossing it onto the backseat.
“Marybeth never said you’d be picking me up today. Can we go to your place for a bit before we go home?”
How easy children were, he thought. She looked up at him, full of trust and bubbling with excitement as they drove off.
“Of course we can,” he replied, running his hand over her hair. “Your mom called from the airport. She was very sorry she couldn’t tell you herself, but she had to go to Hong Kong for some meetings. I said it was okay, so she gave Marybeth some time off.”
“That’s so typical of her,” Isabella said precociously, shaking her head exaggeratedly as if she were used to having to deal with her mother and her work.
“She sends you all her love and told me to give you a big kiss,” said Carl Emil with a smile.
“Does it mean I’m staying with you until she gets back?”
“Yes, it does. And do you know what? We’re going have a great time as well!”
“Yippee!” she burst out gleefully. “But what about school? I don’t have my school things with me.”
All of a sudden there was concern in her voice. Carl Emil reached across and tousled her hair.
“We’ll just have to play hooky, then, won’t we?” he replied, feeling the adrenaline pumping through his veins. He needed to calm down and act normally. “What are you hungry for? Pizza or Mexican?”
“Pizza! With shrimp and ham!”
“Same as usual, then,” he said, feeling his cell phone thrum in his inside pocket. He had muted it and hoped she wouldn’t hear it vibrating.
“Yes, and you’ll have pepperoni and extra onions like you always do, I suppose?” she rejoined, and instantly he felt more relaxed.
Arriving home, he glanced nervously around the underground parking facility before picking up the pizzas and her bag from the backseat. Crossing to the elevator she took his arm and he swung her in the air, a game they had played ever since she was little. Three swings one way, then all the way around.
“Ow, ow,” said Carl Emil, sounding like she was breaking his arm. And they laughed, just like always.
He let her press the button, but on the way up he froze. Suddenly he felt like he could no longer breathe, the muscles in his throat relaxing only when he realized there was nothing waiting for him on the doormat.
The phone in his pocket thrummed again as he closed the door behind them. He was reasonably sure it was his sister.
21
She’s gone!” Rebekka yelled into his ear once he had collected himself and answered her call.
The pizzas were on the table steaming up their boxes, and Isabella had set out the plates and glasses.
“Who is?” he asked as calmly as he could, closing the door of the living room behind him.
“Isabella! She wasn’t there when Marybeth came to pick her up from dancing school.”
“Maybe she just went home with one of the others?” he asked, sitting down by the big window and looking out over the harbor.
His sister’s voice was strident and dry, brittle almost, he thought, as if it might crack at any moment. Her words were breathless bursts.
“I’ve been waiting for her to call, but there hasn’t been a word. I’ve tried calling the dancing school to hear if anyone’s seen her. I thought maybe she lost track of time if some of the professional dancers were rehearsing. But there’s no one there to pick up the phone and the office is closed.”
“What about her dancing teacher, have you tried calling her?”
Now her voice did crack. “I don’t even know her name,” Rebekka almost whispered back. “I’m never there, it’s Marybeth who goes with her.”
There was a lull during which his sister did not cry but was merely silent.
“I’ll come over,” Carl Emil said. “You get over to the dancing school and see if she’s there. Maybe she just forgot the time like you said.”
The envelope was ready, and had been since the afternoon. It was on the shelf in his wardrobe.
“I’m scared,” his sister breathed. “What am I going to say to the police?”
“I’ll leave right away,” he said. “We’ll find her, I promise.”
He went into the kitchen and sliced the shrimp-and-ham pizza into six equal pieces, placing two on a plate and filling a glass with cola.
“Listen, sweetheart, I’m afraid I’ve got to pop out for a couple of hours,” he said, noting immediately the disappointment in the girl’s face. He knew she didn’t like to be alone when it was dark outside, and sure enough her fingers had already found their way to the ruby heart she had been given by her grandmother when she was small. Her little comforter, his mother had called it, promising her grandchild that if only she clasped the heart tightly she could be sure her grandmother would be with her in her thoughts.
What am I doing? Carl Emil wondered, anguished by the way the child found solace in the heart that hung from its little chain around her neck.
He put the food down on the table in front of her and smiled. “Come and see what I’ve bought you,” he said, leading her into the room he had made up for her and tipping the contents of the carrier bag out onto the bed.
The day before, he had disconnected his cable TV, making sure she wouldn’t zap into a news program when searching for the kids’ channels. He had no doubt her picture would soon be everywhere once it became known that one of the country’s wealthiest families had fallen prey to a kidnapping.
He had unplugged and removed his landline, too, in case she missed her mother all of a sudden and wanted to call her. Not that he thought she knew the number by heart, but he felt it best to be on the safe side.
Naturally he had also considered how to persuade his sister to let the matter drop once he had found the icon and Isabella had been returned. However, it was not an issue that kept him awake. She could be difficult, certainly, but she was by no means stupid. Rebekka would never put herself in any situation that involved opening the curtains on what went on in the family away from the public glare. Faced with a choice, she would prefer by far to keep her mouth shut.
Carl Emil was convinced she would not pursue things any further after he was gone and the girl was back home where she belonged. He would even assist her in constructing a suitable explanation to prevent it getting out that her brother had deceived her because she was pigheaded enough to think she could alienate her entire family and scrape its fortune into her own coffers.
“Dirty Dancing!” Isabella exclaimed, holding up the box for him to see. She could hardly contain herself, her eyes already darting among the other movies he had brought her; she’d already forgotten all about her ruby heart.
Carl Emil got up off the bed and after inserting the disk in the drive he showed her where to press PLAY and PAUSE.
“It’s the same as the one I’ve got at home in my room, silly,” she said with a laugh. “You gave it to me yourself for my birthday!”
“That’s right; I forgot,” he said and shook his head. His mind was elsewhere. He needed to be off so he could get there before his sister got back from the dancing school.
“There’s more pizza in the kitchen. I’ve cut it into slices.”
He went into his own room to get his jacket and the envelope. He had not touched his own pizza. He felt the adrenaline rushing through his body, and the knot in his stomach had long since taken away any appetite he might have had before. His thoughts were on one thing only, which was to make the plan work. Someone wanted him dead t
he day after tomorrow, and now Rebekka was going to help him get his hands on the Angel so he could get away.
He went back in to Isabella’s room and blew her a kiss. But the opening credits had started and she was already well on her way into Patrick Swayze land.
* * *
As he drove past his sister’s house he saw that the only lights were in the kitchen and the part of the basement where the au pair lived. The rest of the big house was dark.
Rain lashed through the air. He had not even thought of taking an umbrella. The only thing on his mind had been to get going. He had decided to park the car a bit farther down the road and would have to think up an explanation for why he was so wet. If she even asked.
He hugged the neighboring property’s meter-high hedge as he went, avoiding the dim pools of light that fell from the streetlamps and caused the rain to shimmer against the asphalt.
He had not thought of what he might do if his sister came home before he got there. He would just have to deal with it. Improvise.
He held the envelope under his jacket. If he left it on the porch up against the front door it would not get wet, he thought, reaching the driveway and noting that Rebekka’s Mini Cooper had yet to return. The big Audi was there, but if she wasn’t at work she always used the Mini.
He stood for a moment and stared toward the light. Seeing no movement, he crept forward, following the outer wall of the house to the front door where he left the envelope and turned away, neither glancing around nor straightening up.
All he could think about now was getting away.
He reached the Range Rover before seeing the turn signal flash. She came toward him from the direction of the town, signaling briefly as she turned off Frederiksborgvej.
Two minutes, he said to himself. It had been that close.
He waited a few minutes before turning the ignition and drawing forward.
* * *
The front door was wide open when he drove up to the house and pulled in. The light was on in the hall, and when he stepped inside his sister was sitting on the staircase that wound its way up to the first floor.
The envelope was on the floor at her feet and she was cradling a little Nokia in her hands. Nothing fancy, just a regular, basic phone.
He had thought through her possible reactions right from the start when he had begun to plan the operation, and he knew that everything depended on how he dealt with her now. And yet when he saw her sitting there with such panic in her eyes, all his preparations fell by the wayside and he forgot completely what he was going to say.
Rebekka held the phone in her hands as if it were an object she had never seen before, and he watched silently as she pressed a couple of keys to see if it was switched on.
The display lit up and she sat there quietly, staring at the tiny screen as she read the message that had appeared. After a moment the phone dropped from her hands.
“They’ve taken her,” she said in a small, strangled voice, without looking up. “They’ve taken my daughter.”
Carl Emil stepped forward and sat down beside her on the stair.
“I can’t call the police,” she said flatly.
She began to cry, leaning her head on his shoulder and weeping.
“But you must,” said Carl Emil. “We’ll call them right away.”
22
When the phone began to thrum on Louise’s bedside table, she was miles away in sleep. Jonas was going in late, so she had set the alarm for eight. It was now seven thirty.
“Morning,” said Thiesen when she answered.
She sat up immediately. When the head of the negotiation unit phoned at this hour it could only mean they had an incident.
“Morning,” she replied, flustered.
“Rick, we’ve got an abduction situation and I want you and Palle,” Thiesen explained as she swung her legs out of bed. “An eight-year-old girl. Vanished from her dancing school yesterday evening. The mother received demands a couple of hours later. The chief super in Roskilde just got in touch. We’re getting down there on the double so we can be set up and ready the next time there’s word.”
Louise had not negotiated in a kidnapping case before. Usually they were called out to suicide threats, people who had to be talked down from parapets and bridges, or perpetrators who had holed up somewhere and were refusing to come out. Sometimes they dealt with psychiatric cases trying to pull off a suicide by cop—forcing a situation to the point where the police had no option but to open fire. Only once before had she been involved in a hostage situation, a failed bank robbery in Amager where the robber had withheld three of the staff.
What she liked about the negotiation unit was how they intervened between perpetrator and police. When she worked with Thiesen she was no longer an investigator; she became instead a mediator trying to solve a conflict.
Jonas, she suddenly thought. She had been intending to get him off to school with a minimum of fuss and had arranged for Melvin to be there when lessons ended so they could gain some idea of when he was coming home.
Louise had tried talking to him several times now, but all he did was shut her out and stare at the ground. She had tried again the night before, and eventually he had gotten so angry with her he had yelled in her face and told her that she wasn’t his mother. Louise conceded that he was right but also reminded him that coming to live with her had been his choice. Before she had time to apologize he had gone off into his room and slammed the door behind him.
At a loss, she had gone downstairs to see Melvin and suggested they both be more attentive and try a bit harder to be there for him.
“Is it a bad time?” Thiesen asked in response to her sudden silence.
“No, not at all,” she replied swiftly.
“The address is in Roskilde, Frederiksborgvej. I’m on my way to the vehicle, so I can pick you up if you want,” he offered, explaining that the girl’s mother was the daughter of Walther Sachs-Smith. “Given the size of the family’s fortune we should probably be prepared for demands to rise,” he concluded.
The wooden flooring felt cold under Louise’s feet, and the sight of her long, tangled hair in the mirror reminded her she had an appointment with the hairdresser. She would have to cancel.
“You mean it’s his grandchild?” she burst out in surprise. “When did this happen?”
“The girl vanished after her dancing lesson. Someone snatched her before the au pair got there,” Thiesen repeated, adding that Nymand and his people were in charge of the investigation.
“Are they asking for a ransom?” Louise asked, sensing adrenaline displace her fatigue.
“We’re not sure yet,” Thiesen admitted. “The contact so far has only been brief. When the mother got home after looking for the girl at the dancing school she found an envelope at the front door with a cell phone in it. The kidnappers sent her a message on it.”
“What did it say?”
“It said The Angel of Death for your daughter.”
* * *
Louise left a note for Jonas along with some money so he could buy his own lunch in the school cafeteria. She would call Melvin later on. Their downstairs neighbor was no early bird, and she decided to give him time to get up first.
She threw some clean clothes into a weekend bag along with her toothbrush, some cookies, and what fruit was left in the bowl, then closed the door behind her and went down to wait for Thiesen.
She had no doubt the story would be given maximum attention by both Police Headquarters and the media. Not that it worried her much. What did concern her, however, was that the kidnapping seemed to confirm what Camilla had told them. If they were dealing with the same people who had killed Inger Sachs-Smith, then the little girl’s life was in imminent danger. Louise felt sure that whoever was responsible was convinced the family was still in possession of the priceless icon.
“Do you want your bag in the back?” Thiesen asked as the big Mercedes van pulled up in front of her and he jumped out to give her a we
lcoming hug.
Louise shook her head and climbed into the front, dumping her bag at her feet. At first she had been uncomfortable with the way her colleagues in the negotiation unit always hugged when they met up on a job. After a while, she understood it had to do with the intimacy and trust that always existed among them. They worked so closely together, both physically and mentally, that it gradually occurred to her how natural a convention it was.
“Palle’s on his way,” Thiesen went on. “And I’ve called Ole, but he’s in Aarhus and can’t get off the job he’s doing over there, so I’ve put him on standby in case we need him.”
The unit was drawn together from colleagues in various police districts across the country. Most were investigators or team leaders, and all had their own particular strengths. Palle Krogh, for instance, could maintain a clear overview of even the most complex situations. The unit’s vehicle was fitted out with a small table in the back, the seats could be turned around, and there was even room for a bulletin board across most of the window space on the vehicle’s left-hand side. The last time Louise had worked with Palle they had sat in the back negotiating with a robber who refused to come out of a house in Copenhagen’s well-to-do Frederiksberg district.
“The Special Intervention Unit has been alerted, and they’re ready to go in as soon as we know where the girl is,” Thiesen continued. “Do you want to be number one?”
Louise nodded. She had been hoping to be the one who would guide the girl’s mother through her contact with the kidnappers.
“Do you know much about the Sachs-Smiths?” he asked.
“Not really,” she replied, going on to tell him about Camilla’s encounter with Walther Sachs-Smith.
“So someone was already looking for the icon six months ago,” she concluded, explaining that their colleagues in Roskilde had just reopened the case and were now investigating the death as a murder.
“How the other half live.” Thiesen nodded pensively. “Do we know if Camilla Lind is still in touch with Sachs-Smith?”
