The Stolen Angel

by Sara Blaedel

  But instead of replying to Wedersøe’s question, he responded with one of his own instead.

  “Do you want us to call witnesses before we search the vehicle?”

  “No,” Wedersøe replied with a shake of his head. “But save yourselves the effort. She’s not there.”

  He looked at the three officers who stood peering into the Mercedes.

  “We need the trunk opened,” one of them said.

  “If you’re interested in saving the girl’s life, you’ll have to let me speak to Nymand,” Wedersøe said. “I assume Roskilde is still in charge of the investigation.”

  Shifting the onus onto the police themselves was a deliberate move. Now it was up to them to make the right decision.

  The man stuck his hands in his pockets and looked nonplussed.

  “Are you going to hand over the key, or do we have to break the lock?” he said after a moment.

  Wedersøe had been expecting to negotiate his way out before they began to search the vehicle. Now he felt the sweat seep from his pores once more. There was nothing to see through the windows. The icon was in the trunk.

  “You’re going to be needing a good lawyer,” the local inspector or whatever he was mumbled as Wedersøe reluctantly handed him the key.

  “I think I’m quite capable of representing myself, don’t you?” he replied, wondering how the man could be so unaware of his practice in criminal law.

  The lights flashed twice as the officers pressed the remote key and stepped up to the rear of the vehicle.

  He watched as they opened the trunk. One of them leaned inside and lifted the quilt in which the icon was wrapped, only to step back and direct a shake of his head at his superior as he clunked the trunk shut and locked the vehicle after him again.

  Obviously they were so desperate to find the girl that they were oblivious to all else.

  “I wish to speak to Nymand or to the head of the negotiation unit,” Wedersøe declared, sensing his composure return to him. “The girl has only a few hours at most. If you want to help her, I think we should be getting a move on.”

  He saw how the man’s expression changed slightly, as if he were considering whether Wedersøe might be bluffing.

  “I can prove she’s still alive if you allow me to speak to whoever is in charge.”

  The other officers had closed in around them, but nobody spoke. Everyone stood still in anticipation.

  “Right,” said the man finally, turning toward one of the patrol cars and ordering the officer who still had a firm hold of Wedersøe’s arm to put him in the back.

  “No, you don’t.” Wedersøe reacted immediately. “I’m staying here.”

  He needed to be near the car. Near the icon.

  The policeman gave him a look of appraisal in return.

  “Just make the call,” Wedersøe repeated without moving.

  He watched the elderly man as he leaned back against the patrol car and took out his phone.

  Obviously he didn’t want the conversation broadcast over the police radio, Wedersøe realized with a rising feeling of having taken the upper hand. It was going to work. It had to.

  He was unable to hear what was said but noted that the man began to speak, and after a few seconds he stepped toward him with the phone still in his hand, clearly holding the line. With a nod he ordered the officers restraining him to release the handcuffs, before handing Wedersøe the phone.

  “Miklos Wedersøe speaking,” he began after Nymand had presented himself. “I’ve got the girl. Let me go and you get her back. Providing, of course, that you agree to follow my instructions.”

  “We don’t do deals,” Nymand replied icily into his ear, prompting Wedersøe to smirk. The fat plod thought he could bluff.

  “Oh, but you do,” he answered calmly. “You have no choice. I am your only hope, the only person who can lead you to the girl.”

  They would never let the girl die. Human life took absolute precedence. Especially a child’s, and especially an heiress to the Sachs-Smith fortune. Did they really think he was that stupid?

  The silence that ensued was so protracted he began nevertheless to fear that Nymand had hung up.

  “Tell me your demands,” the chief superintendent said eventually.

  “Once your colleague here is satisfied that the girl was alive this morning, you let me go. Two hours later, I call and tell you where to find her. But,” he quickly added, “if at any time I suspect I am being followed or in any other way tracked or held under surveillance, that message will not, and I repeat not, be forthcoming.”

  “And what if you don’t call us back?”

  “In that case I’d be fair game and you would know I had no leverage by which to force any negotiation once apprehended. But trust me. I’ll make the call.”

  He paused for effect before repeating the sentence that had been fixed in his mind all the way across the country.

  “Nymand,” he began, “it’s up to you whether Walther Sachs-Smith’s grandchild lives or dies. But time is of the essence.”

  He dipped his free hand into his trouser pocket and took out a small cassette tape, handing it to the policeman in charge along with the phone.

  “Now, if this gentleman would care to let go of me for a moment, I’ll get the camcorder out of the car.”

  The elderly inspector’s eyes were no longer as narrow after Nymand’s entry into the proceedings. He nodded for two officers to accompany the attorney to the Mercedes while conferring briefly with the Roskilde team over the phone.

  Wedersøe held his hand out for the key, then opened the car door, slowing his movements demonstratively to show he had no intention of making a run for it.

  There was no chance he could, so the gesture was mere theatrics.

  The camcorder was in the side pocket on the driver’s side. He picked it up and slammed the door shut, locking the car once more with the remote key.

  * * *

  They watched the tape several times through, glancing up at him each time after the girl had spoken. His method had been the classic one, the girl holding the day’s newspaper up in front of her so they could see the footage had been shot that same morning.

  The policeman in charge had called Nymand again, his face twisted with displeasure. The girl had clearly been under duress and was apparently being held in a space so confined, no adult would possibly be able to sit upright in it.

  Of course, it helped that she had whimpered and cried for her mother.

  It was a very good recording indeed.

  He noted the vicious look sent to him by the young officer who had earlier slammed him against the hood of the car, yet his condemnation didn’t matter. Should he be judged by a simple farm boy? The idea was laughable.

  “Difficult decisions take time,” said the inspector, trotting out the well-worn cliché of any negotiation. “As I’m sure you understand.”

  Bullshit, Wedersøe thought to himself, amused that this bumpkin should underestimate him so.

  He shook his head. “Now you let me go. If not, she dies,” he reiterated, without waiting for the man to finish what he was saying. “You’ve got everything to win. She doesn’t have long.”

  His eyes scanned the empty highway while he waited for the police to confer. He knew the local man and Nymand were hooked up to a decision-making unit invested with responsibility for the operation. The go-ahead had to come from there before he could be allowed to go free.

  A pair of peasants like them would be sorely unable to make decisions of life and death, he thought, nodding in acknowledgment when it seemed the man in charge had finally been authorized to proceed.

  “Two hours,” Wedersøe repeated, confident no one had installed a tracking device in the car. For one thing, they wouldn’t have had time even to requisition the necessary equipment before being deployed to the highway. Nevertheless, he impressed the point upon them just to make sure. “Don’t try and track me. We need to be quite clear about this.”

 
The inspector said nothing, but nodded. Old-school and obstinate. He had written something down on a notepad he had taken from his inside pocket.

  “Call this number when you’re ready to tell us where Isabella Sachs-Smith is being held,” he said, instructing his men to move a couple of the patrol cars and allow him through.

  “I want all traffic held back for five minutes after I’ve gone. And remember, the slightest suspicion I’m being followed or tracked and you lose your chance to find the girl,” Wedersøe said again and stepped toward the Mercedes, relishing the feeling of once more having the upper hand.

  44

  It was pouring rain. All visitors to Roskilde Cathedral had been bundled outside and the head of the Special Intervention Unit already had his team in place. Clusters of inquisitive onlookers stood huddled beneath umbrellas as Nymand and his people cordoned off the church and went in.

  The call had come exactly two hours after the police in South Jutland had been forced to let Miklos Wedersøe go.

  “You’ll find her in the cathedral,” had been his brief message, shortly afterward traced to Hamburg. A search had now been instigated via Interpol, and police were on the lookout throughout Germany.

  Four officers had been deployed to scour the church interior but they were still waiting for the dog handler to arrive from outlying Lejre with his German shepherd. An ambulance was parked at the entrance, and three constables manned the cordon.

  Louise was on her way home after her visit to Gerd and Mona in Svogerslev when Thiesen rang and told her they had received word from Wedersøe. It had been Thiesen himself as head of the negotiation unit who had advised Nymand to let the attorney go: It was their only chance of finding the girl alive.

  “Rather we lose him than her,” he had said when Louise asked if he was sure they were doing the right thing.

  “What if she’s already dead?”

  “We’d still like to find her, wouldn’t we?” he replied, and Louise had to acknowledge he was right. Without question, they would.

  “Okay, we’re going into the crypts,” Nymand commanded, striding from Christian I’s chapel.

  Louise had brought the chief superintendent up to date as to Wedersøe’s seat on the parish council and that he might be expected to be rather familiar with the church building and all its nooks and hiding places. She herself had been there only once, on a school trip, so long ago now that all she remembered was the vast interior and the long aisle leading to the altar.

  A constable had been dispatched to the house on Frederiksborgvej, charged with bringing back Isabella’s pink nightdress. The dog handler had arrived, Louise noticed, and before long the dog had the scent of the garment and sat whining with obvious impatience. The verger had been instructed to open all rooms normally closed to the public, and once the search began he scuttled anxiously along on the heels of the police with worry etched all over his face.

  In a corner over by the Trolle family’s chapel, the iron gate stood open and Louise could hear the dog handler already at work somewhere down the steps. The verger buried his hands nervously in his pockets as he talked about how there were some two thousand people buried in the cathedral.

  “Seven hundred and five of them are in the floor,” he said with a nod at the great stone slabs that lay bricked into the floor at intervals.

  Louise shuddered and instinctively stepped aside, away from the graves most immediately underfoot.

  “It wasn’t that unusual when the church was still Catholic,” he went on, though she wasn’t really listening. Voices were ringing from the crypts, and a moment later the dog emerged, only to sit down facing the steps to wait for its owner, who then came into view shaking his head and instructing the verger to lock the gate again; there was nothing there.

  As the dog handler moved on to the southern tower’s chapel, Louise stepped up toward the altar. Beneath the chancel in whose column Harald Bluetooth was said to be interred, she crouched down and peered into the crypt below. The aged caskets were covered in thick layers of dust, and several were raised above the floor on low stone platforms.

  She closed her eyes and listened. The four officers had gone upstairs and were now investigating the museum area normally only accessible during the daily guided tours.

  The crypt was silent. She stood up and went on to the next grate, the room inside once more housing a number of caskets and at the rear a chandelier yet to be unpacked.

  She called out, “Isabella! Isabella!”

  The dog approached busily. They were in Frederik V’s chapel now. Louise jumped when the verger suddenly spoke behind her.

  “The royal children’s crypt,” he said, nodding downward. “The young who died too soon, they’re all down there.”

  Louise straightened up and followed him as he stepped toward the gate and unlocked the crypt.

  “It’s bigger than the others,” he said, about to go down the steps.

  “Stay here,” Louise ordered him at once, stopping him with a hand against his shoulder. The dust lay thick on the small, black coffins. Matted by time, they stood side by side. “The dog first.”

  The verger stepped back apologetically.

  “Normally, admittance is for church staff only,” he said, plunging his hands into his pockets again.

  The officers came down the stairs from above.

  “She’s not in the tower, either,” one of them said, pausing to watch as the dog handler went down into the crypt. It was the last place they still had to look.

  Louise had withdrawn slightly and leaned up against the rough brick wall, hoping with all her heart they would find the girl before it was too late.

  There was nowhere left to look. The verger had shown them every room, even informing them there had once been talk of constructing a tunnel leading over to Queen Ingrid and Frederik IX’s burial site outside the church, but that the plans had been shelved: There were no hidden passages or secret rooms anywhere in the cathedral.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid,” the dog handler said, rewarding the German shepherd and thereby clearly concluding his work. “She’s not here.”

  Louise closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. Hope of finding Isabella alive was dwindling rapidly, and only now did she realize how certain she had felt that they would find the girl in the church as they had been told.

  Nymand had been calling Wedersøe’s cell phone every five minutes, though without contact. Now he buried his face in his hands. His bulky body swayed slightly on his feet, his shoulders drooped.

  “The bastard!” he spat despairingly as he looked up again.

  45

  Miklos Wedersøe pulled into the inside lane and turned off the Autobahn toward Wedel, a small town due west of Hamburg. He glanced at the clock and saw he had plenty of time.

  Before calling the police in Denmark he had dumped his black Mercedes. It had been heart-wrenching to walk away from the 4.5-million-kroner car in the knowledge that before long it would be picked up by a truck and taken away as evidence in the case against him. He had left it with the keys inside a couple of streets behind the railway station, carrying the icon around the corner to the car Carl Emil had insisted should be parked ready to transport them onward. The red Opel had no navigation system, so he had been forced to buy an old-fashioned road map, which was now spread out on the passenger seat next to him.

  Having made the call he switched off the phone, wary of being traced. Still, he was confident he had thought things through, and finding him would not be easy. Once the money had been transferred he would continue on through Germany before leaving the car and taking the train the last part of the way to Trier. From there he would enter Luxembourg.

  They would be on his trail, of that he was in no doubt. Most likely they already were, and the hunt would be intensified when they failed to find the girl.

  But she was where he had told them she was. It wouldn’t be his fault if they still couldn’t find her.

  * * *

&
nbsp; It was dark as he drove through the town. His instructions were to pass through and continue for one kilometer before turning off to the left and continuing toward an iron gateway at the end of a tree-lined driveway.

  The deal was to be completed at a manor house on the outskirts of the town. He had still not been in touch with the buyer in person, but his contact in New York had revealed to him that the purchaser was of a German family, though no longer resident in the country.

  He flicked the lights to high beam and slowed down, his eyes darting to the trip counter. One kilometer.

  It was with mixed feelings he prepared himself to bid the Angel of Death farewell. He was not nervous, not by any means; the slight tension he felt was more anticipation, he told himself, tempered by the relief of finally having gotten so far. And yet he could not deny that he was immensely saddened by the thought of giving up the icon. His desire to own it had been so powerful it had dulled almost every other emotion, like a hunger that could not be satisfied. Only the thought of the money, the entire undivided sum, was able to divert his mind from notions of defeat: Unexpectedly his dream of owning his own private island had come closer to fruition, and every opportunity would be his.

  The sudden sight of the driveway, lined with its tall, leafless trees, filled him with a warm sense of expectation. There was no sign to indicate this was the place, but he felt certain it was. He braked and turned without signaling. There had not been a single car since he left the town.

  The gravel track was level and wide, the main house as yet tucked from view. He crossed a small bridge and came to the gate.

  A moat, he thought to himself, and felt impressed.

  He stepped out of the car and went up to the gate. He leaned his weight into it and shoved hard. When it began to open, lights came on all the way up the drive to a castle-like building of stone with an imposing entrance.

  He went back to the car and got in. There were lights on in two windows to the right of the steps. He pulled up, and a man emerged from the side of the house.