The Stolen Angel

by Sara Blaedel

  There was no escape.

  It was as if something inside him turned to steel. He took his foot off the accelerator. A moment before, when he had been stuck on the shoulder and had run a quite indefensible risk, he had felt himself, however briefly, gripped by a sense of rising panic. But it was gone now.

  He had the girl, and it would be up to them to decide if she would live or die.

  He put his foot gently on the brake.

  42

  Louise turned off toward the Boserup Forest. Sankt Hans, the psychiatric center, was situated in Roskilde’s pleasant suburbs. She saw the big buildings from afar, clustered against the background of the fjord. She followed the signs toward the information desk and parked outside the main door.

  “I’d like to speak to one of your patients,” she said to the woman who came to help her, handing her a piece of paper with a name on it that Rebekka had given her. “Mona Jepsen.”

  She presented herself and passed her police ID over the counter.

  “Mona isn’t here anymore,” the woman replied without so much as casting an eye on either the paper or the ID.

  “What do you mean?” Louise asked, slightly confused.

  “She was admitted when police said they were interested in that little girl’s whereabouts,” the woman explained, adding that Mona Jepsen always became rather unsettled by people going missing. “She was in quite a state when she arrived. But today she was feeling much better and asked to be released.”

  Louise raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  “We’ve known Mona for years,” the woman smiled. “She’s been in our system here ever since she was young and knows her own rhythm now. She can feel it whenever she won’t be able to look after herself, but she also always knows when her seizures are going to stop again.”

  “Seizures?” Louise inquired, though sensed immediately that any answer would compromise medical confidentiality.

  The woman smiled apologetically.

  “Do you know where I might find her?” she asked instead.

  “Well, either she’ll be at home or else she’ll have gone to see Gerd,” the woman replied, looking pensive for a moment. “I can find the numbers for you, just a minute.”

  Louise waited patiently until the woman returned with an address, explaining to her how best to get to Svogerslev.

  “Thanks very much, you’ve been a big help,” she said, taking the yellow Post-it the woman handed her and going back out to the car.

  * * *

  “Who did you say it was?” the elderly woman answered in a deep, masculine voice when Louise called from her car. At first she thought it was a man, but when the woman called for Mona a moment later she could hear she had been mistaken.

  “My name’s Louise Rick,” she repeated once Mona Jepsen came to the phone.

  She heard herself enunciating as if she were speaking to a child who didn’t quite understand. “I gather you might be able to tell us something about Isabella Sachs-Smith?”

  “She’s alive,” the woman replied swiftly. “If you’ve got time I can tell you some more.”

  Louise felt like an idiot and regretted giving the woman any time at all. She ought to have driven back to Police HQ, but somehow it was the last place she wanted to be. For the moment, at least.

  “I’ll tell Gerd you’re coming,” Mona Jepsen added in a bright, clear voice.

  Louise thought for a second before accepting. As Suhr always said, what did they have to lose? They still had no trace of the girl, so she was willing to try anything.

  “I’m on my way,” she said, and hung up.

  * * *

  The houses were red brick and arranged in clusters with little gardens facing the parking area. Louise followed a system of footpaths over to the other side and found the house, the last in a little row.

  The woman who came to the door was dressed in dungarees, her gray hair worn in a pageboy style and swept behind her ears at the sides. Her eyes almost seemed to smile behind her wire-rimmed glasses and it did not surprise Louise one bit to learn that the woman, now retired, had once been Mona Jepsen’s school psychologist.

  “Mona’s in the living room,” she said, advising Louise that she had two Norwegian Forest cats. “You’re not allergic, are you?”

  Louise shook her head and thought of Dina at home. She was really more of a cat person herself, but now they had a dog. For a brief moment, Mik passed fleetingly through her mind. She missed him, but had gradually come to terms with the fact that she would probably never hear from him again.

  “Follow me,” said Gerd.

  The hallway was stuffed with gloomy furniture. A tall sideboard with five enormous drawers stood up against one wall.

  Louise took her boots off and followed on behind into a living room that smelled of chamomile tea and herbs. It was pleasant enough, if rather predictably on the mildewy side, she thought, before stopping in her tracks at the sight of Mona Jepsen.

  Mona Jepsen was seated at the end of a six-seater solid oak dining table, and Louise was so taken aback she could hardly stop staring.

  As slight as a little girl and with white, lifeless hair reaching to her waist, she sat with a number of dead insects arranged on the table in front of her.

  Not until Mona pushed her chair back to get to her feet and say hello did Louise snap out of her stupor and put out her hand in return.

  At first sight, Mona Jepsen’s face suggested youth. As if time were somehow standing still for her, Louise thought, recalling that she had been told Mona was in her mid-forties. Only when she stepped closer did she become aware of the slight droop of her eyelids, the more mature look in her eye than was immediately visible from a distance.

  They greeted each other and she thanked Mona for letting her come on such short notice.

  “Of course,” Mona replied. “I did phone the chief superintendent, but he didn’t have time.”

  Louise could hardly take her eyes off the table.

  The insects.

  Great, dead things lined up with the care of a stamp collector. All were different, and it seemed Mona Jepsen was in the process of piercing them with needles. On a chair next to the table was a little display board on which the first exemplars had already been mounted.

  “I collect them,” she said in her little girl’s voice that seemed so completely at odds with her macabre enterprise. “These aren’t especially rare, but I’d like them framed anyway. This one I found yesterday after I heard about Isabella.”

  She pointed out a large spider that had now been pressed.

  “And a fly, I see,” said Louise, pulling out a chair from the middle of the table.

  “Yes, there aren’t that many insects around in February, so there are always some doubles at this time of year.”

  Louise nodded.

  “The girl’s afraid. You must hurry to find her.”

  Louise opened her mouth and was just about to say something when she noticed the stack of newspaper cuttings in the middle of the table. All seemed to be about Isabella. A shudder ran down her spine and she couldn’t help but wonder if the strange and fragile woman with her insects had simply been gripped by the story and fabricated some continuation of it, or whether she really might possess some insight.

  Mona Jepsen had sat down cross-legged on her chair. Her baggy harem pants lay in folds around her.

  “She doesn’t have enough air.”

  Gerd had now come to the table, too, and pulled a chair out at the other end where she wouldn’t be in the way.

  “You can trust Mona’s intuitions to be true,” the retired psychologist said.

  Louise smiled awkwardly.

  “There was a girl once who disappeared after a concert in the park here,” the elderly woman went on. “Mona rang the police and told them the girl was hiding on a boat in the marina. Sure enough, the police found her there that same night.”

  Louise leaned forward. “Mona, if you have any idea where Isabella Sachs-Smith might be being h
eld, I must ask you to tell me,” she said, feeling herself to be suddenly carried away by the conviction in the mysterious woman’s eyes.

  “I didn’t say I knew where,” Mona answered quickly, her busy fingers toying with what looked like an earwig. “I didn’t say that at all, nothing like. If I knew that kind of thing, I’d have to have your job, wouldn’t I?”

  She started to laugh.

  A nutcase, Louise concluded, annoyed with herself at having given it a try. Still, it would give Lars Jørgensen something to laugh about once this dreadful thing was all over.

  “I don’t know where the girl is, but if she could look out she would see right across at a big arch. I can feel she’s afraid, and it’s dark all around her. There’s something wrong with her breathing, too. It’s like the oxygen’s running out.”

  Louise nodded and stroked the big tomcat that had jumped onto her lap. She was unable to keep her eyes from the diminutive woman, although Gerd had now embarked on a somewhat lengthy speech on the subject of intuition and its conceivable uses.

  “It’s important you find the right arch,” Mona interjected, fixing her penetrating gaze on her guest.

  “Why did you admit yourself to the center the other day?” Louise asked her instead of commenting on her visions.

  The unburdened look that had been present in her blue eyes vanished, and although she might not have been aware of the fact, Mona Jepsen’s hands dropped underneath the table and she began to shift uneasily on her chair.

  Louise sensed immediately that she had touched uncomfortably on a delicate matter.

  It was Gerd who answered.

  “Mona is very much affected when people go missing, and sometimes it comes over her the way it did when she heard about Isabella Sachs-Smith.”

  Louise nodded; she knew it was best not to pursue the matter. She got to her feet, stepping toward Mona and offering her hand with a polite suggestion that she would be grateful if Mona would contact her if she felt there was something the police ought to know.

  The fragile little woman nodded, her eyes fixed on her insects, and she did not get up when Louise put her card with her phone number on it on the table and left the room.

  Out in the hallway, Gerd opened the front door for her and paused while still holding the handle.

  “She doesn’t often use her abilities, but they’re there,” she said, her voice full of warmth. “Take it from me, it would be wise to listen to what she has to say.”

  Louise nodded and thanked her without feeling in any way convinced.

  Returning to the car, she checked her phone and saw there were four unanswered calls from Rønholt. He had left a message on her voice mail, too:

  “Forensics found insulin pens in Carl Emil’s name in the cellar. We’re working on the assumption Wedersøe also killed Inger Sachs-Smith. Moreover, they found the same paint that was used for that headstone.”

  Louise stared into the air in front of her, shaken by the thought that the attorney had resorted to death threats to prompt his client into getting his hands on the icon as quickly as possible.

  “The sick bastard,” she muttered, reflecting on the case so far. Six lives had been taken. Very nearly seven, counting Naja Holten. And now he had vanished with the little girl.

  She closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest.

  * * *

  The light was distant, almost out of reach, when Naja Holten opened her eyes.

  Everything was silent. Sleep beckoned and she succumbed, drifting heavily away, but then it was there again.

  The voice, calling out to her.

  She tried again, struggling to open her cumbersome eyelids, clinging to the voice of the man who repeated her name.

  “She’s coming back,” a woman said farther away.

  Naja wanted to shake her head. She wanted the woman to be quiet so she could hear the man at her side. She sensed him come closer, felt his breath on her cheek.

  “Sweetheart, wake up.”

  Jesper. She had been dreaming about him. Or at least she thought she had, but now she was no longer sure. Nothing seemed certain anymore. She was so tired.

  “Wake up,” he said again.

  The light was dazzling when finally she opened her eyes fully. His face: She recognized the lines of his face, his hazel eyes moist and glassy.

  He smoothed her cheek and wiped his eyes quickly with the backs of his hands so as not to cry on her.

  More faces came and peered, unfamiliar faces. A stethoscope was put to her chest, her blood pressure measured.

  “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me,” said Jesper.

  She wanted to smile at him, but her face felt oddly stiff, so she simply squeezed as instructed.

  “You’re in the Rigshospitalet,” he said. “You were in a car accident.”

  Naja tried to shake her head again, but was unable to. She remembered the cloth pressed hard against her mouth, how it took away all her breath, how she had struggled with death as the night descended.

  It was no car accident. But she had no idea how to tell them. Again she felt the cloth against her face. A flood of nausea flushed through her, compelling her to reach out so that she might pull herself upright.

  “She’s moving her arm,” a woman’s voice said.

  Immediately she felt Jesper’s hand against her back and glimpsed the vomit bowl he held up to her mouth.

  And then it came. Her whole body trembled with cold, and still it came.

  “It’s the antidote,” a deep voice commented, and she registered a man in a white coat who had appeared at the bedside. “It’s working nicely.”

  She vomited again, a deluge, and Jesper held up a new bowl.

  Naja closed her eyes and slumped back into her pillow, still freezing cold. But now her body relaxed. She tried to gain control of her mouth. It had opened for her to throw up. It could open again.

  “Jesper,” she breathed, and found her lips now obeyed the command.

  “I’m here,” he answered, close again.

  “What do you mean, accident?”

  “Nothing, it’s all right,” he replied quickly.

  “He tried to kill me. It was no accident.”

  “I know. But he didn’t succeed.”

  She remembered it all, recalling how it had felt to be in the very clutches of death. The darkness and fear. She would remember it for as long as she lived. Always she would be able to recall the terror, she told herself, and was suddenly lucid.

  There was a knock on the door and she looked across to see a man with a neatly trimmed beard peering in.

  “We’d like to speak to Naja,” he said, introducing himself as Rønholt from the Search Department of the National Police. “Can I come in?”

  She saw Jesper rise to his feet and felt a ripple of unease.

  “Don’t go.”

  “No, absolutely not,” her partner replied swiftly, taking her hand in his again. “I’ll stay right here with you. But you must talk to the police.”

  43

  Four service pistols were aimed straight at him. The other officers stood with their hands already at their shoulder holsters.

  He understood their wordless communication perfectly, the body language, the steely-eyed vigilance. He locked the car and raised his hands obligingly in the air to signal that it was okay for them to lower their weapons, which predictably they did not.

  Then, before he knew it, his arm was twisted up his back and his jaw slammed painfully against the Mercedes’s hood. He felt the heat of its metal on his skin.

  He tried to lift his head, but a viselike hand forced him into immediate submission.

  “Miklos Wedersøe,” a voice rattled off in buoyant South Jutlandic. “You are now under arrest and will be charged with murder, interference with a human corpse, and the abduction of Isabella Sachs-Smith.”

  None of it came as any surprise to him, though it was odd that the officer had failed to mention the Angel of Death, he thought to himself as handc
uffs snapped tightly around his wrists.

  “Who are you reporting to?” he asked, once he was permitted to stand upright. “The negotiation unit or Roskilde Police?”

  “Never mind that,” replied the policeman, who was gripping his right arm at the elbow. “You just come with us.”

  The young man’s hair was fair and curly, buffeted by gusts of wind. He looked like a farm boy, his cheeks blotched ruddy by sheer agitation and excitement, his nerves an uncertain flutter beneath the textbook exterior.

  Miklos glanced at the other officers. They were alert and at the ready, their eyes attentive and keen. The gravity of the case was plain, he thought. But if only they knew. This was a mere diversion, and any minute now they would be forced to release him again and allow him to drive on.

  Only then did he become aware of the stillness. There was no longer any traffic on the opposite roadway. The constant noise was gone. They had closed down the entire highway, he realized, and felt satisfied by the delay it would entail before normal traffic could be resumed, allowing him a clear start to his continued journey south.

  An elderly man strode forward, glaring at him through eyes narrowed to slits of disdain.

  “Where is she?” he demanded, his gaze fixed on the attorney, seemingly oblivious to the police officer at his side.

  There was something about his tone that annoyed him. The man was insolent and rude, and Wedersøe took particular offense at the way he stared, like some windbag sheriff who thought he could banish the bad guys from town with a warning shot fired into the air.

  He had anticipated a more civilized exchange, courteous communication between decent individuals, but now his own arrogance came to the fore and his eyes took in the man dismissively, looking him up and down as if to ridicule his every visible weakness.

  “Might I inquire who is in charge here?” he said, making it clear he certainly did not consider the local pencil-licker worthy enough to have been handed such an important matter as a kidnapping. The man was obviously little more than a cattle driver.