The Stolen Angel

by Sara Blaedel

Miklos was unsurprised by his appearance: an elderly gentleman with white hair and a stick, stepping forward to meet him. The features of his face were hidden by the dim light, but he walked slowly, as if his legs were uncertain.

  “Welcome,” he said in English, without any trace of German.

  Miklos accepted the man’s outstretched hand and nodded as he explained that he could pull forward to the side of the building, from where it would be easier to carry the icon inside.

  A dark wooden door stood open in the end wall. Light shone from inside, and a broad staircase led down into the basement.

  “If you would be so kind as to carry it for me,” the man requested, indicating the way. “As I’m sure you understand, I have been most anxious to finally behold the divine object. For years, no one really knew if she even existed anymore.”

  Miklos lifted the icon from the trunk and followed the man down the stairs into a large, illuminated room with white walls and heavy wooden beams in the ceiling. Thick metal bars lined the windows, and he was struck for a moment by the sense of having stepped inside a medieval castle. But what caught his attention most were the banknotes stacked up on the table.

  Euros, neatly bundled.

  He smiled at the man as he placed the Angel with great care on the cloth that had been spread out over the other end of the table.

  The man stood for some time, gazing at the artifact in front of him, now and then reaching out to pass a hand over the rough metal of the frame and caress the glass.

  “Do you know how I can be sure that what you have brought me is genuine?”

  Miklos shook his head.

  “Come here,” the man said.

  Miklos stepped forward as the old man leaned over the glass.

  “Can you feel the tiny mark in the bottom left-hand corner of each pane?”

  Miklos leaned closer to see.

  “Oh, they can’t be seen. Only felt. Gently, with your fingertips.”

  It was true: the smallest of nicks, exactly where the man had said.

  “Proof of authenticity. It’s what they did in those days.”

  “Interesting.” Miklos nodded, already impatient to complete the exchange and be on his way.

  “Let me show you something,” the man went on, picking up his stick and beckoning him to follow.

  Used notes, exactly as agreed, Miklos noted, indulging the man as instructed, albeit with a measure of annoyance.

  “This will interest you, I’m sure,” said the man, revealing that he owned another icon from the same period.

  Miklos stepped into the corridor and walked with the man to a small recess at the end.

  “Wait here, let me switch on the light.”

  The man doddered back to the staircase.

  The clamor that ensued was deafening, like a thousand iron bars clattering to the stone floor at once. Miklos jumped in fright, striking his shoulder against the wall, his heart pounding in alarm as the lights went out and the cellar was plunged into darkness. Enraged, he rattled the bars of the portcullis that had descended to trap him.

  He glanced around and could make out that the castle’s dungeons consisted of several rooms. He was now confined to the first.

  The man’s shuffling footsteps came closer.

  “How could you people bring it upon yourselves to even contemplate selling one of the world’s most celebrated cultural treasures?” he demanded with disgust, a hint of German accent now traceable in his trembling voice. “My entire active life has been spent searching for the Angel of Death. Every single day for sixty years the icon has in some way occupied my thoughts. You would never dream of how close I have come. But the Sachs-Smith family has always denied that it was in their possession, so what does a person do?” he said inquiringly.

  Miklos roared and thrashed at the bars.

  “He waits,” the old man went on, unabashed. “And in the end, people such as yourself unwittingly come to our aid. Greedy for money and willing to sacrifice even history’s most precious artifacts to line your pockets.”

  He snorted and paused. As if his fierce passion was finally finding an outlet.

  “You listen to me,” Miklos said. “I’m going to call our contact and you two are going to have to sort this problem out. He’s already transferring your money into my account, so you’ve got nothing to gain by holding me back like this. And the Angel of Death is yours.”

  “Go ahead and call,” the man replied calmly. “Money, that’s the only thing you can think about. Do you know how many years the Angel of Death hung in the Hagia Sophia before it went missing?”

  No, he didn’t, and he didn’t care! But he had switched on his cell phone, its display lighting up the dark with the number of his contact in New York. He pressed the number and turned away with his back to the old man, seething with rage, when a phone suddenly began to ring.

  It rang several times before Miklos realized that the phone he was trying to reach was ringing right behind him.

  He wheeled around and saw that the man had stepped up to the bars and stood with the cell phone in his hand. Miklos stared in disbelief as the German took the call in faultless American.

  “We got a problem,” he said, his voice suddenly so familiar, adding that the bank transfer had most regrettably fallen through.

  Miklos hurled his phone to the floor and leaped forward, clinging to the trellis.

  “Bastard!” he screamed, realizing the contact he had so trusted had cheated him.

  “And you are a cheap and common thief,” the old man retorted. “Tomorrow the icon will be transported to Istanbul, and by the summer I hope it will be restored once more to its rightful place in the Hagia Sophia.”

  And with that, he turned and left.

  46

  Louise drew her legs up underneath her on the church pew. The dizziness had come on as fatigue suddenly overpowered her. She closed her eyes and thought it was probably because everyone had felt so sure they were going to find the girl in the cathedral; now, with all hope seemingly extinguished, it hit doubly hard. They had nothing to go on. Nothing whatsoever. Apart from the fact that Isabella was in the hands of a madman.

  An arch, Mona Jepsen had said. Roskilde Cathedral was full of them, but the girl was nowhere to be found. So much for clairvoyance. She got to her feet and went outside as the dog handler slammed the tailgate of his vehicle shut, the German shepherd panting inside. He had left the girl’s nightdress on the shelf next to the tourist brochures, and Louise had promised to take it with her when she went.

  Rain-soaked onlookers continued to stand and stare even though it was plain to anyone that the operation was over. Louise ducked under the cordon and zipped up her coat. Hands in pockets, she walked over to the enclosure where Queen Ingrid and King Frederik IX lay buried.

  She had to get away, if only for a few moments, she told herself, walking on to the rear of the cathedral and following a low brick wall that ended in what looked like a small construction site where the earth had been dug up and broken-up church stones lay in heaps.

  The derelict appearance matched the desolation she felt inside. For a moment she felt some small relief in the rain that lashed against her skin, alleviating any need for tears, she thought, and paused to turn her face to the sky. As she did so, she saw the arch.

  Absalon’s Gate, the archway joining the cathedral to the Roskilde Palace. For the first time she found herself desperately wanting to believe in clairvoyance.

  She ran up and stood underneath the gateway’s gray arch, looking straight ahead as Mona Jepsen had described to her, but seeing nothing other than the yellow-washed wall that closed the area off from the Stændertorvet square. Annoyed at herself for her momentary lapse, she sighed and turned to go back.

  A woman left the cathedral’s administrative offices with a bag slung over her shoulder. The Konventhuset from which she had emerged was an old diocesan meetinghouse next to the dean’s residence. Absently, Louise watched the woman as she began to walk away. And then
she saw it. Suddenly she found herself staring at a bricked-up window situated just above the cobbles. The recess in which it sat was shaped like a church window ending in a point at the top.

  She gasped and ran up. A brass plate on the wall informed her that besides the cathedral’s administrative unit the building also housed the office of the Roskilde Cathedral Parish Council.

  * * *

  A Bobcat mini excavator drove past with a load full of gravel as Louise dashed back to the red-brick Konventhuset with a still-confused Nymand following behind in the rain.

  “What’s all this about?” he shouted after her, already out of breath, his face wet with rain as his four officers followed on his heels.

  “The cathedral parish council has its office here and Wedersøe’s got a key,” she explained, holding the door for him as he caught up. “We need to get into the basement.”

  The desks where the administrative staff sat were empty. The woman she had seen must have been the last to go home.

  Louise looked around.

  “There’s a stair over here,” one of the constables shouted, and Louise hurried out into the passage where he was standing.

  She found him holding open a low wooden door leading down into a stone cellar. The steps were narrow and steep.

  “There’s no light,” he said.

  Louise called Isabella’s name, but no sound came from the darkness below.

  Nymand joined her.

  “Go on,” he said, and she nodded. It was too narrow for him and she could hardly hold herself back.

  Cautiously she began to climb down, feeling her way with her feet. The cellar wall was cold and damp, the air stale and fusty.

  “Here’s a flashlight for you,” Nymand called to her, bending forward and handing her a Maglite.

  The beam illuminated the black stone walls as she reached the bottom. Slowly she proceeded, calling Isabella’s name as she went, her voice echoing back through a series of empty spaces. She concentrated on maintaining some sense of direction, inching her way forward to where she thought the bricked-up window would be, yet finding it difficult to orient herself. In several places the floor rose and she had to bend down so as not to hit her head on the ceiling.

  Almost on all fours, she was moving toward the far wall when the beam of her flashlight picked out a trapdoor in the floor: a rectangular wooden hatch over in the far corner.

  She scrabbled toward it and knelt down to pull the iron bolt aside, but it seemed to be stuck. Desperately, she swept the light around the room. Here and there, loose bricks lay scattered, dislodged at some point from the old brickwork. She picked one up and sat down before striking the bolt hard with it, following up with a pair of swift kicks with her heel until eventually it gave way.

  She called out to Nymand and told him she was going farther down.

  “Do you need any help?” he shouted back.

  She got to her feet, took a firm hold of the hatch, and lifted it upward. It was heavy, but offered no other resistance.

  “Isabella?” she called out, kneeling down again and using her arm and shoulder to bring the hinged hatch upright, then tipping it over out of the way. “Isabella?”

  For a brief second she felt stupid. There was no sound forthcoming at all to indicate that anyone might be there. The only thing she could hear as she held her breath to listen was silence.

  Louise shone the flashlight in. The space was little more than a crawl space. Utterly dark and cramped, only two steps leading down, and she realized quickly there was no room for her to descend.

  “Is the dog still here?” she shouted up at Nymand, and lay down flat on her stomach to peer inside.

  * * *

  The girl was on her side up against the wall, her face turned away from the hatch and the steps that led up. Her hands and feet were bound with strips of cloth.

  “Isabella?” Louise called out gently, but there was no reaction.

  “She’s here!” she yelled back toward Nymand, scrabbling to her feet and hurrying back to the bottom of the stair. “Get an ambulance over here. I can’t tell if she’s alive.”

  She returned to the hatch and got down on her stomach again to wriggle her way down into the space, placing the flashlight on the steps for light. She shuffled forward on her elbows toward the still-motionless girl, breathing her name with apprehension.

  Cautiously she turned her onto her back. The little girl’s clothes were damp and filthy. Louise saw the crumpled chamois leather next to her mouth, and the vomit, and wondered if the child had suffocated. She saw the congealed blood on her face and placed her hand against her chest, her ear to her mouth, and yet was unable to tell if she was breathing.

  She heard sounds behind her. The rescue unit was on its way with a stretcher. Louise would have to climb out to give them room.

  “We’re with you now,” she whispered, not knowing if the girl could hear her or not. “You’ve been found.”

  She pulled herself back through the trapdoor as the paramedics arrived, watching as they transferred her onto the stretcher and secured her frail body so they could bring her to safety. Slowly they slid her up the two steps, and once she was lying flat on the stone slabs of the cellar floor, they commenced the resuscitation procedure.

  “We’ve got a pulse,” one of them said after a few moments and asked for an IV to be prepared.

  “It’s the cold,” the youngest of the two men explained as they crouched over the unconscious child. “And maybe a concussion, too. It looks like she was struck a few times.”

  “Is she going to be all right?” Louise asked, holding her breath.

  “Too early to say.”

  They passed the stretcher up the narrow cellar stair, then promptly inserted the IV catheter before wrapping Isabella up warmly in layers of blankets.

  Louise glanced around for Nymand.

  “He’s gone outside to phone the girl’s mother so they can meet up at the hospital,” one of the young officers said, watching as the stretcher was rolled inside the ambulance.

  47

  I just got back from the chapel in Roskilde,” Rønholt began as Louise sat down in front of him in his office. “Grete Milling wanted to see her daughter.”

  Louise herself had just returned from the memorial service for Willumsen at Police HQ. It had been hard not to cry, especially because his wife had been there with a black silk scarf around her hairless head. Not everyone in the department was aware that she had resumed her chemotherapy, and it was obvious that a lot of people hadn’t quite known how to approach her, as if their reluctance were compounded by her tragedy having doubled.

  Louise had been on her way home when Suhr called her into the office.

  “It was tough, I’ll tell you,” Rønholt said, wrenching her from her thoughts. Her mind had not been still since the homicide chief had closed the door after they got back from the service and begun by telling her he wanted her to be the first to know that he had already picked out Willumsen’s replacement. The person in question was, as he put it, someone Louise was used to working with closely.

  Immediately, she had thought of Henny Heilmann, her first team leader in the department, who had since moved on to radio communications. To be reunited with her would be brilliant.

  “We’d tried to prepare her and had covered up her daughter’s naked body,” Rønholt went on. “But how do you prepare someone for something as grotesque and yet as lifelike as that?”

  He shook his head bleakly and smoothed his neat beard.

  “She had to have something to calm her down afterward. A good thing she had her new friend with her.”

  Louise knew Melvin had been there. She had asked him to be there when Jonas came home from school, and he had been most apologetic in having to decline on account of having promised his help elsewhere.

  “I’d like to have been there and drunk a toast to Willumsen,” said Rønholt, looking at her. “Only I didn’t feel I could until the two of us had a little chat.”


  She raised an eyebrow, struggling to understand what he meant. After her meeting with Suhr, fatigue had been almost getting the better of her. The day had begun with her stopping to see Nymand. After a night in the hospital Isabella had regained consciousness. She had been suffering from hypothermia but was now in the clear, and the consultant in the children’s section had assured the family that there would be no long-term physical effects from her ordeal.

  Rønholt folded his hands in front of him, his eyes still fixed on Louise’s. He looked serious in a way she couldn’t quite gauge, and she shifted uneasily on her chair.

  “I’ve been extremely happy to have had your help,” he said. “By the looks of it, we can expect Miklos Wedersøe to be transferred into Danish detention within the week. The old art historian who duped him has all their phone calls on tape and can fully document how the deal was set up. Apparently, he’s been looking for the Angel of Death most of his life. With his network he’s basically had human search engines running all over the world, so the minute something new cropped up about the icon he would know straightaway. That’s how he got wind of Carl Emil Sachs-Smith putting feelers out in the collectors’ circles. He put himself forward as a potential buyer and contact.”

  Louise nodded. She already knew the story from Walther Sachs-Smith, who for his part had been relieved to learn it was the art historian he had been striving to keep at bay for years who had stepped up when his son had decided to sell. She knew from Nymand that Walther had hired an army of lawyers to compile evidence in a case against Wedersøe.

  “I’ve been particularly struck by your dedication in the matter of Jeanette Milling’s disappearance, a case in which we had been floundering, to say the least,” Rønholt went on.

  Louise crossed her legs and kept her gaze on his, perplexed as to where he might be heading.

  “Since our department was reorganized, or massacred as we prefer to say, we no longer have resources available to devote to cold cases,” he explained. “Not even when we feel confident a crime may have been committed.”