Angel Maker: An Unputdownable Scandinavian Crime Thriller With A Chilling Twist (DI Jamie Johansson Book 1)

Wiik and Jamie drove in silence.

She stared out of the window as they wound back towards the city, watching the trees go by, trying to get the image of her father beating a murder confession out of an innocent man out of her head.

Jamie shook that thought off. Possibly innocent. He still had the means, the opportunity, and she was sure that despite the way the confession was obtained, that her father was positive Hans Sjöberg was the guy.

She could only operate under the same assumption.

At least for now.

Wiik reached out and touched the screen in the centre console, dialling for the HQ.

It rang twice and then a woman answered, her voice bright.

Jamie hmphed a little as the woman said, ‘Hello, Polisassistent Hallberg.’ Hallberg was the equivalent of a constable, and from her disposition it sounded like she hadn’t yet had the shine taken off her by the scum of the earth.

Jamie caught herself smirking sardonically. Damn. When did she get so cynical?

She returned to looking at the trees, the high-rises in the distance darkening as they swam out of the cold winter mist.

‘Hallberg,’ Wiik said.

Just that one word, in that tone, told Jamie that Hallberg was Wiik’s workhorse. The one that proofed his paperwork, the one that did the research and the running around, the boring stuff. The one that fetched his coffee and made his phone calls.

The one that would probably be sitting in this seat if Jamie wasn’t.

Had she shit all over the biggest case of this poor girl’s career? Jamie thought back to the times she was brushed off as a DC. How much she had hated it.

No, it would be a good lesson for her. And plus, this case was already well above her pay grade.

‘We’re heading back from Eva Sjöberg’s house. I need you to do some things. Got a pen?’ Wiik asked.

There was scrabbling on the line as Hallberg jammed the phone against her shoulder and grabbed a pad. ‘Go.’

‘Take these names down. Leif Lundgren, Tomas Lindvall, Per Eriksson. Got that?’

‘Uh-huh. Who are they? Suspects?’

‘From the original case, we think. Names in Johansson’s notebook.’

Jamie perked up, then realised Wiik meant her father. She never wanted to live in her father’s shadow. And yet the warmth of the sun had never felt further away.

Wiik went on. ‘The last one – Eriksson. He was the prime suspect before Johansson’s focus switched to Sjöberg. He was the groundskeeper at the church where the girls were targeted.’

‘Oh,’ Hallberg said. ‘Want me to try and track him down?’

‘I want you to track them all down. We need to rebuild the original case from the ground up. Find out where Johansson fucked up.’

Jamie shot Wiik a cold glance, but he either didn’t care, or made a point of seeming like it.

‘Find me addresses – historical addresses, too. I want to know where they lived at the time of the original murders as well as where they live now, okay?’

‘Sure. You have any more info? Dates of birth, or—’

‘No, nothing,’ Wiik said, then sighed. ‘Just the names. But you’ll get it done.’

‘Might take some time,’ Hallberg replied tentatively. ‘A lot of records to comb through.’

‘Just get it done. And Hallberg?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll need copies of the court transcripts for the original trial. And get me a list of all the visitors that Sjöberg had in prison. Security footage if you can, too.’

‘In the last twenty years?’

‘I don’t think it will be a long list.’

There was quiet on the line for a second as she scribbled down the items. ‘Anything else?’

‘Any word on an ID for the girl, yet?’

Hallberg sighed. ‘No, I’m searching missing persons, but no hits yet matching her description. The girl can only have been gone three, four days. Maybe a report hasn’t been filed yet.’

‘Search wider. Outside the city, too,’ Jamie said suddenly, turning her head. ‘The girl could be from anywhere. We don’t know how she was chosen.’

Hallberg didn’t respond for a second. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, doing her best to keep what Jamie thought might be jealousy from her voice.

Wiik clenched his jaw, as though already annoyed at the idea of there being any animosity between them. ‘The consultant. From the London Met.’

‘Oh.’

Jamie sat straighter. ‘Detective Inspector Jamie Johansson,’ she added formally.

‘Johansson?’ she asked, surprised. ‘As in…’

‘Yes,’ Wiik said, his voice taking on a cold edge. ‘Johansson’s daughter.’

‘I didn’t realise that she— I mean, it’s… Never mind,’ Hallberg replied, clearing her throat regaining herself. ‘I apologise.’

‘I don’t want your apologies,’ Wiik said. ‘Just get what I asked done.’ He huffed and then hung up on her before she could say anything else.

Jamie eyed him, trying to decode what had just happened.

Wiik put both his hands on the wheel now and tightened his grip, looking ahead.

Being forty-eight hours into a murder case with no possible ID on your victim was a nightmare for any detective. And when your breadcrumbs were this stale – two decades stale – things could only get tougher. But there was something else, too. The whole consultant thing? Something was off.

‘Where are we going?’ Jamie asked as Wiik sailed into the other lane, swooping around a caravan doing forty, before cutting back in. He seemed to have sped up considerably since the call.

‘Pathology lab,’ Wiik muttered, seemingly unhappy about the fact. ‘And whatever you do, don’t tell him your name.’

Dr Peter Claesson was the head pathologist at the Swedish National Forensic Centre’s Stockholm lab.

Jamie was the same height as him. Wiik was a head taller.

The man wasn’t overweight, but his narrow shoulders and slouching posture did nothing for the fit of his shirt and lab coat. His weak chin, narrow mouth, and bald pate all came together to make him look utterly unapproachable. And that’s exactly how his demeanour was, too.

‘Wiik,’ he said, walking out from the sealed lab, pulling bloodied latex gloves from his hands. His white lab coat came down to his knees, his beady eyes bouncing from Jamie to Wiik and back. ‘I suppose you have a good reason for interrupting my examination?’

The door hissed and clicked shut behind him so that he was crowded into the corridor with them.

If Wiik was in a bad mood before, the thirty minutes he’d been forced to wait in the reception area before being allowed back here had done nothing for him.

The body had been at the lab for a few hours already, and Wiik was like a rabid dog pacing behind a fence. He clearly had a sharp mind, but his judgement was clouding. Jamie wondered if he had it in him to hold back when he needed to the most.

‘My good reason,’ Wiik snapped, ‘is that there’s a maniac out there cutting up girls.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say maniac,’ Claesson said evenly. ‘If anything, the wounds show a great degree of patience, care and focus. Quite the opposite to a maniac, in fact.’

Jamie observed the little man closely, the way he never broke eye contact with Wiik, the way he kept his face completely straight. She saw right through it: Claesson thought he was hilarious. That getting to poke the bear was the highlight of his day. Hell, probably his week. He and Wiik had obviously crossed paths before. And much like Jamie, Claesson had his number from the very first meeting.

She wondered if lots of people did. Whether it irked the shit out of Wiik. It probably did.

Wiik growled. ‘Show me,’ he demanded.

It was clear that Claesson was in the middle of the examination, and that as much as he liked screwing with Wiik, he was smart enough to read the look of determined rage on his face.

The doctor raised his key card against the pad and pushed through the door into the lab.

Rows of counters ran from left to right in the large room, filled with various glassware, microscopes, centrifuges and everything else that a pathology lab of this calibre would need to conduct tests.

Beyond, in the direction that Claesson was headed with short, quick steps, were the slabs. Four of them lay in a row, gleaming silver under the articulated lamps hanging overhead.

Three were empty.

The furthest away contained the body of a young girl. The same young girl that Jamie had seen in the forest.

The long brown hair that had stretched down to her sternum was now laid neatly under her back.

Her green eyes stared blankly at the light, shining and milky.

Her skin had taken on a deathly pallor, but her fingers and toes had blackened completely.

Otherwise, she was clean. Faultless. Flawless.

Her frame was slight, her body not yet having taken on the curves of puberty. A privacy sheet had been laid across her pubis, but her chest was exposed, the skin around the exit wounds turned out to face the sky. They glimmered like tar.

Claesson circled absently and leaned on the slab over her.

Wiik pulled up a little short, didn’t even look down at the girl. It was tough to keep that sort of mean expression when you were faced with horror like this. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘What do you want to know?’ Claesson asked, smiling politely. ‘I haven’t got to the autopsy yet.’

‘I can see that,’ Wiik said through gritted teeth.

Jamie stepped forward, seeing that there was clearly a path this was headed down, and it didn’t seem like an efficient one. ‘Would you mind just going over your preliminary findings for us, please? We’re trying to ascertain whether this kill holds a significant resemblance to those of the original Angel Maker case.’

Claesson kept his eyes on Wiik but turned his head slowly, letting his gaze fall on Jamie after a second. ‘You could learn a thing or two from this one, Wiik,’ Claesson said. ‘There is such a thing as manners, you know.’

Jamie didn’t realise someone could glare at her without even looking, but Wiik was somehow doing it.

Claesson softened then, and looked down at the girl. ‘I had hoped I’d never see another body like this.’

‘You were here during the original case?’ Jamie asked, stepping closer again, so she was ahead of Wiik.

Claesson gave her a brief smile, his small mouth struggling to shape upwards. ‘Unfortunately, yes,’ he said. ‘I was a junior pathologist at the time, but I assisted with the examinations, the autopsies. It is hard to forget something like that.’

Jamie nodded. ‘Of course. Well, any insights you can give us on this victim – and the others, would be very helpful.’

He stared at her intently now, as though trying to place her face.

Jamie set her jaw, recognising that look.

Wiik had said not to give her name. And judging by Claesson’s exchanges with Wiik, he was the torturous type. And if he was a stalwart here, he’d no doubt crossed paths with her father. And if there was one thing she knew about her father, it was that he didn’t respond well to people intentionally trying to annoy him.

Claesson began speaking slowly, his brain still working to identify Jamie. ‘Well then, it’s a good thing that I dug the original files out the moment I saw the body.’ He pointed to one of the counters, a cardboard box sitting on it. It was dusty, the denotation CX-231-07-95 written on it.

Jamie looked over. CX-231 was the case reference, 07 the number of victims in the case, she guessed. Seven girls. It made sense. And 95 the year.

She swallowed.

Wiik took the opportunity to leave the conversation and head over to it, lifting the lid without invitation.

‘Help yourself,’ Claesson said, seemingly unable to help himself.

Jamie cleared her throat. ‘Doctor?’

He looked back at her. ‘My apologies.’ He wasted no more time. ‘The girl, like the original victim, appears to have suffocated. I performed a preliminary endoscopy, and identified some light damage to the lungs congruent with smoke inhalation. I have taken blood samples to test, but I would be inclined to believe that this girl died in the same manner as the original victims.’

‘Which was?’ Jamie asked, watching as Claesson trailed off, looking down at the girl again.

‘Carbon monoxide poisoning. Likely caused by the exhaust fumes from a car being fed into an enclosed space.’

Jamie drew a slow breath, the lingering scent of bleach and chlorine in the room burning the inside of her nostrils.

‘This was the favoured method of the Angel Maker,’ Claesson concluded. ‘And by all accounts, a relatively humane method of killing his victims.’

Wiik scoffed from the box, but didn’t look up. He was flipping through the top file. Claesson scowled at him.

‘Painless,’ Jamie added, pulling Claesson’s attention back. ‘Were there any marks on the girl’s hands?’ She held up hers. ‘On the outside and heels?’ she asked, running a finger from the tip of her pinkie to her wrist. ‘Her nails, maybe?’

Claesson shook his head. ‘No, there is no bruising or damage to suggest that she tried to break or claw her way out from whatever space she was locked in.’ His eyes narrowed slightly at her. ‘An astute observation, though.’ He looked at Wiik’s back. ‘Your new partner?’ he called.

Wiik grunted in reply.

‘She’s a smart one,’ Claesson added.

Wiik met that with silence.

Jamie was keen to press on. ‘The frostbite, was that sustained—’

‘Post-mortem, yes,’ Claesson confirmed. ‘All of the wounds were. Not long after, but yes. She was dead when he displayed her.’

Jamie nodded. ‘What can you tell me about the cuts?’

‘Done by someone who knew what they were doing, had a working knowledge of anatomy—’

‘Or lots of practice,’ Wiik said darkly, dropping the file onto the counter and picking another up from the box.

Claesson cleared his throat. ‘Six cuts were made in total, using a sharp, smooth blade. A retractable knife or even a small hunting knife, I would think.’ He gestured down to the six cuts on the girl’s chest, starting just below her collarbones and finishing just above the bottom ribs. Three on each side of her sternum. ‘The killer made an incision between ribs two and three on each side of the spine on her back, approximately five centimetres in length. The cuts were deep, but it took just a few incisions to get through the skin and muscle tissues.’

‘Confident,’ Jamie observed.

Claesson nodded. ‘Quite – they don’t appear tentative, I know that much.’ He sighed, then pointed to the other wounds. ‘The killer repeated the cuts between ribs five and six, and eight and nine. And mirrored them on the girl’s chest.’

Jamie pulled her lips back into a line, trying not to look the girl in the eyes.

‘Once the incisions had been made,’ Claesson continued, ‘he inserted the boughs of wood. They were sharpened, skilfully, and then forced through the body’ – Claesson held his left hand up flat in the air and mimed pushing something through the space between his thumb and index finger – ‘to the corresponding intercostal space here.’ He gestured down to the girl’s front now. ‘Judging by the photographs, I believe he placed her in a kneeling position first, made the incisions all at once going by the blood on her body, and then began the process of…’ He trailed off, shook his head.

‘Skewering her’ seemed like the only way to put it, but it didn’t need to be said.

‘I understand,’ Jamie said, filling the silence, but she didn’t. How could anyone?

‘The ends of each bough were then pushed into the earth, keeping the girl in place. The first would have been the most difficult. The rest…’ Claesson swallowed, showing the first sign of emotion Jamie had seen. Though with a career as long as his, she doubted there was much that rattled him anymore. ‘The ligature marks on her wrists here are paler than you would see with perimortem binding. The tissue damage doesn’t show evidence of haematoma, just superficial tissue damage, which leads me to conclude that he bound her wrists at the end of this process, after she had bled out.’ He cleared his throat again, then reached up and pinched at his neck, as though something was caught in it.

Jamie had to ask the one question she didn’t want to. It came out quieter than she intended. ‘Was she— Was she raped?’

Claesson seemed to need a moment for this and clamped his teeth together before answering. ‘I performed a cursory examination,’ he muttered, looking up now, over Jamie’s head. ‘In order to establish congruency with the original murders—’

Wiik was suddenly at the table. ‘Just answer the question,’ he said coldly, his knuckles white around the file marked 03. Three of seven.

Jamie corrected herself.

Three of eight.

‘Yes,’ Claesson said. ‘There is evidence to suggest that she was raped. Though it doesn’t appear that the killer assaulted and then killed her in quick succession. Some early-stage healing of the damaged tissue had occurred before—’

Wiik silenced him with a hand and returned to the box.

Jamie steeled herself in the face of this new information. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I know it’s difficult to tell, but do you think…’

He nodded gravely. ‘This method of murder, followed by this method of display does lead me to believe that this crime was committed by the same perpetrator.’ He looked over at the files on the counter next to Wiik.

Jamie let her eyes rest on him. A file was open in front of him but he was hunched over the counter, arms spread wide into a triangle, his head hung. She couldn’t tell if he was reading or steeling himself against the gravity of what Claesson had just said.

She let out a long breath, her jaw quivering.

Her father was wrong.

He’d beat a confession out of the wrong man, and then put him in prison for twenty goddamn years.

Claesson was staring at Jamie now, brow crumpled, lips pursed.

She met his eyes over the slab.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice quiet. ‘You seem very familiar to me. But I cannot say where we’ve met before.’

‘We haven’t,’ Jamie choked out.

Wiik picked his head up and looked over his shoulder.

‘But, uh,’ Jamie began. She wasn’t going to hide from who she was. ‘I think you knew my father.’

Claesson’s face unscrewed itself, his eyes widening in realisation. ‘My God,’ he said.

‘Yeah,’ Jamie sighed, extending her hand over the top of the girl’s pale corpse. ‘Detective Inspector Jamie Johansson, nice to meet you.’