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

When Jamie got there, Wiik was already at his desk, his face pressed into the V between his thumb and index finger, concertinaing the skin of his cheeks into folds around his knuckles.

She circled it and looked over his shoulder at the screen.

It displayed a big, grainy image. A beaten-up old Mercedes sat in the middle of the photo, its headlights flaring in the dark. The aged night-vision mode on the camera had turned everything a sub-nautical shade of green. Detailed wasn’t the word she’d use. Big white lumps littered the image, too – snow. Heavy snow.

The picture was head on to the car, but the driver was no more than a dark smudge. Impossible to make out.

‘Piece of shit,’ Wiik muttered, shaking his head.

The only thing clear in the photo was the number plate.

Jamie squinted at the photograph of Nyström’s car and then gestured to the headlights. ‘Looks like he put his full beams on, fog lights too, to blind the camera.’

Wiik slouched backwards. ‘It’s dark, snowing – everyone drives with full beams and fog lights. If they value their life at least.’

Jamie stared down at him. He looked exhausted.

The sky had darkened outside and the light inside had changed to a shadowless glare courtesy of the LED strips that hung off the ceiling on thin wires.

‘Basically,’ he said, throwing his arms out at the screen. ‘It’s shit. And it’s worth shit.’

Jamie was waiting for him to sweep the keyboard and mug full of pens off the desk. The latter had the words Min pappa är en superhjälte written on it.

My dad is a superhero.

She didn’t know if she could picture Wiik in dad mode. But she didn’t have long to try before they were interrupted again.

Hallberg appeared, hanging up her phone. ‘Okay,’ she said, pushing it into the pocket of her black skinny jeans. ‘That was the prison – they’re sending over the visitor logs from the new system via email when they can.’

‘When will that be?’ Wiik asked, staring at his underling.

She dared to shrug. ‘I don’t know. Soon as he could. But the guy I spoke to, the head liaison officer, said that Sjöberg only had two visitors since he’s been working there. Wasn’t a popular guy, as you can imagine.’

‘I can,’ Wiik said. ‘Who were they?’

‘He couldn’t remember off the cuff, but he said one was definitely his wife. She visited once or twice a year.’

Wiik pursed his lips. ‘Doesn’t seem like a lot for a loving wife who believes her husband’s innocent.’

Jamie folded her arms. ‘The prison isn’t exactly close, and the woman is in a wheelchair,’ she argued. ‘And she said that people aren’t exactly lining up to take her.’

Wiik drew a slow breath and then motioned for Hallberg to continue.

‘The other visitor came just once, a week before Sjöberg died.’

Wiik sat up straighter.

‘He can’t remember the name,’ Hallberg said, answering the question before he asked it. ‘But they take a scan of every visitor’s ID when they arrive and keep it on file.’

Wiik was nearly salivating.

‘He’ll email it across, too,’ Hallberg finished.

Wiik nodded slowly. ‘Okay. Let me know the second it arrives.’

Hallberg nodded, did a strange sort of half-bow, and then backed away like a servant before turning and heading to her desk.

Jamie thought it was strange it was so far away, but then again, she doubted she’d be able to concentrate with Wiik breathing down her neck, either.

Wiik was leaning back in his chair now, his hands on his stomach, fingers interlaced, thumbs drumming together.

His coat was draped over the back of his seat, and he was in a white shirt with a grey sweater over it. He stared into space. ‘You hungry?’ he asked.

Jamie was still standing next to his desk, her coat in her hand. ‘Yes,’ she said, thinking about her empty stomach. She’d had a sandwich from the vending machine after they’d brought Lindvall in for questioning, but otherwise she was running on fumes. ‘What do they have around here?’

‘Pizza?’ Wiik asked.

Jamie pressed her lips into a line. ‘Anything else?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t like pizza?’ He cast an eye down the loose knitted jumper that was bunched at Jamie’s elbows and covered her butt, and down her muscular legs. His eyes paused for just a moment on the curve of her quads as they narrowed at her knees, the defined, triangular shape of her calves as they dived into her boots. His gaze didn’t look salacious though. More like the way a trainer might appraise a new race horse before buying.

Jamie still shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably anyway. Yes, she took care of her body, she felt like saying. Seriously so. So what? The eleven flights at Lindvall’s apartment block, the run to cut him off. She was built like a Kudu, and moved like one, too.

Jamie always hated that comparison, but her old partner had told her she wasn’t skinny enough to be a gazelle. Then added that it was a compliment.

Wiik then turned his detecting powers to her upper body, as if trying to visualise whether it matched.

It did. But he had no business knowing that.

Jamie set her jaw and pulled her phone out, looking for takeaways nearby.

‘You’re not one of those health freaks, are you?’ Wiik asked dryly. ‘A “vegan”.’ He even put air-quotes around it.

Jamie glanced up at him, her thumb stopping on the screen. ‘No, I’m not,’ she replied, though she thought she’d be offended by his comment if she was.

‘Well, that’s something,’ Wiik said, his face straight.

She honestly couldn’t tell if he was joking or not and quickly went back to looking for a decent place to eat.

‘Married?’ Wiik asked now, still clapping his thumbs on his stomach.

‘Nope,’ Jamie replied, not even looking up.

‘Boyfriend?’

‘No. You?’ She glanced up from under her brow.

He scowled at her a little. ‘Funny.’

Jamie went back to her phone, her mind crawling back to the little cottage in the Scottish isles she’d just come from. To the bed there. To the warm space next to Graeme. She’d not text him back since she’d landed, and he’d not text again. Hell, she didn’t know if he was out on the water or at home. And what were they, anyway? They’d never discussed it… Did she even care?

‘Divorced,’ Wiik added, gesturing to himself and nodding slowly. ‘No surprise there, though.’ He sighed.

Jamie kept looking. Discussing their personal lives wasn’t something she was keen to do. All she wanted from this trip was to finish what her father started, finally lay his memory to rest, and then move on with her life.

‘We have a son.’ He seemed hell-bent on filling the silence. ‘He’s nine now.’

Jamie wanted to talk about Wiik’s children even less than she did her own love life.

‘The job, you know.’

Jamie sighed and lowered her phone, looking at Wiik, who was staring at her now.

‘Why haven’t you asked me if I knew your father?’ he said.

Jamie shook her head slowly, at a loss. Both for an answer to the question and as to why he’d driven the conversation in this direction. ‘I don’t know.’ She should have just let him order the pizza. ‘Did you?’

He nodded. ‘I did. Not personally. But I knew who he was. Everyone did.’

‘Great.’

‘I was young – in my twenties. Just a uniform during his time.’

Jamie felt her fist tighten around the phone, the number for a Thai place on-screen, ready to be dialled.

‘He was a good man,’ Wiik said.

Jamie felt her shoulders begin to tension, like someone was ratcheting them into her spine. She pulled in a breath, but they wouldn’t loosen.

‘Troubled, though.’ He seemed intent on continuing, despite the resistance from Jamie.

‘Oh yeah?’ Jamie asked vaguely, her thumb retracting from the screen.

‘It broke him, you know?’ Wiik looked up at her wistfully. ‘I remember it – there was a distinct change.’ He looked over towards Falk’s now dark office. ‘Falk warned me to steer clear of him. He had a short fuse anyway, but after…’

‘After what?’

‘You left.’

Jamie stiffened a little, pushing her phone into her pocket now.

‘I remember you, as a girl.’

Jamie measured him, sitting there in the chair, spouting shit about her family.

‘You were always so full of energy – of course, you don’t remember me. Why would you?’

She raked in a difficult breath and looked away. ‘Is there a point to all this?’

‘Your father changed, when you’d gone. We could all see the decline in him – we knew it was just a matter of time until…’

‘Until what?’ Jamie asked, her voice dripping venom.

‘Until something like what happened with Claesson…’

She swallowed hard.

‘That was the worst thing of all, that everyone knew.’ Wiik shook his head. ‘A ticking time bomb. And everyone was just waiting for it to go off, praying they weren’t the one to set it off.’ He huffed a little bit, looked down at his thumbs. They’d fallen still now.

Jamie’s teeth were about to shatter under the force of being clamped together so hard.

‘Everyone gave him a wide berth, not wanting to be the one sucked under his wheels, you know? When in reality, it was the opposite that—’

‘You know what,’ Jamie cut in, ‘I’m actually not hungry.’ She let her coat fall open in her hand and threw it around her shoulders. ‘I’m going back to the hotel,’ she said, pulling her long plait out of the collar and already making for the door. ‘Let me know if anything—’

‘Detective!’ Hallberg’s voice carried across the room, her footsteps hurried.

Jamie froze in her tracks, her eyes closing. She exhaled and turned slowly to see Hallberg standing at Wiik’s desk, a little out of breath.

‘You might want to see this,’ she said.

Jamie went back over, looking at the piece of paper Wiik had in his hands. It was a black-and-white printout of a photocopy of a driver’s licence.

As she approached, Wiik held it up to her, scoffed, and then smirked. ‘Sjöberg’s mysterious deathbed visitor.’

Jamie took it and stared down at the face on the page.

A guy in his fifties looked up at her, his expression bordering gormless. He was thin, with a narrow jaw and a long neck that ran down into an unbroken white collar.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Jamie muttered, looking at it. ‘He’s a priest.’

‘Yep,’ Wiik said, taking it back and spinning around on his chair to face her. ‘Per Eriksson is a goddamn priest.’