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

Wiik was leaning against the railing at the bottom of the church steps. He pushed off as Jamie emerged and immediately started speaking. ‘I had Hallberg follow up on the story about the seminary school. Apparently, they did pass Eriksson’s information on to someone a few weeks ago.’

‘That was fast,’ Jamie said, surprised. It could only have been about five minutes – no more than ten at most – since Wiik had left the room.

He nodded. ‘Yeah, Hallberg is good like that. The forensics reports on the original murders were delivered this morning, too. Hallberg is going to go through them and let us know what she finds.’

‘You’re lucky to have her.’

He scoffed. ‘Yeah, sure. Sir, sir,’ he parroted emphatically, waving his hands next to his head. ‘I hear that a hundred times a day. “How do I do this? What do you think about this? What would you do in this situation?”’ He snorted derisively.

Jamie gritted her teeth. ‘She’s eager to learn – don’t punish her for it. She’ll make a great detective one day, and she clearly just wants guidance.’

He exhaled, walking fast for the car. He ran his hand over his head and smoothed down his hair. ‘I just wish she’d focus on the cases, not so much on her own footing. As if I don’t have enough to worry about without mollycoddling her all the time.’

Jamie let it go. She didn’t feel like getting into an argument, and saying, Well, if you cut the kid some slack every once in a while, maybe said thank you, she’d realise she was actually doing a pretty great job, could only cause one.

Wiik got into the car and sat down hard, closing the door behind him.

He sighed and exhaled hard. ‘You want to get some breakfast?’ he asked suddenly, staring out of the window.

‘I ate already,’ Jamie said, looking at him. ‘What happened in there?’

‘I don’t like churches.’

‘I kind of got that.’

‘My parents used to make me go as a child. I always thought it was ridiculous.’

Jamie bit her lip for a second. ‘You still should have been careful in there. Eriksson gave us some good information.’ Provided it wasn’t all a complete fabrication, she felt like adding. But she didn’t think she needed to feed Wiik’s distrust any more.

‘Yeah? Like what?’ Wiik leaned on his hand, his elbow on the sill of the window.

‘Information on Sjöberg – the name in my father’s notebook, Annika Liljedahl. What A.M. stands for.’

‘And who is she, exactly?’ Wiik asked, seemingly bored by it all now.

‘Sjöberg’s first girlfriend, Eriksson said.’ Jamie watched him, but he didn’t seem to perk up. ‘Apparently they had some sort of disagreement, and then Sjöberg left for the military – he was an army medic for a couple of years.’

‘A.M.,’ Wiik said quietly, nodding. ‘Great. But how does that help us?’

Jamie did her best to keep her cool. ‘Any lead right now is a good one. And filling in the blanks from the original case can only help us.’

‘Whatever you say.’ Wiik brushed her off and started the motor, accelerating away from the church at speed.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Like I said: breakfast.’

Jamie had already had her fill of cold meats, muesli, fruit and coffee from the breakfast buffet at the hotel. She’d worked up an appetite after her swim. But judging by the way he was stuffing a breakfast sub into his mouth, Wiik had skipped the most important meal of the day altogether. The smell of it filled the cabin of the car, but because of the cold he refused to let Jamie roll the window down.

The screen in the central console lit up, the word Hallberg appeared there, and Jamie quickly jabbed the answer button to drown out the sound of Wiik’s chewing and slurping.

‘Hallberg,’ Jamie said brightly.

‘Oh, Inspector Johansson,’ she replied, a little surprised. ‘Is, er, Kriminalinspektör Wiik there?’

‘I-ng-here-ngg,’ he said, mouth full, spewing crumbs all over the steering wheel. He swallowed – painfully, it looked like – coughed, and then spoke. ‘What is it?’

‘I was just looking through the original files from the coroner’s office, and one of the girls – victim seven – her name was Hanna Lundgren.’ She paused after it.

Wiik looked at Jamie, then took another bite of his sandwich. ‘Lundgren?’ he said, lowering his sandwich a little.

‘As in Leif Lundgren?’ Jamie interjected, glancing at Wiik. ‘The third name in the notebook?’

‘I don’t know, yet,’ Hallberg said. ‘But I have her information here. I’ll try the next of kin that’s listed, but I doubt the number is still in use after all these years. If it’s not, I’ll check with the hospital, get a copy of the birth certificate, and see if I can get a match. I’ll let you know what I find.’

‘You do that,’ Wiik said, reaching out and hanging up on her. He turned to Jamie and took another bite from his sub. ‘See what I mean?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Jamie said, shaking her head. ‘She’s fucking heinous.’

Hallberg was back on the line in twenty minutes.

Wiik had finished his meal and his coffee, and the caffeine seemed to be lifting his mood. But the church had struck a nerve of some kind, and Jamie wasn’t keen to open that can of worms, especially not right in the middle of a murder investigation.

‘Okay,’ Hallberg said, taking a deep breath. ‘Leif Lundgren. I found Hanna’s birth certificate, but Leif isn’t listed as her father. It looks like Hanna’s mother died when she was four and her father was unable to care for her. Public records show that she was taken into care and was then adopted by Helena and Leif Lundgren in 1987. In 1996, when she was killed, she was only fourteen years old.’

‘Why was Lundgren a suspect?’ Wiik asked, his voice cutting.

‘The forensic report on Hanna showed that epithelial cells were recovered from under her fingernails – and the DNA was positively matched to Leif Lundgren.’

Wiik stuck out his bottom lip.

‘The report says that build-up like that was consistent with defensive scratching.’

‘Why was Leif never arrested?’

‘Uh,’ Hallberg said, hedging. ‘I don’t know whether he was or not. The case files are missing.’ She did her best not to sound patronising, but it was obvious Wiik still took it that way.

‘You have a current address for Lundgren.’

‘Of course.’ She knew not to call a second time without everything in front of her.

‘Send it to me. We’ll head there now—’

Jamie interjected. ‘Actually, I’d like to follow up on the Annika Liljedahl lead.’

Wiik fired her a strange look like she’d just driven a knife into his ribs. ‘Why?’

Jamie thought for a second how best to phrase it. ‘I’d like to know more about Sjöberg. If my father was wrong about him, I need to know where he went off course. Lindvall, Eriksson and now Lundgren… They’re solid suspects. Means. Opportunity. But if they got away with it twenty years ago, then my father did something wrong. And I need to know what that was. If you need backup, take Hallberg.’

Wiik’s jaw tightened. ‘You’re here to help catch a killer, not prove your father’s competence.’

Jamie could have torn him apart, wanted to. He was acting like a child. A spoilt one at that. The way he treated Hallberg, the case, now this… She didn’t feel great about pushing Hallberg back into the firing line, but as the girl had said herself, you get used to Wiik. She knew her way around him. And obviously Jamie didn’t just yet. ‘You’re more than capable of handling Lundgren, yourself,’ Jamie replied finally. ‘You didn’t even want me on the case to begin with, remember? Let’s just divide and conquer. If my father was onto something with Sjöberg, then this helps prove it’s a copycat. If he was wrong…’

Wiik huffed. ‘Whatever you want. Hallberg – get Johansson an address for Annika Liljedahl. There can’t be many people born around the same time as Sjöberg in the same town with that name.’

‘I can find it myself,’ Jamie protested.

‘No,’ Wiik said. ‘Hallberg is good at this sort of thing, and she doesn’t mind.’

Hallberg was silent on the line, but Jamie could picture her fist around the receiver, ready to crush it.

She knew how she felt.

Her own fist was balled at her side. Knuckles white with tension.

But she didn’t feel like crushing a phone with it.

She could think of a much better use.