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

It was 7.26 a.m. and darkness was still very much upon the city when Jamie rounded the gates and headed into the Norra Begravningsplatsen. The Northern Cemetery.

Her feet pounded the asphalt of the sprawling network of paths, her brow bristling with sweat. It oozed out of her skin and evaporated in a thick mist that streamed behind her.

She was moving fast and had already racked up nearly ten kilometres.

The counsellor she had to see after she was put on administrative leave told her she couldn’t outrun her problems.

But she’d never seen Jamie run.

Jamie streaked through the cemetery, somewhere between a jog and a sprint, and let her legs tell her where to go. The hotel had refused to open the pool early two mornings in a row, so she’d been forced to find a twenty-four-hour supermarket and buy a very questionable pair of running shoes.

But they did the job, she was moving, and that was all that mattered.

Jamie was out of her head, thankfully, if only for a few short seconds at a time. She focused on her heart, her breathing, her feet, and let the road guide her.

And then she realised where she was and slowed to a stop.

Her hands found her hips, her shoulders rising and falling fiercely as she stepped off the path and onto the grass. It was covered with snow, but channels were cut between the headstones.

Her skin prickled, her shoulders slick with sweat, exposed outside the running-vest she was wearing.

Jamie’s throat ached as she walked, catching her breath, nearing the place she’d not been aiming for, but that she knew she couldn’t have avoided if she tried.

The cemetery was silent around her. The trees bowed a little, holding snow up to the sky in tribute. All quiet, all sombre. All shadows and darkness.

When she got there, she stood back a little, staring down at the stone baseplate, the empty brass vessel that hadn’t seen flowers for nineteen years.

The name carved into the headstone: Jörgen Johansson.

Jamie stared down in the darkness – there was just enough creeping light in the sky to pick out the letters – and clenched her jaw. The inscription read, Loving Father, Devoted Husband, Taken From Us Too Soon.

She wanted to kick the fucking thing down, spit on it.

Not because it was her father’s grave, but because of her mother’s words written there.

That guilty bitch had bawled her eyes out at the funeral – had been consoled by her father’s colleagues. She’d sobbed and sobbed, drowned out the priest who spoke. Made sure it was all about her – that she was seen as the grieving widow pining for a lost love. When it had been her vicious spite that had put that barrel in his mouth.

That was a week after Jamie’s eighteenth birthday.

Her father had called on the morning of it. Had asked to speak to Jamie.

Her mother had refused. Had told him Jamie didn’t want anything to do with him.

An hour later that gun was in his mouth.

Jamie swallowed hard, her lips trembling with rage. ‘Sorry, Dad,’ she whispered, the words barely clawing their way up her tightened throat. ‘Things should have been different.’ Jamie hung her head, felt the sting of the cold on her back, and ran the back of her hand across her face, wiping away what she told herself were beads of sweat.

She picked her head up then and looked around. The cemetery was deserted, but she didn’t feel alone. She couldn’t help but wonder if those unseen eyes from Rättvik had followed her home.

Jamie checked her watch – just after half past. Why did she have to lie to Wiik? Even if she’d got the mechanic up early, she’d still not make it back to the city before ten at the very earliest. She shook her head, annoyed at herself for being so stupid. She couldn’t call him until then about the house or he’d know something was up. She should have just called him the night before. And she definitely shouldn’t have gone inside her house. She may have potentially contaminated a crime scene, destroyed evidence. This is what happens when you let your emotions rule you, she thought, anger bubbling in her.

She exhaled, cursing herself, and shifted from foot to foot, staring down at her father’s grave. She’d been eighteen the last time she stood here. A strange weight laid itself on her chest and crushed the air from her lungs.

Jamie had to keep moving, or she knew she’d break down.

Her feet were heavy, didn’t want to move. But she forced them to. She still had a long way to go and she couldn’t crack yet.

She took off, willing warmth back into her muscles, and circled away from the cemetery, taking a wide loop back to the hotel.

Then she would eat, she would rest, she would recharge.

And then she would catch a killer.

It was eleven in the morning when the first of the flashing blue lights rounded the corner of her street and made a beeline for her.

Jamie was standing at the kerb in front of the rented hatchback, staring up at her house.

A patrol car and two CST vans rolled to a halt behind her, and the first of the CSTs disembarked.

A woman approached quickly in white overalls, a hood around her shoulders, a face mask hanging loosely under her chin. ‘Inspector Johansson?’ she asked, smiling.

‘Yes,’ Jamie answered.

‘I was told you had something for us to put in for examination?’ She was holding a clear evidence bag between her fingers and lifted it to illustrate.

Jamie reached inside her coat and pulled out the letter that had been tucked under her windscreen wiper.

The tech pulled on a blue vinyl glove and reached out, taking it from Jamie’s fingers and slotting it into the bag.

Jamie was mouthing a thanks when the sound of tyre-roar cut through the din of the engines idling around her.

Wiik’s car whistled towards them in the cold morning air, the sky a turbulent grey overhead, and then ploughed to a standstill in the middle of it all.

He was out of the cockpit in seconds, striding across the road towards her. ‘What happened?’ he asked, wasting no time.

Jamie looked over his shoulder at Hallberg, who seemed to have been promoted to co-driver again in her absence. The woman looked tired. Beaten down by Wiik’s insatiable good mood and cheery banter, no doubt.

She turned her attention back to Wiik, her story prepared. ‘I was looking at the note again last night,’ Jamie lied. ‘And I realised that the paper was the same size and shape as my father’s old notebook.’ She drew a slow breath and effect. ‘So I came straight here this morning, and noticed that there were tracks in the snow leading around the side of the house.’

Jamie gestured towards the door, a stream of CSTs in white overalls zipping around her and moving up the path. They all stopped at the threshold and pulled blue shoe-coverings on, and then disappeared into the darkness, hard cases and cameras in hand.

Jamie watched as the final one paused, snapping photos of the tracks. ‘I went inside,’ she said, and noticed that the tracks came up to the back door. That’s when I called it in.’

Wiik set his jaw. ‘Did you touch anything?’

‘No,’ she lied.

He nodded. ‘Okay – good. Let them do their work. Do you really think that someone broke in and took one of your father’s notebooks?’

Jamie raised her shoulders slowly into a shrug, still watching the tech taking photos of the tracks. Another had joined him now and was tapping things into a tablet he was holding. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I think if the killer had the foresight to take Nyström out before he made his kill, then the idea of me coming around probably rubbed him up the wrong way. And what better way to send a clear message than to let me know that I’m not safe – not even in my own home?’

She turned to face him and saw that Wiik was staring intensely at her. ‘This isn’t good,’ he said, dropping his voice as Hallberg drew close to them. She stood back a little – not wanting to crowd Wiik and give him any other reason to berate her, probably. ‘Falk wants to see you,’ Wiik added. ‘As soon as possible.’

Jamie sighed. Whether it was her boss or not, getting dragged into the office of a senior officer was never fun. ‘Okay,’ she replied. ‘Did you get anything from Lundgren at least?’

Wiik made a sort of hungh noise. ‘I’ll say. The guy was a pure creep.’

Jamie raised an eyebrow. ‘How so?’

Wiik shook his head, put his hands on his hips, looking up at the techs as if disapproving of their methods. A third one had joined them at the tracks now and was mixing what looked like plaster in a plastic cup, ready to pour into the first footmark. ‘He didn’t want to let us in, first off,’ Wiik said, still watching them. ‘We had to insist pretty hard – told him we just needed to get some background on the case, cross his name off the list, you know?’

‘He didn’t like that?’

‘I’ll say.’ Wiik scratched his forehead. ‘Hallberg pulled some records on him – he and his wife were registered foster carers until 2012. He worked as a risk consultant for an oil company that operated in Norway – so was back and forth a lot – he tried to tell us he wasn’t even in the country when Hanna was killed.’

‘Was he?’ Jamie asked.

Hallberg stepped in now. ‘No, he wasn’t,’ she said. ‘I checked with the company and their records show that he was flown out to one of the drill sites the day before Hanna died. And after her body was discovered, he was immediately flown back to deal with it.’

Jamie processed. ‘So it couldn’t have been him, then?’

Wiik tilted his head back and forth. ‘Hard to say. Depends how long the body was in the snow for. He could have killed her, posed her, hopped a flight out that day, knowing the body wouldn’t be found until the next.’

Hallberg dared to argue. ‘Though it’s highly unlikely – the original report from the pathology lab said that the body of Hanna Lundgren hadn’t been out there for more than about twelve hours at the most – and time of death was shortly before that. His flight departed from Gothenburg at two the previous afternoon.’

Wiik made his mouth into a shape that told Jamie he didn’t like Hallberg’s information, even though she was dead right. ‘He was still a creep.’

Jamie remembered something then. ‘What about the skin cells found under her nails?’

Hallberg nodded. ‘A positive match to Lundgren – but he said that Hanna used to scratch his back for him – he’s a pretty big guy, said he couldn’t reach it himself. But she had sharp nails.’

Wiik scoffed. ‘Bullshit.’

Jamie bit her lip. ‘Doesn’t sound like a likely story – but impossible to disprove.’

Hallberg nodded. ‘Yeah, I guess we’ll never know what happened. But something was definitely off about the whole thing.’

‘How so?’ Jamie watched her, saw the expression on her face. She looked troubled by the meeting.

Wiik interjected. ‘Like I said – the guy was a creep. He was really cagey about the whole thing – and when we asked him about the scar…’ Wiik turned his head to the side and sucked air through the corner of his mouth.

‘Scar?’ Jamie queried.

Hallberg fielded that one. ‘He had a scar across his neck’ – she illustrated with her finger, from under one corner of her jaw to the other – ‘old, faded, but clearly there. Looked like he’d been strangled.’

‘Garrotted,’ Wiik corrected her, not making any effort to mask the condescension in his voice. ‘Strangled is with hands. The guy had been garrotted by the look of it.’

‘Jesus,’ Jamie said. ‘When? By who?’

Wiik let out a long sigh, and Jamie caught the odour of sour coffee on his breath. ‘He didn’t know – he said he was mugged a few weeks after Hanna’s death walking home from the shop in the evening. Someone came up behind him, put the wire over his head, pulled back, dragged him to the ground.’

‘Doesn’t sound like a mugging to me.’ Jamie’s brow crumpled.

‘I didn’t think so either,’ Hallberg added.

Wiik fired her a hard look for interrupting, and she shrank apologetically.

He cleared his throat and went on. ‘He said he fought the guy off, managed to get away.’

‘Did he report it?’ Jamie asked.

Wiik shook his head. ‘No, and Hallberg double-checked. Nothing on file either. He said that he didn’t get a look at the guy – he didn’t hear his voice, nothing. His wife took him to the hospital, got it stitched up – but lucky for him it was just superficial.’

Jamie took it all in. ‘Jesus – that’s…’

‘Yeah,’ Wiik said, pushing his hand over his hair, slicking it to his head.

‘That’s too weird to be a coincidence.’

‘Maybe,’ Wiik said.

Jamie rolled the story over in her head again. ‘Two weeks after his daughter dies, he gets attacked? Brutally, too. You don’t try to garrotte someone unless you want to kill them. And definitely not just to take their wallet.’

Wiik was eyeing her now, watching her work.

‘And you said he said, “on the way home from the shop”?’

Wiik nodded in confirmation.

‘The shop,’ Jamie echoed.

‘Yeah, why?’

‘You say “the shop” when it’s the one local to your house. Otherwise, you’d be coming home from shopping, or from a shop.’

Wiik was expressionless, waiting for her to finish.

‘The killer targeted Lundgren – knew where he lived.’ She picked her head up, looked back at her house, thinking about the killer in her father’s office. Following her to Rättvik. Slashing her tyres. ‘Stalked him. Hunted him.’

Wiik set his jaw. ‘This is why you should have been there.’ The words came from his mouth coldly, and behind him Hallberg visibly shrivelled. If he’d have said another word, she would have been in tears.

Jamie resisted the urge to swing a kick into his testicles and cleared her throat instead. Though she didn’t know what to say to that. ‘Uh,’ she started, unable to look away from Hallberg. She had to throw the girl a lifeline. ‘Hallberg.’ She looked up at Jamie but didn’t risk speaking. ‘Can you check out the parents of the other victims in the original case? Dig into them, see what you can find, see if anyone else had any run-ins after the murders.’

Wiik eyed Jamie cautiously. ‘You think there’ll be a pattern here?’

Jamie thought of the seven dead girls. That made fourteen parents. And they had another girl lying on a slab right now, still without an ID. Though Jamie knew she probably had two parents, too. ‘I hope not,’ she replied, meeting his eye. ‘But I’m right about these things more often than I’d like to be.’

Wiik stared at her, deliberated, and then turned to Hallberg. ‘Get on it,’ he commanded.

She nodded diligently.

Wiik turned back to Jamie. ‘You need anything else from the house? Falk is waiting.’

‘No,’ Jamie said, shaking her head. ‘I’m good. I’ll let them work.’

Wiik was already turning on his heel. ‘Hallberg,’ he called beckoning her like a dog. ‘You’re with me.’

‘Wait,’ Jamie said, raising her hand. ‘Do you mind if Hallberg rides with me?’

Wiik stopped and looked back, hands in the pockets of his coat. He looked confused. ‘Why?’

Jamie thought fast. ‘I’ve got some leg-work I need done on Annika Liljedahl and Hans Sjöberg’s families, and you said it yourself – she’s good at that sort of thing.’ She met Hallberg’s eye. The girl didn’t look like she could take another punch. ‘And she doesn’t mind.’

Jamie let just a hint of a smirk slip, and Hallberg understood then.

Wiik sighed and waved them off. ‘Fine – just go straight to HQ.’ He started walking again. ‘Falk’s waiting.’

Wiik got into his car, the door closing heavily, and Hallberg came over.

‘Do you really need me to look into Liljedahl and Sjöberg?’ she asked, a waning hope in her voice.

‘No,’ Jamie said. ‘I just thought you might appreciate some breathing room.’

Hallberg laughed sadly. ‘More than you know.’