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

Jamie was sitting in the back of an ambulance having a torch shone in her eyes when Wiik pulled into the driveway and skidded to a halt on the slick tarmac.

The Gunnarsons’ front lawn was a sea of flashing lights. Two ambulances were at the scene, as well as four squad cars, two canine units, Hallberg, and now Wiik.

He kicked his door open and swept from his car, throwing the tail of his long coat from around his arms as he stormed towards Jamie.

She sighed, brushed the penlight away from her face and thanked the paramedic checking her over. He glanced at Wiik, realised that sticking around was probably a bad idea, and then evaporated into the blue haze.

‘Hey,’ Jamie said, sighing and rubbing her forearm. Mikael Gunnarson wasn’t a fighter by any means, but his knuckles had caught her, and it was still aching horribly.

‘Hey?’ Wiik asked incredulously, standing over her and putting his hands on his hips. ‘What were you thinking?’

Jamie narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I’m fine, thanks for asking,’ she said.

Wiik’s nostrils flared, and then he exhaled hard, smoothing down his hair. ‘You could have been killed.’

‘So could have Mikael.’ Jamie set her jaw. ‘Åsa was.’ She turned and nodded towards the house. Two paramedics were walking out, pulling off their gloves. Mikael had been unharmed, but Åsa hadn’t made it. Jamie only had to take one look at the holes in the walls to know there was no coming back from a direct hit like that.

The gunman had shot to kill, and he’d succeeded.

Wiik stood stoically now and looked out into the darkness, the fog still thick around the house.

Torch beams moved intermittently through the trees in the distance as the canine units combed the forest for the shooter. Jamie knew he was long gone by now. But just finding his nest, maybe a few shell casings, anything, would be a start. She wasn’t so sure of the shooter’s identity, but she knew Wiik had already made up his mind, was hoping the canine units would corner Eriksson out there.

‘You shouldn’t have rushed in like that,’ Wiik muttered, his anger riling against something else. Concern?

Jamie cast an eye past him at Hallberg, who was hovering near the front of her car. She was on her phone, but kept glancing over. How much had she told Wiik, exactly?

‘And what else was I supposed to do?’ Jamie asked, genuinely not knowing the answer.

‘Wait, call for backup,’ he answered plainly.

‘It would have taken twenty minutes for the nearest officers to arrive – and you know as well as I do,’ Jamie said, trying to keep the coldness out of her voice, ‘that they’d be some inexperienced bumbling country-born uniforms who’d be about as much help as… as…’ Jamie trailed off, shaking her head. She couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t a joke, and she didn’t much feel like laughing.

‘I don’t care,’ Wiik said.

‘If I hadn’t gone in, then Mikael could have been killed.’

‘Åsa was anyway, and did you have any way to know that Mikael wasn’t either before you almost got your head blown off? Hallberg told me you were dodging bullets all the way to the front door, and the shooter had no intention of letting you get to him.’

Jamie leaned around Wiik and scowled at Hallberg. She looked away sheepishly. Wiik’s reasoning was as sound as she’d heard. ‘Look,’ she said tiredly. ‘I’m fine. Mikael Gunnarson is fine.’ Jamie dipped her head to one of the squad cars, where they could just make out the silhouette of the would-be second victim in the darkness of the back seat, hunched over, head hung. ‘The shooter didn’t get him – and he didn’t get me. I went in there, because the case probably rests on Gunnarson now, and I wasn’t about to let our best lead catch a bullet.’

Wiik’s mouth had become an expressionless line.

‘The shooter knew this property, and he knew the targets. This was planned, it was executed to precision. It was just dumb luck that we showed up when we did. And me going into that house might have been the only thing that stopped the shooter from advancing on it and finishing the job. I have no doubt that if we weren’t here, there’d be two dead bodies in there, and we’d be no closer to figuring out just what the fuck is going on here.’

Wiik refused to look at her now. He was staring up at their house. ‘It doesn’t fit,’ he said after a few seconds.

‘What doesn’t?’ Jamie asked, shaking her head. She didn’t think she had the energy for riddles.

‘This,’ Wiik said, not looking away from the house. ‘The killer – going after Mikael and Åsa Gunnarson.’

‘I don’t think I’m following,’ Jamie said, watching Wiik closely.

‘In each case – the other five victims,’ Wiik said, looking back at her now and holding out his five fingers. ‘Christina Bergner – her father was run off the road and killed.’ He pulled one of his fingers down. ‘Britta Engdahl, mother disappears without a trace.’ Another finger. ‘Hilda Nordell – father hanged himself. Agnes Floden’s father, missing. Elin Wickstrom’s father, stabbed.’ He lowered a finger with each one. ‘There’s a pattern here.’

‘It’s not gender-driven,’ Jamie said, trying not to let on how impressed she was he remembered all that. He’d barely seemed interested in what Hallberg had to say, and definitely not enough to come out here after the Gunnarsons. And yet he had taken that information and memorised it from the off. Jamie was impressed. But she didn't let on. ‘We know that,’ she went on. ‘Britta Engdahl’s mother was targeted, as, now, Åsa Gunnarson was, too. The rest are fathers.’

‘But why?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jamie answered truthfully.

‘Why would the killer go after the girls? Specifically girls. Aged thirteen or fourteen. Same church group. All linked. All alike. Young, Christian – ready for their confirmation. All killed in the same way, too. Abducted, suffocated, displayed. But then the parents… The kills were opportunistic, tailored to the victim, not the killer.’ Wiik folded his lips into a line again. ‘They were careful, too. Hidden. Plausible. Seemingly accidental. A hit-and-run – disappearances, supposed suicide. They were able to slip through the net, unnoticed.’

Jamie sighed, agreeing with him then. ‘Taking shots at two high-profile business people with a hunting rifle isn’t exactly covert. It doesn’t fit,’ she said tiredly.

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Wiik looked out at the forest again. ‘So what changed between then and now? What made him come at the Gunnarsons like this? Why both of them?’

‘If the killer was twenty-five years younger then,’ Jamie mused, ‘he was probably young enough, strong enough to take them like that. Confident enough to get close. Now, if he’s older… a gun is a safer bet. Maybe he didn’t want both of them. Maybe he just wanted to take them both so the other couldn’t call for help.’

Wiik didn’t look sold on the theory. But then again, Jamie was just spewing words at this point. Her head was spinning. She was exhausted, the adrenaline having worn off. She could barely think. ‘I don’t know,’ she said for what felt like the hundredth time. ‘But we will.’ She looked over towards Gunnarson again. ‘The killer has gone after the girls, and then their parents. We need to question the surviving parents, and we need to question Gunnarson. If anyone knows why they’re being targeted, it’s him.’

‘And if he doesn’t?’ Wiik was watching Jamie now.

Jamie closed her eyes and rubbed them with the heels of her hands. ‘Then we’re no closer to solving this case.’