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

Wiik was driving quickly.

Whether he thought they were racing another shooter to the punch, or whether he was just angry and not paying attention to the speedometer, Jamie didn’t know. But either way, he was doing nearly twice the speed limit. And on slick roads, too.

His phone buzzed in his pocket and he wrestled it out, glancing down at the screen. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, looking back up and weaving around a car pulling left into a side street. They laid on their horn as the car straightened out and slipped away, deeper into the city.

‘What is it?’ Jamie asked, reading the look of frustration on Wiik’s face.

‘Forensic reports have just come back on Eriksson’s, Eva Sjöberg’s and your place.’

Her place? Wiik meant her father’s house. But yes, she guessed it was hers now. It just felt strange to hear it come out of someone’s mouth.

She didn’t have much time to process it as Wiik went on. ‘Eriksson’s was clean – if he was doing anything sick with Emmy Berg before he murdered her, then he wasn’t doing it there.’

Jamie made a disapproving hmm sound at Wiik’s conjecture, but didn’t slow him down.

‘No prints, no DNA, nothing. And his computer is gone, too.’ He sighed hard, brake-checked as a car in front flew out of the distance towards them, and then started weaving back and forth in the lane, looking for space to overtake.

Jamie hadn’t ever seen him drive like this. He’d not been a slow driver before, but it was always measured. Now, it was bordering on erratic. He’d been in a good mood that morning – brought her coffee. But now… It was as though getting the ID on Emmy Berg had done something to him. Had stoked his fire. The cool, detached man she’d first met had now been replaced by a father with a grudge, his hands in fists around the wheel.

Was it a daughter he had? He’d said he had a kid, but Jamie couldn’t remember if he’d said a boy or girl. Divorced, though, he’d said, right? She’d barely been listening. And though she’d been living in his pocket for the last four days, she didn’t know a damn thing about him. But if he was half as difficult to get on with in a marriage as he was in work, she wasn’t all that surprised.

She glanced across at the man, noted that his usually impeccably clean jaw was now covered in one-day stubble.

Then again, she doubted she looked runway ready either. She’d not washed her hair since she’d arrived and her long sleeve was wrinkled from the sink-wash it had suffered the night before. That, combined with the total sixteen hours of sleep she’d had over the last four days, probably made her look like she’d just crawled out of the gutter.

She could smell the faintest whiff of sweat in the air and had assumed it was coming from Wiik. But looking at him now – unshaven but washed, in a perfectly pressed shirt – she came to the conclusion that it was either coming from her hair or her own top.

Jamie cleared her throat and focused on the task at hand. ‘So Eriksson’s running,’ she said. ‘No news there. What about Sjöberg’s house?’

Wiik looked at his phone again. ‘Tracks in the snow indicate a single person gained access through an unlocked bedroom window, then exited the same way. The tracks were doubled-back on to remove any trace of tread marks and to make sizing impossible. Sound familiar?’

Jamie looked ahead, thankful that Wiik was coming up on a wall of cars and a red light. He pressed the brake and they slowed. She noticed then that her hand was around the safety handle on the door. ‘Yeah, it does.’ Jamie thought back to the crime scene. The killer had backtracked on his footprints for the same reason. And she guessed it was the same at her father’s house, too. ‘What about DNA, fibres, particulates—’

‘Nothing. They scraped the whole place, found lots of skin and hair they’ve positively matched to Eva Sjöberg – but nothing else. Killer probably wore gloves, a hat…’

‘Like every person in this city in January,’ Jamie remarked, shaking her head. ‘Shit. And uh,’ she said, finding it hard to say. ‘What about my house?’

Wiik’s eyes were on the road now, but even from briefly skimming what Jamie had assumed was a summarising email from Hallberg, he’d committed all the details to memory. ‘No signs of forced entry, tracks doubled-back on. There was no moisture in the house, either, no snowy prints on the floor – so the CSTs assume that it happened sometime the day before. Pinpointing time is difficult. Which makes looking for nearby CCTV practically impossible. Or at least more time consuming than we can afford.’

Jamie set her jaw. Damn. If she had reported it when she first got there the night before, would there have been prints? Other evidence that had degraded through the night? Evidence that she’d walked out the front door on the bottom of her own shoes and destroyed? Jamie swallowed and tried to move the conversation on as quickly as she could.

‘Did they say if anything was missing?’ She’d already removed certain items – ones she didn’t want bagged and tagged and stuck in an evidence locker for years.

‘Nothing apparent – but it will take a while to catalogue everything. And I’m sure they’ll ask you some questions, too, just to confirm.’

Jamie nodded, glad Wiik hadn’t mentioned anything that suggested they knew she’d arrived home a full twelve hours before she’d called the CSTs in. ‘So, timeline,’ she started, raising her hands. ‘We visit Eriksson, the second we walk out the front door, he’s out the back, in the… church bus? He races over to Eva Sjöberg’s house, gets in through the window, takes the letter he sent to Hans to stop us from using it in evidence – maybe lifts Hans’s hunting rifle if he has one, then slips back out.’

Wiik sort of scoffed. ‘For all we know, he rang the front doorbell and asked Eva Sjöberg for them right to her face. The woman will be completely useless as a witness when this goes to trial. We’d get as much sense painting a face on Hans’s urn and asking that questions instead.’

Jamie wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be humorous or not. She thought Wiik was even less funny than she was. And that was saying something. Someone had once asked her to tell a joke, but the only one she knew – and still knew – involved the words ‘knock, knock’ and an owl. And she’d somehow managed to screw that up the one time she’d told it, too. Jamie pressed on anyway. ‘So he leaves Eva Sjöberg’s house with the letter, then goes to my father’s house? Picks the lock to get in, looks around – maybe takes a notebook, or a page from one?’

‘And then follows you out to Rättvik,’ Wiik added. ‘Leaves you a note to try and scare you off the investigation.’

‘And when I don’t get the message, and then show up at the Gunnarsons’ place…’

‘He’s got the rifle in hand, and a chance to kill two birds with one gun. Literally.’

Jamie pursed her lips, thinking. ‘But why break in at all? He couldn’t think that we wouldn’t connect the dots. That we would go see him, he’d make a comment on my notebook, and then, when a threatening note shows up under my windscreen wiper, that we wouldn’t immediately leap to him?

‘Maybe that’s what he wanted. If he didn’t think we’d home in on him, why would he run? Taking a page from your father’s notebook was as much of a message to back off as the message itself.’

Jamie nodded. That was her first thought at the scene, too. ‘No doubt he was looking for this, as well.’ She pulled out the red notebook she had in her pocket. It wasn’t the Angel Maker notebook – that was still back at her hotel. But Wiik didn’t and wouldn’t know the difference. ‘He was probably looking for all evidence from the original case, anything he could remove to lessen potential evidence against him. Except he didn’t find it.’

‘So he changes the plan, snatches a page from one of your father’s notebooks, and writes you a little letter to try and get you to back off.’ Wiik narrowed his eyes.

Jamie watched as he fitted the puzzle pieces together in his head.

‘And then follows you out to Rättvik, note in hand.’ Wiik glanced over at her. ‘But how would he pick up your trail?’

Jamie thought on that. ‘He knew about Annika Liljedahl,’ she said, recalling their conversation. ‘He told me about her – he knew I’d go there. He put me on to her. He could have withheld that information, played dumb. I’d never have known the difference.’

‘What does he gain from getting Annika Liljedahl wrapped up in all this?’

Jamie bit her lip. ‘Annika’s story about Hans Sjöberg was the reason my father believed he was guilty.’ Jamie scoffed a little, shaking her head. ‘And it was the reason that his guilt was called into question in my mind… The story doesn’t implicate Sjöberg in the Angel Maker case – it just calls Sjöberg’s character into question.’

‘And Eriksson knows that,’ Wiik said. ‘So he sends you out there to throw the original conviction into question… You come away believing Sjöberg was wrongly convicted… And it all leads back to Eriksson.’

‘Shit,’ Jamie said, understanding then. ‘He’s playing with us. It’s all just a big game to him, and he’s got us out here chasing our tails.’

Wiik sort of grunted his approval of the theory and his growing disdain for Eriksson.

There was still one thing she couldn’t figure out. ‘But what does he get from killing the parents? From putting a bullet between Åsa Gunnarson’s shoulders and trying to blow Mikael Gunnarson’s head off?’

Wiik drew a slow breath. That one escaped him, too. ‘I don’t know. The court transcripts don’t tell much of a story – Sjöberg pleaded innocent, to begin with, but didn’t contest the signed confession. The transcript shows no mention of him announcing that the confession was coerced as Eva Sjöberg said.’ He looked over at her to gauge her reaction to that, Jamie thought.

She tried not to show any. She only had one person saying that her father had brutalised Hans Sjöberg to get that confession, and a distinct lack of corroboration to argue against it. No confirmation wasn’t the same as opposition.

‘The evidence was overwhelming, and by the time they’d presented what they had on the third victim, Hans Sjöberg offered to change his plea – and then plead guilty to all seven murders.’

‘Jesus,’ Jamie said. Wiik had been busy in Jamie’s absence. Between the trip to Rättvik and then the run out to the Gunnarsons’, it looked like he’d done his homework. ‘So he pleads guilty to the seven murders to cover up the killings of the parents? But that doesn’t make sense if it was Eriksson all along.’

‘The evidence was overwhelming. Maybe a guilty plea got him a shorter sentence?’ Wiik offered.

‘If you were innocent, would you plead guilty to the rape and murder of seven teenage girls for a shorter sentence?’

‘I don’t know,’ Wiik said, sighing now. ‘But either way, we can’t rule him out. There was solid evidence on top of the confession… which means there’s a good chance he was the Angel Maker.’ He looked at Jamie now, his features grave. ‘Or at least one of them.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jamie eyed him now.

Wiik moved his head back and forth. ‘Seven girls and their parents? Twelve total victims in the space of a year – nearly thirteen if you include Leif Lundgren? That’s prolific.’

‘You think Sjöberg and Eriksson were in on it together?’ Jamie hadn’t considered that.

‘Who knows? Both were religious men – both believed in whatever fucked-up version of God and faith drives men to rape and murder children. Sjöberg had the medical knowledge and training from the army, Eriksson knew his way around a hatchet. Maybe one did the girls and one did the parents. Maybe they took turns with the girls—’

Jamie cut him off. She’d heard enough. ‘So they get together, cook this scheme up over a bottle of whisky, a couple of buddies, and then they just, what, start murdering?’

‘I’ve had wilder theories that have panned out.’

Jamie exhaled hard, her head spinning suddenly. ‘And then when Sjöberg gets picked up, he takes the fall for Eriksson. They part ways, keep the radio silence for appearances, Eriksson goes into the church to cover his tracks.’

Wiik nodded. ‘They think they’ll get together when Sjöberg gets out, maybe do another one for old times’ sake.’

‘But then Sjöberg gets sick. Reaches out to his old friend, tells him he’s not getting better…’

‘Eriksson goes to visit him, they have a nice off-the-record chat. Just like they used to, plan another kill. Plan how to get away with it – what he’d need to do. Nyström, the case files…’

‘And when Sjöberg dies…’ Wiik said, rolling his head left and right, looking for an opening for another overtake.

‘Eriksson chooses a girl and gets to work. Pays tribute to his friend and the good old days…’

‘And throws doubts on the original investigation, too – potentially exonerating his friend. Muddying the waters for us. Splitting our focus.’

‘Or at least giving Eva Sjöberg some peace.’ Jamie bit her lip. ‘Sounds like he did care about her.’

‘It’s all a lie,’ Wiik said coldly. ‘He’s a piece of shit and he’s playing a game. That addled old woman is just one more part of it. He’s a twisted child-killer, a rapist, and he thinks he’s a lot smarter than he really is. Just like they all do. And with Nyström in the bag, the case files missing, he thinks he’s gotten away with it all.’

‘Except he doesn’t bank on me showing up,’ Jamie said, feeling Wiik’s anger start to rub off on her.

‘Right. And when you come asking about Sjöberg, Annika Liljedahl, it sets alarm bells ringing. He knows we’re getting close, so he bolts – tries to clean up his mess. He goes after the letter to Hans, he tracks down the Gunnarsons’ to sweep up his mess. He goes out to Rättvik, banking on you being there, tries to scare you off the case.’

‘Why not just try and kill me then, too?’ Jamie asked. She had to play devil’s advocate. It was the job.

‘Kidnapping an old, semi-retired detective is one thing. Especially because he needed Nyström. But he’s older, too. Remember how he winced when he leaned against the desk in his bedroom?’ Wiik glanced at her for confirmation. Damn, he really didn’t miss a thing.

‘I did. You don’t think that was bullshit too?’

‘Who knows. But either way – you’re a few decades his junior, and you’ve only got to take one look at you to know that you wouldn’t go quietly.’

Jamie restrained a little smile.

‘Maybe he sized you up, thought he was going to be biting off more than he could chew if he came after you face to face.’

‘But with a rifle from across the valley…’ Jamie sighed. ‘Damn,’ she said tiredly.

‘“Damn” what?’ Wiik asked, indicating at the last second and swinging down another street.

Jamie jostled in her seat but didn’t think twice about the standard of driving anymore. ‘Damn – it all fits.’

‘It does.’

‘So you think Eriksson is our guy?’ Jamie asked, watching the buildings go by. They’d changed now from central-city offices and apartment blocks to suburban townhouses.

‘I do,’ Wiik said. ‘Whether Sjöberg was in on it too, or Eriksson hung him out to dry, I can’t say. But I know one thing – innocent men don’t run.’ Wiik decelerated sharply. ‘The main question now, is how he chose Emmy Berg, and more pertinently, whether he’s going to stop at one.’

The brakes squealed as they came to a stop and Jamie lurched forward and then slumped back in the chair, looking up at the pretty townhouses on her left. Tall, narrow, three-storeyed. Picturesque.

‘Come on,’ Wiik said, stepping out. ‘Let’s go and question Jan and Anna Hansen.’ He closed the door and buttoned up his coat against the cold. ‘And with any luck,’ he said, looking across the top of the car at Jamie, ‘we’re not already too late.’