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

Jamie rose from the chair, exhausted.

The photo just had a date on the back. It said, December 1995, but it made no mention of where the cabin was.

Jamie had to find it, though. Her father’s note to her had said that he’d left things for her.

And if they’d be anywhere, they’d be there.

She just knew it.

He wouldn’t risk leaving anything at the house in case her mother found it. But her mother would never be caught dead on a camping trip.

She found herself nodding, bathed in the blinding light of the flood lamp.

It was making her eyes ache.

Jamie checked her watch – it was nearly six in the evening now and once again her stomach was empty. She sighed, rubbed her eyes, and then set about thinking of dinner. Sweden had nearly one hundred thousand lakes, and visiting them one by one until she found the cabin wasn’t the solution.

But she couldn’t seem to come up with a better one just then, but nor did she need to.

The cabin could wait.

Eriksson was still out there, and the case was far from over. Every minute that passed was a minute closer to the next body. The next victim. The next girl.

And with still no new leads on Nyström she was no closer to finding him either.

As for her father's parcel — it had waited twenty years. It could wait a few more weeks.

For now, she’d get back to the hotel, get some food in her stomach. Grab a hot bath and a good night’s sleep. Or at least as good as she could hope for. Closing her eyes just meant being alone with the things that lived in her head. The things she’d done.

She had to admit, as much as she hated to, that working a case again was giving her focus. Purpose. Though while it blocked out those thoughts while she was awake, nothing much could be done for the times that she was asleep.

Jamie placed the photos – of her father and Robert Nyström, and of her and her father – into the notebook, along with a few others above the desk she didn’t want to leave behind, and made for the door.

She switched off the lamp above her head, a deep throbbing pain developing behind her eyes, and opened the door to her father’s office.

Jamie’s skin hackled, gooseflesh coming out on the back of her neck, a shiver erupting through her body. And not just from the near-zero temperature in the house.

She held her breath between her teeth, staring out into her darkened dining room. The table was just a black slab in front of her, the sideboard with the glass windows, glass shelves, and decanters a ghostly outline, the faintest rays of light playing on the edges of the bottles.

But it was the window Jamie was transfixed on. Nestled between the archway into the kitchen and the unit, it was about two feet across by three high and shuttered. Jamie could just make out the pale lines of the shutter slats. They caught the orange light from the street lamps at the kerb and cut through the dust.

She could only just see through them from this angle – a millimetre or two between each slat. Barely anything. Basically nothing. And yet her brain was telling her not to move a fucking muscle.

It was blackness on blackness, the tiniest hint of yellow. Shadow in the absence of light. Emptiness to the eye. But something was screaming at her. Something that made her blood run colder, her muscles all strain tight and fill with blood, her heart kick up a few gears, her heels grind into the floor for traction, and her fists curl at her sides.

Jamie narrowed her eyes, forcing herself to breathe, not daring to look away.

And then the darkness moved.

A ripple beyond the shutters in the veil of night. The flap of a hood or the flutter of hair. It didn’t matter which. But they were running.

And now so was Jamie.

She plunged forward on instinct, and then cut left into the kitchen, shoving one of the chairs out of the way as she slid across the tiled floor and made for the hallway.

The sound of footsteps sloshing in snow echoed through the shuttered windows, reaching Jamie from the right-hand kitchen window, then the front window, then through the front door as she hit the porch.

Jamie tore the door open and pressed herself to the inside wall in case the figure was armed, watching as the shadow lurched towards the fence at the end of the front garden, spraying snow everywhere as he slung his feet in wide strides.

The whole picket fence, rotten with age, swayed violently as he pitched over it and into the street, stumbling before he managed to find his balance.

Jamie hauled herself forward, running down the icy path, the treads of her boots fighting for grip as she made for the street.

She slid onto the kerb, squinting into the darkness – no sign of the figure.

Shit.

Jamie turned and circled into the roadway around one of the neighbour’s cars and caught a glimpse of a coat flashing between two bumpers twenty metres ahead.

She filled her lungs and took off, bolting straight down the street to make up some ground.

The figure was headed for the city. It was maybe a kilometre or so before the houses and gardens gave way to apartment blocks and offices, but the guy was moving fast.

Jamie skidded on the slick ground and shoved herself through the gap between the two cars, back up onto the opposite pavement.

She glanced left and right, looking for any sign of him. The same person that had been lingering in the alleyway across from the hotel? Maybe the same person who’d shot at her at the Gunnarsons’. Per Eriksson, the fifty-something priest with the bad back? The way they were moving, she didn’t think so. But she’d been wrong before.

Jamie stopped, tweaked her ears for any sounds or signs of movement. Cars were trundling past now, coming home from work. Windows were lit up, casting glare onto front gardens. Voices carried – the sounds of TVs and families sitting down to dinner.

Shit, she was going to lose him.

Something clanged and her head snapped around, seeing the glint of metal moving in the streetlights as a side gate swung closed and bounced on the jamb two houses up.

Jamie was running again.

She hurdled a low fence into someone’s garden, trusting her footing more on the snow than she did on the frozen pavement.

Her knees came high, her heels nearly clipping her hamstrings as she tore through the slush, blinding herself with a thick cloud of breath-mist after every heaving exhale.

She was fit – more so than most – but running in these temperatures was hard. The air slashed at her lungs, felt like it was tearing into her throat. Her chest tightened and threatened to clamp shut.

Jamie fought it off, leaping the dividing fence, her hip just clearing the chain-link as she vaulted over it.

It sang behind her, wobbling madly as she adjusted her course and closed ground on the gate.

Her feet came free of the snow and she was through it. The gate hit the wall and swung shut behind her and then she was at the side of a house and charging forward, fists pumping through the frigid air.

Something banged and then echoed up ahead, and Jamie came around the corner and into another back garden, watching as the figure scrambled to its feet and took off again, an overturned plastic see-saw shaped like a triceratops lying up-ended on the grass, the broken snow on the ground telling Jamie the man fleeing had fallen face first over the thing.

She wasted no time in closing the gap, and ran the guy down just as a security light flared to life overhead, filling the entire garden.

The figure slid, looked for an exit, and then made for the back-fence.

He ducked between the swings on a children’s swing set and then leapt onto the panelled fence at the back, toes scrambling as he tried to haul himself over it.

Jamie was too close, though, and too fast.

She circled the set and took three big steps, kicking into the air.

Her fists hit the back of the figure’s jacket, just at the shoulders, and the sudden extra weight tore the fence from his grasp.

Jamie and the man toppled backwards, hitting the ground and sprawling onto their backs.

The figure reacted quickly, glancing over, his face obscured by a mask pulled up to the eyes, a black beanie hat pulled low to his brow, and lifted his right arm.

His fist sailed into the air above Jamie and he swung it down like a mallet, right at her face.

She threw her arms up, taking the blow against her forearms, and then rolled away as the figure tried to get to his feet again, skidding and sliding in the snow, his hands and heels gouging divots in the earth beneath, sending mud everywhere.

But Jamie was quicker, already on her feet.

She came forward now again and tackled the man to the ground, her shoulder hitting him in the middle of his back, forcing him onto his belly.

His legs flailed, arms swimming for freedom, but it was no good. Jamie had her right knee firmly in the small of his spine, her hands going for his. She snatched the man’s right hand out of the darkness and folded it up behind his back, leaning him left at the same time so his other arm could do nothing but bend awkwardly against the earth.

He cried out in pain, but the yell was muffled as Jamie shoved her free hand against the back of his head and pressed his face into the snow, sweat dripping from her brow as she did.

She was panting hard, fighting to stay on top of him, but a quick twist of the captured wrist settled him down and told him there was no getting away.

A voice rose from the snow. ‘Don’t kill me!’ it yelled, followed up with a mewling whimper.

But it wasn’t the voice of a man.

Jamie released the wrist a little and unfolded it, standing just enough that she could flip the woman underneath her over.

Before she could try anything, Jamie pulled her arm down to her side and pinned it under her knee again, straddling the woman’s midriff.

‘I can’t— I can’t breathe,’ she choked out breathlessly, throwing her free hand to her face and dragging the ski mask down to her chin.

She had her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling under her heavy parka. Her skin was pale, rosed in the freezing air, her dark curly hair sticking out from under the brim of her hat. She panted wildly, coughing and spluttering. But Jamie didn’t release any pressure. She just caught her own breath and kept her fists curled in a loose attack position above the woman’s head.

‘Who are you?’ Jamie demanded, feeling the cold of the ice soak through the knees of her jeans.

They both drowned in a sea of steam. It peeled from their exposed skin, streamed from their noses and mouths.

‘I— I—’ the woman began, stammering.

Jamie leaned into the woman’s wrist, crushing it under her knee.

She squealed in pain. ‘Get off!’

‘Who are you?’ Jamie asked again.

‘My name is… my name is Rachel, Rachel Engerman!’ she practically screamed it now, her straight, white teeth gritted in pain.

‘And who are you, Rachel Engerman? And more importantly,’ Jamie said in a low, hard voice, twisting her knee a little more, ‘why are you following me?’

Tears formed under Rachel’s eyes now, and she sobbed with pain, her free hand flapping around wildly at her side, at a loss for anything else to do.

It seemed to have no intention of harming Jamie now.

‘It’s about Hanna,’ she said, devolving into sobs. ‘I killed Hanna Lundgren.’