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

Jamie released the woman and stood up, backing off a step or two, processing what the hell she’d just heard. ‘What did you say?’

Rachel Engerman – a woman roughly the same age as Jamie – maybe a year or two older – curled onto her side, her back soaked with snow, and cradled her right wrist, the hand locked into a claw shape. She clutched at it with her left, crying into her fingers.

Jamie looked around at the house they were behind, could see a man and a woman standing at the patio doors, a pair of little girls clutching at their legs. ‘It’s okay,’ Jamie said, fishing her police lanyard from her pocket. She held it up. ‘I’m with the Stockholm Polis,’ she called commandingly, glancing down at the woman on the ground, who seemingly had no intention of running anywhere now. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ she called again, smiling. ‘Sorry about your, uh… garden,’ she finished, glancing down at the mess they’d made.

She stepped back towards Engerman and reached down, taking the girl by the arm and dragging her to her feet. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘It’s not broken.’

Jamie kept a vice-like grip on the woman’s arm, and half pulled, half pushed her back through the garden towards the side gate, holding her badge up to the family in the window as she passed. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she called again. ‘Sorry to disturb you.’

They peered around the corner as best they could to watch Jamie and the stranger go, but the second they were out of sight, shielded by the side of the house, Jamie stopped and threw Engerman against the wood panelling. ‘Start talking,’ she said, pointing into her face. ‘Now.’

The woman looked frightened, and shook her head innocently, unable to muster words.

‘Why have you been following me?’ Jamie demanded.

She held her hands up beside her shoulders now. ‘I haven’t,’ she said quickly.

‘Bullshit! I saw you across the road from my hotel.’ Jamie thought then. ‘Were you in my house?’

‘What? No!’ the woman said.

Jamie’s fist curled suddenly and plunged into the panelling next to her head. ‘Don’t fucking lie to me!’

‘I wasn’t!’ She began to well up again.

Jamie exhaled and pulled her hand back. Her knuckles were throbbing. She was soaked, freezing, shivering and exhausted. ‘Were you at my house a few days ago?’ she asked, more calmly now.

The woman nodded slowly, not daring to move.

‘But you didn’t go inside?’

She shook her head.

‘Why were you there?’

‘I was looking for you.’

‘Me? Why?’ Jamie narrowed her eyes.

‘I… I needed to talk to you.’

‘About what? Hanna Lundgren?’

She nodded, her teeth beginning to chatter.

‘Then why did you run?’

‘I wasn’t sure if it was you.’

‘Who else would it be?’

Engerman lifted her shoulders a little, offering a weak shrug. ‘I don’t know.’

She looked scared. Which told Jamie she might have had an idea. But this wasn’t the place to have this conversation.

‘You know I’m not police, right? At least not Swedish police.’

Rachel Engerman nodded. ‘I guessed.’

‘So why didn’t you try to contact my partner, or—?’

‘I wasn’t looking for you.’

‘Who were you looking for?’

‘Jörgen Johansson. The detective from the old case. I looked it up online when I read the news – about the Angel Maker – that he was back, I wanted to reach out, to… to make things right.’

‘Jörgen Johansson was my father,’ Jamie said. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Oh,’ Rachel said, looking at the ground. ‘I didn’t know – I’m sorry.’

‘I’m helping with this case, though,’ Jamie added quickly. If Rachel Engerman had something worth saying to say to her father, then she was damn well going to hear it herself. Jamie studied her for a second and then sighed. ‘You going to try and run again?’

She shook her head.

‘Then put your hands down and come on.’ Jamie slapped them out of the air and beckoned the woman after her. ‘It’s freezing out here.’

Jamie pulled the car into a nearby coffee shop and led the way into the overly bright interior.

The two women entered – soaked and bedraggled – and headed for a booth in the corner. It was quiet in there now. The only other patrons were a man in the far corner tapping away on a laptop and a young couple leaning over a little table at each other, laughing and whispering about who knew what. Something innocent and fun, no doubt. Jamie grimaced and tore her eyes from them, looking back at Rachel Engerman.

They stared at each other in silence, sizing each other up, and then a waitress appeared.

‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked, looking at both of them in turn, dying to ask, but too afraid to.

‘Black tea,’ Jamie said, not looking away from Engerman.

‘The same,’ she replied, unable to resist looking at the waitress and smiling. ‘Thanks.’

Jamie bit her lip. She was polite, well-spoken. She seemed nice, by all accounts. Not the murderous type at all. But those words had stuck with her. I killed Hanna Lundgren. Jamie didn’t think she’d raped her, suffocated her, and then rammed birch branches through her back. But you couldn’t ignore a statement like that.

‘Start talking,’ Jamie said, the second the waitress was out of earshot.

Rachel Engerman swallowed and then cleared her throat. ‘Hanna Lundgren was my friend,’ she said slowly, choosing her words. ‘I thought I was helping her.’

Jamie’s fingers had gone numb now and the backs of her legs were stinging with the cold. ‘Talk faster.’

‘We were childhood friends – neighbours. She was two years younger than me, but we grew up together.’

‘You said you killed her,’ Jamie said plainly. ‘So either explain what the hell you meant, or I’m going to put you over this table and cuff your hands behind your back.’

Rachel Engerman looked at the table and let out a long breath, as though summoning the strength to say what she needed to. ‘Hanna Lundgren was raped.’

The waitress approached the table and put down the two teas. She waited to see if anything else was going to be said, but Jamie and Rachel just stared at each other in silence until she left.

Jamie waited until she was sure she wouldn’t be overheard, and then leaned in, clasping the mug with her cold hands. ‘All of the Angel Maker’s victims were raped,’ she said. ‘It was part of his—’

‘No,’ Rachel said, shaking her head. ‘It was Leif Lundgren.’ She basically spat his name, and the look of disgust on her face told Jamie exactly what she thought of the man.

‘Hanna Lundgren’s father?’ This was coming as news to her, but she tried not to let on her surprise.

‘Leif wasn’t her real father. Hanna was adopted.’

Jamie knew that already. But it didn’t make it any better.

‘Hanna was a pretty girl – and when she hit thirteen, she started to… develop.’

Jamie watched Rachel closely.

‘Her parents – Helena and Leif – they couldn’t have children of their own. And by all accounts, they were good parents, you know?’

Jamie reserved judgement, but offered Rachel a soft look as the woman stared at her. Trying to hurry her would do no good. She just had to listen.

‘But then, as Hanna got older, Leif started to change. He became… strange. Quiet, angry. I think… I think he knew it was wrong. He hated himself for it. But he couldn’t stop. It didn’t start out like that at first. But Hanna said it got worse over time, and then one night…’ She looked out of the window, her eyes filling, and then she took a sip from her tea. ‘She didn’t want to tell me, at first, but she said Leif was starting to get scared. He’d threatened her.’

‘Threatened her?’ Jamie’s voice was low, and she was almost over the table now, trying to catch every word. Rachel was practically whispering.

She nodded. ‘Yeah, said that if she told anyone that he’d… he’d kill her.’

Jesus, Jamie felt like saying. But she kept quiet, nodding Engerman on.

‘She needed help,’ she said, voice cracking.

‘And you gave it to her?’ Jamie asked tentatively.

Rachel Engerman nodded. ‘Yeah – I told her about the church.’

Jamie’s back stiffened, her heart picking up a little in her chest.

‘My family went there – and I went to this group that they ran. It was like a kids-group type thing – but for all ages. We did some Bible study, that kind of stuff, but mostly… mostly it was just somewhere to go, you know? Where you could talk to people. Where you could feel safe.’ Rachel’s lip began to quiver.

Jamie needed to keep her on track. ‘And you took Hanna there. Introduced her to Hans and Eva Sjöberg?’

Rachel met her eye now and nodded. ‘Yeah, I did. Eva was so sweet. So caring. And Hans, too – he was so nice. Really caring people. And I thought, you know, that if Hanna wanted to tell them, that they could, you know, protect her. From Leif.’ She was barely holding it together. ‘We all knew that Hans was in the army. So I thought that… that…’

She trailed off. Her shoulders jerked, then she began to sob.

Jamie sat there, clenching her teeth.

The waitress appeared at the side of the table. ‘Is everything alright?’ the young girl asked. She must have been eighteen, no more. Jamie fired her a look that said a thousand words, and the girl receded from the table as quickly as she’d arrived.

Jamie reached out and took one of Rachel’s hands. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘You didn’t know.’ She left that for a second, and then spoke again, keen to hurry Rachel along. ‘What happened then?’

‘Hanna came… a few… times,’ she said between little sobs. ‘And then, suddenly, she didn’t. I went to her… house… and, uh… she wasn’t there.’ She swallowed and looked at Jamie. ‘Leif told me to go home – he looked scared. I thought… I thought that he’d killed her.’

My father thought that, too, Jamie wanted to say. Again, she just watched, waited, and listened.

‘But then, when they arrested Hans Sjöberg… I-I knew those other girls. All of them. We were all friends. And one by one… I thought, I mean… I thought that they were leaving? Just not coming anymore. The Bible stuff could get a little heavy sometimes. Some people thought it wasn’t cool – others just sort of dropped in and out. It was mostly for kids with nowhere else to go. But it was popular – a lot of kids went there.’ She took a second and collected her thoughts. ‘I never thought Hans could have…’

Jamie processed it all, trying to work out what it meant. What it meant for the original case. What it meant for this case. Whether her father had this information. Whether it would have changed anything. ‘Did you tell anyone about Hanna back then?’ Jamie asked, her voice subdued suddenly.

Rachel shook her head. ‘No – I thought if I did, that Leif would have killed me, too.’

‘Why didn’t you tell anyone you thought Leif killed Hanna?’

‘I did,’ Rachel said, picking her head up.

‘Who?’

‘Hans Sjöberg.’

Jamie set her teeth. ‘After Hanna disappeared?’

Rachel nodded.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said… He said not to worry. That— that men like that always got what was coming to them in the end.’ She scoffed a little and shook her head. ‘Heaven-and-hell bullshit, you know? That’s all it was. Forgiveness. Turn the other cheek. All of that crap.’ Rachel looked at her now, but Jamie’s brain was still on the last thing she’d said. Men like that always got what was coming to them…

Just then, Jamie’s phone started vibrating in her pocket. She pulled it out, seeing Hallberg’s number flash up on-screen. ‘Excuse me a second,’ she said to Rachel, sliding out of the booth and answering it. ‘Hello?’

‘Jamie,’ Hallberg said quickly. ‘Is Wiik with you?’

‘No, he’s not.’

‘You know where he is?’ She sounded stressed.

‘No, I don’t. Why? What’s going on?’

‘We just had an email from Tech – it looked like one of the tablets recovered from the Hansens’ house wasn’t password locked. The son’s tablet.’

‘William?’

‘Yeah – they just pulled the history from it now, and—’

‘And they found evidence that Emmy Berg was being sexually abused by Jan Hansen.’ The words came out of her mouth before she could stop them.

‘Yeah,’ Hallberg said, surprised. ‘How did you know?’

‘I didn’t.’ Jamie let out a long, shaky breath, and turned to look at the woman sitting in the booth. The woman who had just changed the entire case.

You don’t understand.

Jamie gritted her teeth.

She was beginning to.