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

Wiik strode out of Falk’s office, straight across the room, and disappeared without looking back. He was clearly unhappy with those parting words.

Jamie didn’t know how she felt.

She watched him round a corner, wondering if it was the last time she’d ever see Anders Wiik. And how she felt about that, too.

‘It’ll be a shame,’ Hallberg said, grabbing Jamie’s attention. ‘To see you go, I mean.’

‘Yeah,’ Jamie answered. ‘But you’ve got things under control.’ She smiled at the girl. ‘Wiik will come around, don’t worry. Just don’t try so hard. You’re doing great.’

She blushed a little. ‘Thank you,’ she said, nodding. ‘That means a lot coming from you.’

Jamie laughed at that a little. From me?

‘You’re a great detective,’ Hallberg said. ‘I hope that I—’

Jamie turned and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Hallberg – don’t turn out like me. Like Wiik. There’s more out there than killers and these four walls. I realised that too late.’

Hallberg swallowed, nodding then.

Jamie didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t think there was anything to say.

‘Are you leaving straight away?’ Hallberg asked after a second.

‘I don’t know,’ Jamie answered truthfully. ‘I’ve still got one or two things to do at the house, I’ll need to sort things out with the car rental company, too. Hope that their insurance covers bullet holes. Then I’ll need to check out of the hotel, book a flight.’ She sighed. ‘I’ll be here for a little while.’

She looked up at the corner Wiik had rounded. For all his teenage moodiness and annoying quirks, Jamie thought she might miss the man. Or at least working with him. And even if he was petty enough to walk away without a goodbye, she wasn’t.

But beyond that, there was something else. Something niggling at her that she couldn’t put her finger on. Some loose end that wouldn’t be tied up with paperwork. That wasn’t in the forensic reports.

‘Okay,’ Hallberg said, seemingly cheered up by the news. ‘I’ll see you before you go.’ She reached out and touched the back of Jamie’s arm before melting away, leaving Jamie alone in the middle of the deserted office floor.

She stood there for a moment, rolling it all over in her head, and then wondered if it was even her problem anymore. Falk had said, fairly unequivocally, that it wasn’t.

And yet, Jamie wasn’t the sort of person to let something like this go.

Especially when she was pretty sure that whatever she was missing, everyone else was, too.

Jamie was sitting in the corner of the office at a desk that had been used to store the boxes and files that the NTF didn’t want to look at. She was leaning back, her feet propped up on a two-high stack of them, rolling her father’s ring around her thumb.

The entire floor was abuzz with bodies. There were no less than twenty NTF guys in emblazoned jackets sorting files, carting boxes back and forth, cataloguing everything and formulating their own reports and assumptions about the case.

Hallberg appeared and waved her hand in front of Jamie’s face to grab her vacant stare.

Jamie’s eyes focused and she looked up at her. ‘Hey,’ she said.

Hallberg was holding a piece of paper between her hands. ‘Here.’ Hallberg held it out quickly.

Jamie took it and turned it over, reading the text.

‘It’s a statement that says you told me about your father’s rifle and I confiscated it before we travelled out to the cabin,’ Hallberg said before Jamie had a chance to read it.

Jamie glanced up at her, surprised.

‘You found it in your house, reported it to the closest officer – me – and then I took responsibility for it. I was going to log it officially when we got back.’ She smiled at Jamie. ‘That’s why it was in the car.’

Jamie furrowed her brow. ‘Hallberg… this is… you don’t have to do this. You could get in a lot of trouble.’

She shrugged. ‘You saved my life. If that rifle hadn’t been in the car…’ She trailed off. ‘It’s my way of saying thanks, okay?’

‘What about the CSTs? They went through everything in the house. This statement basically claims they missed the rifle.’ Jamie couldn’t keep the doubt out of her voice.

Hallberg curled a smile. ‘So, they missed it. After all, who better to hide a weapon from the police than one of the finest detectives the city’s ever known?’

Jamie couldn’t help but return it. ‘You’re right there. My father would have hated anyone touching his things.’

‘And if anything comes back – I’ll stand by that.’

Jamie held the paper up. ‘This means a lot. Thanks, Hallberg.’

‘Of course.’ She lingered then. ‘Did you get everything sorted with the rental company? Manage to find a flight?’

Jamie nodded slowly, going back to her vacant stare. ‘Yep.’

‘So you’ll be leaving then?’

She nodded slowly again. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Seen Wiik?’

‘No. He’s avoiding me.’

‘That’s not surprising.’

‘No,’ Jamie said, laughing a little. ‘I suppose not.’ She looked up at Hallberg again then. ‘Can you do something for me?’

‘Sure. What is it?’

‘Do you still have access to the files?’

‘For the case?’ Hallberg raised an eyebrow. ‘Yeah, why?’

‘I’m sure it’s nothing. Just want to confirm something for my own peace of mind. Could you get a few things for me?’

‘Name it.’

‘The court transcript for Hans Sjöberg’s file, a copy of the note stuck under my windscreen wiper, and I’m going to need access to Robert Nyström’s apartment.’

‘Nyström’s apartment?’ Hallberg seemed unsure about the last one. ‘Why?’

‘Just a feeling.’

‘A feeling?’

Jamie nodded.

‘Okay,’ Hallberg said after a few seconds. ‘But it’s still technically a crime scene. You can’t go out there on your own.’

‘Then you’d better get your jacket.’

They slipped out without Falk seeing. And despite the last two trips they’d taken together ending with gunfire and death, Hallberg didn’t seem too tense to be sitting next to Jamie.

‘So,’ she asked curiously, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘What are we looking for at Nyström’s?’

Jamie was reading the transcript from Sjöberg’s trial. ‘Papers, notes, anything like that.’ She kept her eyes fixed on the words in front of her, a pen in her other hand, flipping back and forth between her fingers. ‘A diary would be good. But a shopping list will do in a pinch.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Hallberg said. ‘What are we doing?’

‘It’s probably nothing,’ Jamie said. ‘It’s just my brain is telling me we’re missing something. And if I leave now, it’ll just bother me the whole way home.’

Hallberg looked over.

Jamie was trying to keep her expression light, but the feeling of unease in the back of her brain had become a chained-up dog, gnawing at its own leg. And it wasn’t going away.

They arrived a few minutes later and climbed the stairs to Nyström’s modest apartment on the third floor.

Police tape was still stretched across the door. Hallberg carefully unfastened it from one side. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and handed Jamie a set. Then she unlocked the door and they stepped inside.

The interior was musty, and about what Jamie expected to find.

Nyström was always a studious man, and his apartment felt apt. It was clean, neat and sparsely decorated, if a little dated. A small sofa was pushed against the right-hand wall, and a single wing-back chair with a brown velveteen covering faced a TV. Sitting between them was a folding dinner table.

Jamie looked at it for a moment and then moved on, taking a slow circle around the room.

On the wall, a few pictures were hanging. Nyström and his late wife. Nyström and his late wife. Nyström and his late wife. Nyström and Jamie’s father. Another fishing trip.

‘When did Nyström’s wife die?’ Jamie called out to Hallberg, who’d already gone on the hunt for the notes and shopping lists.

‘Uh – six, seven years, I think?’ Hallberg called back from the bedroom.

Jamie kept going, taking that in. It was still outrageous to think that he was capable of doing something like this. He’d practically raised her at times. And he’d definitely looked after her more than his fair share in her father’s stead. And not once had she ever found him anything other than caring, gentlemanly and, above all else, fatherly.

She stopped as she got to the end of the photo gallery, and then stepped away from the wall, heading for the kitchen instead.

Jamie pulled open the fridge and was hit by the smell of soured milk. She grimaced and closed it again, just as Hallberg reappeared behind her. ‘Will this work?’ she asked, holding up a little notepad with a hole in the top of it.

Jamie took it from her and flipped through the pages, seeing lots of notes jotted down on the pages. Little reminders to do or buy things. She looked over Hallberg’s shoulder at a house phone on the wall next to the bedroom. There was a corkboard next to it, a nail hanging there. As the notepad had been moments before.

‘Yeah, this will work,’ Jamie said.

Hallberg stared at her for a moment, and then it twigged. ‘The note from under your windscreen,’ she said. ‘You want to compare the handwriting.’

Jamie looked up at her. ‘I don’t suppose Forensics are going to be pushed to make a positive match now that Nyström is dead, are they?’

Hallberg rolled her lips into a line. ‘You think they’ll be a match?’

Jamie thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, meeting Hallberg’s eye. ‘I just don’t know.’

It was getting dark by the time they got back to HQ.

Jamie and Hallberg stepped out of the stairwell, expecting things to be winding down, the NTF mostly cleared out, and for the situation to be a lot calmer.

But it was exactly the opposite.

Things were frantic. Phones were ringing. People were moving in a maelstrom. And in the middle of it all, Falk and Wiik were standing in front of a guy from the NTF, listening diligently.

Falk and Wiik caught sight of them at the same time. Falk beckoned them over.

The guy from NTF turned to look. He was about five foot eight, with sandy-coloured hair, dark blue eyes and a beard that was a retro combination of stubble and moustache.

Falk did the introductions. ‘This is Polisöverintendent Dahlvig.’ Police Superintendent. ‘He has been given command of this operation.’

He nodded curtly, glancing from Hallberg to Jamie, and keeping his eyes there. ‘You are the one who shot Nyström?’ he asked, his voice bordering accusative.

Jamie met his eye, then nodded.

‘And as I understand it, you’re not a part of Swedish Polis, yes?’

‘No.’

‘You are from the London Metropolitan Police?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why are you here?’

Surprisingly, it was Wiik that jumped to her defence. ‘She is here at my behest,’ he said boldly. ‘I asked that she assist on the case as she has unique insight and knowledge on the—’

He cast Wiik a cold glance. ‘I wasn’t asking you.’

Falk tried to play the diplomat, smiling broadly. ‘Please, Polisöverintendent – Detective Inspector Johansson’s involvement in the case thus far has been in an advisory role. The incident involving Robert Nyström was unfortunate and purely coincidental, I might add, but I assure you that she was only acting in both self-defence and the defence of one of our own detectives, Polisassistent Julia Hallberg.’ Falk gestured to Hallberg then. ‘But now that the NTF are involved, Inspector Johansson’s services are no longer required. And she’ll be on a plane back to the UK by the end of the day. Isn’t that right?’ She looked at Jamie now.

If Jamie said no, she felt like she was going to regret it.

‘That’s right,’ Jamie confirmed.

This seemed to annoy Wiik, but stood between Falk and Dahlvig, he knew his place. And speaking out now would only hurt his position further.

‘If she’s not,’ Dahlvig said, his voice like ice. ‘I’m holding you personally responsible, Falk. There’s no room for tourists in the SPA, and especially not for ones who shoot my suspects.’ He glared at Jamie then, making sure everyone there knew exactly where he sat in the pecking order. ‘Now – Hallberg, is it?’

She looked up at Dahlvig.

‘Falk here tells me you’re good at paperwork. That right?’

She lifted her chin to show her enthusiasm. Feigned as it was.

‘Good. Then I’ll be correct in assuming that you’ve already produced a list of Eriksson’s contacts, family members, friends – anyone who might help him in a situation like this.’

‘Yes,’ she squeezed out. Jamie thought it was the first time she’d ever seen Hallberg look angry.

‘Good. Then you’re with me.’ He nodded decisively. ‘And you,’ he said, turning to Wiik. ‘You’ve met Eriksson, yes?’

‘Yes,’ he replied stiffly.

‘Then you’re coming, too. Falk has briefed me on the mess you made with… Lindvall, was it?’ He glanced at Falk for confirmation and she nodded reluctantly. ‘But none of that matters right now. So consider your holiday officially over. We’re going to hit every address on Hallberg’s list – full incursion, dogs, tactical.’ He sliced through the air with his hand. ‘You and Hallberg will need to be there to provide intelligence and a positive ID on Eriksson if we see him. This is now a shoot-to-kill operation. Got it?’

Hallberg and Wiik both agreed, though getting a chain jerked tight around their necks didn’t appear to sit well with either of them.

‘Good,’ Dahlvig said. ‘Afterwards SID can do whatever they want with you.’ He turned to Jamie now and stepped a little closer. ‘And you,’ he said, meeting her eye. ‘Don’t let me see you again. You’ve done enough to fuck up this investigation already, and you’ll do no more. Understand?’

‘Perfectly,’ Jamie said, standing firm.

Dahlvig snapped his fingers over his shoulder at Hallberg and Wiik, and then stormed past Jamie, brushing her with his elbow and knocking her off balance like a schoolyard bully.

Jamie had to smirk at that – that she could pirouette on her left foot in half a second and sling a roundhouse into the side of his head before he could even react.

But she didn’t. She just let Dahlvig go, his no doubt undersized penis swinging.

Hallberg gave Jamie one last, solemn nod. ‘It was a pleasure working with you,’ she said, voice a little shaky, and then lowered her head and followed Dahlvig.

Falk offered a hand to Jamie, and she took it. ‘Thank you, Jamie,’ she said, smiling. ‘Your father would be proud of the woman you’ve become. I have no doubt of that.’ She let go, and then turned away, heading to her office.

Jamie looked after her, voice caught in her throat.

Wiik cleared his own then and stepped towards her. He seemed less perturbed by the authority being impressed upon him. ‘What will you do now?’ he asked.

‘You heard Dahlvig – I couldn’t stay if I wanted to.’

‘Do you?’ He still had hope in his eyes.

‘That’s not my decision.’

‘But if it was?’

Jamie turned her head and stared at Dahlvig, barking commands to his men. They were gearing up to leave. To go and hunt Eriksson into oblivion like the animal they thought him to be. ‘Do you think it’s him?’ Jamie asked after a moment.

‘Who?’

‘Eriksson.’

‘Do I think what’s him?’ Wiik leaned in a little, trying to catch Jamie’s eye.

She couldn’t give it to him. ‘Do you think that Per Eriksson is the Angel Maker?’

Wiik looked troubled then. ‘It can’t be anyone else. Eriksson was an original suspect. He had means, opportunity. He knew the girls. He had access to the dresses they were placed in. He knew Sjöberg. They were best friends. He was contacted by Sjöberg before his death, they exchanged letters. He knew that Sjöberg was dying – to coincide the crime with his death. He would have known Nyström, too, from the original investigation. And what better way to screw with us than to manipulate the very detective who worked the case into committing the crime he’d convicted a man for years before?’ Wiik ran his hand over his head now, smoothing down his hair.

Jamie noticed then that he had shaved at some point since their meeting that morning. And had fixed his hair, too.

Wiik began putting his fingers in his other palm one by one as he counted the mounting evidence. ‘Eriksson knew we were looking for the letters to match the handwriting, which is why he was ahead of us at Eva Sjöberg’s and stole it before we got there. And then he ran, too. Got the hell out of town right before the net closed. In my experience, innocent men don’t run.’

Jamie inhaled slowly, filling her lungs, thinking of Tomas Lindvall. But Wiik wasn’t done yet.

‘He’s been ahead of us at every turn – always just out of reach. Staying that way. It was pure chance that we stumbled upon the hunting cabin – if you hadn’t have been looking for it, then we never would have found it. Nyström was the only person in the world who would have known about it other than you and your father. And with him dead nearly twenty years, and you living in another country, they were safe. And we know they were both there – because we have Eriksson’s bus, his clothes and his DNA all over the cabin. He staged Nyström’s kidnapping to throw us off balance, used him to get the case files, take the girls and to find them somewhere safe to hide. He did all of those things. But then we caught him off guard. And as much as I hate to admit it, Dahlvig is right. Now that Eriksson’s pushed, he’s going to be thinking on his feet – something he’s not used to. He’s a planner. He left nothing to chance. Killing Nyström? That was reactive. He was adapting to a quickly changing situation, and he took a big risk going to the hospital. They’re still searching CCTV for him, and they’ll find him. No one is invisible. No one can stay hidden forever. He’ll be running now – looking for a way out. We’re on to him, Jamie,’ Wiik said, trying to catch her eye again. ‘And he won’t get away. They’ll run him down, smoke him out if they have to. And when he’s in the open, they’ll put him down. There’s nowhere left for him to go now. His face is everywhere, and there’s not a uniformed officer in the entire country that isn’t looking for him.’

Jamie listened to Wiik, processing and filing every scrap of evidence, every line of reasoning. Weighing them, measuring them, fitting them together into that complete puzzle.

And she couldn’t argue. They all fit.

Perfectly.

Jamie hung her head and sighed.

‘You don’t think it’s him?’ Wiik asked, folding his arms now and sinking his teeth into his bottom lip.

Jamie looked at him now for the first time. ‘You said it yourself, Wiik – really, there’s no one else it could be. Right?’