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

The street outside Eva Sjöberg’s modest one-storey house was a flood of blue flashing lights.

There were three uniformed police cars, two canine units, Wiik’s Volvo and a whole fleet of officers.

Eva Sjöberg sat like a statue in the back seat of one of the marked cars, staring blankly at the metal cage in front of her.

You’ll have to get used to it, Jamie thought. You’ll be looking through bars for a long time.

Wiik was standing with his arms folded, staring at her, bottom lip turned out in disdain.

‘Hey,’ Jamie said, coming up beside him.

He looked at Jamie briefly, then went back to his scowling.

She was about to start talking when Hallberg appeared from the jungle of blues.

‘So it turns out,’ Hallberg said, shaking her head, ‘that Eva Sjöberg was in a car crash in 1993 that damaged her pelvis and spine. Hospital records show that she needed to have surgery which would have prevented her from being able to have children, as she said – but the spinal injury was minor. She needed the wheelchair for eight to twelve weeks, from the notes, but made a full recovery. The follow-up consultation stated as much. Since then, it was all just a cover.’ Hallberg lowered her head. ‘If we’d have just thought to check…’

Wiik eyed her.

Jamie could tell he wanted to say something encouraging, but couldn’t bring himself to.

So she did instead. ‘You couldn’t have known. No one could have. There was no reason we should have confirmed that.’ Jamie made a point of smiling at her. ‘What matters is that we got her.’

‘But how did you know?’ Hallberg asked, looking up at Jamie in awe.

Jamie squirmed under her gaze. It felt uncomfortable, and she certainly wasn’t deserving of any enamour. She was just doing her job. And a lot of the time, playing devil’s advocate was part of it. ‘There was too much evidence,’ she said quickly. ‘It had to be Eriksson. Everything we knew said that. The DNA, the circumstance, the means, the opportunity. Everything.’

Hallberg didn’t look to be following the train of thought.

‘But what if it wasn’t?’ Jamie shrugged. ‘There are no certainties in this game. And if it wasn’t Eriksson – who else could it have been?’

‘And you thought of Eva Sjöberg?’

‘Not at first.’ Jamie was tired of this explanation before it began. ‘But outside of what we thought we knew, he didn’t make sense as the killer. How does a six-foot-plus priest hide in plain sight of a hospital room and uniformed officer for hours without garnering a second glance? How does he evade CCTV, slip in and out unseen? How does he reach the ceiling to put a latex glove over a camera?’

‘He doesn’t. But an old woman in a wheelchair…’

‘Can move freely around a hospital without turning a head.’ Jamie nodded.

‘And she could get up on her chair and reach the ceiling no problem,’ Hallberg said, huffing in realisation.

‘Exactly. Eriksson wasn’t visible on the CCTV because he wasn’t on it. But go back through it now and I bet you’ll see Eva Sjöberg rolling through the corridors, as cool as a cucumber.’

Hallberg tutted, then looked at the woman in the car, mustering as much disgust as her friendly face could manage. ‘And the court transcript? Nyström’s apartment?’

‘Just pulling the thread. The transcript said that Sjöberg pleaded innocent to begin with – but then did a U-turn and pled guilty with no explanation. At first I thought he was doing it to protect Eriksson – they were best friends, after all. But Eriksson said that he turned his back on Sjöberg. They didn’t speak for twenty-five years. And during all that time, it seemed odd to me that Sjöberg would continue to protect him. It all hinged on who was telling the truth – Eva Sjöberg or Eriksson. And if Eriksson wasn’t lying.’

‘It meant Eva Sjöberg was.’

‘Hans went to prison for her. Took all the blame. And he protected her until his last breath.’

‘And Nyström’s place?’

‘He had pictures of his wife everywhere – years after her death. He was lonely – we had that much right. But he missed his wife more than he missed my father. Eva Sjöberg was more likely to have been able to twist him up than Per Eriksson.’ Jamie watched the woman who’d been running circles around them for two decades through the window of the police car. ‘Once I compared the handwriting at Nyström’s apartment to the note under my windshield wiper, I saw they were a match. I knew the killer wouldn’t be sloppy enough to leave a clue like that – but Nyström did it because it was me. He knew me. Didn’t want to kill me. But it created a trail. A trail that Eva Sjöberg then had to mop up. If we’d got the Eriksson letter from her house, we’d have been able to eliminate Eriksson as the person who left it. And she needed to maintain that illusion – keep us chasing a ghost. And that’s all it was. It was her, pulling the strings all along. She wanted us to believe that Eriksson had fled. That he’d stolen his letter back to protect himself. But he wouldn’t need to. If Eva was as infirm as he said, he could have walked right in the front door. Why risk breaking in in broad daylight? And why leave her alive, a potential witness? No, if it was Eriksson, he would have taken Eva along with the letter. Tied up all the loose ends.’ Jamie turned away from her now and looked back at Hallberg. ‘The double-tracked footprints to obscure the size, the misdirection, the loyalty Hans Sjöberg showed at trial, the link to Nyström through the original investigation… Each piece on its own would be ignorable. But all together…’

‘It had to be her.’

‘If it wasn’t Eriksson, there was no one else.’

Hallberg took it all in, her eyes still shining like a child’s.

Jamie cleared her throat and folded her arms, then looked at Wiik and saw he had his folded too. She unfolded hers quickly. ‘Eva always planned to frame Eriksson. And getting rid of him was a part of that. She lured him to her house under the guise of taking him up on his offer of picking her up to attend church. When he got there, she killed him, took the letter and Hans’s belongings, drove his bus out to the cabin and dumped them there. Then her and Nyström got rid of the body, and he drove her back. He’s out there somewhere – buried in the earth or under the ice in that lake.’ Jamie grimaced at the thought. ‘Killing Nyström was the icing on the cake. The public act of brutality that would send the whole of the SPA into a blind rage. The NTF took the bait, came in with numbers, ready to run Eriksson down. And they would have tried. All the time, looking at the wrong person. It was a perfect plan. She thought of everything.’

‘Everything except what would happen if you showed up,’ Hallberg said, grinning at Jamie now.

‘Yeah,’ Jamie said, shrugging. She didn’t take praise well. ‘If you say so.’

‘So your father was right, all along then. About Hans Sjöberg.’

Jamie nodded. ‘Yeah, he was. He just only had half the picture.’

Hallberg put her hand on Jamie’s shoulder and squeezed. It felt awkward and strange. ‘It was a good thing you were here to finish what he started.’

Jamie felt her throat tighten. ‘Yeah, I guess it was.’ Her eyes drifted to Wiik, who was still standing, looking at the unassuming woman in the back of a police car responsible for it all.

Hallberg read the cool silence between them and excused herself tactfully. ‘I’ve got to follow up with some of the officers,’ she said, hooking a thumb over her shoulder, and then left the two of them alone.

After a few seconds of silence, Wiik spoke, but didn’t look around. ‘With some luck, her testimony will help us go after Lundgren and Hansen.’

‘Guess there will be a silver lining, then.’

‘And maybe she can shed some light on what Mikael Gunnarson did to Tilde.’

Jamie swallowed, not sure she even wanted to know.

Wiik said nothing for a while, eyes still fixed on Eva Sjöberg. ‘How did you know I’d come?’ he asked.

Jamie stood a little closer, pushing her hands into her pockets. She nudged him with her shoulder. ‘And miss the party for the third time?’

He turned his head and looked at her, narrowing his eyes a little.

‘You looked back,’ Jamie said.

‘When?’

‘At HQ. After I asked you if you thought it was Eriksson.’

‘And you drove out here alone, hoping that I’d get cold feet with Dahlvig and come running after you, based on a look?’

Jamie laughed a little. ‘A look can say a lot, Wiik.’

He shook his head a little.

‘I knew that my question would bug you. And I knew you wouldn’t be able to let it go. That you’d check with Falk. And that when she told you where I was going, it would click and you’d come running.’

‘I wouldn’t say running.’

‘I’m happy you did. For a second I thought I’d have to face her on my own.’

‘You could have taken her,’ Wiik said, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

‘Yeah, maybe.’ She looked at him now and he at her. ‘But I’m glad I didn’t have to.’

That sat between them for a second, and then he spoke again.

‘What time are you leaving?’ he asked, the blue lights playing on his expressionless face.

Jamie stared into the distance for a while, letting him suffer. ‘You know,’ she said slowly. ‘I never actually booked my flight.’

He twitched a little, trying not to seem eager. ‘No?’

‘Or checked out of my hotel.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Why not?’

Jamie tried to keep the smile from her face. ‘I don’t really have anywhere to go back to. The Met isn’t missing me, and all my stuff is in storage in a locker in London. The place I was staying in Scotland was…’ She just sort of trailed off. ‘It was nice. But I’m in no hurry to go back. That’s a part of my life I think I’m ready to leave behind. And anyway, I feel like I have some things to sort out here. There’ll be outstanding bills on the house that will need clearing before anything can happen to it. And it needs some work before it can be lived in.’

‘You’re thinking about living there?’ Wiik tried his best to keep the excitement from his voice.

‘Living in it, selling it. I’m not sure. There are a lot of memories there for me. Some good. A lot bad.’ She shrugged. ‘But either way, I’m not going to let it rot.’

‘What about work?’ This time, he didn’t try to suppress it.

‘I hadn’t given it much thought,’ Jamie said, meeting his eye finally. Answering his question, finally. ‘I don’t suppose you know of any detectives looking for a new partner, do you?’

Wiik looked down, smiling to himself, and then looked at Jamie. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said coyly, reaching up and flattening his hair against his head. ‘I’m sure I could think of someone.’