Dark Angel

About the Book

No one can hurt you like your own family.

A mother’s love should be the most natural and sustaining thing in the world. But when that love twists into obsession, and from obsession into control, the consequences can be devastating.

When glamorous party-planner Viktor Algard is found murdered at one of his own glitzy events, suspicion falls immediately on to a wife spurned. But if Inspector Anders Knutas has learnt anything from his years in the Gotland Police Force, it is that there is no such thing as an open-and-shut case. A second attack confirms that things are not as they first appeared.

Knutas’s investigation will take him into the dark and hidden corners of another family’s tragedy – but if he is to catch the killer, he is going to have to face some family secrets of his own.

For Bosse Jungstedt, beloved brother – always in my heart

SHE LOOKED SO beautiful standing there. Wearing a white dress with a wide belt around her slender waist. Her blond hair pinned up high in a knot. Very stylish. She was smiling at the photographer with her head tilted to one side. Flirting with the camera, as usual. Always well dressed. Sometimes she wore her hair tied back with a ribbon. And that dazzling smile of hers. Standing in front of the stove as she fried Falun sausages, picking apples out in the country, walking out to the car with the children. A façade. As fragile as the glass in the frame of the photograph. He picked up the portrait and hurled it against the wall.

The shattered glass flew all over the room. That was his life.

THE BLINDS DRAWN, shutting out the springtime sun. Silence in the room. From far off the sound of car doors slamming, dogs barking. Sirens. The muted conversation of passersby, an occasional laugh. Street sounds, the sounds of life. It has nothing to do with us. My story is etched into the face of the person sitting across from me. As if the lines had deepened, the eyes filled with compassion. Neither of us says a word.

Once again I have described a memory from my childhood. In truth, nothing out of the ordinary, not at all. Just a fragment from daily life. Yet the image is still razor-sharp in my mind, although twenty-five years have passed.

I was seven when I decided to surprise my mother by serving her breakfast in bed. The idea came to me the minute I woke up and realized that everyone else was still asleep. I was ecstatic at the thought. I would make Mamma happy again. She’d been so sad on the previous day, sitting on the sofa and crying for such a long time. She never seemed to stop. I didn’t know why she was so sad. Mamma was often like that. She would cry and smoke, and smoke and cry. Then she would talk on the phone all evening, and afterwards we had to go to bed. There was nothing I could do. Or my siblings either. It made all of us sad. But now I’d come up with a good plan. I would serve her breakfast in bed.

Eagerly I climbed out of bed and padded down the hall to the bathroom. I tried not to wake anyone. I wanted to do this on my own, without any help from my siblings. I wanted to be the one she would thank, the one she would hug. Her face would be beaming with joy when I came into her bedroom carrying the tray. And then everything would be fine again.

Cautiously I crept down the stairs. I remember how I cringed at every creak of the steps, scared that the sound might wake her. In the kitchen I got out a cereal bowl and a spoon. But the box of cornflakes was high up on a shelf in the pantry. I couldn’t reach it. I went to get a chair from the table. It was so heavy. With great effort I lugged the chair into the narrow work area and then into the pantry. I climbed up on it and stretched out my hand for the box. Pleased that I’d managed to grab it, I filled the bowl and then poured just the right amount of milk over the cereal. Mamma was very particular about things like that. It had to be done just so. Not too much and not too little. What about sugar? She usually wanted sugar on her cereal. But where was it? There, behind the porridge oats. Good. I used the spoon to scoop out what I thought was the proper amount of sugar, but not too big a spoonful. Mamma always complained if her cereal was too sweet; I’d heard her say that so many times.