The Postcard Killers (20 page)

“It’s a beautiful name,” Jacob said.

She laughed.

“You can imagine how much fun it was being called Désirée when you’re ten years old and living in Ådalen. ‘Désirée, have you got diarrhea?’”

“Poor Désirée,” said Jacob, stroking her hair, then her face, his fingers lingering.

“It was lucky my cousin Robert from Kalix came to visit sometimes,” Dessie said, lifting her face to look at Jacob’s. “Robert was big and strong, and he protected me.”

He kissed her, and she felt an immediate little shiver between her legs.

She felt him react the same way.

She rolled over to sit on top of him and nibbled gently at his earlobe, then his cheek.

If this was wrong, how come it felt so right?

Dessie kissed Jacob’s eyes one at a time.

Chapter 89

Friday, June 18

SHE WAS WOKEN BY a muffled electronic noise. It was coming from somewhere beneath them, and she waited quietly until the annoying sound stopped.

Carefully she laid her head back on Jacob’s chest and breathed in his smell, a combination of sweat and aftershave. Everything was quiet. The sun was already high in the sky, drowning the little room in white light.

Dessie wondered how long she had been asleep.

An hour, maybe two.

She wanted to lie here forever. Never have to get up from this bed or leave this man, never do anything else for the rest of her life but make love to him until the day they died, or possibly until the lack of caffeine made her change her mind.

It would soon be unbearably hot in here. In his cell. That much was a certainty.

She wriggled her way out of his embrace, pulled herself up on one elbow, and looked at his sleeping face.

He looked so young when his face was relaxed and all his worries were far away.

His hair curled over his forehead and spread out on the pillow. He couldn’t have had it cut for at least six months.

Not since Kimmy. She thought about Jacob’s daughter now, picturing her face. How unbearably sad to lose her like that… to outlive your own child.

The electronic noise started up again, longer and more persistent this time.

It was her cell phone.

Damn, it was in her knapsack, which had slid under the bed the night before, during their somewhat chaotic entry into the little room.

She waited until it stopped buzzing. Jacob stirred in his sleep beside her.

She leaned over the edge of the bed, pulled out the knapsack, and fished out her phone.

One missed call.

One new message.

She clicked on the message.

It was a news flash from the main Swedish news agency, short and concise as usual.

She gasped, “Oh, no.”

Jacob’s heavy breathing stopped and she realized he was awake. She’d woken him. She felt his warm hand on her back, a caress that carried the promise of something more.

She turned to face him, meeting his radiant eyes.

His smile faded when he saw the look on her face.

“What is it?” he said. “What’s happened?”

Oh god, oh god, how was she going to tell him?

He sat up so abruptly that he hit his head on the top bunk. “Just say it, for god’s sake!”

She shrank from his words.

“They’re out,” she said. “Ridderwall has let the Postcard Killers go free.”

Chapter 90

DESSIE HELD HER ARMS out to him, wanting to catch him as he fell into despair at the news. She wanted to hold his face in her hands and reassure him that everything would sort itself out, that this was just a mad, stupid mistake, that Kimmy would get justice and he would be able to move on with his life, and that the rest of his life started right here in this bed with her.

But Jacob leapt up from the bunk, making his way across her and stumbling onto the floor.

He grabbed his jeans, pulling them on without bothering with his underwear.

“You can’t change the decision,” Dessie said, forcing herself to sound calm and collected. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

His hair was a mess, still damp with sweat. His face was almost completely drained of color.

“No,” he said, pulling his black T-shirt over his head. “But I can follow them. So that’s what I’m going to do, right to the ends of the damn earth, if I’m not there already…”

Dessie sat up in bed now, lifting the covers over her breasts, suddenly very conscious of her nakedness. She felt incredibly vulnerable, too. A little sad.

“They were let out at six this morning, to avoid the media. They could be halfway across the Atlantic by now. They could be anywhere.”

He pushed his feet into his shoes without bothering to untie them and tugged his suede jacket on. Then he stopped by the door, hesitating.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean… I’m just sorry!”

The door frame shook as he slammed the door shut behind him.

Jacob is gone,
Dessie thought.
The policeman is back.

Chapter 91

THE NEWSROOM WAS EMPTY, deserted as though a bomb had gone off inside. Forsberg was sitting on his own behind his desk, half asleep, his eyes rimmed with red, watching a TV screen. His jowls seemed to have grown larger overnight.

“Where is everyone?” Dessie asked, sitting down next to him.

The news editor nodded toward the television.

“The Grand Hôtel,” he said. “Our favorite killers have booked into the honeymoon suite, if you can believe that. The whole of the world’s press is there, including all our esteemed colleagues.”

Dessie stared at him.

“Are you serious?”

“They’re giving a press conference at two p.m.”

“The Grand?”

Forsberg rubbed his hedgerow of stubble. He hadn’t shaved for three days or more.

“The Rudolphs have decided to speak. They want to tell the world how innocent they are.”

Dessie leaned back in her chair. This had to be a very bad dream. Soon she’d wake up with Jacob’s arms around her and the Postcard Killers safely locked back away in Kronoberg Prison.

“This is surreal. What in hell are they up to?” she said. “Those bastards are guilty as hell. Now they’re holding press conferences?”

Forsberg gave a long yawn.

“So anyway, how are we doing with our journalist’s objectivity these days?”

Dessie stood up.

“Shouldn’t you go home and get some sleep?”

The phone on the desk rang. Forsberg grabbed it.

“What is it?”

He gestured that Dessie should stay, then listened carefully for more than a minute.

Dessie shook her head to say that she wasn’t there and pulled her knapsack on.

“Just a moment…”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

“It’s a Danish journalist. He wants to talk to you specifically. Says it’s important.”

“I’m not giving any interviews,” she said, fastening her helmet strap under her chin.

“I think you should talk to him. He says he received a postcard in this morning’s mail —
postmarked yesterday in Copenhagen
. He thinks it’s from the Postcard Killers.”

Chapter 92

JACOB CAME TOWARD HER in the departure hall of the Central Station and something fluttered in Dessie’s chest, something that made her catch her breath and break into a broad, genuine smile. Even here, even now.

But then she saw his eyes and clenched jaw, and the smile froze on her lips.

“Have you got the copies?” he asked in a monotone.

Dumbly she handed over the faxed copies of the Danish postcard, front and back. He put his duffel bag down beside him, clutching the sheets of paper, staring at them.

The card was a picture of the Tivoli pleasure gardens. She knew the place well.

Apart from the name of the city, the back of the postcard had exactly the same capital letters and layout as Dessie’s.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE
IN COPENHAGEN
THAT IS THE QUESTION

WE’LL BE IN TOUCH

“I’ll be damned,” he said, studying the copies. “It’s quicker to get hold of evidence through the media than through useless bloody Interpol. That’s unbelievable.”

She swallowed hard. So that was why he’d agreed to meet her, because she had access to information that the police hadn’t yet gotten hold of.

“What do you think about the handwriting?” she asked, trying to sound neutral. “Is it the same person?”

He shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. She thought of last night, couldn’t help it. What had she been thinking?

“It’s impossible to tell with this lettering. Looks like it. Can I keep this?”

She nodded, unsure if she would be able to control her voice if she tried to say anything.

“You’ve heard about the Grand Hôtel?” she finally managed to say.

“The press conference at two o’clock, yeah.”

He heaved his duffel bag onto his shoulder again.

She tried to smile.

“So at least you know where they are,” she said. “You don’t have to go to the ends of the earth after all.”

He stopped in the middle of what he was doing and looked at her, and she suddenly wanted the floor to swallow her up.

How could she be so clingy? She wasn’t that way — not ever — not even as a kid, especially not then.

“I’ve had a reply from the States,” he said. “From my contacts, those e-mails I sent from your computer.”

“That’s good,” she said.

“I’m on my way to Los Angeles right now,” he said, looking at his watch. “My plane leaves in two hours.”

She felt like someone had just poured a bucket of ice cold water over her.

“You’re — Los Angeles? But…” She’d been about to say, “But what about me?”

She bit her cheek so hard she could taste blood.

She was acting like an idiot. She wanted to shrivel up, to be anywhere but here.

He looked at his watch again, hesitating. Then he took a step toward her and gave her a clumsy hug. The duffel bag was in the way and she got no contact with his body. How very fitting, she thought. The perfect ending for them.

“See you,” he said, turning around and walking quickly toward the express train to Arlanda.

She watched him go until he was swallowed up by the mass of people and disappeared in the crowd.

“See you.”

Chapter 93

CNN, SKY NEWS, AND BBC World were all broadcasting live from the Hall of Mirrors in the Grand Hôtel. The overblown decor with its gold pillars, mirrored doors, and crystal chandeliers made Dessie think of Versailles or some other wedding-cake château. Journalists and photographers and cameramen and radio reporters were all pushing and shoving to get the best places.

It was so crowded that the television people were standing shoulder to shoulder as they spoke to the cameras.

Usually she did all she could to avoid press conferences.

There was something humiliating in all the pushing and shoving to get close, packed in with other reporters and turned into a babbling crowd.

The hierarchy was ridiculously strict as well.

The television people always got to sit at the front. The bigger and noisier the channel, the closer their reporter got to the center of the action.

Then came the radio reporters with their antennas, the news agencies, the national press, and then the specialist and local press. Researchers and editorial staff like her were let in only if there was room.

Today she decided to behave like Jacob, storming through everybody like an express train, quickly showing her press pass at the door and forcing her way into the back of the room, not taking no for an answer, not caring what anybody thought of her.

The room could hold five hundred, but the hotel management had limited the number to three hundred because of all the equipment needed for live television broadcasts.

She leaned back against the wall, craning her neck to see. What an absurd circus.

At the front of the room was a small, important-looking podium with metal steps on both sides.

The jungle of microphones shouted out the fact that this was where the siblings were going to proclaim their innocence to all the world.

The level of sound in the room was rising steadily, like the tension in a stadium during the World Cup final.

Dessie closed her eyes.

She felt almost completely paralyzed inside. Events in the room were reaching her through a thick, toughened, glasslike material. It felt like that, anyway.

How could everything have gone so wrong? And so quickly.

Her cell rang and she only noticed it because she was holding it in her hand.

It was Forsberg.

“How does it look? Did you manage to get inside? How close are you?”

“I thought this whole spectacle was going out live on seventeen channels,” Dessie said. “Can’t you see for yourself?”

“They’re just showing a forest of microphones. I can’t tell anything. Have you seen Alexander Andersson?”

“I don’t think we’re in quite the same place,” Dessie said. “I’m standing right at the back.”

Forsberg took a deep breath.

“Is it true that you interviewed them?” he said. “While they were being held?”

She kept her eyes fixed on the podium. Something was happening in the front.

“Don’t believe everything you hear. They’re coming in now!”

The Hall of Mirrors exploded in a storm of flashbulbs and spotlights. From a door on the left Malcolm Rudolph walked into the room. He was wearing a light blue shirt unbuttoned at the neck and a pair of fashionably torn jeans.

His sister, Sylvia, was walking behind him, her billowing chestnut brown hair glittering in the flashing lights. She was dressed entirely in white.

“Shit,” Forsberg said in her ear. “She’s beautiful! How does she look in person?”

“I’ll call you later,” Dessie said, ending the call.

After Sylvia came a tall, thin woman whom Dessie recognized as Andrea Friederichs, their lawyer — their
copyright
lawyer.