The Postcard Killers (5 page)

“I mean all four of us,” she said. “Do you know anywhere we could go?”

He looked at her full breasts and gulped audibly, then nodded.

“We’re renting a house in the archipelago. Our rental car’s actually in a garage not far from here.”

Sylvia kissed him on the lips then, letting her tongue play over his front teeth.

“So what are we waiting for?” she whispered. “Let’s go to your house.”

Chapter 14

THE NEWSROOM WAS NEARLY ABANDONED for lunch.

Forsberg, the news editor, was sitting chewing the end off a ballpoint pen and reading telegrams. Out in the mail room, two twitchy forensic investigators had settled in to intercept any letters the killers might send.

Dessie was sitting with a mass of printouts about the double murders throughout Europe over the past eight months spread out on her desk. She had been there since seven o’clock that morning and had been told to stay until the last postal delivery arrived, sometime in the late afternoon. She had agreed to put together a summary of the murders that another reporter could build a story on.

The case in Berlin, the latest one, was deeply tragic to her.

The killers had not been content merely to murder the Australians. They had also mutilated their bodies. It was not clear from the articles Dessie had found precisely what they had done to the couple.

She picked up another printout and started making her way through the Spanish newspaper article.

The killings in Berlin seemed to be a replica of those in Madrid, except for the bit about mutilation. An American couple, Sally and Charlie Martinez, had been found with their throats cut in their room in the Hotel Lope de Vega. They had been in Spain on their honeymoon.

The postcard had been sent to the newspaper
El País,
and it was of the bullfighting arena Las Ventas.

She leaned closer to the grainy printout.

It looked like a round building with two towers with flags on top. Some cars and some pedestrians were in the picture. There was no information about what had been written on the back of the card.

“How’s it going, Dessie? Have you caught them yet?”

She put the printout down.

“Jealous?” she asked, looking up at Alexander Andersson, the paper’s high-profile, sensationalist reporter.

Andersson sat down on her desk and made himself comfortable. Dessie could hear her printouts getting crumpled beneath his backside.

“I’ve been wondering about something,” he said smoothly. “Why did the killers send the card specifically to you?”

Dessie opened her eyes wide in surprise, mocking Andersson.

“God,” she said. “You really are quick. Did you come up with that question all on your own?”

Andersson’s smile stiffened somewhat.

“People don’t usually read anything you write,” he said. “It’s a bit of a surprise…”

Dessie sighed and made up her mind not to get angry. She reached for a copy of that day’s paper. There was nothing about the postcard in it. Andersson walked away without saying anything else.

The paper’s management, after serious pressure from the police, had decided not to publish the details. But Andersson had written a sloppy article about the murders around Europe. It contained a large number of loaded words like
terrible
and
unpleasant
and
massacre
but not many facts.

Dessie lowered the paper.

I’ve been chasing these bastards for six months. No one knows more about them than I do.

Why hadn’t she heard from Jacob Kanon today? He had been so keen to talk yesterday evening.

She stretched her back and looked out across the newsroom.

Presumably his not getting in touch again had something to do with her behavior — the fact that she was always so brusque and never let anyone get close to her.

She shook off her feelings as ridiculous, then leafed through the printouts again.

She ran her fingers over the pictures of the victims.

The victims in Rome.

This was her, this was what she looked like before she was murdered. Smiling, shy, fair curly hair.

Kimberly Kanon.

Jacob Kanon’s daughter.

She had her father’s bright blue eyes, didn’t she?

Chapter 15

THE WIND HAD DROPPED BY the time they stepped into the bright sunshine outside the house the Germans had rented in the archipelago. Yachts with slack, chalk white sails glided slowly past in the sound below as Sylvia waved to an older man piloting a large yacht.

Mac filled his lungs with air and stretched his arms out toward the islands, trees, water, and glittering sunlight.

“This is wonderful,” he exclaimed. “I love Sweden! This could be my favorite country so far.”

Sylvia smiled and threw him the car keys.

“Can you find the way back out of here?”

Mac laughed loudly. He shoved the backpack onto the backseat of the rental car, pulled on a new pair of latex gloves, got in behind the wheel, and put the car in gear.

As they turned left onto the gravel track, Sylvia opened the window to let the fresh air into the coupe.

The landscape was sparse, yet simultaneously beautiful and tastefully minimalist. The green of the deciduous trees was still tender, almost transparent, the sky clear blue as glass. Shy flowers that had only just emerged from the frozen soil swayed in the turbulence caused by the car as it flashed by.

They passed two cars just before they crossed the bridge leading back onto the mainland. Neither of the drivers seemed to take any particular notice of them.

“Party time tonight,” Sylvia said, stroking Mac’s neck. “Are you up for it?”

“I want you here, right now,” he whispered sexily.

She ran her hand slowly across his crotch, feeling how hard he was.

When they were on the motorway heading north toward Stockholm, Sylvia put on a new pair of gloves. She reached into the backseat for the backpack and started to go through the dead Germans’ valuables.

“Look at this,” she said, taking out an ultramodern digital camera. “A Nikon D3X. That’s pretty neat.”

She rummaged through the woman’s jewelry.

“A lot of it’s rubbish, sentimental, but this emerald ring is okay. I guess.”

She held it up to the sunlight and examined the gemstone’s sparkle.

“He had a platinum Amex,” Mac said, glancing at the things spread out on the floor of the car and in Sylvia’s lap.

“So did she,” Sylvia said, waving the metallic card.

Mac grinned.

“And we’ve got the Omega watch itself, of course,” Sylvia said, triumphantly holding up the German woman’s recently purchased gift. “And it’s even in the original packaging!”

“The cheap Kraut bastard was thinking of buying her a Swatch,” Mac said.

They burst out laughing, heads thrown back, as they passed through the commercial center of Stockholm.

“We’re
back,
” Sylvia said in an eerie voice.

Chapter 16

THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER MAC MADE a turn into the long-term parking lot at Arlanda Airport. Just to be safe, Sylvia wiped down the surfaces she might have touched with her fingers: the buttons that controlled the side windows, the instrument panel, Mac’s seat.

Then they left the car among a couple of thousand others, a dark gray Ford Focus that even they lost sight of after walking just a few meters. It would probably be there for weeks before anyone noticed it.

The free bus to the airport’s terminal buildings was almost empty. Sylvia sat on one of the seats, Mac standing beside her, wearing the backpack. No one paid any attention to them. Why should they?

They got off at International Terminal 5 and went straight to the departure hall.

Sylvia had managed to get a fair ways ahead before she noticed that Mac wasn’t right behind her. Now where was he?

She turned all the way around and saw him standing and looking up at one of the large screens where departures were listed.

She hurried back quickly.

“Darling,” she whispered, sidling up to him. “What are you doing?”

Mac’s light gray eyes were staring fixedly at the flashing destinations.

“We could take a plane,” he said.

Sylvia put her tongue in his ear.

“Come on, baby,” she said in a low voice. “We’ve got lots left to do. Today is party time!”

“We could go home,” Mac said. “We could stop this game of ours now. Quit while we’re ahead. Retire as legends.”

She wound her arm around his waist and blew softly on his neck.

“The train leaves in four minutes,” she said. “You. Me. We’re on it.”

He let her lead him off to the escalators, down into the underground, and out onto the platform. Only when the doors had closed and the express train had set off for the center of Stockholm did Sylvia let go of him.

“Legends,” she said, “always die young. But not us.”

Chapter 17

Sunday, June 13

A UNIFORMED SECURITY GUARD STOOD up in a glass cubicle over to Jacob’s left. He pressed a button and said something incomprehensible in a metallic loudspeaker voice.

“I don’t speak Swedish,” Jacob said. “Can you tell Dessie Larsson that I’m here?”

“What about?”

“The postcard killings,” he said, holding up his New York police badge. “I’m homicide.”

The man pulled his stomach in and yanked up his baggy trousers.

“Take a seat for a moment.”

He gestured toward the row of wooden benches over by the door.

The stone floor of the
Aftonposten
lobby was slippery from the rain outside.

Jacob slid a couple of steps before getting his balance back, along with his dignity. He straightened his shoulders, wondering if perhaps he was not entirely sober yet.

With a groan, he sank onto the nearest bench. It was hard and cold.

He had to pull himself together. Never before, never during all those years raising Kimmy, had he let himself sink this low. The previous day had vanished in a haze of vodka and aquavit. The Swedes also had something they called
brännvin,
a spirit made from potatoes that was pure dynamite.

Hoping he wasn’t about to be sick, he rested his head in his hands.

The killers weren’t far away. Even though he felt hazy about many things, he could sense their proximity.

They were still walking the city’s streets, hiding in the rain, and had probably already found their next victims — if they hadn’t already dealt with them…

Jacob shivered slightly and realized how cold and wet he was. His hands were filthy. There was no shower in his room in the youth hostel where he was staying, and he hadn’t bothered trying to find the shared bathroom. The building depressed him. It was an old prison, and his room was a cell from the 1840s, which he was sharing with a Finnish poet. He and the poet had squeezed onto the lower bunk of the bed and drunk their way through the vodka, aquavit, and
brännvin,
and afterward the poet had gone into the city to dance the tango somewhere.

Jacob had spent the night throwing up into the wastepaper basket and feeling miserable. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the whole of the country to drown his thoughts about Kimmy and her murder.

He beat on his forehead with his fists.

Now that he was so close to the bastards, his own failings were overtaking him.

He got gingerly to his feet and set off toward the glass cubicle again. The soles of his shoes had dried and had a better grip on the floorboards.

The glass box was empty now. The guard had gone off somewhere.
Shit
.

Shielding his eyes from the glare of the glass with his hands, he tried to see into the newsroom. As far as he could tell, there was no one about.

What sort of fucked-up place was this? Wasn’t this supposed to be a newspaper?

He walked back to the security post and buzzed the alarm. No response, no one anywhere.

He put his finger on the buzzer and held it there. The guard finally approached, holding a mug of coffee in one hand and a pastry in the other.

“Hello!” Jacob called.
“Can you please call Dessie Larsson and tell her I’m here?”

The guard glanced at him, then turned his back and started talking to someone out of sight.

Jacob banged the glass wall with the palm of his hand.

“Hello!” he yelled. “Come on! It’s a matter of life and death!”

“You’re too late,” said a voice behind him.

He spun around to see the journalist standing in the stairwell behind him. Her face was white, her green eyes tired. There were dark rings around them.

“The picture arrived this morning,” she said. “The forensics team already took it away.”

He stepped toward her and opened his mouth, but he couldn’t get a single question out.

“A man and a woman,” Dessie Larsson said. “Their throats were cut.”

Chapter 18

DESSIE OPENED THE DOOR TO the newsroom with her card and code.

“I’m not going to offer you anything to drink,” she said over her shoulder. “If you’d turned up yesterday, you might have gotten a cup of coffee, but you lost your chance. This way…”

She headed off to the right through the office, aiming for the crime desk.

“I’m not here for coffee,” Jacob Kanon said behind her. “Have the bodies been found?”

He was in a bad mood and stank like hell. Nice guy.

“Not yet,” said Dessie. “Give us a little time, will you. Murder is a bit less common here than in New York. Suicide is our specialty.”

She sat down behind her desk and pointed to the wobbly metal chair in front.

“When was the letter posted?” he asked.

“Yesterday afternoon, at the central Stockholm post office. We don’t usually get mail on a Sunday, but the police ordered an extra delivery.”

He sat down on the chair and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.