The Postcard Killers Read online

  “So, now you think they’re innocent?” Gabriella said.

  “Not for a second,” Jacob said. “We just haven’t got the evidence yet, that’s all. They’re clever and they’ve covered their tracks pretty good.”

  “We’ve still got to handle the press,” Sara Höglund said. “Several of the main channels have already done their own vignettes on the Rudolphs, with music and everything.”

  Jacob stood up.

  “We’ve got to knock a hole in their defense,” he said. “We’ve got to continue to provoke them into making mistakes.”

  He stopped in front of Sara Höglund.

  “Let me question them,” he said. “Let Dessie interview them. Let us talk to them both together.”

  Sara Höglund got to her feet.

  “You’re not exactly the shy, retiring type, are you? What makes you think that a reporter on the evening paper and a desperate father would be better at breaking down criminals than experienced murder investigators?”

  “With all due respect,” Jacob said, forcing himself to sound calm and collected, “you aren’t the only murder cops in this room. And I’m American. You don’t pick up the nuances in the language.”

  “And Dessie Larsson can?”

  “She’s written a doctoral thesis on criminology. In English. Have you?”

  Dessie stood up as well.

  “I’ve done it before,” she said in a quiet voice.

  Jacob and Sara Höglund looked at her in surprise.

  “I’ve interviewed criminals during ongoing investigations,” she said. “Without pen and paper, or a tape recorder, of course, and under police supervision, but it wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “What do we stand to gain from it?” Mats Duvall asked. “Please tell me that.”

  “What do you stand to lose?” asked Jacob.

  Chapter 80

  THE PRESS CONFERENCE WAS OUT of control from the very start.

  Several American television channels were broadcasting live and had no desire to sit through Evert Ridderwall’s painstaking details of the progress of the investigation.

  Their reporters started shouting questions almost at once, which revealed yet another complication: Evert Ridderwall was extremely bad at English.

  He was also rather hard of hearing. He just about managed to read out the details that the investigating team had jointly put together for him, but he could neither hear nor understand what the reporters were asking him.

  “A sufficient lack of self-doubt can get you anywhere,” Dessie muttered as she stood next to Jacob at the back of the room.

  “And we have a stunning example of that in front of us,” Jacob agreed bitterly.

  Evert Ridderwall had insisted on holding the press conference himself because he was, after all, the head of the investigating team.

  Sara Höglund, who was standing on the podium next to him, eventually leaned purposefully across the table, picked up the prosecutor’s script and started reading.

  Her English bore traces of the East Coast of the United States, and Jacob recalled that she had a good knowledge of the NYPD. Maybe she’d trained there, or worked with them once upon a time.

  In actual fact, she said very little other than that the investigation was continuing, and that certain evidence had been obtained but she couldn’t go into details because of the significance of the material to the investigation.

  “Fuck it, they haven’t got anything,” said a reporter from one of the Swedish news agencies to his colleague. They were sitting right in front of Dessie and Jacob.

  “Shall we go?” Jacob whispered.

  “Yes. Please. Now.”

  They got to the exit before the reporter from Dagens Eko caught sight of Dessie.

  “Dessie,” he called after her. “Dessie Larsson?”

  She turned around, surprised that he had recognized her.

  “Yes?” she said, and the next moment she had a huge microphone pressed up under her nose.

  “What do you think of the unpleasant criticism that’s being directed at you?”

  Dessie stared at the man. He was unshaven and had bad teeth.

  Don’t blow up, she thought. Don’t get angry, don’t rush off, that’s exactly what he wants.

  “Criticism directed at me?” she said. “What do you mean specifically?”

  “What do you think of the fact that you’ve introduced to Scandinavia the Anglo-Saxon tradition of paying large amounts of money to brutal serial killers?”

  “I think you’ve completely misunderstood that,” she replied, trying to sound calm and confident. “I haven’t paid any money to—”

  “But you tried to!” the reporter cried indignantly. “You wanted to buy interviews with brutal serial killers. Do you really think it’s morally defensible to pay for their violent deeds?”

  Dessie swallowed before she spoke again.

  “Well, firstly, not a single penny has been paid, and secondly, it wasn’t my decision to—”

  “Do you think you’ve made yourself complicit in the crime itself?” the reporter yelled. “What’s the difference between paying for a murder and paying for the details of a murder?”

  Dessie finally pushed the microphone aside and walked away from the rude, stupid man.

  “Let it go,” Jacob said in her ear.

  He was right beside her, struggling to keep up. He hadn’t understood the exchange, but the content and spirit of it were all too clear to him.

  “After this disaster, Duvall will be clutching at straws. In less than ten minutes’ time he’ll be asking us to interview the Rudolphs,” Jacob continued.

  Dessie took a deep breath and pushed the Eko reporter from her mind.

  It turned out that Jacob was right.

  It took seven minutes.

  Chapter 81

  IT WAS ALREADY AFTERNOON WHEN Malcolm and Sylvia were led separately into the interrogation room where Dessie and Jacob sat waiting for them.

  Sylvia gave a small squeal of delight when she saw her brother.

  They gave each other an emotional hug before the officers escorting them pulled them apart.

  Dessie had expected to be nervous before the meeting, but her anger and determination had pushed aside most feelings of that sort. She was quite convinced that the Rudolphs were the Postcard Killers.

  Now she and Jacob had to pull the rug out from under them. Somehow. But where to begin?

  She studied each of them. They really were strikingly attractive. Malcolm was trim but also muscular, and in all the right places. Dessie guessed that he must have swallowed a good number of anabolic steroids. Sylvia was extremely thin, but her breasts were plump and round. Silicone, of course.

  The man had much fairer skin and hair than his sister, but they had the same eyes: the same shade of light gray, with long eyelashes that only added to their allure and magnetism.

  They were clearly overjoyed to see each other again. They settled down side by side on the other side of the table and seemed relaxed and happy to be there.

  Dessie realized immediately that they hadn’t recognized her.

  They’d never seen a picture byline of her in the paper, and they evidently hadn’t Googled her picture before they sent the postcard to her at Aftonposten.

  Dessie and Jacob let the pair settle in, and they did not introduce themselves. Their expressions were completely neutral and they didn’t take the initiative.

  The siblings smiled contentedly and looked around the room. They were considerably more alert now than they had been during their questioning that morning. The change of questioners had evidently livened them up.

  “So,” Sylvia said, “what shall we talk about now?”

  Dessie didn’t change her expression.

  “I’ve got a few questions about your interest in art,” she said, and the brother and sister stretched their backs and smiled even more confidently.

  “How nice,” Sylvia said. “What are you wondering about? How can we help?”<
br />
  “Your attitude toward art and reality,” Dessie said. “I’m thinking about the murders in Amsterdam and Berlin, for instance. The killers mimicked two real people, Nefertiti and Vincent van Gogh.”

  Both Sylvia and Malcolm looked at her, a little wide-eyed. Their contented expressions were replaced by one of watchful interest.

  “I’ll explain,” Dessie said. “It isn’t at all clear that the Egyptian queen Nefertiti was missing her left eye. It’s just that the bust of her in the Neues Museum is. Yet you still took out Karen’s and Billy’s eyes. I suppose you chose to imitate the art and not the person, didn’t you?”

  Sylvia laughed.

  “This might even be exciting, your theory, this line of questioning,” she said, “if it wasn’t so crazy and absurd.”

  “Do you know how I realized it?” Dessie said. “Lindsay and Jeffrey—you remember them?—the British couple you killed in Amsterdam. You cut off their right ears, even though van Gogh cut off his left. But in the painting, his self-portrait, the bandage is on the right-hand side, of course, because he was painting his reflection. So you chose to re-create the artworks, rather than the people themselves.”

  “This is obviously going nowhere,” Sylvia said. “I thought you were going to ask us some questions that might help catch the killers.”

  “We are,” Jacob said, turning to Malcolm. “Where have you hidden your disguise?”

  Chapter 82

  THE SIBLINGS REMAINED COOL AND controlled, but their supercilious attitude had vanished. Dessie noted

  how they unconsciously leaned closer to each other as the questions suddenly got tougher. They were a very tight-knit team, weren’t they?

  Malcolm manufactured a laugh.

  “Disguise? I don’t understand…”

  Dessie looked at Jacob. He was clenching his teeth. He was presumably having to strain every muscle to overcome the desire to smash the killer’s head in.

  “The brown wig,” Jacob said. “The cap, the sunglasses, the coat you wear when you go around emptying your victims’ accounts. The outfit you wore when you pawned Claudia’s Omega watch? And that you were wearing when you pretended to kill Nienke and Peter?”

  Malcolm held his arms out, a questioning expression on his face.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “And the eyedrops,” Jacob said. “They weren’t in your hotel room. So you must have hidden them in the same place as the disguise.”

  Malcolm looked over at his sister.

  “Do you understand what he’s talking about?”

  “The recording from the Grand Hôtel was good,” Jacob went on, “but not good enough.”

  He turned to Sylvia.

  “It’s obvious that you were kissing thin air when you pretended to kiss their cheeks, and that you were faking a conversation. And you forgot about the shadow.”

  Sylvia shook her head, but her smile seemed far less certain now.

  “Sorry,” she said, “but where are you going with this? I’m completely lost.”

  “I’m telling you about your mistakes,” Jacob said. “I’m talking about the shadow, the one formed when a dead body got in the way of the daylight coming through a window.”

  Sylvia’s eyes had narrowed and turned quite dark and small.

  “This is harassment,” she said.

  “The statue from Millesgården,” Dessie said. “The one clearly visible on the floor of the corridor when you opened the door to Peter and Nienke’s room. That’s the shadow he’s talking about.”

  “We want a lawyer,” Sylvia said.

  Chapter 83

  THE PAIR CLAMMED UP. THEY refused to say another word without a lawyer present.

  The interrogation was stopped. The two of them were taken back to their cells, and Dessie and Jacob headed off to Mats Duvall’s office, where the investigating team had gathered.

  Sara Höglund looked distinctly pleased.

  “That business with the shadow worked very well,” she said.

  “A shame we made it up,” Jacob said. “Otherwise we really would have a case. Anyway, it’s a start.”

  “Now we just have to hope that they get tangled up in their various lies and explanations,” the head of the crime unit said.

  The theme music to the 4:45 Eko news bulletin came over the radio, and Mats Duvall turned up the volume.

  The lead story was the “questionable arrest” of the two American art students traveling through Sweden.

  The newsreader’s voice sounded stuffy and pompous.

  “According to reports received by Dagens Eko, the suspects have solid alibis for several of the murders in Europe. Video recordings from security cameras in the Grand Hôtel show that the Dutch couple were still alive when the brother and sister left them on Wednesday afternoon…”

  The air in the room had turned to ice.

  Obviously, someone in, or very close to, the investigation had talked to the press.

  No one looked at anyone else. They all just stared straight ahead or down at the table.

  Dessie felt a sense of unease creeping up her spine.

  She was the one whom these detectives would suspect of leaking information. And because it was against the law for the authorities to investigate the media’s sources, no one would ask her straight out, but she knew what they were thinking. She was the journalist, the outsider, the one who was the most likely to be disloyal.

  From now on, she wouldn’t be welcome here, that much was clear to her.

  The superintendent’s face stiffened into a mask that grew more rigid the longer the broadcast went on.

  The chair of the Swedish Bar Association gave a statement, seriously criticizing the fact that “the two American youngsters” hadn’t been given a lawyer until late this afternoon, a whole day after they were taken into custody.

  Sara Höglund was quoted saying in an irritated voice that the investigation was proceeding—a sound bite that was probably taken from the very last minutes of the press conference, when she had already answered the same question umpteen times.

  Then the Dagens Eko bulletin turned its attention to criticism of the media.

  The newsreader’s voice was full of indignation as he trumpeted the next item.

  “In a letter that has received harsh criticism, a newspaper reporter at Aftonposten, Dessie Larsson, attempted to buy an interview with the suspected killers.

  “For one hundred thousand dollars, almost a million kronor, she wanted to secure an exclusive interview with the American youths. The chair of the Journalists Federation, Anita Persson, considers the development a scandal that should be investigated.”

  Dessie felt the floor sway beneath her. Her mouth went dry and her pulse was racing.

  “Dessie Larsson has brought shame on the entire profession,” Anita Persson said over the radio. “She should be expelled from the Journalists Federation right away.”

  The author and journalist Hugo Bergman was next to be interviewed. He added to the criticism, saying that Dessie Larsson was “a lightweight” and “a useless journalist.”

  Everyone in the room turned to look at Dessie.

  Hugo Bergman clearly didn’t like being spurned when he had paid for wine and dinner at a fancy restaurant, she thought. It was a hell of a price to pay for mashed potatoes.

  Dessie stood up and went toward the door.

  “I’m not even a member of the Journalists Federation,” she said.

  Jacob followed her out through the door.

  Chapter 84

  DESSIE COULD SEE THE SATELLITE dishes on the television crews’ vans, some of which had come all the way from Götgatan. What a waste of time, money, and gas.

  The media storm had settled right outside her door, blocking the whole of Urvädersgränd. She stopped, her bicycle beside her, and stared at the crowd.

  Jacob caught up with her and let out a quiet whistle.

  There were unfamiliar figures with huge microphones and colleagues she had met a
t the Association of Professional Newspapermen, photographers with long lenses, and radio reporters who looked like giant beetles with their broadcast antennas mounted on their backs.

  “Impressive,” Jacob said drily. “You must be the hottest date in town.”

  “I can’t go in there,” she said.

  “They’ll go home when they get hungry,” Jacob said. “Come on, let’s go and get something to eat in the meantime.”

  They headed toward Mariatorget. The sky was full of dark clouds; there was rain in the air.

  They stopped at a steak house on Sankt Paulsgatan, where Jacob ordered barbecue ribs and Dessie corn on the cob.

  “Is that all you’re having?” Jacob said when the food arrived.

  “I don’t think I can even get this down,” she said in a quiet voice.

  He looked at her with something in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was actually worried about her.

  “I know you’re finding this unpleasant and unfair,” he said, “but you should know that you did the right thing. You’ve probably already prevented some murders.”

  She finished her glass of wine and poured some more.

  He put his hand on hers.

  “Dessie,” he said, “listen to me, please. Kimmy was killed by these monsters, and you’re one of the reasons they’ve been caught. I thank you for that. I owe you my life.”

  Chapter 85

  JACOB’S HAND WAS DRY and warm, burning on her skin. She looked up and met his gaze.

  “You must have loved her very much,” Dessie said before she could stop herself.

  He shut his eyes tightly and squeezed her hand. For a few moments she thought he was going to start crying. She felt terrible for making him suffer like this.

  “Yes,” he whispered, weaving his fingers through hers. “Yes, I did. It was just her and me…”

  Dessie kept hold of his hand.

  He stared out through the window, seemingly losing himself in his memories.

  She looked at him and wondered what he was thinking.