Postcard killers Read online

  They drove on in silence.

  Mac was looking intently through the windshield.

  "What do you think about that one?" he said, pointing to a farm on the edge of the forest.

  Sylvia leaned forward to check the place out. "Could be. Maybe."

  Mac slowed down, then stopped the car. "Yes or no?"

  The farmyard seemed quiet and deserted. Al the windows and doors were shut. They could see an old Volvo behind a barn, a sedan that must have been the height of style in the early 1980s.

  "This'l do," Sylvia said, taking a quick look behind her.

  No cars in sight.

  "Quickly, now," she said. "We need to be really careful from here on. No mistakes."

  Chapter 124

  Mac jumped out of the car. Sylvia took her seat belt off and slid over to the driver's seat.

  With a certain amount of effort she put the car in gear. She wasn't used to driving cars with gears and a clutch. Then she sped off to the far side of the next bend.

  There she stopped.

  She wound down the window and listened over the sound of the engine.

  The trees sighed; some sort of animal was bleating in the forest. The sound of a car rose and fel in the distance, but nothing came past. 166 She would have to wait here for a while.

  Her eyes settled on some sort of construction in the trees. Planks, a ladder.

  A tree house, or maybe a hunting post.

  Suddenly she was fil ed with a feeling of intense hatred and disgust.

  Imagine, there were people who lived the whole of their pointless lives in godforsaken places like this, working and drinking and fucking and building hunting posts without any awareness that there was anything else, that a higher level of human consciousness even existed. People out here abandoned their lives to meaningless banality, never bothering about bril iance, about aesthetics.

  She tore her eyes from the hunting post and concentrated on the rearview mirror.

  Mac was driving the red Volvo now. He didn't slow down as he passed her, just carried on at the same careful y precise speed: not too slow, but not too fast either.

  She put the car in gear and fol owed at a safe distance. Careful. No mistakes.

  Now they had to find a good spot to dump the car from Stockholm, somewhere it would be found relatively quickly, but not immediately.

  She licked her thumb and pressed it against the wheel. A lovely print.

  Suck on that, dear police!

  It made her giddy to think of what they'd already achieved, and that was only the start.

  The next part could be even more impressive, their next act. She and Mac were maturing as artists.

  Chapter 125

  The whole case was breaking open now – and quickly.

  The kil ers from Athens lived in Thessaloniki. They weren't a couple, just two art student friends at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the largest university in Greece. They were arrested on the campus, given away by the electronic trail left on their computers.

  They were both deeply religious, and both claimed that they were in direct contact with "the creating God, the unknowable ruler of al the universe." They admitted to what had happened in Athens, but denied it was murder. Their work was part of a global conceptual artwork intended to reveal humankind's divinity.

  The murders in Salzburg were traced to a young British couple from London. They were enrol ed at a fashionable art col ege in the middle of London. They hadn't attended any classes for the past four months. 167 Their fingerprints and DNA were found at the scene of the crime, and the murder weapon was discovered under a loose floorboard in the couple's apartment.

  They didn't comment on the accusations. They didn't respond to any of the authorities' questions, and they even refused to talk to their own lawyer. On their blogs they had written that every individual was responsible for creating their own morals and their own laws, and that everything else was an affront to the rights of the individual.

  The kil ers in Copenhagen were arrested that evening, both the repeat offender whose details had been in the DNA register and his accomplice, a younger woman who was deeply remorseful once she was captured. The woman confessed at once, in floods of tears, and said that she had changed her mind and tried to stop the kil ings. Her change of heart had occurred when her col eague had raped the young American woman, which hadn't been part of the "artwork" design.

  Dessie looked at Jacob and saw how his eyes registered everything that was reported about the murderers, how his jaw clenched every time new information was received.

  The other police officers exhibited the sort of relief that comes after an arrest and a confession, but not Jacob. The others' shoulders relaxed, became less tense, and the way they walked seemed somehow freer, but Jacob's face remained carved from stone.

  She knew why.

  Kimmy's kil ers were stil out there somewhere, probably on their way to Finland.

  Chapter 126

  During the day, three cars had been stolen in the Stockholm region.

  An almost-new Toyota from the suburb of Vikingshil. A Range Rover out in Hasselby garden suburb, at the end of the underground network. An old Mercedes from a parking garage beneath the Gal erian shopping center in the middle of the city.

  "The Merc makes sense, right?" Jacob said. "They wouldn't take the underground al the way out to the suburbs just to get a car."

  He picked up the map again.

  "So now they're driving north. That's how Dessie and I figure it," he said.

  "They might even have changed cars by now. I would have. They're traveling on minor roads and heading for Haparanda. They're sticking close to the speed limit. So they should get there early tomorrow morning, at the latest."

  Mats Duval looked skeptical. "That's just speculation," he said. "There's nothing to prove that they'd choose that particular route, or even that mode of 168 transport. We don't know anything for certain."

  Dessie watched Jacob stand up. He was making an effort not to attack anything, or anyone.

  "You've got to reinforce the border crossings in the north," he said.

  "What's the name of that river right on the border? The Torne River?"

  "We can't al ocate manpower simply on the strength of guesswork," Mats Duval said, closing up his electronic gadget, a sign that the conversation was over.

  At that, Jacob stormed out of the room, closely fol owed by Dessie.

  "Jacob…," she began, taking hold of his arm. "Stop. Look at me."

  He spun around, standing right next to her.

  "The Swedish police are never going to catch them," he said in a low voice. "I can't let them get away again. I can't do that!"

  Dessie looked into his eyes.

  "No," she said. "You can't."

  "When's the next flight to Haparanda?" Jacob asked.

  She took out her cel and cal ed the twenty-four-hour travel desk at Aftonposten.

  The closest airport was in Lulea, and the last flight that evening was an SAS plane, leaving Arlanda at 9:10.

  She looked at her watch.

  It was nine o'clock exactly.

  The airport was forty-five kilometers away.

  The first plane the next morning was a Norwegian Air Shuttle, due to leave at 6:55.

  "We can be in Lulea at 8:20," Dessie said. "Then we have to rent a car and drive up to the border. It's another hundred and thirty kilometers away."

  Jacob stared at her.

  "Do you know any police up there? Or some customs officer who can keep an eye on things until we get there?"

  "No," she said, "but I can cal Robert. He lives in Kalix. It's a forty-fiveminute drive from the border."

  "Robert?"

  She smiled, a smile that was almost a grimace.

  "My criminal cousin. The big one who protected me when I was a kid.

  And even now."

  Jacob ran his fingers through his hair and paced quickly around the coffee machine.

  "How long wo
uld it take to drive up there?" he asked. "If we leave now."

  She looked at her watch again.

  "If we go for it, and the road isn't ful of trailers and lumber trucks, we'l be there by six."

  He slapped the wal with his hand, nearly putting a hole in it. 169 "That's not good enough," he said.

  "If Robert keeps an eye on things, they won't get through," she said. "A blue Mercedes, registration TKG two-nine-seven, wasn't it?"

  He looked at her, fire in his eyes.

  "Have you got access to a car?"

  "No," she said, "but I've got a bicycle."

  She waved her American Express card.

  "We'l rent one, you idiot."

  Chapter 127

  Thursday, June 24

  Norrland, Sweden

  It was past one o'clock in the morning when Dessie sailed past the town of Utansjo. She had driven almost five hundred kilometers and needed to get petrol, drink coffee, and go to the bathroom. Not in that order actual y.

  She glanced at Jacob in the reclined seat next to her as he slept the comatose sleep of the jet-lagged. The diesel would last until they got to the twenty-four-hour truck stop in Docksta, but she had a much better idea.

  It would mean a slight detour, but it might be worth the trouble.

  She reached the turning to Lunde, hesitated just for a second, and then headed left along Route 90.

  The car's rhythm changed and the very poor road surface made Jacob stir.

  "What the hel…?" he said, confused, as he sat up straight. "Are we there?"

  He looked around, astonished, at the early dawn light. Mist was lying in thin veils on the water, black fir trees reached up to the heavens, several deer fled across the fields.

  "We're exactly halfway to Haparanda," Dessie said. "Those are reindeer, by the way."

  He looked at his watch.

  "This whole midnight sun thing is pretty fucked up," he said, shaking his watch. "And the reindeer, too. Where's Santa?"

  Dessie slowed the car and pointed ahead.

  "See that?" she said. "Wasterlunds Bakery. I lost my virginity in the parking lot around the back."

  This nugget of information woke him up properly.

  "So these are your old stomping grounds? Interesting. You're real y a 170 hick."

  "Until I was seventeen. I spent a year at Adal high school in Kramfors, then went to New Zealand as an exchange student. I ended up staying there nine years."

  Jacob looked at her.

  "Your weird English accent," he said. "I've been trying to place it. Why New Zealand?"

  She glanced over at him.

  "It was as far away as I could get… from being a hick. See that? There's the memorial to the workers who were shot by the military in nineteen thirtyone. Remember our talk, fascist?"

  She pointed to a sculpture of a horse and a running man that was just visible down by the water.

  They drove up onto Sando Bridge, and Jacob peered down at the river below.

  "When it was built, this was the longest single-span concrete bridge in the world. I had to cross it every day to get to school."

  "Lucky you," Jacob said.

  "It scared me every single time, every day, twice a day. The bridge col apsed once, kil ing eighteen people. The most forgotten tragedy of the last century, because it happened on the afternoon of August thirty-first, nineteen thirty-nine."

  "The day before the Second World War broke out," Jacob said. "I have a good memory for history, too. Where are we actual y going?"

  "Past Klockestrand," she said. "It's not far now."

  She slowed down and turned off to the right, onto a narrow dirt road.

  "I thought we might need some expert help," she said, driving up to a huge wooden building in a state of more or less complete ruin.

  "What the hel is this place? The House on Haunted Hil?"

  "Welcome to my childhood home," Dessie said, switching the engine off.

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  There was a faint light coming from a window on the ground floor, the sort of blue light that an old television set gives off.

  Dessie wondered how many of her family were there. The house was a base for her uncles, the few who were stil alive, and for a number of her cousins.

  "Wil anyone be awake at this time of day?" Jacob asked.

  "Granddad," Dessie said. "He usual y sleeps during the day. At night he watches old black-and-white films that he downloads il egal y from the Net. 171 Are you coming in with me?"

  "Wouldn't miss it for the world," Jacob said, climbing out of the car.

  The held each other's hand as they walked up to the huge building.

  The structure was an old-style farmhouse, with four chimneys, two floors, and a loft tal enough to stand up in. The red iron-oxide paint had peeled off decades ago and the wooden wal s shone a grayish white in the early light.

  Dessie opened the outside door without knocking and kicked off her shoes.

  Apart from the sound from the television, the house was quiet. If anyone was here besides Granddad, they were sound asleep.

  Her grandfather was sitting in his usual armchair, watching a film with Ingrid Bergman in it.

  "Granddad?"

  The old man turned around and took a quick look at her.

  Then he went right back to the television screen.

  "Drag ata dorn for moija," he said.

  Dessie shut the outside door.

  "This is Jacob, Granddad," she said, walking toward him, stil holding Jacob by the hand.

  Her grandfather hadn't aged much, she thought. Maybe it was because his hair had been white for as long as she could remember, and his face had always had the same miserable scowl. He didn't seem the least bit surprised to see her in his living room for the first time since her mother's funeral. Instead, he just glowered suspiciously at Jacob.

  "Vo jar hajna for ein?"

  "Jacob mostly does rough work," Dessie said, taking the remote and turning off the television.

  Then she sat down on the table directly in front of the old man.

  "Granddad, I want to ask you something. If I'm on the run from the police and haven't got any money and want to hide out in Finland, what should I do?"

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  The old man's eyes twinkled. He cast a quick, approving look at Jacob, straightened up in his armchair, and regarded Dessie with new interest.

  "Vo hava ja djart?"

  "What language is that?" Jacob asked, bewildered. "It doesn't sound like any Swedish I've heard."

  "Pitemal," Dessie said. "It's an almost extinct dialect from where he grew up. It's further from Swedish than either Danish or Norwegian. This farm belonged to my maternal grandmother's family. No one around here real y understands him."

  She turned to her grandfather again.

  "No," she said, "we haven't done anything bad. Not yet, anyway. I'm just 172 wondering, purely hypothetical y."

  "Sko ja hava nalta a ita?"

  "Yes, please," Dessie said. "Coffee would be good, and a sandwich, if you've got any cheese."

  The old man stood up and staggered off toward the kitchen. Dessie took the opportunity to go out into the gloom of the hal and crawl in under the stairs, where the only toilet in the house was situated.

  When she got back, the old man had prepared some bread and cheese and had boiled water for instant coffee. He was sitting with his hands clasped on the wax tablecloth, his eyes squinting as he mul ed over Dessie's question.

  "A djoom sa i Finland," he said. "Ha ga et…"

  Dessie nodded and took a bite of the sweet bread and Port Salut.

  Then she interpreted simultaneously for Jacob so he could fol ow.

  Hiding in Finland wouldn't work. The Finnish police were far more effective, and brutal, than the Swedes. Any Finns on the run came over to Sweden as quickly as they could.

  But if you absolutely had to get to Finland, that was no problem, as long as you had a freshly stolen car, of course.

  Anyone co
uld cross the Torne River wherever they liked. There were bridges in Haparanda, Overtornea, Pel o, Kolari, Muonio, and Karesuando.

  Each had its advantages and disadvantages. Haparanda was the biggest and slowest, but the guards there were the laziest, so you might not get questioned.

  Kolari was the least used and fastest, but you were more likely to be noticed there. You had to choose your route in Morjarv – north toward Overkalix or south to Haparanda. Then you just had to aim straight for Russia as quickly as you could.

  "Russia?" Jacob said. "How far away is that?"

  "Ja nogges tjoor over Kuusamo, ha jar som rattjest…"

  "Three hundred kilometers," Dessie said.

  "Christ," Jacob said. "That's nothing. Manhattan to the end of Long Island."

  According to Dessie's grandfather, it was hard to get into Russia, and it always had been.

  In his day, the no-man's-land along the border had been mined with explosives, but they were al gone now. Nowadays it was the most remote boundary of the European Union. It was tricky but not impossible.

  The biggest problem wasn't getting out of the EU, but into Russia. You had to leave the car and then walk across, maybe just north of Tammela. There was a main road on the other side of the border that would take you to Petrozavodsk, and from there to St. Petersburg.

  Dessie and Jacob sat in silence until the old man had finished.

  Then he stood up, put the coffee cups on the draining board, and wandered off toward the television again.

  "Stang ata dorn for moija da ja ga," he said.

  "We have to shut the door to stop the midges from getting in when we leave," Dessie said. "I think he likes you."

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  They filled the car with diesel from the farm's il egal agricultural tank.

  Then Jacob took the wheel.

  "Where am I going?"

  "Straight on until you see 'Suomi Finland' on the signs," Dessie said, putting the seat back down and stretching out.

  He aimed north and emerged onto the main road again.