The Postcard Killers Read online

  He knotted his hands in frustration.

  “You have to understand how important this is. How far have the police gotten? Have they made contact with the Germans? Tell them they have to talk to Berlin, the best inspector there is called Günther Bublitz. He’s a decent man. He cares.”

  The woman lowered her head, peering at him from beneath her hair. Her fear seemed to have subsided, and her gaze was steady and calm now. She was impressive in her way.

  “This is my home,” she said. “If you want to discuss anything about the postcard or the killers or the police operation, you’ll have to come to my workplace tomorrow.”

  She nodded toward the stairs.

  “I’m sure you’ll find your way, Detective. You can get the address from directory inquiries.”

  He took a step closer to her and she held her breath.

  “I’ve been chasing these bastards for six months,” he said, almost inaudibly. “No one knows more about them than I do.”

  The woman braced herself against the wall, then forced her way past him. She picked up her keys from the floor and clutched them hard in her hand.

  “You look and smell like a garbage dump,” she said. “You’ve no authority with the Swedish police. You’re just chasing these killers…. Sorry, but that seems a bit… obsessive.”

  He brushed his hair back hard and closed his eyes.

  Obsessive? Was he obsessed? Of course he was.

  He saw the Polaroid picture in front of his eyes, the man’s and woman’s hands, the beautiful fingers that were almost touching. The blood that had run down their arms and gathered around the fingernails. “Love you, Dad! See you at New Year’s!”

  He opened his eyes and met her gaze.

  “They killed my daughter in Rome,” he said. “They cut Kimmy’s and Steven’s throats in a hotel room in Trastevere, and I’m going to chase them until Hell freezes over.”

  Chapter 10

  DESSIE HEARD THE MAN’S HEAVY footsteps disappear down the stairs as she double-locked her door. She blew out a deep breath.

  It was Friday evening, and she was alone again. Worse, she’d just been scared shitless by an American detective who tragically had lost his daughter.

  She took off her sneakers, hung up her jacket, and put her bike helmet on the hat rack. She pulled off the rest of her clothes as she walked to the bathroom and got into the shower.

  Jacob Kanon, she thought. He hadn’t meant her any harm, that much was obvious. What would have happened if she had asked him in? What would she have lost as a result? Would she have gotten a news story?

  She shook off the idle thoughts and turned the tap to run the water ice cold. She stood under the jet until her toes started to go numb and her skin stung.

  Wrapped in a big dressing gown, she walked across the tiled floor into the living room. She sank onto the sofa and reached for the television remote control but held it idly in her hand.

  Why had the killers picked her? What the hell had she done? She wasn’t a star reporter by any means.

  Were they actually in the city right now?

  Were they looking for their next victims, or had they already set to work? Had the letter containing the photographs of the dead bodies already been sent?

  She got up off the couch and went into the kitchen. She opened the fridge door and found a few withered carrots and a moldy tomato. Jeez. She really must do some shopping.

  Coming home usually made her thoroughly calm and relaxed. Not this night.

  Her apartment lay on Urvädersgränd, an old street on the island of Södermalm, in the heart of the onetime working-class district that had recently been transformed into overpriced homes for the hip middle class to buy. Sweden’s national poet, Carl Michael Bellman, had lived in the building next door for four years in the 1770s. She tried to feel the winds of history.

  It didn’t work too well tonight. Another Friday at home. Why was that?

  She went over to the stereo and put on a CD of German hard rock. Du, du hast, du hast mich…

  Then she sat down and stared at the telephone. She had a pretty good reason for making the call.

  She was neither lonely nor abandoned. She had just turned down the chance to invite a man into her apartment—a dirty, unshaven man, admittedly—so she wasn’t the slightest bit desperate. Right?

  She picked up the receiver and dialed the number of Gabriella’s cell phone.

  Chapter 11

  GABRIELLA ANSWERED WITH HER USUAL unfriendly grunt.

  “Hi,” Dessie said. “It’s me.”

  She could hear Gabriella breathing.

  “It’s not what you think,” Dessie said. “I don’t want to be a nuisance, and I haven’t changed my mind…”

  “I’ve been expecting you to call,” Gabriella said, sounding strictly professional. “Mats Duvall pulled me onto the investigating team this afternoon. I think you and I can deal with this like grown-ups…. Right, Dessie?”

  Dessie breathed out. She had lived with police inspector Gabriella Oscarsson for almost a year. Maybe they had been in love, maybe not. Three months ago Dessie had ended the relationship and Gabriella had moved out of the apartment. It hadn’t been an amicable split. Was it ever?

  “Have you heard anything?” Dessie asked, which meant in plain language, Have you found any bodies with their throats cut?

  “Nothing. Not yet.”

  Not yet. So they were expecting something. They believed the postcard was real.

  “I was contacted by an American cop here this evening,” Dessie said. “A Jacob Kanon. Do you know anything about him?”

  “He’s been working with the Germans,” Gabriella said. “We’ve had confirmation that he’s with the New York force, and that his daughter was one of the first victims. In Rome. Where did you say you met him?”

  Dessie sighed with relief. At least he was who he said he was, even if he smelled.

  “He looked me up,” she said.

  “Why? Why did he look you up? What did he want with you? He came to the apartment?”

  All the old irritations came crashing back on Dessie like a fist in the stomach. All these questions, the insinuations, the same accusing tone that had finally driven her to finish it with Gabriella.

  “I really don’t know,” Dessie said, trying to sound calm and in control of the situation.

  “We’re thinking of talking to him to see what he knows,” Gabriella said, “so you’re free to interview him if you like.”

  “Okay,” Dessie said, feeling that it was time to hang up.

  “But we’re looking after this case, not some freelancing Yank,” Gabriella said. “And be careful, Dessie. These are murderers, not your usual pickpockets and burglars.”

  Chapter 12

  Saturday, June 12

  SYLVIA RUDOLPH TILTED HER HEAD to one side and smiled beautifully. Her eyes lit up.

  “You have to let us show you our very favorite place in Stockholm. They’ve got the most wonderful cakes, and their hot chocolate cups are as big as bathtubs.”

  The German couple laughed, their mood lightened by the thick joint the four of them had just shared.

  “It’s on Stortorget, the square in the Old Town that’s got a ridiculously dramatic history,” Mac said, putting his arm around the German woman. “The Danish king, one Christian the Tyrant, had the whole of the Swedish nobility executed there in November fifteen twenty.”

  “More than a hundred people lost their heads,” Sylvia said. “The mass murder is still called ‘the Stockholm Bloodbath.’ ”

  The German girl shuddered.

  “Ugh, how horrid.”

  Mac and Sylvia exchanged a quick glance and smiled at each other. “Horrid?” This from someone whose forefathers started two world wars?

  The Rudolphs held each other’s hand and walked quickly up toward Börshuset, the old Stock Exchange Building, and the Nobel Museum located in it. The Germans followed them, giggling and stumbling.

  In the café, actually
called Chokladkoppen, “The Chocolate Cup,” they ate cinnamon buns and drank homemade raspberry juice.

  Sylvia couldn’t take her eyes off the German woman. She really was incredibly beautiful. Unfortunately she was light blond, almost platinum, but that could be sorted out somehow.

  “Oh, I’m so glad we met you two,” Sylvia said, hugging the German man. “I have to have a souvenir of today! Mac, do you think the jeweler in that department store is still open?”

  Mac sighed, raising his eyebrows as he always did at this point in their script.

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “This is going to be expensive.”

  The German took out his wallet to pay for the pastries, but Mac stopped him.

  “This is on us!”

  Chapter 13

  THEY WALKED DOWN TO THE quayside together, following the water until they came to the greenery of Kungsträdgården. The German woman seemed to have gotten the munchies badly after the marijuana, because she stopped to buy an ice cream at one of the kiosks along the way.

  Sylvia took the opportunity to sidle closer to the man while his girlfriend was busy licking her ice cream.

  “She’s amazing,” Sylvia said, gesturing toward the woman, who was dripping melted ice cream on her clothes. “If I were you, I’d really want to give her a token of my appreciation…”

  The German smiled, a little uncertain. He was not exactly a bad specimen either. He looked like a handsome villain from some film, maybe a member of the old Baader-Meinhof Gang, something like that.

  “ ‘Appreciation’? How do you mean?”

  Sylvia kissed him on the cheek and touched his left wrist.

  “She hasn’t got a nice watch…”

  Sylvia suggested they get a little cash, so they stopped at the bank. She hung on to the man, memorizing his PIN as he keyed it in at the ATM.

  NK, the department store, was crowded, and they had to take a number at the jeweler. Sylvia pulled the German woman over to the perfume department while the men picked out the right watch. They each bought a bottle of Dior’s J’adore.

  The woman let out a series of very cute squeals of joy when she opened her present.

  Sylvia took the opportunity to pop into a branch of Systembolaget, the state-owned chain that had a monopoly on selling alcohol throughout Sweden, and bought two bottles of Moët & Chandon.

  “This deserves a celebration,” Sylvia cooed, twining her arm around the German man’s waist. “I want to drink these with you, somewhere where we can be alone.”

  The German looked slightly confused but definitely interested.

  Sylvia laughed softly.

  “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.