The Postcard Killers Read online

  Gabriella was standing by the window, writing something on her own pad. Outside in the sound a yacht glided by.

  “What the hell?” Gabriella said, taking a couple of quick steps toward them.

  Jacob held up his badge.

  “I’m not here to sabotage things,” he said quickly. “I’ve got important information that will help your investigation. I know more about these killers than anyone else does.”

  He stepped to one side to let Dessie into the living room. She stopped beside him and caught sight of the sofa. My god, dear god.

  The bloody bodies were still sitting and looked frozen in their peculiar pose.

  The blood covering their bodies was dark, almost black. It had run onto the floor, down into the cracks in the wood, to be sucked up by a colorful rug. The woman’s light blond hair hanging down across her breasts was stiff with blood.

  The man was lying in her lap, half on the floor, just like in the photograph. The opening in his throat was like a gaping gill, Dessie thought. The wound to his windpipe had been so violent that his head had almost come away from his body.

  Dessie felt her blood pressure sink into her toes and grabbed at Jacob to stop herself from falling.

  “So you’re Jacob Kanon,” Mats Duvall said, looking the American up and down. “I’ve heard about you.”

  He didn’t sound aggressive, just curious.

  “You’ll find at least one empty champagne bottle somewhere in here,” Jacob said, “probably Moët and Chandon. Four glasses, and in two of them you’ll find traces of the drug cyclopentolate. It a muscle relaxant used in eye examinations to dilate the pupil.”

  Gabriella took a couple of long strides across the room and stopped right next to Jacob Kanon.

  “You’re trespassing on a crime scene,” she said and pointed back at the door. “Get out of here!”

  “Eyedrops?” Mats Duvall asked.

  Jacob looked at the Swedish detectives, ready to fight his side of the ring.

  “In the States it’s sold under several different names,” he said. “Ak-Pentolate, Cyclogyl, Cylate, and a couple more. In Canada it’s also known as Minims Cyclopentolate. You can get it here in Europe, too.”

  Dessie could feel the room starting to spin. There was a very good chance that she’d throw up. That was pretty much all she was thinking about now.

  “So the killers drug their victims?” Mats Duvall said, stepping over and putting his hand on Gabriella’s shoulder. “With eyedrops in the champagne?”

  Gabriella cast a furious glance at Dessie and moved even closer to Jacob Kanon.

  “And cut their throats once they’re unconscious,” he said. “The killer is right-handed and uses a small, sharp implement. He does it from behind, sticking the knife right into the left jugular vein, then cutting deeply through the sinews and windpipe.”

  He mimed the act with his arms as he spoke. He’d obviously done it before.

  Dessie realized that all the colors and sounds were starting to fade away.

  “Pulse and breathing probably stop after a minute or so,” Jacob said.

  “Sorry,” Dessie said, “but I have to get out.”

  She went out onto the gravel drive, raised her face to the sky, and took several long, deep breaths. Her first big case, she thought, and probably her last.

  Chapter 23

  “THEY’RE CHARMING, PLEASANT PEOPLE, THESE killers,” Jacob said to Dessie, stretching his back in the thin sunlight. “They find it easy to make new friends. Are you sure you don’t want a cinnamon bun?”

  Dessie shook her head, letting the American eat the last one.

  They were sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Bellevue on Dalarö, with a coffeepot, cups, and an empty plate in front of them. There was a sharp wind from the sea.

  It was really too cold to be sitting outside, but Dessie couldn’t bear Jacob Kanon’s body odor after feeling sick at the murder scene.

  “So, you think there’s two of them? A couple—a man and a woman? Why?”

  Jacob nodded, chewing hungrily on the bun. He seemed completely unaffected by the grisly scene they had just witnessed.

  “A couple is less of a threat. They’re probably young, attractive, a pair of carefree travelers meeting others doing the same thing. People who drink champagne, smoke dope, live it up a bit…”

  He drank some coffee.

  “And they probably speak English,” he said.

  Dessie raised her eyebrows quizzically.

  “The postcards. They’re written with perfect grammar, and most of the victims have been native English speakers. I’m guessing the rest have been fluent.”

  Dessie pulled her long hair up into a bun on her neck and pushed her pen through it to keep it up. Her notepad was already full of information about the victims, the murders, and the killers.

  “These postcards,” she said. “Why do they send them?”

  Jacob Kanon looked out over the water. The wind pulled at his messed-up hair.

  “It’s not unusual for pattern killers to communicate with the world around them to get attention,” he said. “There are lots of examples of that.”

  “They kill to get in the paper?”

  Jacob Kanon poured himself some more coffee.

  “We had our first Postcard Killer in the U.S. over a hundred years ago, a man named John Frank Hickey. He spent more than thirty years killing young boys along the East Coast before he was caught. He sent postcards to his victims’ families, and that was what gave him away in the end.”

  He drained his cup again and seemed strangely content.

  Dessie was freezing her ass off in the bitter wind.

  “But why me?” she asked.

  Chapter 24

  JACOB KANON DID UP HIS suede jacket, the first sign that he felt anything.

  “You’re talented, ambitious, and your career comes first above almost everything else in your life. You’re well educated—really too well for the type of journalism you’re involved in, but that doesn’t seem to bother you.”

  Dessie made an effort to look cool and neutral as she sipped her coffee.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Am I right?”

  She cleared her throat quietly.

  “Well,” she said. “Maybe a bit. Some of that is true. Continue, please.”

  He gave her an indulgent look.

  “It’s not rocket science,” he said. “I think I’ve worked out what they do when they pick their contacts.”

  Dessie wrapped her arms tightly around herself. Everything about this was so creepy and unreal.

  “What?”

  “They buy the local papers the day they decide to set to work. The paper, and the reporter, with the biggest crime news that day is the one they pick as their contact.”

  Dessie blinked several times.

  “Burglar Bengt,” she said. “My interview with Burglar Bengt was on the front page of Aftonposten on Thursday.”

  Jacob Kanon looked out at the sea.

  “But how could you know?” she said. “That bit about ambition and education?”

  “You’re a woman and you write about typically male subjects. That requires talent, and also stubbornness. Where I come from, crime reporting isn’t very highly regarded, even if it sells papers. That’s why the journalists involved in it tend to be competent but not too hung up on prestige.”

  “That’s not always the case,” Dessie said, thinking of Alexander Andersson.

  Jacob Kanon leaned toward her.

  “I need to work with you,” he said. “I need a way into the investigation and the media. I think I can get them this time. I do.”

  Dessie got up, holding down the payment with the coffeepot so it wouldn’t blow away.

  “Have a bath and burn your clothes,” she said. “Then we’ll see.”

  Chapter 25

  THE STORY HAD QUICKLY GROWN into something unusual—a top international news story playing out right there in Stockholm.


  All the top boys and girls at the paper were keen to have a headline that might get quoted on CNN or in the New York Times. Photographers swarmed around the picture desk, waiting for a crumb to fall their way. Poor Forsberg sat there tearing at his remaining strands of hair, talking into two cordless phones at the same time.

  Alexander Andersson held court in the newsroom, reading out loud from his own articles.

  For the first time in history the editor in chief, Stenwall, had come into the paper on a Sunday. Dessie saw him sipping a cup of coffee in his glass box.

  She went over to her desk, got out her laptop and camera, and downloaded the pictures she had taken of the yellow house in the archipelago, then sent them to the picture desk. She wrote down all the facts about the case and the killers that could be used as a basis by some other reporter.

  “How was it out there?” Forsberg asked, suddenly materializing beside her desk.

  “Terrible,” Dessie said, typing on her laptop. “Worse than I could ever have imagined.”

  “Is it the same killers?”

  “Looks like it,” she said, turning the computer so the news editor could read her background material.

  He started skimming her copy. “Eyedrops?” Forsberg said.

  “There were several previous cases in Sweden where women were drugged with eyedrops in their drinks. In Mexico City the drops are used by prostitutes to knock out their clients. At least five men have died there, probably more.”

  “From eyedrops in their drinks?” Forsberg said doubtfully. “Sounds like the stuff of mystery novels.”

  Dessie let go of the keyboard and looked up at him.

  “Some girls put the drops directly on their nipples.”

  Forsberg shuffled his feet and dropped the subject. She always won with him—if she needed to.

  “How much of this can we publish?”

  “Hardly anything,” Dessie said, going back to her computer. “The police want to suppress the information about the drugs, champagne, and other stuff they found at the crime scene. We can give the cause of death, though, and information about the victims. Their families were told at lunchtime.”

  Forsberg sat down on the edge of her desk. He liked Dessie but was thoroughly confused because of her fling with Gabriella. Everyone was.

  “The victims?”

  Dessie stared at her screen, at the bare facts she had put together about the dead couple.

  “Claudia Schmidt, twenty years old. Engaged to Rolf Hetger, twenty-three, both from Hamburg. Arrived in Stockholm on Tuesday, renting the house on Dalarö through an agency on the Internet. Rented a car at the airport, a Ford Focus. Car missing.

  “They probably met their killers somewhere in town and invited them home,” Dessie said. “We’re getting photographs from Die Zeit. You’ll have everything in two to three minutes.”

  “What are your sources? I need those as well, Dessie.”

  She looked at him coolly.

  “Confidential,” she said. “What are we going to do with the information about the postcard and the picture of the bodies?”

  Forsberg stood up.

  “The police have us on a short leash, so we still can’t use it. Did you take pictures of the house?”

  “Of course. Just as backup. They’re with the picture desk. So sick.”

  She held up the copy of the postcard of the Stock Exchange.

  “Do you know what the American cop calls them? ‘Postcard Killers.’ ”

  “Cool headline,” Forsberg said. “Almost even lines.”

  Dessie looked at her watch.

  “The last mail has just arrived. If there’s nothing there, I’m going to go.”

  “A date?” Forsberg teased.

  “Actually, yes,” Dessie said, “and I’m already late.”

  Chapter 26

  SHE REALLY HAD BEEN ASKED out, something that wasn’t exactly commonplace. In a way she had been looking forward to this evening: someone actually wanting to take her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant with candles and white napkins.

  Right now, though, she would have given anything to get out of going.

  Several weeks ago she had been contacted by Hugo Bergman, a successful crime writer and columnist, who needed help with the credibility of one of his characters: an incorrigible petty thief who had ended up the victim of a global conspiracy. As partial thanks for her work, he had offered to take her out to dinner.

  Flattered, she had said yes. Hugo Bergman was famous, rich, and fairly good-looking. Also, he’d invited her to the Opera Cellar, one of the fanciest eateries in town.

  She parked her bike outside the entrance, the smell of the corpses from Dalarö still in her nostrils. She took off her helmet, let her long hair down, and went in.

  In her shapeless trousers and sweaty top, she was as wrongly dressed as she could have been, but there had been no time to go home and change for dinner.

  The maître d’ showed her to the table. The magnificent dining room with its cut-glass chandeliers, painted ceiling, and tall candles made her feel messy and clumsy, like the country bumpkin she often felt that she was since coming to Stockholm.

  Chapter 27

  “DESSIE,” HUGO BERGMAN SAID, HIS face lighting up. He stood and kissed her on both cheeks in the continental fashion.

  Dessie gave a forced smile.

  “Sorry I’m late, and a mess,” she said, “but I’ve been out at a double murder all day.”

  “Ah,” Hugo Bergman said. “These stupid editors. Blood and death, their daily bread. But who am I to moralize?”

  Bergman laughed at his own joke.

  “It was really rough,” Dessie said, sitting down. “The victims, a young couple from Hamburg.”

  “Let’s not talk about that anymore,” the author said as he poured red wine into the glass in front of her. She noticed that the bottle was half empty.

  “I’ve already ordered,” he said, putting his glass down. “I hope you eat meat.”

  Dessie smiled again.

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” she said. “I’m against the commercial exploitation of animals.”

  Hugo Bergman inspected the wine list.

  “Well,” he said. “You can eat the mashed potatoes. They haven’t been exploited. What about this one, the Château Pichon-Longueville-Baron from nineteen ninety-five?”

  This last sentence was directed at the waiter who had silently glided up to their table.

  Bergman turned back to her. “Did you read my article about the workload of public prosecutors, by the way? Goodness, I’ve had a really positive response to it.”

  Dessie continued to smile until her mouth was starting to ache. She really was trying. Tossing her hair and fluttering her eyelashes, she listened attentively and laughed politely at the writer’s attempts to be witty and sophisticated.

  The food was good, or at least the mashed potatoes were.

  Bergman got more and more drunk from the ridiculously expensive wines he went through. He actually had some difficulty locating the dotted line when it came to signing the credit-card bill.

  “You’re a very beautiful woman, Dessie Larsson,” he slurred when they came out into Kungsträdgården in front of the restaurant.

  His heavy breath struck her in the face.

  “Thank you,” she said, unlocking her bicycle, “for everything.”

  “I’d love to see you again,” he said, and tried to kiss her.

  Quickly Dessie put on her bike helmet, thinking, That ought to work as a passion killer. But Bergman didn’t give up so easily.

  “I’ve got a writer’s pad in the Old Town,” he slurred at her. “A penthouse…”

  Dessie took a quick step to the side and got on her bike.

  “Thanks for a fantastic evening,” she said, turning her back on him and pedaling off.

  It was so bloody typical. Anyone who was interested in her was a control freak, a self-obsessed idiot, or a single-minded sex maniac.

  She glanced back
over her shoulder when she reached the next intersection. Hugo Bergman was standing there swaying where she had left him, fumbling with his mobile phone. He had probably forgotten about her already.

  “Asshole,” she whispered into the wind. “It’s your loss.”

  It was a cool, still evening. The clouds had drifted away and the sky was light even though it was after eleven.

  People were walking along the quayside, talking and laughing. The sidewalk bars were open, offering blankets and halogen heaters to anyone feeling cold.

  She breathed the white summer night into her lungs and cycled slowly past the Royal Palace, crossed the intersection at Slussen, and then stood up on the pedals to climb up Götgatsbacken.

  She carried the bike up the steps to Urvädersgränd, unlocked the door, and parked it in the courtyard.

  She had time to unlock and open the door to her apartment before she noticed the man standing watching her from the shadows.

  Chapter 28

  SHE HEARD HERSELF GASP. THAT was starting to become a habit, a very bad one.

  “I’ve done what you said,” Jacob Kanon said, stepping toward her with his arms outstretched.

  She looked at him. He had shaved and washed his hair.

  “H and M,” he explained.

  He was wearing the same jeans, the same jacket, but possibly a new T-shirt. It was hard to tell: it was black, just like the previous one.

  “Fantastic,” Dessie said. “What a transformation.”

  “They sell soap as well,” he went on.

  “I hope you didn’t wear yourself out shopping,” Dessie said. “What do you want?”

  He looked at her with his sparkling eyes.

  “The Swedish police will be making a huge mistake if they don’t listen to me,” he said. “They won’t catch these killers, even if they trip over them. The Germans did nearly everything right and still didn’t catch them.”

  Dessie closed the door to her apartment. She stayed out in the hallway with him. She wasn’t afraid of him anymore, just a bit leery.

  “This type of murder investigation is the worst to try to clear up,” the American went on. “The victims are picked at random, there are no connections between them and the killers, no obvious motives, no shared history going back more than a few hours. And the killers are traveling like ordinary tourists, which means that no one notices their absence, no one cares when they come and go, no one notices if they act strangely…”