The Postcard Killers

    She switched off the computer and went back into the kitchen. The perfect partner didn’t exist, she knew that much, and, god knows, her knowledge was based on extensive research. The idea of finding your other half was a myth and a lie. You had to compromise, make allowances, be tolerant.

    Gabriella was a great girl, beautiful and sexy and seriously in love with her.

    There had been nothing wrong with Christer either. If he hadn’t asked for a divorce, she’d probably still be married to him.

    She drank another glass of water and looked at the clock on the wall. 1:43. Why had she told the American she’d been on a date? Why had she mentioned Bergman’s name? Was it that she wanted Jacob Kanon to know that she dated men as well? Why would she want him to know that?

    She put the glass down on the draining board and realized that she was quite hungry. All she had eaten were those damn mashed potatoes!

Chapter 30

    THE POET HAD GONE BACK to Finland, leaving Jacob alone in his cell. There was no space for a chair or table in the narrow room, so he had settled down on the Finn’s abandoned lower bunk. He had put his pistol and the framed photograph of Kimmy on the deeply recessed windowsill. He’d bought the gun in Rome with the help of an old cop friend who had retired to Italy.

    He leaned forward and ran his finger along his daughter’s smiling cheek. This was the picture he had given the press after she died, taken the day she’d been accepted at Juilliard.

    Jacob got up, went over to his duffel bag, and opened a bottle of wine. He stood with the bottle in his hand, staring out at the light summer night. There was a small beach under his window. A few alcohol-fueled youngsters wearing mortarboards were noisily soaking one another without taking their clothes off.

    He let his eyes roam over the dark water.

    Kimmy didn’t like swimming.

    All the other kids on the block loved going down to Brighton Beach, but Kimmy never learned to swim well. Instead she preferred the big forest parks on Staten Island, or up in Westchester or Putnam County, with their teeming wildlife, especially deer.

    There was only one thing she loved more than her graceful deer, and that was his aunt Isabelle’s piano. Kimmy would go and play on it after school every afternoon, and every day in the summer. She was gifted, so Jacob paid for lessons with the best teacher available in Brooklyn. But that afternoon a couple of years ago when she told him she’d applied to Juilliard, the most famous college in the world for music, drama, and dance, he’d felt almost terrified. He’d never heard of anyone from Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge area even getting close to being accepted there. He’d checked: only five percent of all applicants got in.

    But Kimmy was special. She specialized in Franz Liszt, one of the most technically demanding composers in the world, and she had chosen his suggestive piano concerto Totentanz no.1 as her audition piece. He had been so proud that he’d burst into tears when the acceptance letter came - and back in those days, he hardly ever cried. Not like the present. Kimmy had met Steven on her very first day at Juilliard, a budding classical composer. They got engaged and decided to get married as soon as they graduated.

    Steven was a great guy, but Jacob thought they should see something of the world before they settled down.

    So he had given them a trip to Rome as a Christmas present. They were murdered the day before they were due to return to New York. Jacob took a deep breath and found himself back in the narrow cell at the hostel.

    The shrieking kids on the beach had vanished.

    He sank onto the lower bunk with Kimmy’s picture in his lap. He had identified her dead body in the cold room of a mortuary on the outskirts of Rome on New Year’s Day, the first day of what had been the very worst year of his life.

    This year.

    He picked up his pistol and put the muzzle in his mouth, just as he had done so many nights before, tasting the powder and metal, taking comfort from the idea that there could be an end to this. One slight movement of his finger and his desperate loss and longing would be over.

   But not yet. Not until he found her murderers.

Chapter 31

Monday, June 14

    THE PAPER AFTONPOSTEN WAS STUCK in a downward sales and readership spiral that was probably hopeless. In an attempt to break it, the management was making increasing use of unusual and risky innovations. Usually they failed.

    On other occasions everyone busted their butt to get things moving. This was one of those days.

    Dessie had parked herself at her desk with the first edition that day. Aftonposten had filled practically the whole paper with the Dalarц

    murders.

    The front-page headline was “Butchered by the Postcard Killers.” The photo that dominated the paper was a beautiful picture of the two young Germans. Claudia Schmidt and Rolf Hetger were in each other’s arms, laughing happily toward the camera.

    Dessie leafed through to the paper’s heavyweight news spread, pages 6