The Postcard Killers

    “They look like they’ve just eaten too much,” Dessie said. They were posing. The corpses were posing. They were saying something, or at least representing something. What was it? If the cops figured that out, they just might catch them.

    She looked at Jacob.

    “Let me see the one I was sent,” she said.

    He gave her the picture from Dalarц. She took it and could still feel the smell of the hot living room.

    The woman, Claudia, was sitting upright against the back of the sofa. In her lap was a cushion that had probably been white to start with. She was leaning over the man, Rolf, who was lying on the cushion in her lap. The man was lying in a strange position. One knee was drawn up, and his fingers were spread out above his heart. In his right hand he was holding something that looked like a sign - or a spatula.

    “It’s definitely been arranged,” she said.

    “Does it mean anything to you?”

    Dessie looked at the picture for a long time.

    “I recognize something,” she said. “I just don’t know where from. I can’t put my finger on it.”

    “Concentrate,” Jacob said.

    She stared at the picture until the focus started to blur.

    “Sorry,” she said. “It’s not coming.”

    He looked at her with his very blue eyes for several long seconds. Then he gathered the pictures together and without another word left her sitting at the cafй table.

Chapter 36

    JACOB GOT OFF THE BUS outside the central police headquarters on Kungsholmen in the middle of Stockholm.

    On his first night in Stockholm he had walked around the huge complex that housed the central Swedish police authority ten times or more, feeling like a nut, not caring in the least.

    Various different sections had been added over the course of the past century, giving the building an extremely schizophrenic appearance. The eastern section looked like some Disney castle, the southern bit was functional concrete, the northern section was a concrete monstrosity, and the western piece was inherited from the same Soviet era as the suburb he and Dessie had passed on the way to the crime scene on Dalarц.

    The unconventional-looking building hadn’t made the people inside particularly flexible - he knew that much already. The investigating team refused to take his calls. The receptionist kept putting him through to an automated message box that acted as the telephone tip-off line. Enough was enough, though.

    Now he was going to get inside, no matter what the cost to his reputation. He clenched his fists and steeled himself for the upcoming confrontation. The entrance was in the old, communist part of the complex. He walked into the lobby and got a sense of dйjа vu. Like the Aftonposten lobby, it had a stone floor, pale wood, and a glass cubicle.

    He hoped the similarities would end there and cleared his throat as he laid his police badge on the desk.

    “Jacob Kanon, NYPD,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “I’m here to see Superintendent Mats Duvall. It’s about the murders on Dalarц.”

    The overweight woman on the other side of the desk looked impressed at the sight of his police badge.

    “Is he expecting you?”

    “He should be,” Jacob replied, entirely truthfully.

    “I’ll just call him,” the plump woman said, picking up the phone.

    “No need,” Jacob said. “I’ll find him myself. He’s on the fifth floor, isn’t he?”

    He had studied the building from outside and counted seven floors in the office section.

    “Fourth floor,” the woman said, putting the receiver down as she clicked open the inner door.

    He took the elevator up to the fourth floor and exited into a narrow corridor with a low ceiling and humming strip lighting. He took several steps before knocking on a random door. He stuck his head into a small office and said, “Hello, excuse me, but Duvall, can you tell me where he is?”

    A woman with a ponytail and glasses looked up in surprise.

    “He’s in a meeting about Dalarц at the moment,” she said. “Conference Room C, I think.”

    “Thanks,” Jacob said and turned back. He had already passed Conference Room C.

    He retraced his steps, slipped into the room, and closed the door behind him.

    There were ten people inside, the core of the investigating team: Mats Duvall, Gabriella Oscarsson, a woman in her fifties in a suit, two fairly young women, and five men of varying ages. There were thermoses of coffee and refreshments on the table.

    Coffee cups stopped in midair, hands stiffened, and ten pairs of eyes stared at him.

    “Your investigation is about to go seriously wrong,” he said, pulling up a chair and sitting right down at the table with them.

Chapter 37

    THERE WAS A DEATHLY SILENCE in the room.

    He had managed to get their attention, though. Now he had about ten seconds before he would be thrown out.