The Postcard Killers

    In the rooms where there was no reply, the majority of them, Gabriella opened the door with a master key.

    The suspense was like a drug. Jacob realized that he was holding his breath every time a new door opened.

    The search on the second floor gave them nothing.

    They ran up the stairs to the third floor.

    “What have the other hotels looked like?” Gabriella asked, slightly out of breath as she chased after Jacob along the guest corridor. “Have they been as upscale as this? The Grand Hotel is the finest in Stockholm.”

    Jacob knocked on the door at the far end and got an irritated “Oui?” in reply.

    “Sorry,” he said, “wrong room,” as he moved on to the next. He knocked, no reply.

    “No,” he said. “Nothing in this price range. Not even close.”

    Gabriella put the key card in the door, and the lock clicked. Jacob opened the door and got a gruff “What the fuck?” from the bed in response.

    “Sorry,” he said again and closed it.

    “There are cameras everywhere,” Gabriella said, pointing at the ceiling.

    “Hasn’t been like that anywhere else,” Jacob said, striding on. “They’re breaking their pattern.”

    At that moment, Gabriella’s cell rang. She answered with her usual grunt, listened for seven seconds, then hung up.

    “Fourth floor,” she said. “Two Dutch tourists.”

Chapter 62

    NIENKE VAN MOURIK AND PETER Visser, with separate addresses in Amsterdam, had checked into the Grand Hotel on Saturday evening, June 11, for four nights.

    They would never get to check out.

    Jacob studied their dead bodies with detached concentration. There was no room for anything else, not here, not right now. Sorrow and grief for their wasted lives could come later, at night in his terrible prison cell in the hostel, when it was darkest and the alcohol in the bottle was running out. He didn’t know the works of art Gabriella had referred to, but the bodies had definitely been arranged. The dead woman’s toy ears affected him particularly badly. Maybe because Kimmy had loved Mickey Mouse and had had a similar pair of ears when she was little.

    He turned away.

    God, these murders were so messed up, horrible in every way he could imagine, inhuman.

    The 32nd District of New York police had the highest murder stats in Manhattan, but he’d never seen anything like this. All the killings were coldly planned, and arranged with little respect. In Harlem, people murdered out of jealousy, passion, revenge, or for money. People killed because of drugs, love, or debts, not to create art exhibitions.

    He rubbed his face with his hands. Mats Duvall glanced over at him and turned to one of his detectives.

    “Get the recordings from the camera in the corridor,” he said. “Check what the surveillance is like in the lobby and the elevators. Has the medical officer arrived yet? We need a time of death as soon as possible.”

    “There are two champagne bottles in the bathroom,” Gabriella said. “One empty, the other half full. Four glasses, too, all with remnants of light yellow liquid in the bottom.”

    They would find cyclopentolate in two of the glasses, Jacob thought, looking around the hotel room.

    It wasn’t very big, maybe twenty by sixteen, he guessed. Several of the other hotel rooms had been bigger, but this was still a break from the norm. No other crime scene had been anywhere as elegant as this, but that was just a superficial difference. There was something else here, something that made this murder different from all the others, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

    The medical officer arrived and Jacob stepped out into the corridor to make room for him.

    He noted that there was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. Then he left the scene of the crime. There was nothing else he could do here.

Chapter 63

    BY LUNCHTIME, SECURITY HAD BEEN stepped up in all public places in the Stockholm region that were frequented by tourists, and especially by young people.

    All available personnel had been sent out to look for anyone resembling the composite picture from the clerk at NK, or any of the people on the security recordings from the Museum of Modern Art and the pawnbroker’s on Kungsholmstorg.

    When a preliminary blood test showed that the Dutch couple had smoked marijuana just before they died, sniffer dogs were brought in from around the country to join in the search.

    Throughout Stockholm, young people fifteen and over were asked to empty their bags, purses, and knapsacks.

    Most of them did as they were asked without protest. Those who refused were arrested.

    Dessie was standing in Gabriella’s office, looking out across Kronoberg Park.

    Four uniformed police officers and a large Alsatian dog had blocked one of the entrances to the park, a popular shortcut for people heading for the beach or the shops and underground station on Fridhemsplan. Picnic baskets, bags of swimming gear, and expensive attachй cases were all carefully checked without any distinction between them.

    The sight ought to have made her feel more secure, but she simply felt guilty.