The Postcard Killers

    “They all got the same punishment, five and a half years for aggravated robbery. They were due to be released in May four years ago. That winter had been unusually snowy in dalen, and my mother helped the old folks clear the snow, which she wasn’t supposed to do because the doctor told her… But she was stubborn. And proud.”

    Dessie picked up her glass and turned it slowly in her hand.

    “She died on Hilding Olsson’s drive with a snow shovel in her hand.”

    She took a careful sip. “The amount in her savings account was completely untouched, and I was her only heir.”

Chapter 76

    “SHIT,” JACOB SAID. “THAT’S A hell of a story.”

    He didn’t seem horrified, more like impressed.

    “Didn’t your uncles come and ask for their money when they got out?”

    She sighed.

    “Of course. They were pretty persistent until I called my cousin Robert in Kalix and asked him for a favor. For two hundred thousand and a bottle of Absolut every Christmas, he’s promised to make sure the rest of the family leaves me alone. Which they pretty much do.”

    Jacob was staring at her, wide-eyed.

    “Wow,” he said.

    “Robert’s two meters tall and weighs a hundred and thirty kilos,” Dessie said. “He’s very persuasive.”

    “I might have guessed,” Jacob said.

    She looked at him.

    The story of how she had been able to afford the apartment had gnawed away at her for almost four years now. She had been terrified that someone would find out what had really happened. Now she had dragged her secret out, and Jacob didn’t seem the least bit bothered. Instead, he seemed amused.

    All of a sudden she realized she was weak with tiredness from all the tension of the day.

    She stood up, clutching her glass like someone’s hand.

    “I really have to go to bed,” she said.

    Jacob took the almost empty bottle back to the kitchen. He pulled on his shoes by the door and stood up straight again. He hesitated by the door.

    “You’re pretty cool,” he said in a quiet voice.

    “You’re pretty weird,” she said. “Do you know that?”

    He shut the door soundlessly behind him.

    She leaned her forehead against the door and listened to the sound of his footsteps as they disappeared down the marble staircase.

    “Plus, I’m stubborn. And proud,” said Dessie.

Chapter 77

Thursday, June 17

    MALCOLM RUDOLPH HAD DRAPED HIS body so that he was half lying in his chair in the interrogation room. His legs were wide apart and one arm was hooked around the back of the chair.

    His tousled hair had fallen across his forehead, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone.

    “It was cool. We were traveling around, studying art and life,” he said over the sound coming from the television monitor.

And death, Jacob thought as he sat in the control room, listening to the murderer talk.

Above all, you studied death, you bastard.

    “It was really great to begin with,” the fair-haired man said and yawned.

    “Although it’s gotten a bit boring in recent weeks, actually.”

    So, to start with, they thought it was fun killing people, Jacob thought. Then that became routine as well. How would you like an axe through your skull? Would that be cool, or just half cool?

    Mats Duvall and Sara Hцglund were going through the log of the Rudolphs’ movements in Europe over the past six months.

    Their passports showed that Malcolm and Sylvia Rudolph had landed at Frankfurt airport eight and a half months ago, October 1. Since then, according to Malcolm, they had been traveling around, looking at paintings and enjoying life. They had kept within the part of the European Union governed by the Schengen Agreement - in other words the countries that no longer insisted you show a passport when you crossed between them. So they had no stamps to show where they had been. The investigating team therefore had to look for that information elsewhere, which was more easily said than done.

    Apparently neither of them owned a cell phone, so there were no calls that could be traced.

    They each had a credit card, both Visa, which they very rarely used. They had withdrawn cash with a credit card on two occasions - in Brussels on December 3, and in Oslo on May 6. A credit card had also been used to pay for Malcolm’s medical treatment in Madrid in February. On March 14 a hotel bill in Marbella in the south of Spain had been paid with Sylvia’s card, and on May 2 Malcolm had bought four theater tickets in Berlin with his. The cruise to Finland over the coming weekend was the last time the cards had been used.

    Jacob followed the questioning out in the control room with his jaw clenched. Dessie was sitting next to him, just as absorbed in the interrogation as he was.

    “The murders in Berlin took place on May second. Did they really go to the theater afterward?” she whispered, but he shushed her.

    “To go back to our discussion about Stockholm,” Sara Hцglund said on the screen. “Why did you decide to come here?”

    Malcolm Rudolph gave a nonchalant shrug.