The Postcard Killers

    The house was enormous, and it looked like something from a horror film set in the English countryside. Seсor Rodrнguez may have done his best to keep the building in good condition, but his lame old body had no chance against the wind, the damp, the weeds, and the ivy. One window frame had slipped its hinge and was squeaking in the wind.

    This was where it all began, wasn’t it? The murders - the mystery of the Rudolphs.

    “The electricity has been cut off in the main house,” the gardener said apologetically as he unlocked the oak door.

    Jacob’s footsteps echoed in the grand stone hallway. Doors stood half open, leading into high-ceilinged rooms and down long, dark corridors. He took a quick look into the various rooms where Sylvia and Malcolm had once lived.

    The whole building seemed to have been emptied of its contents. Jacob noticed a single curtain in a library that was empty of books.

    “The master bedroom is on the second floor. Follow me.”

    A magnificent curved staircase led up to the more private parts of the mansion.

    Pale rectangles on the walls revealed where paintings had once hung. A battered rococo sofa, its stuffing hanging out, stood alone and dusty on the first landing.

    “Straight ahead,” Carlos Rodrнguez said.

    The bed was still there, an ornate four-poster without curtains or bedclothes. Otherwise the room was empty.

    “So this was where it happened?” Jacob said.

    The gardener nodded.

    “And you were here that night?”

    He nodded again.

    “What did you see? Tell me anything you remember. Please. It’s important.”

    The man swallowed.

    “Terrible things,” he said. “Blood all over this room. Mr. and Mrs. were lying dead in that bed. They must have been asleep when it happened.”

    “Did you see their injuries close up?”

    The man ran his index finger like a knife across his throat.

    “Deep cuts,” he said. “Almost through to the bone at the back of the neck.”

    He gave an involuntary shudder as Jacob watched him closely. How did you come to be here, in your employers’ room in the middle of the night? I don’t understand.”

    The man took a deep breath, then spoke.

    “I was asleep with my family when Seсorita rang. I hurried here straightaway.”

    “It wasn’t you who found them?”

    “No, no. It was little Sylvia.”

Chapter 106

Monday, June 21

Copenhagen, Denmark

    THERE WAS STILL A pattern here. It had just changed slightly. Dessie kept thinking she could see it clearly, just for a few seconds. Then it would slide out of her reach again.

    She was sitting on the unmade bed in her hotel room with all the pictures and postcards around her, all of Jacob’s crumpled copies. She picked them up, even though she had seen them a hundred times, maybe more. All the buildings and people and details were already imprinted in her memory. The postcard from Amsterdam of the plain building on Prinsengracht 267: the house where Anne Frank was hidden during the war, where she wrote her famous diary.

    Then Rome and Madrid: the Coliseum and Las Ventas, gladiatorial combat and bullfights. Arenas for theater based on killing. The Paris card was of La Conciergerie, the legendary antechamber of the guillotine.

    Berlin was a view of the bunker built by Hitler, the most famous failed artist in history.

   Stockholm showed the main square, Stortorget, the site of the Stockholm Bloodbath.

    But she couldn’t make three of the cards fit the pattern of the others. The Tivoli pleasure gardens in Copenhagen.

The Olympic stadium from the Athens games of 2004.And that anonymous shopping street in Salzburg.

    What did they have to do with death?

    Dessie let the pictures fall to the bed again.

    Was she imagining this pattern?

    Was it foolish to try to give any sort of order to the way these sick bastards thought?

    She stood up and went over to the window. The rain had given way to mist and fog. Cars and bicycles were crossing Kongens Nytorv below her. Why was she really bothering? Jacob had left her. The newspaper hadn’t been in touch for days now. No one missed her.

To be or not to be.

    As if you could choose to live or die.

    Could you? And in that case, what sort of life would it be?

    She knew she could do just as she liked, continue digging around in this story or go home: get involved or let go. Quite regardless of what other people thought, and what they thought about her, what did she actually want to do now?

    She turned around and looked at the mess on the bed.

    Jacob hadn’t managed to contact the Austrian reporter. He had never gotten hold of a copy of the picture of the bodies in Salzburg either. She walked toward her mobile phone, then picked it up and held it to her chest for a few seconds before dialing International Directory Inquiries. A minute later the phone rang at the reception desk of the Kronen Zeitung.

“Ich suche Charlotta Bruckmoser, bitte,” Dessie said.