In Mexico City the drops are used by prostitutes to knock out their clients. At least five men have died there, probably more.”
“From eyedrops in their drinks?” Forsberg said doubtfully. “Sounds like the stuff of mystery novels.”
Dessie let go of the keyboard and looked up at him.
“Some girls put the drops directly on their nipples.”
Forsberg shuffled his feet and dropped the subject. She always won with him - if she needed to.
“How much of this can we publish?”
“Hardly anything,” Dessie said, going back to her computer. “The police want to suppress the information about the drugs, champagne, and other stuff they found at the crime scene. We can give the cause of death, though, and information about the victims. Their families were told at lunchtime.”
Forsberg sat down on the edge of her desk. He liked Dessie but was thoroughly confused because of her fling with Gabriella. Everyone was.
“The victims?”
Dessie stared at her screen, at the bare facts she had put together about the dead couple.
“Claudia Schmidt, twenty years old. Engaged to Rolf Hetger, twentythree, both from Hamburg. Arrived in Stockholm on Tuesday, renting the house on Dalarц through an agency on the Internet. Rented a car at the airport, a Ford Focus. Car missing.
“They probably met their killers somewhere in town and invited them home,” Dessie said. “We’re getting photographs from
“What are your sources? I need those as well, Dessie.”
She looked at him coolly.
“Confidential,” she said. “What are we going to do with the information about the postcard and the picture of the bodies?”
Forsberg stood up.
“The police have us on a short leash, so we still can’t use it. Did you take pictures of the house?”
“Of course. Just as backup. They’re with the picture desk. So sick.”
She held up the copy of the postcard of the Stock Exchange.
“Do you know what the American cop calls them? ‘Postcard Killers.’”
“Cool headline,” Forsberg said. “Almost even lines.”
Dessie looked at her watch.
“The last mail has just arrived. If there’s nothing there, I’m going to go.”
“A date?” Forsberg teased.
“Actually, yes,” Dessie said, “and I’m already late.”
Chapter 26
SHE REALLY HAD BEEN ASKED out, something that wasn’t exactly commonplace. In a way she had been looking forward to this evening: someone actually wanting to take her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant with candles and white napkins.
Right now, though, she would have given anything to get out of going. Several weeks ago she had been contacted by Hugo Bergman, a successful crime writer and columnist, who needed help with the credibility of one of his characters: an incorrigible petty thief who had ended up the victim of a global conspiracy. As partial thanks for her work, he had offered to take her out to dinner.
Flattered, she had said yes. Hugo Bergman was famous, rich, and fairly good-looking. Also, he’d invited her to the Opera Cellar, one of the fanciest eateries in town.
She parked her bike outside the entrance, the smell of the corpses from Dalarц still in her nostrils. She took off her helmet, let her long hair down, and went in.
In her shapeless trousers and sweaty top, she was as wrongly dressed as she could have been, but there had been no time to go home and change for dinner.
The maоtre d’ showed her to the table. The magnificent dining room with its cut-glass chandeliers, painted ceiling, and tall candles made her feel messy and clumsy, like the country bumpkin she often felt that she was since coming to Stockholm.
Chapter 27
“DESSIE,” HUGO BERGMAN SAID, HIS face lighting up. He stood and kissed her on both cheeks in the continental fashion. Dessie gave a forced smile.
“Sorry I’m late, and a mess,” she said, “but I’ve been out at a double murder all day.”
“Ah,” Hugo Bergman said. “These stupid editors. Blood and death, their daily bread. But who am I to moralize?”
Bergman laughed at his own joke.
“It was really rough,” Dessie said, sitting down. “The victims, a young couple from Hamburg.”
“Let’s not talk about that anymore,” the author said as he poured red wine into the glass in front of her. She noticed that the bottle was half empty.
“I’ve already ordered,” he said, putting his glass down. “I hope you eat meat.”
Dessie smiled again.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” she said. “I’m against the commercial exploitation of animals.”
Hugo Bergman inspected the wine list.
“Well,” he said. “You can eat the mashed potatoes. They haven’t been exploited. What about this one, the Chвteau Pichon-Longueville-Baron from nineteen ninety-five?”
This last sentence was directed at the waiter who had silently glided up to their table.
Bergman turned back to her. “Did you read my article about the workload of public prosecutors, by the way? Goodness, I’ve had a really positive response to it.”
Dessie continued to smile until her mouth was starting to ache. She really was trying. Tossing her hair and fluttering her eyelashes, she listened attentively and laughed politely at the writer’s attempts to be witty and sophisticated.
The food was good, or at least the mashed potatoes were. Bergman got more and more drunk from the ridiculously expensive wines he went through. He actually had some difficulty locating the dotted line when it came to signing the credit-card bill.
“You’re a very beautiful woman, Dessie Larsson,” he slurred when they came out into Kungstrдdgеrden in front of the restaurant. His heavy breath struck her in the face.
“Thank you,” she said, unlocking her bicycle, “for everything.”
“I’d love to see you again,” he said, and tried to kiss her. Quickly Dessie put on her bike helmet, thinking, That ought to work as a passion killer. But Bergman didn’t give up so easily.
“I’ve got a writer’s pad in the Old Town,” he slurred at her. “A penthouse…”
Dessie took a quick step to the side and got on her bike.
“Thanks for a fantastic evening,” she said, turning her back on him and pedaling off.
It was so bloody typical. Anyone who was interested in her was a control freak, a self-obsessed idiot, or a single-minded sex maniac. She glanced back over her shoulder when she reached the next intersection. Hugo Bergman was standing there swaying where she had left him, fumbling with his mobile phone. He had probably forgotten about her already.
“Asshole,” she whispered into the wind. “It’s your loss.”
It was a cool, still evening. The clouds had drifted away and the sky was light even though it was after eleven.
People were walking along the quayside, talking and laughing. The sidewalk bars were open, offering blankets and halogen heaters to anyone feeling cold.
She breathed the white summer night into her lungs and cycled slowly past the Royal Palace, crossed the
