“No. At least, I haven’t told her. I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“She sounds like an idiot to me.”
“We were both young, both idiots.”
Silence fell inside the car.
A green VW Passat drove past.
Jacob looked at his watch. 8:54.
A blue Saab sped past them. They could hear the sound of rock and roll coming from the open windows. Two young males. Punk-style haircuts. Jacob looked at his watch. 8:55. He was conscious that he was doing it obsessively, but he couldn’t help it.
Dessie’s phone rang. She listened in silence, said not a word, then turned to Jacob.
“They’ve passed through Salmis and Vuono,” she said. “Two villages just outside this town. Still in the red Volvo. They’re almost here.”
“Robert’s men, are they reliable?”
Dessie nodded. “Very.”
“I don’t want them involved at the border. I’ll take it from here.”
She passed on the message and hung up.
Chapter 134
NINE O’CLOCK CAME AND WENT.
No red Volvo. No Rudolphs.
The road beyond the rotary was full of cars now, mostly trailers and trucks. Due to the hunt for the Postcard Killers, security at the border crossing had been stepped up and all vehicles were forced to go through the checkpoint, next to a small wooden building up on the left.
Jacob looked at his watch again.
Half past nine. Jesus. The time was crawling.
Big tourist buses had started to arrive in the lot outside IKEA. They seemed to come from the whole of the Arctic region. Jacob saw license plates from Norway, Finland, and Russia. It was like IKEA was a county fair. Soon there was a line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot.
“This is the Thursday before Midsummer’s Eve,” Dessie said. “It’s the high point of Sweden’s busiest shopping week. It’s even bigger than Christmas.”
Jacob didn’t say anything.
He realized he was grinding his teeth. He needed to stop that. Yes, as soon as they caught the Rudolphs.
A line of shoppers was starting to form outside the entrance to the superstore. These country folks were clearly nuts.
Jacob looked at the time.
Three minutes before ten.
He glanced up into the rearview mirror.
Just a line of cars: blue, red, white, black, all full of crazy-ass Arctic shoppers.
He pressed the palms of his hands to his forehead.
The doors to the store opened.
People flooded into the hangarlike building.
Jacob felt like he was going to burst out of his skin.
“What the hell is this?” he yelled suddenly. “Where have they gone?”
Dessie didn’t answer.
“They must have taken another road,” Jacob said. “They’re not coming through Haparanda. That criminal hooligan you call your cousin was wrong. Maybe he’s in league with them now. Maybe he’s fooled us into sitting here so they can get away. They could have bribed him.”
“Jacob, calm down! You don’t know what you’re saying. Stop it.”
Jacob turned the key, and the engine coughed into life.
“What are you doing?” Dessie asked.
“I can’t wait here any longer,” Jacob said. “I’m going completely fucking mad just sit-”
“Hang on,” Dessie interrupted. “Just hang on. A red car - there’s a red car. I think it’s a Volvo.”
Jacob looked in the rearview mirror again.
It was a Volvo wagon, an old model, definitely red.
There were two people inside.
A young blond man and a dark-haired woman.
The Rudolphs were here.
Chapter 135
THE VOLVO CREPT SLOWLY toward the big rotary with all the bushes and trees in the middle.
Jacob pulled out into the traffic right behind them. His heart was thumping so hard that he could hardly hear anything going on around him. The pair in the Volvo stopped in the rotary. The line to the border crossing snaked forward ahead of them.
“They’ve realized they can’t get through this way,” Dessie said. “Not in that car. So what do they do about it?”
Jacob pulled handcuffs from the inside pocket of his jacket and stuffed them under his belt behind his back. Then he leaned forward and took the Glock out of its holster strapped to his ankle. Suddenly he was glad he hadn’t turned it over to the authorities as requested but had checked it in an airport locker while he traveled to and from Los Angeles. It looked like he’d need it now.
He heard Dessie’s breath catch.
Just then the red Volvo swerved out of the traffic line. The driver wrenched the car to the left and squeezed past a trailer and a small van with Cyrillic lettering scrawled along the side.
Jacob found first gear and pushed his foot all the way to the floor. A moment later he was forced to brake sharply to avoid a truck that was halfway into the rotary.
“Hell! We’re losing them!”
“They’re going straight on,” Dessie cried, leaning her head out of the window. “Now they’re turning right!
Jacob drove too fast past the truck. He scraped the side of a Peugeot and forced his way into the lot as the driver of the Peugeot sat angrily on his horn behind them.
The parking lot for IKEA was complete chaos. Cars and buses and trailers were all battling with huge shopping trolleys and children’s strollers and hundreds of people.
Jacob stopped the car and looked around wildly.
“Where the hell have they gone? We’ve lost them! They got away!”
“I think they were heading for where the buses park,” Dessie said, pointing. “There.
The dark-haired woman opened the door and started to run. She was athletic, fast on her feet.
“To hell with this!” Jacob said, throwing the door open and racing toward the buses.
Chapter 136
