She turned all the way around and saw him standing and looking up at one of the large screens where departures were listed.
She hurried back quickly.
“Darling,” she whispered, sidling up to him. “What are you doing?”
Mac’s light gray eyes were staring fixedly at the flashing destinations.
“We could take a plane,” he said.
Sylvia put her tongue in his ear.
“Come on, baby,” she said in a low voice. “We’ve got lots left to do. Today is party time!”
“We could go home,” Mac said. “We could stop this game of ours now. Quit while we’re ahead. Retire as legends.”
She wound her arm around his waist and blew softly on his neck.
“The train leaves in four minutes,” she said. “You. Me. We’re on it.”
He let her lead him off to the escalators, down into the underground, and out onto the platform. Only when the doors had closed and the express train had set off for the center of Stockholm did Sylvia let go of him.
“Legends,” she said, “always die young. But not us.”
Chapter 17
A UNIFORMED SECURITY GUARD STOOD up in a glass cubicle over to Jacob’s left. He pressed a button and said something incomprehensible in a metallic loudspeaker voice.
“I don’t speak Swedish,” Jacob said. “Can you tell Dessie Larsson that I’m here?”
“What about?”
“The postcard killings,” he said, holding up his New York police badge.
“I’m homicide.”
The man pulled his stomach in and yanked up his baggy trousers.
“Take a seat for a moment.”
He gestured toward the row of wooden benches over by the door. The stone floor of the Aftonposten lobby was slippery from the rain outside.
Jacob slid a couple of steps before getting his balance back, along with his dignity. He straightened his shoulders, wondering if perhaps he was not entirely sober yet.
With a groan, he sank onto the nearest bench. It was hard and cold. He had to pull himself together. Never before, never during all those years raising Kimmy, had he let himself sink this low. The previous day had vanished in a haze of vodka and aquavit. The Swedes also had something they called brдnnvin, a spirit made from potatoes that was pure dynamite. Hoping he wasn’t about to be sick, he rested his head in his hands. The killers weren’t far away. Even though he felt hazy about many things, he could sense their proximity.
They were still walking the city’s streets, hiding in the rain, and had probably already found their next victims - if they hadn’t already dealt with them…
Jacob shivered slightly and realized how cold and wet he was. His hands were filthy. There was no shower in his room in the youth hostel where he was staying, and he hadn’t bothered trying to find the shared bathroom. The building depressed him. It was an old prison, and his room was a cell from the 1840s, which he was sharing with a Finnish poet. He and the poet had squeezed onto the lower bunk of the bed and drunk their way through the vodka, aquavit, and brдnnvin, and afterward the poet had gone into the city to dance the tango somewhere.
Jacob had spent the night throwing up into the wastepaper basket and feeling miserable. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the whole of the country to drown his thoughts about Kimmy and her murder.
He beat on his forehead with his fists.
Now that he was so close to the bastards, his own failings were overtaking him.
He got gingerly to his feet and set off toward the glass cubicle again. The soles of his shoes had dried and had a better grip on the floorboards. The glass box was empty now. The guard had gone off somewhere.
He walked back to the security post and buzzed the alarm. No response, no one anywhere.
He put his finger on the buzzer and held it there. The guard finally approached, holding a mug of coffee in one hand and a pastry in the other.
“Hello!” Jacob called.
The guard glanced at him, then turned his back and started talking to someone out of sight.
Jacob banged the glass wall with the palm of his hand.
“Hello!” he yelled. “Come on! It’s a matter of life and death!”
“You’re too late,” said a voice behind him.
He spun around to see the journalist standing in the stairwell behind him. Her face was white, her green eyes tired. There were dark rings around them.
“The picture arrived this morning,” she said. “The forensics team already took it away.”
He stepped toward her and opened his mouth, but he couldn’t get a single question out.
“A man and a woman,” Dessie Larsson said. “Their throats were cut.”
Chapter 18
DESSIE OPENED THE DOOR TO the newsroom with her card and code.
“I’m not going to offer you anything to drink,” she said over her shoulder.
“If you’d turned up yesterday, you might have gotten a cup of coffee, but you lost your chance. This way…”
She headed off to the right through the office, aiming for the crime desk.
“I’m not here for coffee,” Jacob Kanon said behind her. “Have the bodies been found?”
He was in a bad mood and stank like hell. Nice guy.
“Not yet,” said Dessie. “Give us a little time, will you. Murder is a bit less common here than in New York. Suicide is our specialty.”
She sat down behind her desk and pointed to the wobbly metal chair in front.
“When was the letter posted?” he asked.
“Yesterday afternoon, at the central Stockholm post office. We don’t usually get mail on a Sunday, but the police ordered an extra delivery.”
He sat down on the chair and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Did you see the picture?” he asked. “What did it show? Were there any particular characteristics? Anything that could identify the crime scene?”
Dessie looked carefully at the man in front of her. He looked even worse in daylight than he had in the gloom of the stairwell. His hair was a mess and his clothes were dirty. But his blue eyes were burning with an intensity that brought his whole face alive. She liked something about him - maybe the intensity. Probably that.
“Just a Polaroid picture, nothing else.”
She looked away as she passed him a copy of the picture. Jacob Kanon took it with both hands and stared at the bodies.
Dessie was trying to look calm and unaffected. Violence didn’t usually bother her, but this was different.
The victims were so young, their deaths so cold and calculated, so inhuman.
“Scandinavian setting,” the policeman stated. “Pale furniture, pale background, blond people. Did they take the envelope away?”
Dessie swallowed.
