The Postcard Killers

    What had he been expecting?

    “I presume you recognize him,” Mats Duvall said.

    Jacob gave a quick nod.

    It was the same man who had been photographed taking money out of ATMs on the murder victims’ credit cards throughout Europe.

Chapter 56

    “OKAY, THEN,” THE SUPERINTENDENT SAID a few minutes later.

    “We’ll meet again at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. You’re all working hard. We’ll get these people.”

    He stood up and walked quickly from the shop without looking back. The two detectives on his team followed close on his heels. Dessie was left standing by the pawnbroker’s desk together with Jacob and Gabriella. On a shelf next to the computer was a copy of that day’s Aftonposten. Her own words screamed out its battle cry: “Accept My Challenge - If You Dare.”

    She turned the paper over to avoid having to see it. Gabriella noticed her doing it.

    “I agree that publishing the letter wasn’t very smart,” she said, nodding toward the paper.

    Dessie took a deep breath and pulled on her knapsack.

    “See you tomorrow,” she said abruptly, heading for the door.

    “I’ve got the car,” Gabriella called after her. “I can give you a lift.”

    Dessie kept walking.

    “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got my bike at police headquarters. It’s close. I’m fine.”

    She opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

    “I’ll walk with you,” Jacob Kanon called, catching up with her.

    “I can put the bike in the back,” Gabriella said, jogging after them. Dessie spun around.

    “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Thanks, anyway.”

    It was evening. The air was damp and cool, and the sun was low in the sky.

    “Whatever you want,” Gabriella said, getting into the Saab and speeding off, sour as hell.

    With a sense of melancholy, Dessie watched the car drive away.

    “You were the one who finished it, weren’t you?” Jacob said. She gave a deep sigh.

    “Hungry?” the American asked.

    She thought for a moment. Then she nodded. “Strangely, I am.”

Chapter 57

    THEY PICKED A CHEAP ITALIAN restaurant with red-checked tablecloths and pasta and pizza on the menu. Jacob ordered a bottle of red wine from Tuscany and poured them each a glass. “This is good for whatever ails you,” he said.

    Dessie took a small sip, leaned back, and shut her eyes. “I doubt it very much, but thank you.”

    So far the letter had done no good at all. Had Gabriella’s unpleasant comment been justified? Had she been completely crazy to write it?

    “You did the right thing,” Jacob said, reading her thoughts. “We’ve already ruffled their feathers. They’re going to make a mistake. Cheers.”

    Jacob ordered Parma ham and spaghetti Bolognese. Dessie the insalatacaprese and cannelloni.

    “I heard you were the one who actually found the watch,” he said. “Good thinking.”

    She was suddenly embarrassed.

    “They aren’t just killers,” she said. “They’re petty thieves, too.”

    “True, but why did you make that connection?” the American asked, pouring more wine into his glass.

    Dessie laughed, not even sure why she thought it was funny.

    “Remember I told you I was writing my thesis? Well, it’s on the social consequences of small-scale property break-ins. Let’s just say it’s been an interest of mine since I was a child.”

    Jacob raised his eyebrows quizzically. He had a very expressive face. When he got angry, his face turned black with rage, when he was happy, he glowed like a woodstove, and when he wasn’t sure of something, like now, his face looked like a big question mark.

    “I grew up with my mother and her five brothers. My mother worked as home help all her life, but my uncles were villains and bandits, the whole lot of them.”

    She glanced at him to see how he reacted.

    “‘Home help’?” he said.

    “Helping old people, sick people. None of my uncles married, but they had loads of kids with different women.”

    Jacob ate some bread. He didn’t wolf down his food like some men she knew.

    “What’s the name of the town you grew up in?”

    “I come from a farm in the forests of dalen,” she said. “That’s part of Norrland, where the military were called in to shoot workers as recently as the nineteen thirties.”

    The American looked at her stonily.

    “I’m sure they must have had a good reason,” he said.

    Dessie’s mozzarella caught in her throat. “What did you say?”

    “The military don’t usually shoot their fellow citizens for no reason,”

    Jacob said.

    Dessie couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

    “Are you defending state-sanctioned murder?”

    Jacob stared at her, simultaneously concentrating on the chewy ciabatta.

    “Okay,” he said. “Wrong topic of conversation. Let’s move on.”

    Dessie put her cutlery down. “Do you think it’s okay to shoot people for demonstrating against their wages being cut?”

    Jacob held up both hands in a disarming gesture.

    “Shit, I didn’t know you were a communist.”

    And I didn’t know you were a fascist,” Dessie said, picking up her knife and fork again.

Chapter 58

    DESSIE HONESTLY DIDN’T KNOW WHAT to make of Jacob Kanon. He was an entirely new species to her, both shut off and extremely demonstrative at the same time. The way he moved seemed a bit clumsy and uncomfortable, as if he weren’t quite house-trained.

    “Tell me more about your uncles.”

    Dessie pushed aside the plate of cannelloni.

    “Two of them drank themselves to death,” she said. “Uncle Ruben was beaten to death outside the church in Piteе the night before May Day three years ago. He had just been released from a stretch in Porsцn, in Luleе.”

    She said it to shock him, but Jacob just seemed amused.

    “Were they often inside?”

    “Mostly short sentences. They only managed one big thing in the whole of their miserable careers: raiding a security van where they discovered considerably more money than they’d been expecting.”