disappeared through the door. “What does this business with works of art mean in this context?”
“We don’t know yet,” Gabriella said. “So far it’s just a theory.”
Dessie squinted and held the picture closer to her face. Either she needed glasses or the picture was bad.
“I don’t know, but maybe…,” she said hesitantly.
“What?” Jacob said.
She pointed at a shadow next to the man’s forehead.
“There,” she said. “That could be a balustrade or a railing. Because it’s so high up, it must be on the roof of a tall building.”
“And?”
“Railings like that are unusual on residential buildings in Stockholm, unless they’re to stop snow from sliding off the roof. This must be some official building.”
“For instance?”
She hesitated and fiddled with her pen.
“Well, I might be wrong…”
“Jesus!” Jacob shouted. “Spit it out!”
Dessie jumped and dropped her pen.
“The Royal Palace,” she said.
Jacob blinked.
“The Royal Palace? How’s that? Have the killers checked in with the king?”
She shook her head.
“The palace is in the background. That’s what I see. The murder scene is exactly opposite.”
Mats Duvall stood up.
“The Grand Hotel,” he said on his way to the door.
Chapter 61
THE FIVE-STAR HOTEL BY THE harbor on Sцdra Blasieholmshamnen had 366 rooms and 43 suites spread over eight floors. About half of them had a view of the water and the Royal Palace.
The hotel manager was calm but stern, even with the police, even with homicide.
“Naturally we’re happy to cooperate,” she said. “But I hope the search can be conducted with discretion.”
Mats Duvall ordered all available staff on the investigation to take part in the search.
Jacob and Gabriella didn’t wait for the reinforcements to arrive from headquarters.
They headed for the second floor and methodically went to room after room on the side facing the water. They were accompanied by a receptionist holding a digital hotel register.
Jacob knocked, and whenever there was an answer, he moved on at once. The killers were hardly going to be sitting with the bodies, just waiting to be discovered. That much was clear.
In the rooms where there was no reply, the majority of them, Gabriella opened the door with a master key.
The suspense was like a drug. Jacob realized that he was holding his breath every time a new door opened.
The search on the second floor gave them nothing.
They ran up the stairs to the third floor.
“What have the other hotels looked like?” Gabriella asked, slightly out of breath as she chased after Jacob along the guest corridor. “Have they been as upscale as this? The Grand Hotel is the finest in Stockholm.”
Jacob knocked on the door at the far end and got an irritated
“Sorry,” he said, “wrong room,” as he moved on to the next. He knocked, no reply.
“No,” he said. “Nothing in this price range. Not even close.”
Gabriella put the key card in the door, and the lock clicked. Jacob opened the door and got a gruff
“Sorry,” he said again and closed it.
“There are cameras everywhere,” Gabriella said, pointing at the ceiling.
“Hasn’t been like that anywhere else,” Jacob said, striding on. “They’re breaking their pattern.”
At that moment, Gabriella’s cell rang. She answered with her usual grunt, listened for seven seconds, then hung up.
“Fourth floor,” she said. “Two Dutch tourists.”
Chapter 62
NIENKE VAN MOURIK AND PETER Visser, with separate addresses in Amsterdam, had checked into the Grand Hotel on Saturday evening, June 11, for four nights.
They would never get to check out.
Jacob studied their dead bodies with detached concentration. There was no room for anything else, not here, not right now. Sorrow and grief for their wasted lives could come later, at night in his terrible prison cell in the hostel, when it was darkest and the alcohol in the bottle was running out. He didn’t know the works of art Gabriella had referred to, but the bodies had definitely been arranged. The dead woman’s toy ears affected him particularly badly. Maybe because Kimmy had loved Mickey Mouse and had had a similar pair of ears when she was little.
He turned away.
God, these murders were so messed up, horrible in every way he could imagine, inhuman.
The 32nd District of New York police had the highest murder stats in Manhattan, but he’d never seen anything like this. All the killings were coldly planned, and arranged with little respect. In Harlem, people murdered out of jealousy, passion, revenge, or for money. People killed because of drugs, love, or debts, not to create art exhibitions.
He rubbed his face with his hands. Mats Duvall glanced over at him and turned to one of his detectives.
“Get the recordings from the camera in the corridor,” he said. “Check what the surveillance is like in the lobby and the elevators. Has the medical officer arrived yet? We need a time of death as soon as possible.”
“There are two champagne bottles in the bathroom,” Gabriella said. “One empty, the other half full. Four glasses, too, all with remnants of light yellow liquid in the bottom.”
They would find cyclopentolate in two of the glasses, Jacob thought, looking around the hotel room.
It wasn’t very big, maybe twenty by sixteen, he guessed. Several of the other hotel rooms had been bigger, but this was still a break from the norm. No other crime scene had been anywhere as elegant as this, but that was just a superficial difference. There was something else here, something that made this murder different from all the others, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
The medical officer arrived and Jacob stepped out into the corridor to make room for him.
He noted that there was a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. Then he left the scene of the crime. There was nothing else he could do here.
Chapter 63
BY LUNCHTIME, SECURITY HAD BEEN stepped up in all public places in the Stockholm region that were frequented by tourists, and especially by young people.
