The Postcard Killers

    THE SQUARE OUTSIDE STOCKHOLM’S CENTRAL Station was filled with police, their dogs, and cordons.

    Mac was walking slowly toward the train terminal’s main entrance with his arm around Sylvia’s shoulders. They could hear the beeping and crackling voices of police radios wherever they went.

    Two long-haired boys were picked up with their back pockets full of grass just a few meters ahead of them. What idiots!

    “Sorry, guys,” Sylvia said.

    No one thought to stop the couple.

    No one asked to look in their bags, because they didn’t have any. They had been walking around the streets, looking at their reflections in plate-glass windows, admiring their work. Mac tried on a new leather jacket at Emporio Armani. Sylvia sampled different perfumes in Kicks. She smelled nice now. Fresh and sexy for her man.

    A police car glided slowly past them. Sylvia took off her sunglasses and smiled at the officer in the car. He smiled back and drove on. An elderly woman started yelling when two officers asked to go through her handbag. Three teenage boys ran past like the hounds of hell were after them, followed by two plainclothes policemen.

    “Come on, let’s go in,” Sylvia said. “These people, the police, are so stupid.”

    Mac hesitated at the entrance.

    Sylvia gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “You’re such a star, Mac.”

    With their fingers laced together, they walked into the lion’s den. Children were crying, dogs barking, adults complaining. Loudspeaker announcements about delays and canceled trains followed one after another. The crowd got thicker and more agitated with every step they took. Some people had already missed trains because of the mindless searches. After just ten meters or so they reached the first police checkpoint. Mac stiffened when he caught sight of his own portrait in the hands of a well-built policeman with a big Alsatian panting at his side, but Sylvia pushed her way through to the policeman and tapped him on the shoulder.

    “Excuse me,” she said, “but what’s going on?”

    The policeman turned around, looked right at her, and quite literally jumped.

    “I see you’ve got my picture there,” she said, wide-eyed, pointing to it.

    “What’s this all about?”

Chapter 66

    THEY WERE AMERICAN CITIZENS, THEIR names Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph, from Santa Barbara, California.

    Their arrest was entirely undramatic.

    They went right along to the police station without protest to clear up what was obviously a misunderstanding. They were both very calm, if a little curious and perhaps a little anxious, but no more than might be expected. Naturally, they wanted to cooperate in any way they could to sort out the mix-up.

    The premises of the Stockholm police had no rooms equipped with oneway mirrors. Instead, Jacob and Dessie, together with Gabriella and the rest of the investigative team, were shown into a control room where the recorded interview was being shown live.

    Jacob’s hands were trembling, his mouth completely dry. There they were. After all the months spent searching, all the cities he’d been in. He stood at the back of the room, worried that he might otherwise attack the television screens with his fists.

    The fair-haired male, Malcolm Rudolph, was already sitting down, nervously rubbing his hands. He was stunningly handsome, no doubt about that.

    Jacob couldn’t take his eyes off this man.

It was him, Jacob was sure of it. There he was: the bastard who had killed Kimmy.

    The door of the interrogation room opened and Mats Duvall and Sara Hцglund entered and sat down opposite the man.

    Mats Duvall jabbered his way through the formalities about time and location. Then Sara Hцglund leaned across the table and began the first interview.

    “Malcolm,” she said calmly, “do you understand why you’re here?”

    The young man bit his lip.

    “The police at the Central Station had our pictures,” he said. “I guess you’ve been looking for us, that you think we’ve done something.”

    “Do you know what?”

    He shook his head. “No, not at all.”

    “It’s about Nienke van Mourik and Peter Visser,” the head of the unit said. “They were found dead in their room in the Grand Hotel this morning.”

    Malcolm Rudolph’s face registered shock and alarm.

    “That can’t be true,” he protested. “Nienke and Peter? But we just saw them, what, yesterday afternoon! We’re all going on a cruise to Finland together this weekend!”

    Jacob let out a noise that sounded like a purr.

    “So you maintain you don’t know anything about their deaths?” Hцglund asked.

    “Are they really dead?”

    Malcolm Rudolph began to cry.

Chapter 67

    THE YOUNG AMERICAN WAS SOBBING as if his heart were about to break, as if he had just lost his best friends in the world.

    “And you think we had something to do with it? That we could have harmed Peter and Nienke? How could you even think that?”

    Sara Hцglund and Mats Duvall let him cry for a few minutes. Then they asked if he wanted a lawyer present. They had to do this. He had the right to one under Swedish law, the same as in America. The murder suspect merely shook his head. He didn’t need legal representation. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He couldn’t understand how anyone could suspect him of anything so terrible. The Dutch couple had been happy and full of life when he and Sylvia had left them in their hotel room the previous day.

    What were they doing in the hotel room? Did they eat or drink anything?

    “No,” Malcolm Rudolph said with a sniff. “Well, actually we did. Peter had a Coke that I drank a bit of.”

    “No champagne?”

    “Champagne? In the middle of the afternoon?” The question seemed to strike him as absurd.

    “Did you smoke anything in their room? Marijuana, for instance?”

    “Marijuana is illegal here, isn’t it? And Sylvia and I don’t smoke, anyway.”

    He slumped down on the table and started crying again. The questions kept coming.

When did you arrive in Sweden?

How long have you been traveling in Europe?

Can you tell us about Peter and Nienke?

    “They were so much fun, so nice. We were really looking forward to the trip to Finland with them. We had a great lunch at that place in the Old Town…”