She hesitated.
“It won’t take long,” he said. “You’ve got to eat anyway, haven’t you? I’ll pay tonight. I’ll even make an effort to be civil.”
“I’m so exhausted. I need to go home. We can get something along the way.”
Chapter 73
THEY HEADED OFF DOWN TOWARD the Central Station side by side.
“What does it mean that the Rudolphs are being held according to Swedish law?” Jacob asked.
“The prosecutor can hold them for up to three days.”
“Can they post bail?”
“No, we don’t have that sort of system here. Have you ever eaten a flatbread roll?”
“A what?”
They stopped at a little kiosk selling hot dogs and hamburgers. Dessie ordered something in her incomprehensible language and let him pay for whatever it was.
Gradually the solid panic inside him started to let go and open up some.
“Here you are,” Dessie said.
She handed him a sort of pancake filled with mashed potato, hamburger dressing, grilled hot dog, chopped dill pickle, onion, mustard, ketchup, and prawn mayonnaise, and all wrapped in foil.
“Jeezuz,” he said.
“Just eat,” Dessie said. “It’s really good.”
“I thought you didn’t eat meat,” Jacob said.
She looked at him in surprise.
“How’d you know that?”
He took a deep breath and tried to relax his shoulders.
“Just something I noticed, I guess. What do you think of the Rudolphs?
Are they our Postcard Killers?”
“Probably,” she said. “Mine’s vegetarian, by the way.”
They sat on the bench inside a bus shelter and ate the sticky rolls. Jacob, who considered himself an expert in junk food, had to admit she was right: it was really good.
He wolfed it down and thought he might even have another hot-dog-withmashed-potatoes thing. Dessie Larsson had a calming effect on him. He’d known that almost from the beginning, but he’d never felt it more than he did right now. He looked at this woman next to him in the yellow glow of the streetlights.
She was actually very beautiful without being conspicuously pretty. Her profile was classically clean and simple. She didn’t seem to wear any makeup at all, not even mascara.
“What makes you think they’re guilty?” he asked, studying her reaction. She glanced at him and wiped her mouth with a napkin.
“The bodies,” she said. “We know they’re arranged as works of art, and the Rudolphs are art students. I don’t know, but there’s something there, in that mix of art and reality. Also, I don’t believe them, especially her.”
He threw the foil wrapping and the small remains of mashed potato into the bus shelter’s trash bin.
“What do you mean, ‘that mix of art and reality’? Either it’s art or it’s reality, right?”
Dessie gave him a serious look.
“It’s not unusual for art students to blend them together. We had several cases like that a year or so ago.
“First there was a girl who faked a nervous breakdown in a psychiatric ward as part of her degree show for the Art School. She had the resources of a whole ward focused on her for an entire night. Anyone who was sick or really suicidal had to wait because of her act.”
“You’re kidding,” Jacob said.
“Nope. Then we had a guy who smashed up a car on the subway. He covered it in black graffiti and broke several windows. He filmed the whole thing and called it ‘Territorial Pissing.’ Believe it or not, it was exhibited in an art show. The cost to repair the car was one hundred thousand kronor.”
“And I thought we had a monopoly on crazies in the States,” Jacob said, looking at his watch. “Speaking of the States, there are a few things I have to check on there. Do you know where I can get hold of a computer?”
She looked at him, her eyes large and green.
“I’ve got one at home,” she said.
Chapter 74
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME in nearly six months that he’d been in somebody’s home.
It felt odd, almost a bit ceremonial. He took off his shoes by the door because that’s what Dessie did.
She lived in a minimally furnished four-room apartment with very high ceilings, a lot of mirrored doors, ornate plasterwork, and a wood-burning stove in every room.
Jacob couldn’t help whistling out loud when he entered the living room. Three large windows opened onto an enormous balcony with a fantastic view over the entrance to Stockholm harbor.
“How did you get hold of a place like this? It’s great.”
“Long story,” she said. “The computer’s in the maid’s room. There’s no maid, of course.”
She gestured toward a little room beyond the kitchen.
“Have you got any wine around here?” he asked.
“Nope,” she said. “I don’t drink that much. Maybe I will after this.”
She turned the computer on for him. He noticed she smelled of fruit. Citrus. Very nice.
He sent two e-mails on the same subject: one to Jill Stevens, his closest colleague on the NYPD, and one to Lyndon Crebbs, the retired FBI agent who had been his mentor once upon a time, and maybe still was. He asked them rather bluntly for information about Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph, residents of Santa Barbara, California, and about Billy Hamilton, Sylvia Rudolph’s former boyfriend, reportedly living somewhere in western Los Angeles. Everything, no matter what it was, was of interest to him, absolutely everything they could find.
Then he went back out to the kitchen, where Dessie was rummaging around.
“I found a bottle of red,” she said. “Gabriella must have left it. I don’t know if it’s still good.”
“Yeah, of course it is,” Jacob said.
She seemed unfamiliar with how to extract a cork, so he helped her. They sat down on the sofas in the living room, leaving the lights off, admiring the stunning view.
Jacob leaned back, sinking into her cushions.
A white boat plowed toward the center of Stockholm out on the water.
“A view like this makes coming home worthwhile,” he said. “What’s the long story you mentioned?”
Chapter 75
DESSIE FINGERED HER WINEGLASS. SHE’D never told anyone the whole truth about how she bought the apartment, not even Christer or Gabriella. So why should she tell Jacob Kanon?
He was a cop on top of everything.
“I inherited a large sum of money a while back,” she said. “From my mother.”
Jacob raised an eyebrow.
“I thought you said she worked with the elderly and the sick?”
“That’s right, she did.”
“So you’re upper class,” he said. “I hadn’t guessed that.”
