Postcard killers

by James Patterson

  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."

  She knew exactly what he was thinking. He thought her mother was the sort who jangled their jewelry in front of the poor at charity galas.

  "You're wrong," she said. "Do you real y want to know this story? I don't do chitchat very wel."

  "I real y want to know."

  She put her glass down on the coffee table.

  That security van raid I mentioned yesterday – you remember?"

  He nodded and emptied his glass, then fil ed it again.

  "Three of my uncles were involved," she said. "They got hold of almost nine mil ion kronor, which was something like eight and a half mil ion more than they were expecting, and they panicked. They didn't know what to do with al the money. They buried some of it, but they put most of it in my mother's savings account."

  "What!" Jacob exclaimed, almost choking on his wine. "You're kidding me."

  "It was pretty smart of them, as it turned out. Al the money they buried was found, but no one thought to check my mother's account."

  She watched careful y for his reaction. Was he about to turn his back on her? Dismiss her as the daughter of a scheming criminal?

  "Your uncles can't have been the sharpest knives in the drawer," he said.

  She avoided his gaze as she went on with the story.

  "They al got the same punishment, five and a half years for aggravated robbery. They were due to be released in May four years ago. That winter had been unusual y snowy in Adalen, and my mother helped the old folks clear the snow, which she wasn't supposed to do because the doctor told her… But she was stubborn. And proud."

  Dessie picked up her glass and turned it slowly in her hand.

  "She died on Hilding Olsson's drive with a snow shovel in her hand."

  She took a careful sip. "The amount in her savings account was completely untouched, and I was her only heir."

  Chapter 76

  "Shit," Jacob said. "That's a hel of a story."

  He didn't seem horrified, more like impressed.

  "Didn't your uncles come and ask for their money when they got out?"

  She sighed.

  "Of course. They were pretty persistent until I cal ed my cousin Robert in Kalix and asked him for a favor. For two hundred thousand and a bottle of Absolut every Christmas, he's promised to make sure the rest of the family leaves me alone. Which they pretty much do."

  Jacob was staring at her, wide-eyed.

  "Wow," he said.

  "Robert's two meters tal and weighs a hundred and thirty kilos," Dessie said. "He's very persuasive."

  "I might have guessed," Jacob said.

  She looked at him.

  The story of how she had been able to afford the apartment had gnawed away at her for almost four years now. She had been terrified that someone would find out what had real y happened. Now she had dragged her secret out, and Jacob didn't seem the least bit bothered. Instead, he seemed amused.

  Al of a sudden she realized she was weak with tiredness from al the tension of the day.

  She stood up, clutching her glass like someone's hand.

  "I real y have to go to bed," she said.

  Jacob took the almost empty bottle back to the kitchen. He pul ed on his shoes by the door and stood up straight again. He hesitated by the door.

  "You're pretty cool," he said in a quiet voice.

  "You're pretty weird," she said. "Do you know that?"

  He shut the door soundlessly behind him.

  She leaned her forehead against the door and listened to the sound of his footsteps as they disappeared down the marble staircase.

  "Plus, I'm stubborn. And proud," said Dessie.

  Chapter 77

  Thursday, June 17

  Malcolm Rudolph had draped his body so that he was half lying in his chair in the interrogation room. His legs were wide apart and one arm was hooked around the back of the chair.

  His tousled hair had fallen across his forehead, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone.

  "It was cool. We were traveling around, studying art and life," he said over the sound coming from the television monitor.

  And death, Jacob thought as he sat in the control room, listening to the murderer talk.

  Above al, you studied death, you bastard.

  "It was real y great to begin with," the fair-haired man said and yawned.

  "Although it's gotten a bit boring in recent weeks, actual y."

  So, to start with, they thought it was fun kil ing people, Jacob thought.

  Then that became routine as wel. How would you like an axe through your skul? Would that be cool, or just half cool?

  Mats Duval and Sara Hoglund were going through the log of the Rudolphs' movements in Europe over the past six months.

  Their passports showed that Malcolm and Sylvia Rudolph had landed at Frankfurt airport eight and a half months ago, October 1.

  Since then, according to Malcolm, they had been traveling around, looking at paintings and enjoying life. They had kept within the part of the European Union governed by the Schengen Agreement – in other words the countries that no longer insisted you show a passport when you crossed between them. So they had no stamps to show where they had been.

  The investigating team therefore had to look for that information elsewhere, which was more easily said than done.

  Apparently neither of them owned a cel phone, so there were no cal s that could be traced.

  They each had a credit card, both Visa, which they very rarely used.

  They had withdrawn cash with a credit card on two occasions – in Brussels on December 3, and in Oslo on May 6. A credit card had also been used to pay for Malcolm's medical treatment in Madrid in February. On March 14 a hotel bil in Marbel a in the south of Spain had been paid with Sylvia's card, and on May 2 Malcolm had bought four theater tickets in Berlin with his.

  The cruise to Finland over the coming weekend was the last time the cards had been used.

  Jacob fol owed the questioning out in the control room with his jaw clenched. Dessie was sitting next to him, just as absorbed in the interrogation as he was.

  "The murders in Berlin took place on May second. Did they real y go to the theater afterward?" she whispered, but he shushed her.

  "To go back to our discussion about Stockholm," Sara Hoglund said on the screen. "Why did you decide to come here?"

  Malcolm Rudolph gave a nonchalant shrug.

  "It was Sylvia who insisted we come," he said. "She's interested in form and design, in the whole Scandinavian simplicity thing. Personal y, I think it's seriously overrated. I find it cold and impersonal and rather a bore."

  He yawned again. His grief at the death of his Dutch friends had evidently faded.

  Mats Duval adjusted his tie.

  "You have to take this more seriously," he said. "You were the last people to see Peter Visser and Nienke van Mourik alive. You were caught on the security cameras in the corridor. Don't you realize what that means?"

  Jacob leaned forward, inspecting the bored young man: Was the little shit just sitting there smiling? What did he know that the police clearly didn't?

  "We can't have been the last people to see them alive," Malcolm Rudolph said. "Because they were stil alive when we left. Someone else kil ed them.

  Obviously. You can't have looked at the recordings long enough."

  Sara and Mats glanced at each other, and their faces showed signs of alarm.

  Had anyone actual y watched the security recordings in their entirety?

  One would hope so, but it had been so chaotic. Sometimes things were missed or got messed up when a case was real y hot.

  They broke of
f the interrogation and ordered al of the security recordings from the Grand Hotel to be taken out once more.

  Chapter 78

  No one had watched the entire tapes. Or paid proper attention. It was a terrible mistake.

  Now they were watching the tapes, though.

  Tuesday afternoons in the middle of June weren't exactly rush hour in the corridor on the fourth floor of the Grand Hotel.

  During the forty-three minutes that Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph were inside room 418, two cleaners and a plumber went along the corridor outside.

  A woman who had evidently forgotten something in her room ran in and then out again and back to the elevators.

  At 3:02 the door to room 418 opened.

  A triangle of light from inside the room fel on the floor and the wal opposite. The door stood open for a few seconds before Malcolm Rudolph stepped out onto the thick carpet.

  He turned and smiled back into the room, said something, laughed.

  Then Sylvia Rudolph came out into the corridor. She stopped, half hidden by the open door, and seemed to be talking to someone as wel.

  The brother and sister stood by the door for another fourteen seconds, facing back at the room, talking and laughing.

  Final y they leaned through the door to exchange kisses with someone.

  The door closed and they headed for the elevators.

  "The Dutch couple were alive when they left the room," Sara Hoglund said. "It's obvious. How could this happen? " She stared daggers at Mats Duval.

  "And they didn't hang a sign on the door," Gabriel a said.

  "What?" Dessie asked.

  "'Do not disturb,'" Jacob said through clenched teeth. "The sign was hanging on the door when the bodies were found."

  The hotel corridor shown on the recording lay empty and dark once more.

  Jacob could feel the adrenaline tearing through his veins.

  "Can we fast-forward a bit?" he asked.

  Gabriel a sped up the playback.

  At 3:21 an elderly couple came out of the lift, walked slowly along the corridor, and opened a door on the rear side of the hotel.

  A few minutes later a cleaner passed through the whole length of the corridor with her trol ey and disappeared into a stairwel.

  "Wil it play any faster?"

  Jacob couldn't hide the impatience in his voice. Or the anger at whoever was responsible for this bungle.

  A middle-aged couple went past.

  A man in a suit carrying a briefcase.

  A family with three children, a tired mother, and a very irritated-looking father.

  And then he came.

  Midlength coat, light shoes, brown hair, cap, and sunglasses.

  "Shit," Jacob said.

  The man knocked on the door of the Dutch couple's room, waited a few seconds, stepped into the room, and shut the door behind him.

  "They let him in," Sara Hoglund said. "At least it looks that way.

  Impossible to tel from this angle."

  "Make a note of the time," said Mats Duval.

  4:35.

  The corridor was deserted once more.

  The seconds crept past.

  Jacob had to make an effort to stop himself from screaming.

  Twenty-one minutes later the goddamn door opened.

  The man in the coat stepped into the corridor. He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle, closed the door after him, and walked quickly toward the lifts. He kept his eyes on the floor, his face hidden from the camera.

  "I've been holding the wrong people," Evert Ridderwal said with despair in his voice.

  Chapter 79

  They were sitting in Matts Duval 's room when the press spokesman of the Criminal Investigation Department contacted them and confirmed that the situation with the media was chaotic, almost completely out of control. This sort of thing just didn't happen in Sweden. And imagine if they discovered the police had made mistakes.

  Stockholm was besieged by foreign newspapers and television crews – especial y American ones. The Postcard Kil ers saga had al the ingredients of a real y juicy criminal scandal. Good grief – two young Americans with Hol ywood good looks who were either notorious serial kil ers or the victims of a terrible miscarriage of justice. It didn't matter which of these it was, they were both "Breaking News."

  "We'l have to hold a press conference," Sara Hoglund said. "We have no choice."

  "And say what?" Jacob wondered. "That we haven't found a thing that connects them to the crime? That the prosecutor thinks we've been holding the wrong people?"

  "Wel," Mats Duval said. "We've got something. They've been traveling throughout Europe al the while these murders have been going on."

  "And can come up with alibis for several of them," Jacob said. "When the Athens murders were committed, they were definitely in Madrid. They were in the south of Spain when the couple was found in Salzburg. And in the countries where they withdrew cash, Norway and Belgium, there haven't been any murders at al."

  "So, now you think they're innocent?" Gabriel a said.

  "Not for a second," Jacob said. "We just haven't got the evidence yet, that's al. They're clever and they've covered their tracks pretty good."

  "We've stil got to handle the press," Sara Hoglund said. "Several of the main channels have already done their own vignettes on the Rudolphs, with music and everything."

  Jacob stood up.

  "We've got to knock a hole in their defense," he said. "We've got to continue to provoke them into making mistakes."

  He stopped in front of Sara Hoglund.

  "Let me question them," he said. "Let Dessie interview them. Let us talk to them both together."

  Sara Hoglund got to her feet.

  "You're not exactly the shy, retiring type, are you? What makes you think that a reporter on the evening paper and a desperate father would be better at breaking down criminals than experienced murder investigators?"

  "With al due respect," Jacob said, forcing himself to sound calm and col ected, "you aren't the only murder cops in this room. And I'm American.

  You don't pick up the nuances in the language."

  "And Dessie Larsson can?"

  "She's written a doctoral thesis on criminology. In English. Have you?"

  Dessie stood up as wel.

  "I've done it before," she said in a quiet voice.

  Jacob and Sara Hoglund looked at her in surprise.

  "I've interviewed criminals during ongoing investigations," she said.

  "Without pen and paper, or a tape recorder, of course, and under police supervision, but it wouldn't be the first time."

  "What do we stand to gain from it?" Mats Duval asked. "Please tel me that."

  "What do you stand to lose?" asked Jacob.

  Chapter 80

  The press conference was out of control from the very start.

  Several American television channels were broadcasting live and had no desire to sit through Evert Ridderwal 's painstaking details of the progress of the investigation.

  Their reporters started shouting questions almost at once, which revealed yet another complication: Evert Ridderwal was extremely bad at English.

  He was also rather hard of hearing. He just about managed to read out the details that the investigating team had jointly put together for him, but he could neither hear nor understand what the reporters were asking him.

  "A sufficient lack of self-doubt can get you anywhere," Dessie muttered as she stood next to Jacob at the back of the room.

  "And we have a stunning example of that in front of us," Jacob agreed bitterly.

  Evert Ridderwal had insisted on holding the press conference himself because he was, after al, the head of the investigating team.

  Sara Hoglund, who was standing on the podium next to him, eventual y leaned purposeful y across the table, picked up the prosecutor's script and started reading.

  Her English bore traces of the East Coast of the United States, and Jacob 107 recal ed that she had a good know
ledge of the NYPD. Maybe she'd trained there, or worked with them once upon a time.

  In actual fact, she said very little other than that the investigation was continuing, and that certain evidence had been obtained but she couldn't go into details because of the significance of the material to the investigation.

  "Fuck it, they haven't got anything," said a reporter from one of the Swedish news agencies to his col eague. They were sitting right in front of Dessie and Jacob.

  "Shal we go?" Jacob whispered.

  "Yes. Please. Now."

  They got to the exit before the reporter from Dagens Eko caught sight of Dessie.

  "Dessie," he cal ed after her. "Dessie Larsson?"

  She turned around, surprised that he had recognized her.

  "Yes?" she said, and the next moment she had a huge microphone pressed up under her nose.

  "What do you think of the unpleasant criticism that's being directed at you?"

  Dessie stared at the man. He was unshaven and had bad teeth.

  Don't blow up, she thought. Don't get angry, don't rush off, that's exactly what he wants.

  "Criticism directed at me?" she said. "What do you mean specifically?"

  "What do you think of the fact that you've introduced to Scandinavia the Anglo-Saxon tradition of paying large amounts of money to brutal serial kil ers?"

  "I think you've completely misunderstood that," she replied, trying to sound calm and confident. "I haven't paid any money to -"

  "But you tried to! " the reporter cried indignantly. "You wanted to buy interviews with brutal serial kil ers. Do you real y think it's moral y defensible to pay for their violent deeds?"

  Dessie swal owed before she spoke again.

  "Wel, firstly, not a single penny has been paid, and secondly, it wasn't my decision to -"

  "Do you think you've made yourself complicit in the crime itself?" the reporter yel ed. "What's the difference between paying for a murder and paying for the details of a murder?"

  Dessie final y pushed the microphone aside and walked away from the rude, stupid man.