James Patterson - Postcard killers

"Maybe I could interview you about Kimmy," she said thoughtful y.

That wasn't actual y a bad idea. A father in mourning speaking out, his grief for a much-loved daughter…

She reached for her pen and notepad.

"Tel me what Kimmy was like as a girl. How you reacted when you found out she was -"

Jacob Kanon smashed his fist on the table so hard the cups jumped. Dessie dropped her pen with a start.

The waitress behind the counter glanced quickly in their direction, then looked away again. Whatever this was, she didn't need any of it.

"I'm not giving any interviews about Kimmy," Jacob said.

Dessie sat in silence for several moments before she spoke.

"I just meant as a way of -"

"I'm a homicide detective," he interrupted. "I talk to people, I attempt to solve crimes, but I don't do interviews. Not about anything."

"I don't want to ask you in your capacity as a policeman, but as a father."

He looked at her with his strange, piercing eyes. Then he grabbed his sports bag. He pul ed out a bundle of papers and slapped a photocopy on the table between them.

"This is Kimmy," he said.

Dessie heard herself gasp.

Two young people lay dead as if broken on the floor of a hotel room.

Their throats had been cut with the same brutality as in the murders on Dalaro. The wounds gaped dark red, the floor was drowning in blood.

Dessie's mouth went dry again and her pulse was racing in a terrifying way.

"The blood's stil bright, fresh," Dessie said. "They were alive just a few minutes before."

"Yes, that's correct," said Jacob, "they'd just died."

She forced her breathing to stay calm, regular. It wasn't real y helping.

Jacob put another picture in front of her.

"Karen and Bil y Cowley," he said. "Look at them, Dessie. What do you see?"

The young Australian couple who had come to Europe to get over the death of their young son hadn't just had their throats cut. They were sitting upright, side by side, their heads leaning back against what must have been the head of a bed. Their left eyebal s had been stabbed, blood and fluid running like red mascara from the sockets.

"The couple in Amsterdam had their right ears cut off," Jacob said, putting a third picture in front of her. "Their names were Lindsay and Jeffrey Holborn."

She looked at the pictures, forcing herself to see beyond the blood and violence.

"They're tel ing us something," Jacob said angrily. "The kil ers are talking 49 through these pictures. I'm sure of it. Look at this one, from Florence."

A double bed: a young woman on the left, a young man on the right. The picture was taken from above, which meant the photographer must have been standing on the bed, right between the dead bodies.

"What do you see?" Jacob asked.

The man and woman were lying in the same position, their bent legs paral el a little to the left, their right hands on their ribcages and their left ones over their genitals.

"They couldn't have been lying like this when they died," she said.

Jacob nodded.

"I know," he said, "but why?"

Dessie picked up the picture from Paris. The two victims were sitting with their hands on their stomachs.

"They look like they've just eaten too much," Dessie said.

They were posing. The corpses were posing. They were saying something, or at least representing something. What was it? If the cops figured that out, they just might catch them.

She looked at Jacob.

"Let me see the one I was sent," she said.

He gave her the picture from Dalaro. She took it and could stil feel the smel of the hot living room.

The woman, Claudia, was sitting upright against the back of the sofa. In her lap was a cushion that had probably been white to start with. She was leaning over the man, Rolf, who was lying on the cushion in her lap.

The man was lying in a strange position. One knee was drawn up, and his fingers were spread out above his heart. In his right hand he was holding something that looked like a sign – or a spatula.

"It's definitely been arranged," she said.

"Does it mean anything to you?"

Dessie looked at the picture for a long time.

"I recognize something," she said. "I just don't know where from. I can't put my finger on it."

"Concentrate," Jacob said.

She stared at the picture until the focus started to blur.

"Sorry," she said. "It's not coming."

He looked at her with his very blue eyes for several long seconds.

Then he gathered the pictures together and without another word left her sitting at the cafe table.

Jacob got off the bus outside the central police headquarters on Kungsholmen in the middle of Stockholm.

On his first night in Stockholm he had walked around the huge complex that housed the central Swedish police authority ten times or more, feeling like a nut, not caring in the least.

Various different sections had been added over the course of the past century, giving the building an extremely schizophrenic appearance. The eastern section looked like some Disney castle, the southern bit was functional concrete, the northern section was a concrete monstrosity, and the western piece was inherited from the same Soviet era as the suburb he and Dessie had passed on the way to the crime scene on Dalaro.

The unconventional-looking building hadn't made the people inside particularly flexible – he knew that much already. The investigating team refused to take his cal s. The receptionist kept putting him through to an automated message box that acted as the telephone tip-off line.

Enough was enough, though.

Now he was going to get inside, no matter what the cost to his reputation.

He clenched his fists and steeled himself for the upcoming confrontation.

The entrance was in the old, communist part of the complex. He walked into the lobby and got a sense of deja vu. Like the Aftonposten lobby, it had a stone floor, pale wood, and a glass cubicle.

He hoped the similarities would end there and cleared his throat as he laid his police badge on the desk.

"Jacob Kanon, NYPD," he said as calmly as he could manage. "I'm here to see Superintendent Mats Duval. It's about the murders on Dalaro."

The overweight woman on the other side of the desk looked impressed at the sight of his police badge.

"Is he expecting you?"

"He should be," Jacob replied, entirely truthful y.

"I'l just cal him," the plump woman said, picking up the phone.

"No need," Jacob said. "I'l find him myself. He's on the fifth floor, isn't he?"

He had studied the building from outside and counted seven floors in the office section.

"Fourth floor," the woman said, putting the receiver down as she clicked open the inner door.

He took the elevator up to the fourth floor and exited into a narrow corridor with a low ceiling and humming strip lighting. He took several steps before knocking on a random door. He stuck his head into a smal office and 51 said, "Hel o, excuse me, but Duval, can you tel me where he is?"

A woman with a ponytail and glasses looked up in surprise.

"He's in a meeting about Dalaro at the moment," she said. "Conference Room C, I think."

"Thanks," Jacob said and turned back. He had already passed Conference Room C.

He retraced his steps, slipped into the room, and closed the door behind him.

There were ten people inside, the core of the investigating team: Mats Duval, Gabriel a Oscarsson, a woman in her fifties in a suit, two fairly young women, and five men of varying ages. There were thermoses of coffee and refreshments on the table.

Coffee cups stopped in midair, hands stiffened, and ten pairs of eyes stared at him.

"Your investigation is about to go seriously wrong," he said, pul ing up a chair and sitting right down at the table with them.