James Patterson - Postcard killers

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."

"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.

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

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.