James Patterson - Postcard killers

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.

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.

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.

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 knowledge 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.