James Patterson - Postcard killers

"What was the name of that art group at UCLA?" Dessie asked, pul ing the laptop over.

He had shut his eyes and was massaging his own neck. "The Society of Limitless Art," he muttered.

What could he do to persuade the police to open the investigation again?

Or even to act like real cops?

He couldn't just let the Rudolphs disappear.

"Here's something," Dessie said. "Look at this! You don't even have to move. Just open your eyes."

She turned the laptop to face him.

Welcome to the Society of Limitless Art

You are visitor no. 4824 "The address is www.sola.nu," she said. "That's a domain registered on Niue, an island in the South Pacific. They let anyone register any sort of address in just a couple of minutes."

Jacob took a look at the screen.

"They set this up when they were at UCLA," he said.

Dessie tried clicking on the first tab, Introduction. 159 "And here we have the background of conceptual art," she said. "Marcel Duchamp tried to exhibit a urinal in New York in nineteen seventeen. He was refused."

"I wonder why," Jacob said.

"Look here," Dessie said.

Jacob sighed and sat up.

The gal ery included a long sequence of strange photographs that he would hardly have associated with art: motorways, trash, an unhappy cow, and a few shaky home movies of – what a surprise! – motorways, trash, and presumably the same unhappy cow. It was hard to tel for certain.

"This is ridiculous," Jacob said. "I feel like that cow, though. Does that make me a work of art?"

"Their ridiculous art project got them thrown out of school," Dessie said.

"This sort of thing matters to them."

Jacob stood up now, looking for his jeans.

He found them out in the hal. He stopped there, trousers in one hand, and stared back into Dessie's living room.

So this was where it al ended, in an apartment halfway to the North Pole.

He'd done his best, but it wasn't enough. Kimmy's kil ers were going to walk free. Could he live with that? Who cared? What was the alternative?

"Hey!" Dessie cal ed. "Look here!"

"What?"

He went back toward the bed.

"Sections of the site are locked. It's a puzzle to be solved. We need a password."

A box had appeared against a gray background, with the message Log in!

Dessie typed "sola" for Society of Limitless Art in the box and pressed Enter. The screen flickered.

Sorry – wrong password.

"I didn't think it would be that easy," she said.

Suddenly an idea came into Jacob's head. There was a key with no lock in the report. Here was a lock but no key.

"We could be onto something here," he said. "Try 'Rudolph.' Maybe it is that easy."

Sorry – wrong password.

Jacob stared at Dessie. He remembered the last conversation he'd had with Lyndon Crebbs: What if there are other kil ers? What if the Rudolphs have inspired copycats?

He heard his own reply echo in his head: If there are more kil ers, they have to be working together.

"If the Rudolphs have got an accomplice," Jacob said slowly, "then they need some way of contacting him, them, whoever it is. Could they be using this site to communicate with one another?"

Dessie tried a hundred other possibilities. Again and again:

Sorry – wrong password.

"We're lucky the site is stil letting us try new ones. Most sites wil block you after three tries," Dessie said.

"Where are the postcards?" Jacob asked.

Dessie reached for her knapsack on the floor beside the bed. She tipped out the copies, letting them fan across the bed.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

"Let's try al the words on the cards," Jacob said. "What's this one here?"

He picked up a photograph he hadn't seen before. It was of two dead or seriously wounded people in a room that showed clear evidence of a struggle.

"That's the picture from Salzburg," she said. "I spoke to the reporter. She mailed it to me."

Dessie tried word after word: "Rome," "Paris," "Madrid," "Athens."

Sorry – wrong password.

"What are these numbers?" Jacob asked, pointing at the back of the Salzburg envelope.

"The phone number of a pizzeria in Vienna. The reporter already checked it. Nothing to do with the case," Dessie said.

Next she went through al the sites on the postcards: "Tivoli,"

"Coliseum," Las Ventas."

Jacob picked out the pictures from Copenhagen and Oslo.

Oslo was done by the Rudolphs.

Copenhagen was the copycat.

"What if they've got a password that isn't a word but something else?" he said.

Dessie looked at him intently.

"When would you need that information?" Jacob asked. "When are you most in need of instructions? The moment you're about to carry out your task, wouldn't you say?"

Dessie stared at him. "I don't know, I've never been a murderer. I've been tempted a couple of times."

"Where would you write the password you need to get your instructions for the kil s? On the nearest thing available maybe?"

He picked up the copy of the back of the envelope from Salzburg.

"The Rudolphs had an alibi for the murders in Austria," he said. "So that must have been carried out by their accomplice. Try these numbers."

Dessie picked up the laptop again and careful y typed in the nine numbers.

She pressed Enter.

The screen flickered.

A new image appeared.

"Holy fucking Christ," Dessie said.

The investigating team had gathered in Mats Duval 's office. Their faces were pale and drawn.

"Do we have any idea where the hel the Rudolphs have gone?" Jacob asked, sitting down opposite Sara Hoglund.

The head of the unit shook her head. She looked to be in utter despair. As she ought to be.

"They were let out the back door of the Grand Hotel this morning. No one's seen them since then."

"And the key? The key that no one on the team paid much attention to?"

"We know it belongs to a left-luggage locker."

Jacob slammed his fist on the table so hard that the coffee cups jumped.

"We've put out a national alert and informed Interpol," Mats Duval added quickly. "Arlanda, Skavsta, Landvetter, Vasteras, Sturup, and every other airport with international connections is on increased alert. The Oresund Bridge to Denmark is blocked and every vehicle is being searched. The ports have been informed. The border posts are on the alert. Surveil ance of al highways and European routes has been intensified. They won't get out of Sweden."

Jacob stood up.

"For fuck's sake, they've just gotten hold of three and a half mil ion dol ars! They can buy their own plane!"

"The whole amount is in an account in the Cayman Islands," Gabriel a said, reading from a document in front of her. "The transfer has been confirmed by the bank they used here in Stockholm."

Jacob was close to upending the table and al the useless paperwork on it.

"So they haven't got much cash at the moment," Dessie said, just to be clear.

Jacob leaned back in his chair, pressing the palms of his hands to his forehead.

Dessie had already given him the hopeless details. The Rudolphs were free and had vanished, in a country with fewer inhabitants than New York and 162 an area almost as big as Texas. There were thousands of miles of unguarded borders with both Norway and Finland, and just as much coastline. A couple of hours in a fast boat would get them to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Denmark, or Germany.

Silence fel around the table.

Gabriel a Oscarsson was concentrating on a bundle of papers, Mats Duval was fiddling with his BlackBerry. Evert Ridderwal, the hotshot prosecutor, was staring blankly out the window.

Jacob clenched his fists at the sight of the fat little man.