Postcard killers

Chapter 47

Dessie caught her breath as she locked her bicycle outside the entrance to the Museum of Modern Art on the island of Skeppsholmen.

The yel ow building was glowing in the sunlight, making her squint just to look up at it.

She didn't think she'd been here since her divorce from Christer.

She went into the upper entry hal, into an environment similar to her exhusband's gal ery: pristine white, harsh lighting. It looked just as she remembered it, the glass wal s, the espresso bar, the chrome lamps.

She and Christer had been to a party here in the foyer just a few weeks before their marriage came to an end.

She went up to the information desk, staffed by a tal woman in an al black outfit.

"Excuse me," Dessie said. "I'm trying to find a painting cal ed The Dying Dandy."

"Eighty kronor," the woman said.

Of course, the new right-wing government had abolished free entry to Sweden's museums.

Dessie paid.

"You're on the right floor. Just fol ow the corridor to the left as far as you can, then take a right and then the first left again," said the woman in black.

Dessie couldn't remember the reason for the party she had attended with Christer. It was probably someone's birthday, or someone new had managed to get an exhibition at the Modern.

She suppressed the memory and headed off along the long corridor beyond the espresso bar.

The museum was almost empty at this early hour. She could hear people talking from deep within the catacombs but saw no one, not a soul. It wasn't just newspapers but also an appreciation for art that was on the decline, even here in Sweden.

Eventual y she found the right room.

There it was! She recognized it immediately.

TheDying Dandy, oil on canvas, one and a half meters tal, almost two meters across. One of the most famous Swedish paintings of the last century.

Chapter 48

Dessie stopped in front of the painting, oddly moved.

It was an impressive creation, with its sweeping shapes and strong colors: the narcissistic man lies dying on his white cushion, a mirror stil in his hand.

His equal y affected friends are gathered around him. They're mourning, but the only one in tears is the man in the purple jacket and orange shirt up in the left-hand corner.

The woman holding him and the white cushion on her lap looks almost amused.

There was no doubt about it now: this was the model for the murders on Dalaro.

The kil ers must have known the painting. Maybe they'd been here.

Maybe they'd stood exactly where she was standing now, pondering Dardel's work: Was it an al egory about the act of creativity? Or was Dardel holding up a forbidden image of homosexuality?

A thought ran like fire through her brain. She took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling, then felt the adrenaline kick in.

Up in one corner, right above the door, was a discreet surveil ance camera.

Right now, her image was being captured somewhere.

She took out her mobile and cal ed Gabriel a at police headquarters.

Chapter 49

Dessie was holding up the color reproduction of Dardel's masterpiece in one hand and the photograph from Dalaro in the other.

Her hunch had to be right. Jeez, she was better at this than the police!

Gabriel a's desk was covered with Jacob's postcards and the photographs of the bodies. Beside them were pictures Dessie had printed from the Internet.

Gabriel a looked at the pictures one by one, her eyes opening wider and wider.

"God," she said, picking up the picture of the murdered Germans, "you're right, Dessie."

"Sorry," said Jacob, "but what are you talking about?"

Dessie looked at his unruly mop of hair. He looked like he'd been quite literal y tearing it out. Suddenly she felt so sorry for him, for his pain, his terrible loss.

"The kil ers arrange the bodies to imitate famous works of art," she said.

"Look at this one, Jacob."

Dessie picked up the photograph from Paris. Emily and Clive Spencer's bodies were sitting side by side in bed, both with their right hand over the left resting on their stomachs.

"The Mona Lisa," she said, putting a copy of da Vinci's masterpiece alongside the photograph.

Jacob clumsily grabbed the pictures, crumpling them slightly.

The mysteriously smiling woman on the painting was holding her right hand over her left and resting both on her stomach.

"Christ," he said final y, "you're right. That's what they've been doing."

"Karen and Bil y Cowley," Dessie said.

She put down the picture of the couple murdered in Berlin, showing them in profile, the side with their uninjured eye looking toward the camera.

Beside it she laid a printout of an Egyptian statue.

"The bust of Nefertiti, probably the most imitated work of art from Ancient Egypt. It's in the Neues Museum in Berlin. The kil ers saw it there, I guarantee you."

Gabriel a leaned forward. Her face was flushed, two red marks glowing on her cheeks. Dessie glanced at her. They had been there, too, to the Neues Museum, on their first trip away together.

Jacob picked up the picture and studied it intently.

"What do you mean?" he asked Dessie. "What do their gouged-out left eyes have to do with it?"

"The bust of Nefertiti is missing its left eye," Gabriel a said. "Everyone knows that."

Chapter 50

Dessie wasn't particularly interested in art. Hel, she hadn't recognized the co

Gabriel a, on the other hand, had a genuine love of art. She'd gotten on very wel with Christer, better than Dessie had actual y. 69 "Amsterdam," Dessie said, picking out a copy of the next painting.

"Vincent van Gogh. Heard of him?"

Jacob looked at her with indulgence.

"I'm an American," he said, "not a barbarian."

"One of his self-portraits," she said. "It usual y belongs in London, but this spring it was on loan to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. He actual y cut off his left ear, but the kil ers clearly didn't know that, because they cut off -"

"The right ears of their Amsterdam victims," Jacob said breathlessly.

"Hel. What are they up to?"

A silence fel. Jacob drummed his fingers on the table, something he did when he was deep in thought.

Gabriel a looked through the pictures of the bodies and compared them to other works of art that Dessie had printed out.

"Florence is Botticel i's Birth of Venus?"

"The Uffizi," Dessie confirmed.

"What about Athens, then? What's Athens meant to be?"

"I don't know that one. But Madrid has to be The Naked Maja by Goya – from the Prado. What do you think, Jacob?"

But Jacob wasn't listening now. He had gone very pale. He was staring vacantly out at the greenery in Kronoberg Park.

"Who was Kimmy?" he asked. "Which work of art is she? What were they imitating?"

Dessie felt her palms sweating. She looked through the printouts and held them out to him.

"The Sistine Chapel," she said softly. "The Creation of Adam is a detail from the ceiling fresco. You know, Michelangelo…"

She held the larger picture, with God lying in front of a human brain and stretching out his hand to Adam, and then a close-up of God's finger almost touching Adam's hand.