Postcard killers

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They had withdrawn cash with a credit card on two occasions – in Brussels on December 3, and in Oslo on May 6.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.

Chapter 78

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.

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.

4:35.

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.

Chapter 79

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 co

"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 i

"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 cha