Postcard killers

Chapter 99

Sunday, June 20

Copenhagen, Denmark

It was raining.

Dessie was sitting at a table by the window of a packed cafe on Stroget, a long pedestrian street, watching people hurry past with umbrel as and raincoats. She was surrounded by families with young kids out for the weekend, the youngsters sleeping in buggies or sitting in kids' seats and gurgling while their mothers drank lattes and their dads had a Sunday beer.

"Is this seat taken?"

She looked up.

A young father with tousled blond hair and a little girl in one arm had already taken hold of the chair opposite her.

"Yes," she said quickly. "I'm waiting for someone. Sorry. He'l be here shortly."

The father let go of the chair and gave her a sympathetic look. "Sure. No problem."

She had been sitting at the table on her own for over an hour now. But she actual y was waiting for somebody.

Nils Thorsen, a crime reporter on the Danish paper Extra-Avisen had been chosen as the Postcard Kil ers' Danish contact: a position he was as enthusiastic about as she had been in Sweden.

During the past twenty-four hours, the two of them had gone through al the details, pictures, and evidence that Jacob had left behind when he disappeared.

About an hour ago Thorsen had been cal ed back to the office: a letter had arrived in the afternoon mail, addressed to him. White, rectangular, capital letters.

Dessie watched the father go back to the mother. He said something and nodded in her direction. The woman snickered, and they both laughed.

She looked down at the table again and pretended she hadn't seen them.

The fact was, she had a lot in common with Nils Thorsen. They had the same profession, the same interests, and even the same moral principles. He 132 wasn't bad-looking either. A bit thin on top, maybe…

Why couldn't she feel the same way about him as she did about Jacob Kanon? God, she was starting to get loony, wasn't she? It was pretty pathetic, but it was out of her control now.

Slowly she wound her hair up, fastening it with a bal point pen, and went back to looking at the postcard in front of her.

Tivoli. The amusement park in the middle of Copenhagen. Posted while the Rudolphs were being held in Stockholm.

She had to face facts here.

However much she wanted to believe Jacob, his theory just didn't make sense.

Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph weren't guilty.

Not of sending this card, and not of sending the letter that Nils and the police here in Copenhagen had presumably opened by now.

Why had she let herself believe it?

People wil let themselves be convinced of anything, she supposed.

Anything was better than a life without meaning. That was why religion existed, and footbal team fan clubs, and volunteer torturers in the service of dictators.

As both a researcher and a journalist, she had regarded questioning everything as her guiding principle. Investigating. Thinking critical y. Not taking anything for granted.

Al at once a longing burned her like a hot iron.

Oh, Jacob, why aren't you here? How did you get into my head this way?

How did you get into my heart?

Chapter 100

"Sorry, Dessie, so sorry," Nils Thorsen said, shaking the rain from his oilskin coat and sitting down opposite her. "That took ages, didn't it. I apologize."

He ordered a fresh beer at once, sneaking a look to see how she was taking his absence.

"Was it a Polaroid picture?" Dessie asked.

The reporter wiped his glasses on his sweater and put a copy of a blurry photograph in front of her.

The setting was unclear, and the focus al wrong. It was difficult to see what the picture was of, actual y.

Dessie squinted and looked closely at the shot.

It had been taken from a very low angle. She could make out the foot of a bed, but whatever was on top of it was unclear to her.

"Have they found the location where this was taken?" she asked. 133 "It's only a matter of time," Nils said. "It has to be a hotel room. Look at the painting in the background. No one would have anything that ugly in their own home."

"Are there… people on the bed?" Dessie asked.

Nils Thorsen put his glasses back on. His hands were trembling. The man was clearly frightened, and she understood that better than anyone.

"I don't know," he said.

She held the picture up to her face, shifted it around in the light. Bedding, some items of clothing, a handbag, and – Suddenly a foot came into focus. Then another. And another.

Instinctively she thrust the picture away from her eyes.

There were people there, two of them.

The evidence seemed to suggest that they were no longer alive.

"Do you real y think that's an imitation of a work of art?" the Dane asked.

"Impossible to say," Dessie muttered.

She pushed the terrible picture away and began to run through Denmark's most famous works of art in her mind.

The Little Mermaid, the statue in Copenhagen's harbor, was obviously the best known. But there were the artists of the Skagen School, the cubist Vilhelm Lundstrom, and plenty more.

She pushed the stray hairs away from her brow. A lot of the other photographs had been very easy to trace back to various artworks, usual y wel known ones.

This wasn't one of them, was it? Something had changed.

"I don't think it was the same photographer," she said to Nils Thorsen.

"So who took this picture?"

Chapter 101

Los Angeles, USA

"Hey, sleepyhead, you still alive?"

Jacob slowly opened his eyes without the faintest idea of where he was.

He examined the clues.

A ceiling with a large damp stain.

The rattle of an exhausted air-conditioning unit.

A sharp smel of coffee, a smel he hadn't woken up to for the past six months.

"Ah, there you are. It lives. It snores. I've got some more information for you."

Jacob sat up on Lyndon Crebbs's lumpy living-room sofa. It had been insignificantly more comfortable than the recliner on the flight across the Atlantic.

The FBI agent held out a mug of steaming coffee.

"I've got the name of the guardian who took care of the Rudolph kids 134 after their parents died," he said. "Jonathan Blython, a cousin of the mother's, also a resident of Santa Barbara."

Jacob took the mug, had a sip, and immediately scalded himself.

"Excel ent job," he said. "Do you think he'd appreciate an informal visit?"

"Hardly," Lyndon said. "He's been dead three years."

Jacob snapped awake.

"A sudden and violent death?"

Lyndon nodded.

"He was found with his throat cut. Parking lot over on Vista del Mar Street. He'd been with a prostitute. It was written off as a violent mugging. No arrest."

"Three years ago, you say?"

"The twins had just turned twenty-one. They were living here in L.A. No one co

Jacob drank the bitter liquid and fumbled for his trousers. They'd slid beneath the sofa. Suddenly he remembered his night with Dessie. He put it out of his mind.

"I think I'm going to head out to Montecito," he said, pul ing his jeans on.

"How far is it?"

"A hundred miles or so, a bit less. You'l be there in two hours if you miss rush hour. But -"

Lyndon Crebbs placed a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"First you're going to take a shower," he said.