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Chapter 17

Sunday, June 13

A uniformed security guard stood up in a glass cubicle over to Jacob's left. He pressed a button and said something incomprehensible in a metal ic loudspeaker voice.

"I don't speak Swedish," Jacob said. "Can you tel Dessie Larsson that I'm here?"

"What about?"

"The postcard kil ings," he said, holding up his New York police badge.

"I'm homicide."

The man pul ed his stomach in and yanked up his baggy trousers.

"Take a seat for a moment."

He gestured toward the row of wooden benches over by the door.

The stone floor of the Aftonposten lobby was slippery from the rain outside.

Jacob slid a couple of steps before getting his balance back, along with his dignity. He straightened his shoulders, wondering if perhaps he was not entirely sober yet.

With a groan, he sank onto the nearest bench. It was hard and cold.

He had to pul himself together. Never before, never during al those years raising Kimmy, had he let himself sink this low. The previous day had vanished in a haze of vodka and aquavit. The Swedes also had something they cal ed bra

Hoping he wasn't about to be sick, he rested his head in his hands.

The kil ers weren't far away. Even though he felt hazy about many things, he could sense their proximity.

They were stil walking the city's streets, hiding in the rain, and had probably already found their next victims – if they hadn't already dealt with them…

Jacob shivered slightly and realized how cold and wet he was. His hands were filthy. There was no shower in his room in the youth hostel where he was staying, and he hadn't bothered trying to find the shared bathroom. The building depressed him. It was an old prison, and his room was a cel from the 1840s, which he was sharing with a Fi

Jacob had spent the night throwing up into the wastepaper basket and feeling miserable. There wasn't enough alcohol in the whole of the country to 26 drown his thoughts about Kimmy and her murder.

He beat on his forehead with his fists.

Now that he was so close to the bastards, his own failings were overtaking him.

He got gingerly to his feet and set off toward the glass cubicle again. The soles of his shoes had dried and had a better grip on the floorboards.

The glass box was empty now. The guard had gone off somewhere. Shit.

Shielding his eyes from the glare of the glass with his hands, he tried to see into the newsroom. As far as he could tel, there was no one about.

What sort of fucked-up place was this? Wasn't this supposed to be a newspaper?

He walked back to the security post and buzzed the alarm. No response, no one anywhere.

He put his finger on the buzzer and held it there. The guard final y approached, holding a mug of coffee in one hand and a pastry in the other.

"Hel o!" Jacob cal ed. "Can you please cal Dessie Larsson and tel her I'm here?"

The guard glanced at him, then turned his back and started talking to someone out of sight.

Jacob banged the glass wal with the palm of his hand.

"Hel o!" he yel ed. "Come on! It's a matter of life and death!"

"You're too late," said a voice behind him.

He spun around to see the journalist standing in the stairwel behind him.

Her face was white, her green eyes tired. There were dark rings around them.

"The picture arrived this morning," she said. "The forensics team already took it away."

He stepped toward her and opened his mouth, but he couldn't get a single question out.

"A man and a woman," Dessie Larsson said. "Their throats were cut."

Chapter 18

Dessie opened the door to the newsroom with her card and code.





"I'm not going to offer you anything to drink," she said over her shoulder.

"If you'd turned up yesterday, you might have gotten a cup of coffee, but you lost your chance. This way…"

She headed off to the right through the office, aiming for the crime desk. 27 "I'm not here for coffee," Jacob Kanon said behind her. "Have the bodies been found?"

He was in a bad mood and stank like hel. Nice guy.

"Not yet," said Dessie. "Give us a little time, wil you. Murder is a bit less common here than in New York. Suicide is our specialty."

She sat down behind her desk and pointed to the wobbly metal chair in front.

"When was the letter posted?" he asked.

"Yesterday afternoon, at the central Stockholm post office. We don't usual y get mail on a Sunday, but the police ordered an extra delivery."

He sat down on the chair and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.

"Did you see the picture?" he asked. "What did it show? Were there any particular characteristics? Anything that could identify the crime scene?"

Dessie looked careful y at the man in front of her. He looked even worse in daylight than he had in the gloom of the stairwel. His hair was a mess and his clothes were dirty. But his blue eyes were burning with an intensity that brought his whole face alive. She liked something about him – maybe the intensity. Probably that.

"Just a Polaroid picture, nothing else."

She looked away as she passed him a copy of the picture. Jacob Kanon took it with both hands and stared at the bodies.

Dessie was trying to look calm and unaffected. Violence didn't usual y bother her, but this was different.

The victims were so young, their deaths so cold and calculated, so inhuman.

"Scandinavian setting," the policeman stated. "Pale furniture, pale background, blond people. Did they take the envelope away?"

Dessie swal owed.

"Forensics? Of course they did."

"Have you got a copy?"

Dessie handed him a photocopy of the ordinary oblong envelope. The address was written in neat capital letters across the front.

DESSIE LARSSON AFTONPOSTEN 115 10 STOCKHOLM

She looked uncomfortably at her own name.

"They won't find anything on it," Jacob Kanon said. "These kil ers leave no fingerprints, and they don't lick the stamps. Was there anything on the back?"

She shook her head.

He held up the picture of the bodies.

"Can I have a copy of this?"

"I'l print a new one for you," Dessie said, clicking the command through 28 her computer and pointing at a printer some distance away. "I'm going to get a coffee," she said, getting up. "Do you want one?"

"I thought I'd lost my chance," Jacob Kanon replied, heading off toward the printer to get the picture.

Dessie went over to the coffee machine with a gathering feeling of unreality. She pressed for coffee with milk for herself, and black, extra strong for the American. He looked like he needed it.

"They have to make a mistake sometime," Jacob said as he took the coffee. "Sooner or later they'l get lazy, or overconfident, or just unlucky. That moment can't be far off now. That's what I'm thinking."

Dessie pushed the terrible coffee away from her and fixed her gaze on the American.

"I've got a lot of questions," she said, "but this one wil do for a start:

Why me? Why did they pick me? You seem to have a lot of answers. Do you know why?"

At that moment her cel phone began to vibrate. She looked at the display.

Gabriel a cal ing.

"It's one of the police team," she said.

"One of the team on this case? Answer it, then!"

She took the cal and turned her chair so she had her back to Jacob Kanon.