Postcard killers

Chapter 10

Dessie heard the man's heavy footsteps disappear down the stairs as she double-locked her door. She blew out a deep breath.

It was Friday evening, and she was alone again. Worse, she'd just been scared shitless by an American detective who tragical y had lost his daughter.

She took off her sneakers, hung up her jacket, and put her bike helmet on the hat rack. She pul ed off the rest of her clothes as she walked to the bathroom and got into the shower.

Jacob Kanon, she thought. He hadn't meant her any harm, that much was obvious. What would have happened if she had asked him in? What would she have lost as a result? Would she have gotten a news story?

She shook off the idle thoughts and turned the tap to run the water ice cold. She stood under the jet until her toes started to go numb and her skin stung.

Wrapped in a big dressing gown, she walked across the tiled floor into the living room. She sank onto the sofa and reached for the television remote control but held it idly in her hand.

Why had the kil ers picked her? What the hel had she done? She wasn't a star reporter by any means.

Were they actual y in the city right now?

Were they looking for their next victims, or had they already set to work?

Had the letter containing the photographs of the dead bodies already been sent?

She got up off the couch and went into the kitchen. She opened the fridge door and found a few withered carrots and a moldy tomato. Jeez. She real y must do some shopping.

Coming home usual y made her thoroughly calm and relaxed. Not this night.

Her apartment lay on Urvadersgrand, an old street on the island of Sodermalm, in the heart of the onetime working-class district that had recently 18 been transformed into overpriced homes for the hip middle class to buy.

Sweden's national poet, Carl Michael Bel man, had lived in the building next door for four years in the 1770s. She tried to feel the winds of history.

It didn't work too wel tonight. Another Friday at home. Why was that?

She went over to the stereo and put on a CD of German hard rock. Du, du hast, du hast mich…

Then she sat down and stared at the telephone. She had a pretty good reason for making the cal.

She was neither lonely nor abandoned. She had just turned down the chance to invite a man into her apartment – a dirty, unshaven man, admittedly – so she wasn't the slightest bit desperate. Right?

She picked up the receiver and dialed the number of Gabriel a's cel phone.