Postcard killers

Chapter 14

The newsroom was nearly abandoned for lunch.

Forsberg, the news editor, was sitting chewing the end off a bal point pen and reading telegrams. Out in the mail room, two twitchy forensic investigators had settled in to intercept any letters the kil ers might send.

Dessie was sitting with a mass of printouts about the double murders throughout Europe over the past eight months spread out on her desk. She had been there since seven o'clock that morning and had been told to stay until the last postal delivery arrived, sometime in the late afternoon. She had agreed to put together a summary of the murders that another reporter could build a story on.

The case in Berlin, the latest one, was deeply tragic to her.

The kil ers had not been content merely to murder the Australians. They had also mutilated their bodies. It was not clear from the articles Dessie had found precisely what they had done to the couple.

She picked up another printout and started making her way through the Spanish newspaper article.

The kil ings in Berlin seemed to be a replica of those in Madrid, except for the bit about mutilation. An American couple, Sal y and Charlie Martinez, had been found with their throats cut in their room in the Hotel Lope de Vega.

They had been in Spain on their honeymoon.

The postcard had been sent to the newspaper El Pais, and it was of the bul fighting arena Las Ventas.

She leaned closer to the grainy printout.

It looked like a round building with two towers with flags on top. Some cars and some pedestrians were in the picture. There was no information about what had been written on the back of the card.

"How's it going, Dessie? Have you caught them yet?"

She put the printout down.

"Jealous?" she asked, looking up at Alexander Andersson, the paper's high-profile, sensationalist reporter.

Andersson sat down on her desk and made himself comfortable. Dessie could hear her printouts getting crumpled beneath his backside.

"I've been wondering about something," he said smoothly. "Why did the 22 kil ers send the card specifical y to you?"

Dessie opened her eyes wide in surprise, mocking Andersson.

"God," she said. "You real y are quick. Did you come up with that question al on your own?"

Andersson's smile stiffened somewhat.

"People don't usual y read anything you write," he said. "It's a bit of a surprise…"

Dessie sighed and made up her mind not to get angry. She reached for a copy of that day's paper. There was nothing about the postcard in it. Andersson walked away without saying anything else.

The paper's management, after serious pressure from the police, had decided not to publish the details. But Andersson had written a sloppy article about the murders around Europe. It contained a large number of loaded words like terrible and unpleasant and massacre but not many facts.

Dessie lowered the paper.

I've been chasing these bastards for six months. No one knows more about them than I do.

Why hadn't she heard from Jacob Kanon today? He had been so keen to talk yesterday evening.

She stretched her back and looked out across the newsroom.

Presumably his not getting in touch again had something to do with her behavior – the fact that she was always so brusque and never let anyone get close to her.

She shook off her feelings as ridiculous, then leafed through the printouts again.

She ran her fingers over the pictures of the victims.

The victims in Rome.

This was her, this was what she looked like before she was murdered.

Smiling, shy, fair curly hair.

Kimberly Kanon.

Jacob Kanon's daughter.

She had her father's bright blue eyes, didn't she?