Postcard killers

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 brannvin, a spirit made from potatoes that was pure dynamite.

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 Finnish poet. He and the poet had squeezed onto the lower bunk of the bed and drunk their way through the vodka, aquavit, and brannvin, and afterward the poet had gone into the city to dance the tango somewhere.

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."