Postcard killers

Chapter 35

Two young people lay dead as if broken on the floor of a hotel room.

Their throats had been cut with the same brutality as in the murders on Dalaro. The wounds gaped dark red, the floor was drowning in blood.

Dessie's mouth went dry again and her pulse was racing in a terrifying way.

"The blood's stil bright, fresh," Dessie said. "They were alive just a few minutes before."

"Yes, that's correct," said Jacob, "they'd just died."

She forced her breathing to stay calm, regular. It wasn't real y helping.

Jacob put another picture in front of her.

"Karen and Bil y Cowley," he said. "Look at them, Dessie. What do you see?"

The young Australian couple who had come to Europe to get over the death of their young son hadn't just had their throats cut. They were sitting upright, side by side, their heads leaning back against what must have been the head of a bed. Their left eyebal s had been stabbed, blood and fluid running like red mascara from the sockets.

"The couple in Amsterdam had their right ears cut off," Jacob said, putting a third picture in front of her. "Their names were Lindsay and Jeffrey Holborn."

She looked at the pictures, forcing herself to see beyond the blood and violence.

"They're tel ing us something," Jacob said angrily. "The kil ers are talking 49 through these pictures. I'm sure of it. Look at this one, from Florence."

A double bed: a young woman on the left, a young man on the right. The picture was taken from above, which meant the photographer must have been standing on the bed, right between the dead bodies.

"What do you see?" Jacob asked.

The man and woman were lying in the same position, their bent legs paral el a little to the left, their right hands on their ribcages and their left ones over their genitals.

"They couldn't have been lying like this when they died," she said.

Jacob nodded.

"I know," he said, "but why?"

Dessie picked up the picture from Paris. The two victims were sitting with their hands on their stomachs.

"They look like they've just eaten too much," Dessie said.

They were posing. The corpses were posing. They were saying something, or at least representing something. What was it? If the cops figured that out, they just might catch them.

She looked at Jacob.

"Let me see the one I was sent," she said.

He gave her the picture from Dalaro. She took it and could stil feel the smel of the hot living room.

The woman, Claudia, was sitting upright against the back of the sofa. In her lap was a cushion that had probably been white to start with. She was leaning over the man, Rolf, who was lying on the cushion in her lap.

The man was lying in a strange position. One knee was drawn up, and his fingers were spread out above his heart. In his right hand he was holding something that looked like a sign – or a spatula.

"It's definitely been arranged," she said.

"Does it mean anything to you?"

Dessie looked at the picture for a long time.

"I recognize something," she said. "I just don't know where from. I can't put my finger on it."

"Concentrate," Jacob said.

She stared at the picture until the focus started to blur.

"Sorry," she said. "It's not coming."

He looked at her with his very blue eyes for several long seconds.

Then he gathered the pictures together and without another word left her sitting at the cafe table.