Postcard killers

Chapter 47

Dessie caught her breath as she locked her bicycle outside the entrance to the Museum of Modern Art on the island of Skeppsholmen.

The yel ow building was glowing in the sunlight, making her squint just to look up at it.

She didn't think she'd been here since her divorce from Christer.

She went into the upper entry hal, into an environment similar to her exhusband's gal ery: pristine white, harsh lighting. It looked just as she remembered it, the glass wal s, the espresso bar, the chrome lamps.

She and Christer had been to a party here in the foyer just a few weeks before their marriage came to an end.

She went up to the information desk, staffed by a tal woman in an al black outfit.

"Excuse me," Dessie said. "I'm trying to find a painting cal ed The Dying Dandy."

"Eighty kronor," the woman said.

Of course, the new right-wing government had abolished free entry to Sweden's museums.

Dessie paid.

"You're on the right floor. Just fol ow the corridor to the left as far as you can, then take a right and then the first left again," said the woman in black.

Dessie couldn't remember the reason for the party she had attended with Christer. It was probably someone's birthday, or someone new had managed to get an exhibition at the Modern.

She suppressed the memory and headed off along the long corridor beyond the espresso bar.

The museum was almost empty at this early hour. She could hear people talking from deep within the catacombs but saw no one, not a soul. It wasn't just newspapers but also an appreciation for art that was on the decline, even here in Sweden.

Eventual y she found the right room.

There it was! She recognized it immediately.

TheDying Dandy, oil on canvas, one and a half meters tal, almost two meters across. One of the most famous Swedish paintings of the last century.