Postcard killers

Chapter 67

The young american was sobbing as if his heart were about to break, as if he had just lost his best friends in the world.

"And you think we had something to do with it? That we could have harmed Peter and Nienke? How could you even think that?"

Sara Hoglund and Mats Duval let him cry for a few minutes.

Then they asked if he wanted a lawyer present. They had to do this. He had the right to one under Swedish law, the same as in America.

The murder suspect merely shook his head. He didn't need legal representation. He hadn't done anything wrong. He couldn't understand how anyone could suspect him of anything so terrible. The Dutch couple had been happy and ful of life when he and Sylvia had left them in their hotel room the previous day.

What were they doing in the hotel room? Did they eat or drink anything?

"No," Malcolm Rudolph said with a sniff. "Wel, actual y we did. Peter had a Coke that I drank a bit of."

"No champagne?"

"Champagne? In the middle of the afternoon?" The question seemed to strike him as absurd.

"Did you smoke anything in their room? Marijuana, for instance?"

"Marijuana is il egal here, isn't it? And Sylvia and I don't smoke, anyway."

He slumped down on the table and started crying again. The questions 91 kept coming.

When did you arrive in Sweden?

How long have you been traveling in Europe?

Can you tel us about Peter and Nienke?

"They were so much fun, so nice. We were real y looking forward to the trip to Finland with them. We had a great lunch at that place in the Old Town…"

The detectives' questions bounced off him, many unanswered, then into the control room.

Where were you on November twenty-seventh last year?

December thirtieth?

January twenty-sixth this year? February ninth? March fourth?

The interrogation was stopped after just forty-three minutes. To be humane, and to be lawful.

Malcolm Rudolph was led away to a cel in Kronoberg Prison.