Postcard killers

Chapter 115

Wednesday, June 23

Stockholm, Sweden

Urvadersgrand was deserted and doing its best to show why it had been named after bad weather.

Gusts of rain tore and tugged at the street lamps and signs, the shutters and gables.

The reporters had finally given up and gone the hel home. That was the good news.

Dessie paid the taxi driver and hurried in through the doorway. Her steps echoed in the empty stairwel. She felt like she'd been away for ages.

Her apartment welcomed her with gray light and complete silence and a certain unappealing mustiness.

She pul ed off her clothes, letting them fal in a heap on the hal floor.

Then she sank down and sat on the telephone table in the hal, staring at the wal opposite. Suddenly she was far too exhausted to take the shower she had been looking forward to al day.

For some reason her mother came to her mind.

They hadn't been in regular contact during the last years she was alive, but right now Dessie would have liked to cal her and tel her what had been written about her, about the terrible murders, about her own loneliness.

And about Jacob.

She would have liked to tel her about the unusual American with the sapphire blue eyes. Her mother would have understood. If there was one thing she had experience in, it was doomed relationships.

At that moment the phone rang right next to her. It startled her so much that she jumped.

"Dessie? The phone didn't even ring on my end. You must have been sitting on it."

It was Gabriel a.

"Actual y, I was," Dessie said, standing up.

She got hold of a towel and grappled with it to pul it around her with one hand, then took the cordless phone out through the kitchen and into the living room.

"How are things with you? You sounded so down when I last spoke to 154 you."

Dessie slumped onto the sofa and looked out at the harbor. It was stil gorgeous; at least that never changed.

"Everything got a bit much in the end," she muttered.

"Is it Jacob?"

Unable to stop herself any longer, Dessie started to cry.

"Sorry," she sniffled into the phone. "Sorry, I…"

"You fel for him hard, didn't you?"

Gabriel a sounded neither angry nor disappointed, but more like a good friend now.

Dessie took a deep breath.

"I suppose so," she said.

There was a moment's silence.

"Things don't always work out as you hope," Gabriel a said, so quietly that her words were almost inaudible.

"I know," Dessie whispered. "Sorry."

Gabriel a laughed.

"That took its time," she said.

"I know," Dessie repeated.

Silence again.

"What's happening today?" Dessie asked, to break the silence more than anything else.

"The Rudolphs have announced that they're checking out of the Grand at lunchtime. Not a moment too soon, if you ask me."

Dessie bit her lip. "Do you real y think they're innocent?" she asked.

"There's nothing to link them to the murders," Gabriel a said. "No forensic evidence, no witnesses, no confessions, no murder weapons…"

"So who did it? Sel me on a new explanation," Dessie said. "Who are the real Postcard Kil ers, then?"

Before Gabriel a could answer, the doorbel rang.

What the -?

Who could it be now? A reporter who stil hadn't given up?

She had no peephole and no safety chain.

"Hang on a moment while I get the door," Dessie said, going out to the hal and unlocking the door.

She opened it cautiously, then suddenly she couldn't breathe.

"I'l cal you later," she said into the phone and hung up on Gabriel a.