Postcard killers

Chapter 63

By lunchtime, security had been stepped up in al public places in the Stockholm region that were frequented by tourists, and especial y by young people.

Al available personnel had been sent out to look for anyone resembling the composite picture from the clerk at NK, or any of the people on the security recordings from the Museum of Modern Art and the pawnbroker's on Kungsholmstorg.

When a preliminary blood test showed that the Dutch couple had smoked marijuana just before they died, sniffer dogs were brought in from around the country to join in the search.

Throughout Stockholm, young people fifteen and over were asked to empty their bags, purses, and knapsacks.

Most of them did as they were asked without protest. Those who refused were arrested.

Dessie was standing in Gabriel a's office, looking out across Kronoberg Park.

Four uniformed police officers and a large Alsatian dog had blocked one of the entrances to the park, a popular shortcut for people heading for the beach or the shops and underground station on Fridhemsplan. Picnic baskets, bags of swimming gear, and expensive attache cases were al careful y checked without any distinction between them.

The sight ought to have made her feel more secure, but she simply felt guilty.

Jacob came into the room with three plastic wrappers containing sandwiches he had found in a vending machine somewhere.

"Where's Gabriel a?"

"She went down to the video suite to get the recordings from the Grand,"

Dessie said, col apsing onto a chair.

Jacob tore open one of the packets and with a healthy appetite took a large bite of the bread and tuna plus mayonnaise. Dessie looked at him and cringed.

"How can you eat?" she asked. "Doesn't al the violence you see ever affect you?"

"Of course it does," Jacob said, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.

"I was just thinking about how sick these murders are. But it won't help the Dutch couple if I faint from low blood sugar."

Dessie leaned her face down into her hands. "I shouldn't have written that 86 bloody letter."

Jacob carried on chewing.

"I thought we'd gotten past that."

She had her cel phone out.

"And now it's started," she said. "Just as I thought it would."

"What has?" Jacob wondered.

"I'm getting cal s from the trade press, asking why I'm doing the police's work for them."

Jacob gestured with his hand toward the pictures of the dead couple in the hotel room.

"That's your reality," he said. "What you're talking about is pretentious bul shit."

"Exactly," she said. "And what if I'm the one who made that reality happen?"

He groaned.

"It's true," she said in a low voice. "You said so yourself. They've broken their pattern – they've kil ed again in the same city. If I hadn't let myself be persuaded, this Dutch couple would stil be alive."

"You don't know that," Jacob said. "And if they hadn't died, other young people would have, in some other city."

She took her hands away from her face.

"What do you mean? That the Dutch couple were sacrificed to a noble cause? What does your lot usual y cal it, col ateral damage?"

The American wiped his fingers on his jeans. His expression had grown dark.

"I never think like that," he said. "The Dutch couple's deaths were a tragedy. But you have to lay the blame where it belongs. You didn't kil them, and neither did I. Those bastards on the recordings did that, and we're soon going to catch them. Right here in Stockholm. It ends here."