Postcard killers

Chapter 78

No one had watched the entire tapes. Or paid proper attention. It was a terrible mistake.

Now they were watching the tapes, though.

Tuesday afternoons in the middle of June weren't exactly rush hour in the corridor on the fourth floor of the Grand Hotel.

During the forty-three minutes that Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph were inside room 418, two cleaners and a plumber went along the corridor outside.

A woman who had evidently forgotten something in her room ran in and then out again and back to the elevators.

At 3:02 the door to room 418 opened.

A triangle of light from inside the room fel on the floor and the wal opposite. The door stood open for a few seconds before Malcolm Rudolph stepped out onto the thick carpet.

He turned and smiled back into the room, said something, laughed.

Then Sylvia Rudolph came out into the corridor. She stopped, half hidden by the open door, and seemed to be talking to someone as wel.

The brother and sister stood by the door for another fourteen seconds, facing back at the room, talking and laughing.

Final y they leaned through the door to exchange kisses with someone.

The door closed and they headed for the elevators.

"The Dutch couple were alive when they left the room," Sara Hoglund said. "It's obvious. How could this happen? " She stared daggers at Mats Duval.

"And they didn't hang a sign on the door," Gabriel a said.

"What?" Dessie asked.

"'Do not disturb,'" Jacob said through clenched teeth. "The sign was hanging on the door when the bodies were found."

The hotel corridor shown on the recording lay empty and dark once more.

Jacob could feel the adrenaline tearing through his veins.

"Can we fast-forward a bit?" he asked.

Gabriel a sped up the playback.

At 3:21 an elderly couple came out of the lift, walked slowly along the corridor, and opened a door on the rear side of the hotel.

A few minutes later a cleaner passed through the whole length of the corridor with her trol ey and disappeared into a stairwel.

"Wil it play any faster?"

Jacob couldn't hide the impatience in his voice. Or the anger at whoever was responsible for this bungle.

A middle-aged couple went past.

A man in a suit carrying a briefcase.

A family with three children, a tired mother, and a very irritated-looking father.

And then he came.

Midlength coat, light shoes, brown hair, cap, and sunglasses.

"Shit," Jacob said.

The man knocked on the door of the Dutch couple's room, waited a few seconds, stepped into the room, and shut the door behind him.

"They let him in," Sara Hoglund said. "At least it looks that way.

Impossible to tel from this angle."

"Make a note of the time," said Mats Duval.