Postcard killers

Chapter 80

The press conference was out of control from the very start.

Several American television channels were broadcasting live and had no desire to sit through Evert Ridderwal 's painstaking details of the progress of the investigation.

Their reporters started shouting questions almost at once, which revealed yet another complication: Evert Ridderwal was extremely bad at English.

He was also rather hard of hearing. He just about managed to read out the details that the investigating team had jointly put together for him, but he could neither hear nor understand what the reporters were asking him.

"A sufficient lack of self-doubt can get you anywhere," Dessie muttered as she stood next to Jacob at the back of the room.

"And we have a stunning example of that in front of us," Jacob agreed bitterly.

Evert Ridderwal had insisted on holding the press conference himself because he was, after al, the head of the investigating team.

Sara Hoglund, who was standing on the podium next to him, eventual y leaned purposeful y across the table, picked up the prosecutor's script and started reading.

Her English bore traces of the East Coast of the United States, and Jacob 107 recal ed that she had a good knowledge of the NYPD. Maybe she'd trained there, or worked with them once upon a time.

In actual fact, she said very little other than that the investigation was continuing, and that certain evidence had been obtained but she couldn't go into details because of the significance of the material to the investigation.

"Fuck it, they haven't got anything," said a reporter from one of the Swedish news agencies to his col eague. They were sitting right in front of Dessie and Jacob.

"Shal we go?" Jacob whispered.

"Yes. Please. Now."

They got to the exit before the reporter from Dagens Eko caught sight of Dessie.

"Dessie," he cal ed after her. "Dessie Larsson?"

She turned around, surprised that he had recognized her.

"Yes?" she said, and the next moment she had a huge microphone pressed up under her nose.

"What do you think of the unpleasant criticism that's being directed at you?"

Dessie stared at the man. He was unshaven and had bad teeth.

Don't blow up, she thought. Don't get angry, don't rush off, that's exactly what he wants.

"Criticism directed at me?" she said. "What do you mean specifically?"

"What do you think of the fact that you've introduced to Scandinavia the Anglo-Saxon tradition of paying large amounts of money to brutal serial kil ers?"

"I think you've completely misunderstood that," she replied, trying to sound calm and confident. "I haven't paid any money to -"

"But you tried to! " the reporter cried indignantly. "You wanted to buy interviews with brutal serial kil ers. Do you real y think it's moral y defensible to pay for their violent deeds?"

Dessie swal owed before she spoke again.

"Wel, firstly, not a single penny has been paid, and secondly, it wasn't my decision to -"

"Do you think you've made yourself complicit in the crime itself?" the reporter yel ed. "What's the difference between paying for a murder and paying for the details of a murder?"

Dessie final y pushed the microphone aside and walked away from the rude, stupid man.

"Let it go," Jacob said in her ear.

He was right beside her, struggling to keep up. He hadn't understood the exchange, but the content and spirit of it were al too clear to him.

"After this disaster, Duval wil be clutching at straws. In less than ten minutes' time he'l be asking us to interview the Rudolphs," Jacob continued. 108 Dessie took a deep breath and pushed the Eko reporter from her mind.

It turned out that Jacob was right.

It took seven minutes.