They only stayed a few hours on that last visit, and then they left, in the middle of the night…"
"And then Senor Blython was murdered," Jacob said.
Carlos Rodriguez snorted.
"If you hang around with putas in Los Angeles…," he said.
Jacob nodded and let the subject drop. The gardener had told him more than he had expected.
"The main building," he said, "is it stil here?"
Carlos Rodriguez's face broke into a smile again.
"Pero claro que si! I'm not formal y employed anymore, of course. I get a little from the bank. Mostly we live on my pension. But I look after the Mansion."
"Could you show me around?" Jacob asked.
"Si, claro! Of course I can."
Chapter 105
Lyndon was right .
The house was enormous, and it looked like something from a horror film set in the English countryside. Senor Rodriguez may have done his best to keep the building in good condition, but his lame old body had no chance against the wind, the damp, the weeds, and the ivy. One window frame had slipped its hinge and was squeaking in the wind.
This was where it al began, wasn't it? The murders – the mystery of the Rudolphs.
"The electricity has been cut off in the main house," the gardener said apologetical y as he unlocked the oak door.
Jacob's footsteps echoed in the grand stone hal way. Doors stood half open, leading into high-ceilinged rooms and down long, dark corridors.
He took a quick look into the various rooms where Sylvia and Malcolm had once lived.
The whole building seemed to have been emptied of its contents. Jacob noticed a single curtain in a library that was empty of books.
"The master bedroom is on the second floor. Fol ow me."
A magnificent curved staircase led up to the more private parts of the mansion.
Pale rectangles on the wal s revealed where paintings had once hung. A battered rococo sofa, its stuffing hanging out, stood alone and dusty on the first landing.
"Straight ahead," Carlos Rodriguez said.
The bed was stil there, an ornate four-poster without curtains or bedclothes. Otherwise the room was empty.
"So this was where it happened?" Jacob said.
The gardener nodded.
"And you were here that night?"
He nodded again.
"What did you see? Tell me anything you remember. Please. It's important."
The man swal owed.
"Terrible things," he said. "Blood al over this room. Mr. and Mrs. were lying dead in that bed. They must have been asleep when it happened."
"Did you see their injuries close up?"
The man ran his index finger like a knife across his throat.
"Deep cuts," he said. "Almost through to the bone at the back of the neck."
He gave an involuntary shudder as Jacob watched him closely.
How did you come to be here, in your employers' room in the middle of the night? I don't understand."
The man took a deep breath, then spoke.
"I was asleep with my family when Senorita rang. I hurried here straightaway."
"It wasn't you who found them?"
"No, no. It was little Sylvia."
Chapter 106
Monday, June 21
Copenhagen, Denmark
There was still a pattern here. It had just changed slightly.
Dessie kept thinking she could see it clearly, just for a few seconds. Then it would slide out of her reach again.
She was sitting on the unmade bed in her hotel room with al the pictures and postcards around her, al of Jacob's crumpled copies. She picked them up, even though she had seen them a hundred times, maybe more. Al the buildings and people and details were already imprinted in her memory.
The postcard from Amsterdam of the plain building on Prinsengracht 267: the house where Anne Frank was hidden during the war, where she wrote her famous diary.
Then Rome and Madrid: the Coliseum and Las Ventas, gladiatorial combat and bul fights. Arenas for theater based on kil ing.
The Paris card was of La Conciergerie, the legendary antechamber of the guil otine.
Berlin was a view of the bunker built by Hitler, the most famous failed artist in history.
Stockholm showed the main square, Stortorget, the site of the Stockholm Bloodbath.
But she couldn't make three of the cards fit the pattern of the others.
The Tivoli pleasure gardens in Copenhagen.
The Olympic stadium from the Athens games of 2004.
And that anonymous shopping street in Salzburg.
What did they have to do with death?
Dessie let the pictures fal to the bed again.
Was she imagining this pattern?
Was it foolish to try to give any sort of order to the way these sick bastards thought?
She stood up and went over to the window. The rain had given way to 141 mist and fog. Cars and bicycles were crossing Kongens Nytorv below her.
Why was she real y bothering? Jacob had left her. The newspaper hadn't been in touch for days now. No one missed her.
To be or not to be.
As if you could choose to live or die.
Could you? And in that case, what sort of life would it be?
She knew she could do just as she liked, continue digging around in this story or go home: get involved or let go. Quite regardless of what other people thought, and what they thought about her, what did she actual y want to do now?
She turned around and looked at the mess on the bed.
Jacob hadn't managed to contact the Austrian reporter. He had never gotten hold of a copy of the picture of the bodies in Salzburg either.
She walked toward her mobile phone, then picked it up and held it to her chest for a few seconds before dialing International Directory Inquiries.
A minute later the phone rang at the reception desk of the Kronen Zeitung.
"Ich suche Charlotta Bruckmoser, bitte," Dessie said.
Chapter 107
There were several clicks on the line, then the Austrian reporter was there.
Dessie introduced herself as a fel ow reporter from Stockholm.
"Before I start, I want to apologize for phoning and disturbing you," she said in her rusty schoolgirl German.
"I was the one who received the postcard and picture in Sweden," she explained. "I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions."
"I haven't got anything to say," the reporter said, but she didn't sound angry. Just watchful.
"I completely understand," Dessie said. "I know what you've been through."
"I read about the kil ings in Sweden," Charlotta Bruckmoser said, sounding slightly less guarded.
"Wel, here's something you might not know," Dessie said, and she told her story. About the photographs mimicking famous works of art, with a few exceptions; about the postcards of places where death and art mixed together, again with a few exceptions; about Jacob Kanon and his murdered daughter; about Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph, their alibis and Jacob's conviction that, in 142 spite of everything, they were the Postcard Kil ers.
The only thing she left out was the night in Jacob's room in the hostel.
Two sharp beeping sounds told her that someone was trying to cal her, but she ignored them.
Charlotta Bruckmoser was silent for a few moments after Dessie had finished speaking. "I haven't read any of this in the papers," she eventual y said.
"No," Dessie said, "and I doubt you could get confirmation of it from any official sources."
"What about you, what do you think?" the reporter asked cautiously. "Are the Rudolphs guilty?"
Dessie took a moment to reply.
"I real y don't know anymore."
Silence again.
"Why are you tel ing me this?" the Austrian woman asked.
Two more beeping sounds. Someone was keen to get hold of her.
"The pictures you received," Dessie said. "I'd real y like to see the pictures you received."
"I'l e-mail you the card and the letter and everything," Charlotta Bruckmoser said.
Ten seconds later there was a ping from Dessie's mailbox. The pictures were here!
There was blood al over the room, as if the victims had been crawling about while they bled to death. Two lamps had been broken. The bodies had fal en forward onto their sides and lay about a meter apart on the floor.