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.
Chapter 116
Jacob was almost AS crumpled-looking and unshaven as he had been 155 the first time he stood outside Dessie's door.
She took a great leap into his arms, holding him t ight, tight, tight, as though she never meant to let go, kissing him hard and letting her hands roam inside his checkered flannel shirt.
"Dessie," Jacob whispered into her hair. "We're standing in the stairwel and you're not wearing any clothes."
Her towel had fal en to the floor. She kicked it into the apartment and pul ed him into the front hal way. The dirty duffel bag ended up under the telephone table, his jeans by the door, his shirt and T-shirt by the radiator.
They made it as far as the door to the living room before they col apsed to the floor. She fel into his bright blue eyes and felt him pushing inside her. The world spun and she closed her eyes, straining her head back against the wooden floor when she came.
"Jeezuz," Jacob said. "I guess that means you're happy to see me!"
"Just you wait," she said, nipping his earlobe with her teeth.
They stumbled into the bedroom. Dessie pushed him onto the bed and began to explore every inch of his body. She used her fingers, hair, and tongue, tasting and licking and caressing.
"Oh, god!" he panted. "What are you doing to me?"
"I'm just happy to see you," Dessie said. "What are you doing to me?"
Then she sat astride him.
She moved gently above him, deep and intense, forcing him to calm down, slow down. It gave her a chance to catch up, and when she felt the rush coming, she let go completely. He seemed to lose several seconds when he came, but she forced him to continue for another minute or so until she came as wel.
Then she fel into his arms and passed out.
Chapter 117
Dessie opened her eyes and looked deep into his bright blue ones. They crackled with a warmth that left her breathless. And more confused than ever.
"You're here," she whispered. "It wasn't a dream. I'm so glad. I'm happy."
He laughed. His teeth were white, a bit crooked. His hair was sweaty, sticking out in every direction. He sank back down on the bed and pul ed her to him.
"Why did you come back?" she asked.
He kissed her and then grew suddenly serious.
"Several reasons," he said. "You were the most important one."
She hit him playful y on the shoulder with her fist.
"Liar," she said.
"How did you make out in Denmark and Norway?" he asked.
She told him about the grotesque murders in the hotel in Copenhagen, about the mutilation of the bodies and the fact that the woman had probably been raped. They had found bruises and scratches on the inside of her thighs, and the semen in her vagina wasn't her husband's. It didn't seem to her like the Rudolphs' work.
She went on to tel him about the motor home death scene at the campsite outside Oslo, how neither the bodies nor the letters had been discovered because the reporter had been on vacation, and how the bodies had been arranged to look like Munch's The Scream.
"How did you get on in America?" she asked.
He gave her a summary of his investigations, tel ing her that the Rudolphs came from an extremely privileged background. That Sylvia had found their parents murdered when she was thirteen years old. That their guardian, Jonathan Blython, had embezzled their inheritance and been found dead with his throat cut. That Mac's girlfriend Sandra Schulman – whom Sylvia was jealous of – had disappeared after a visit to the Rudolphs' home. That the twins had set up an experimental art group, the Society of Limitless Art, and been expel ed from UCLA because of a public act of incest.
"A public act of incest?" Dessie said.
"They cal ed the work Taboo. The two of them made love in an exhibition hal."
"They real y are mad," Dessie said, pul ing him to her once more.
Chapter 118
Afterward, they sat in bed and ate an improvised lunch. Jacob was finishing one of her microwaved vegetarian lasagnas.
Dessie had taken her laptop back to bed and was reading Aftonposten's report of the deal that the lawyer, Andrea Friederichs, had negotiated for the rights to Sylvia and Malcolm's story.
"An advance of three and a half mil ion dol ars," she read, "plus royalties and even more money for the subsidiary sale of the book rights. And get this – the lawyer has decided not to charge for her services. She only represented them because it was the right thing to do, she says."