Jacob stood up.

"We've got to knock a hole in their defense," he said. "We've got to continue to provoke them into making mistakes."

He stopped in front of Sara Hoglund.

"Let me question them," he said. "Let Dessie interview them. Let us talk to them both together."

Sara Hoglund got to her feet.

"You're not exactly the shy, retiring type, are you? What makes you think that a reporter on the evening paper and a desperate father would be better at breaking down criminals than experienced murder investigators?"

"With al due respect," Jacob said, forcing himself to sound calm and col ected, "you aren't the only murder cops in this room. And I'm American.

You don't pick up the nuances in the language."

"And Dessie Larsson can?"

"She's written a doctoral thesis on criminology. In English. Have you?"

Dessie stood up as wel.

"I've done it before," she said in a quiet voice.

Jacob and Sara Hoglund looked at her in surprise.

"I've interviewed criminals during ongoing investigations," she said.

"Without pen and paper, or a tape recorder, of course, and under police supervision, but it wouldn't be the first time."

"What do we stand to gain from it?" Mats Duval asked. "Please tel me that."

"What do you stand to lose?" asked Jacob.

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.

Chapter 81

IT was already afternoon when Malcolm and Sylvia were led separately into the interrogation room where Dessie and Jacob sat waiting for them.

Sylvia gave a smal squeal of delight when she saw her brother.

They gave each other an emotional hug before the officers escorting them pul ed them apart.

Dessie had expected to be nervous before the meeting, but her anger and determination had pushed aside most feelings of that sort. She was quite convinced that the Rudolphs were the Postcard Kil ers.

Now she and Jacob had to pul the rug out from under them. Somehow.

But where to begin?

She studied each of them. They real y were strikingly attractive. Malcolm was trim but also muscular, and in al the right places. Dessie guessed that he must have swal owed a good number of anabolic steroids. Sylvia was extremely thin, but her breasts were plump and round. Silicone, of course.

The man had much fairer skin and hair than his sister, but they had the same eyes: the same shade of light gray, with long eyelashes that only added to their al ure and magnetism.

They were clearly overjoyed to see each other again. They settled down side by side on the other side of the table and seemed relaxed and happy to be there.

Dessie realized immediately that they hadn't recognized her.

They'd never seen a picture byline of her in the paper, and they evidently hadn't Googled her picture before they sent the postcard to her at Aftonposten.

Dessie and Jacob let the pair settle in, and they did not introduce themselves. Their expressions were completely neutral and they didn't take the initiative.

The siblings smiled contentedly and looked around the room. They were considerably more alert now than they had been during their questioning that morning. The change of questioners had evidently livened them up. 109 "So," Sylvia said, "what shal we talk about now?"

Dessie didn't change her expression.

"I've got a few questions about your interest in art," she said, and the brother and sister stretched their backs and smiled even more confidently.

"How nice," Sylvia said. "What are you wondering about? How can we help?"

"Your attitude toward art and reality," Dessie said. "I'm thinking about the murders in Amsterdam and Berlin, for instance. The kil ers mimicked two real people, Nefertiti and Vincent van Gogh."

Both Sylvia and Malcolm looked at her, a little wide-eyed. Their contented expressions were replaced by one of watchful interest.

"I'l explain," Dessie said. "It isn't at al clear that the Egyptian queen Nefertiti was missing her left eye. It's just that the bust of her in the Neues Museum is. Yet you stil took out Karen's and Bil y's eyes. I suppose you chose to imitate the art and not the person, didn't you?"