The Postcard Killers Read Online Free PDF

was crowded, and they had to take a number at the jeweler. Sylvia pulled the German woman over to
     the perfume department while the men picked out the right watch. They each bought a bottle of Dior’s J’adore.
    The woman let out a series of very cute squeals of joy when she opened her present.
    Sylvia took the opportunity to pop into a branch of Systembolaget, the state-owned chain that had a monopoly on selling alcohol
     throughout Sweden, and bought two bottles of Moët & Chandon.
    “This deserves a celebration,” Sylvia cooed, twining her arm around the German man’s waist. “I want to drink these with you,
     somewhere where we can be alone.”
    The German looked slightly confused but definitely interested.
    Sylvia laughed softly.
    “I mean all four of us,” she said. “Do you know anywhere we could go?”
    He looked at her full breasts and gulped audibly, then nodded.
    “We’re renting a house in the archipelago. Our rental car’s actually in a garage not far from here.”
    Sylvia kissed him on the lips then, letting her tongue play over his front teeth.
    “So what are we waiting for?” she whispered. “Let’s go to your house.”

Chapter 14
    THE NEWSROOM WAS NEARLY ABANDONED for lunch.
    Forsberg, the news editor, was sitting chewing the end off a ballpoint pen and reading telegrams. Out in the mail room, two
     twitchy forensic investigators had settled in to intercept any letters the killers might send.
    Dessie was sitting with a mass of printouts about the double murders throughout Europe over the past eight months spread out
     on her desk. She had been there since seven o’clock that morning and had been told to stay until the last postal delivery
     arrived, sometime in the late afternoon. She had agreed to put together a summary of the murders that another reporter could
     build a story on.
    The case in Berlin, the latest one, was deeply tragic to her.
    The killers had not been content merely to murder the Australians. They had also mutilated their bodies. It was not clear
     from the articles Dessie had found precisely what they had done to the couple.
    She picked up another printout and started making her way through the Spanish newspaper article.
    The killings in Berlin seemed to be a replica of those in Madrid, except for the bit about mutilation. An American couple,
     Sally and Charlie Martinez, had been found with their throats cut in their room in the Hotel Lope de Vega. They had been in
     Spain on their honeymoon.
    The postcard had been sent to the newspaper
El País
, and it was of the bullfighting arena Las Ventas.
    She leaned closer to the grainy printout.
    It looked like a round building with two towers with flags on top. Some cars and some pedestrians were in the picture. There
     was no information about what had been written on the back of the card.
    “How’s it going, Dessie? Have you caught them yet?”
    She put the printout down.
    “Jealous?” she asked, looking up at Alexander Andersson, the paper’s high-profile, sensationalist reporter.
    Andersson sat down on her desk and made himself comfortable. Dessie could hear her printouts getting crumpled beneath his
     backside.
    “I’ve been wondering about something,” he said smoothly. “Why did the killers send the card specifically to you?”
    Dessie opened her eyes wide in surprise, mocking Andersson.
    “God,” she said. “You really are quick. Did you come up with that question all on your own?”
    Andersson’s smile stiffened somewhat.
    “People don’t usually read anything you write,” he said. “It’s a bit of a surprise…”
    Dessie sighed and made up her mind not to get angry. She reached for a copy of that day’s paper. There was nothing about the
     postcard in it. Andersson walked away without saying anything else.
    The paper’s management, after serious pressure from the police, had decided not to publish the details. But Andersson had
     written a sloppy article about the murders around Europe. It