The Postcard Killers - James Patterson [35]
There it was! She recognized it immediately.
The Dying Dandy, oil on canvas, one and a half meters tall, almost two meters across. One of the most famous Swedish paintings of the last century.
Chapter 48
DESSIE STOPPED IN FRONT OF the painting, oddly moved.
It was an impressive creation, with its sweeping shapes and strong colors: the narcissistic man lies dying on his white cushion, a mirror still in his hand.
His equally affected friends are gathered around him. They’re mourning, but the only one in tears is the man in the purple jacket and orange shirt up in the left-hand corner.
The woman holding him and the white cushion on her lap looks almost amused.
There was no doubt about it now: this was the model for the murders on Dalarö.
The killers must have known the painting. Maybe they’d been here.
Maybe they’d stood exactly where she was standing now, pondering Dardel’s work: Was it an allegory about the act of creativity? Or was Dardel holding up a forbidden image of homosexuality?
A thought ran like fire through her brain. She took a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling, then felt the adrenaline kick in.
Up in one corner, right above the door, was a discreet surveillance camera.
Right now, her image was being captured somewhere.
She took out her mobile and called Gabriella at police headquarters.
Chapter 49
DESSIE WAS HOLDING UP THE color reproduction of Dardel’s masterpiece in one hand and the photograph from Dalarö in the other.
Her hunch had to be right. Jeez, she was better at this than the police!
Gabriella’s desk was covered with Jacob’s postcards and the photographs of the bodies. Beside them were pictures Dessie had printed from the Internet.
Gabriella looked at the pictures one by one, her eyes opening wider and wider.
“God,” she said, picking up the picture of the murdered Germans, “you’re right, Dessie.”
“Sorry,” said Jacob, “but what are you talking about?”
Dessie looked at his unruly mop of hair. He looked like he’d been quite literally tearing it out. Suddenly she felt so sorry for him, for his pain, his terrible loss.
“The killers arrange the bodies to imitate famous works of art,” she said. “Look at this one, Jacob.”
Dessie picked up the photograph from Paris. Emily and Clive Spencer’s bodies were sitting side by side in bed, both with their right hand over the left resting on their stomachs.
“The Mona Lisa,” she said, putting a copy of da Vinci’s masterpiece alongside the photograph.
Jacob clumsily grabbed the pictures, crumpling them slightly.
The mysteriously smiling woman on the painting was holding her right hand over her left and resting both on her stomach.
“Christ,” he said finally, “you’re right. That’s what they’ve been doing.”
“Karen and Billy Cowley,” Dessie said.
She put down the picture of the couple murdered in Berlin, showing them in profile, the side with their uninjured eye looking toward the camera.
Beside it she laid a printout of an Egyptian statue.
“The bust of Nefertiti, probably the most imitated work of art from Ancient Egypt. It’s in the Neues Museum in Berlin. The killers saw it there, I guarantee you.”
Gabriella leaned forward. Her face was flushed, two red marks glowing on her cheeks. Dessie glanced at her. They had been there, too, to the Neues Museum, on their first trip away together.
Jacob picked up the picture and studied it intently.
“What do you mean?” he asked Dessie. “What do their gouged-out left eyes have to do with it?”
“The bust of Nefertiti is missing its left eye,” Gabriella said. “Everyone knows that.”
Chapter 50
DESSIE WASN’T PARTICULARLY INTERESTED IN art. Hell, she hadn’t recognized the connection to The Dying Dandy. Not at first. But she was fairly knowledgeable about the theory, something she had picked up during her marriage to Christer, probably as a means of self-preservation. She hadn’t wanted to come across as an ignorant country girl from Norrland at the various openings. She hadn’t exactly felt any real emotion or joy from art, however.
Gabriella, on the other