The Postcard Killers - James Patterson [46]
Naturally, they wanted to cooperate in any way they could to sort out the mix-up.
The premises of the Stockholm police had no rooms equipped with one-way mirrors. Instead, Jacob and Dessie, together with Gabriella and the rest of the investigative team, were shown into a control room where the recorded interview was being shown live.
Jacob’s hands were trembling, his mouth completely dry. There they were. After all the months spent searching, all the cities he’d been in.
He stood at the back of the room, worried that he might otherwise attack the television screens with his fists.
The fair-haired male, Malcolm Rudolph, was already sitting down, nervously rubbing his hands. He was stunningly handsome, no doubt about that.
Jacob couldn’t take his eyes off this man.
It was him, Jacob was sure of it. There he was: the bastard who had killed Kimmy.
The door of the interrogation room opened and Mats Duvall and Sara Höglund entered and sat down opposite the man.
Mats Duvall jabbered his way through the formalities about time and location. Then Sara Höglund leaned across the table and began the first interview.
“Malcolm,” she said calmly, “do you understand why you’re here?”
The young man bit his lip.
“The police at the Central Station had our pictures,” he said. “I guess you’ve been looking for us, that you think we’ve done something.”
“Do you know what?”
He shook his head. “No, not at all.”
“It’s about Nienke van Mourik and Peter Visser,” the head of the unit said. “They were found dead in their room in the Grand Hôtel this morning.”
Malcolm Rudolph’s face registered shock and alarm.
“That can’t be true,” he protested. “Nienke and Peter? But we just saw them, what, yesterday afternoon! We’re all going on a cruise to Finland together this weekend!”
Jacob let out a noise that sounded like a purr.
“So you maintain you don’t know anything about their deaths?” Höglund asked.
“Are they really dead?”
Malcolm Rudolph began to cry.
Chapter 67
THE YOUNG AMERICAN WAS SOBBING as if his heart were about to break, as if he had just lost his best friends in the world.
“And you think we had something to do with it? That we could have harmed Peter and Nienke? How could you even think that?”
Sara Höglund and Mats Duvall let him cry for a few minutes.
Then they asked if he wanted a lawyer present. They had to do this. He had the right to one under Swedish law, the same as in America.
The murder suspect merely shook his head. He didn’t need legal representation. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He couldn’t understand how anyone could suspect him of anything so terrible. The Dutch couple had been happy and full of life when he and Sylvia had left them in their hotel room the previous day.
What were they doing in the hotel room? Did they eat or drink anything?
“No,” Malcolm Rudolph said with a sniff. “Well, actually we did. Peter had a Coke that I drank a bit of.”
“No champagne?”
“Champagne? In the middle of the afternoon?” The question seemed to strike him as absurd.
“Did you smoke anything in their room? Marijuana, for instance?”
“Marijuana is illegal here, isn’t it? And Sylvia and I don’t smoke, anyway.”
He slumped down on the table and started crying again. The questions kept coming.
When did you arrive in Sweden?
How long have you been traveling in Europe?
Can you tell us about Peter and Nienke?
“They were so much fun, so nice. We were really looking forward to the trip to Finland with them. We had a great lunch at that place in the Old Town…”
The detectives’ questions bounced off him, many unanswered, then into the control room.
Where were you on November twenty-seventh last year?
December thirtieth?
January twenty-sixth this year? February ninth? March fourth?
The interrogation was stopped after just forty-three minutes. To be humane, and to be lawful.
Malcolm Rudolph was led away to a cell in Kronoberg Prison.
Chapter 68
JACOB HAD TO STOP HIMSELF from smashing his fist through the cement wall. He was