The Postcard Killers - James Patterson [52]
So, to start with, they thought it was fun killing people, Jacob thought. Then that became routine as well. How would you like an axe through your skull? Would that be cool, or just half cool?
Mats Duvall and Sara Höglund were going through the log of the Rudolphs’ movements in Europe over the past six months.
Their passports showed that Malcolm and Sylvia Rudolph had landed at Frankfurt airport eight and a half months ago, October 1.
Since then, according to Malcolm, they had been traveling around, looking at paintings and enjoying life. They had kept within the part of the European Union governed by the Schengen Agreement — in other words the countries that no longer insisted you show a passport when you crossed between them. So they had no stamps to show where they had been.
The investigating team therefore had to look for that information elsewhere, which was more easily said than done.
Apparently neither of them owned a cell phone, so there were no calls that could be traced.
They each had a credit card, both Visa, which they very rarely used.
They had withdrawn cash with a credit card on two occasions — in Brussels on December 3, and in Oslo on May 6. A credit card had also been used to pay for Malcolm’s medical treatment in Madrid in February. On March 14 a hotel bill in Marbella in the south of Spain had been paid with Sylvia’s card, and on May 2 Malcolm had bought four theater tickets in Berlin with his. The cruise to Finland over the coming weekend was the last time the cards had been used.
Jacob followed the questioning out in the control room with his jaw clenched. Dessie was sitting next to him, just as absorbed in the interrogation as he was.
“The murders in Berlin took place on May second. Did they really go to the theater afterward?” she whispered, but he shushed her.
“To go back to our discussion about Stockholm,” Sara Höglund said on the screen. “Why did you decide to come here?”
Malcolm Rudolph gave a nonchalant shrug.
“It was Sylvia who insisted we come,” he said. “She’s interested in form and design, in the whole Scandinavian simplicity thing. Personally, I think it’s seriously overrated. I find it cold and impersonal and rather a bore.”
He yawned again. His grief at the death of his Dutch friends had evidently faded.
Mats Duvall adjusted his tie.
“You have to take this more seriously,” he said. “You were the last people to see Peter Visser and Nienke van Mourik alive. You were caught on the security cameras in the corridor. Don’t you realize what that means?”
Jacob leaned forward, inspecting the bored young man: Was the little shit just sitting there smiling? What did he know that the police clearly didn’t?
“We can’t have been the last people to see them alive,” Malcolm Rudolph said. “Because they were still alive when we left. Someone else killed them. Obviously. You can’t have looked at the recordings long enough.”
Sara and Mats glanced at each other, and their faces showed signs of alarm.
Had anyone actually watched the security recordings in their entirety? One would hope so, but it had been so chaotic. Sometimes things were missed or got messed up when a case was really hot.
They broke off the interrogation and ordered all of the security recordings from the Grand Hôtel to be taken out once more.
Chapter 78
NO ONE HAD WATCHED THE entire tapes. Or paid proper attention. It was a terrible mistake.
Now they were watching the tapes, though.
Tuesday afternoons in the middle of June weren’t exactly rush hour in the corridor on the fourth floor of the Grand Hôtel.
During the forty-three minutes that Sylvia and Malcolm Rudolph were inside room 418, two cleaners and a plumber went along the corridor outside.
A woman who had evidently forgotten something in her room ran in and then out again and back to the elevators.
At 3:02 the door to room 418 opened.
A triangle of light from inside the room fell on the floor and the wall opposite. The door stood open for a few seconds before Malcolm