The Postcard Killers - James Patterson [86]
The closest airport was in Luleå, and the last flight that evening was an SAS plane, leaving Arlanda at 9:10.
She looked at her watch.
It was nine o’clock exactly.
The airport was forty-five kilometers away.
The first plane the next morning was a Norwegian Air Shuttle, due to leave at 6:55.
“We can be in Luleå at 8:20,” Dessie said. “Then we have to rent a car and drive up to the border. It’s another hundred and thirty kilometers away.”
Jacob stared at her.
“Do you know any police up there? Or some customs officer who can keep an eye on things until we get there?”
“No,” she said, “but I can call Robert. He lives in Kalix. It’s a forty-five-minute drive from the border.”
“Robert?”
She smiled, a smile that was almost a grimace.
“My criminal cousin. The big one who protected me when I was a kid. And even now.”
Jacob ran his fingers through his hair and paced quickly around the coffee machine.
“How long would it take to drive up there?” he asked. “If we leave now.”
She looked at her watch again.
“If we go for it, and the road isn’t full of trailers and lumber trucks, we’ll be there by six.”
He slapped the wall with his hand, nearly putting a hole in it.
“That’s not good enough,” he said.
“If Robert keeps an eye on things, they won’t get through,” she said. “A blue Mercedes, registration TKG two-nine-seven, wasn’t it?”
He looked at her, fire in his eyes.
“Have you got access to a car?”
“No,” she said, “but I’ve got a bicycle.”
She waved her American Express card.
“We’ll rent one, you idiot.”
Chapter 127
Thursday, June 24
Norrland, Sweden
IT WAS PAST ONE o’clock in the morning when Dessie sailed past the town of Utansjö. She had driven almost five hundred kilometers and needed to get petrol, drink coffee, and go to the bathroom. Not in that order actually.
She glanced at Jacob in the reclined seat next to her as he slept the comatose sleep of the jet-lagged. The diesel would last until they got to the twenty-four-hour truck stop in Docksta, but she had a much better idea.
It would mean a slight detour, but it might be worth the trouble.
She reached the turning to Lunde, hesitated just for a second, and then headed left along Route 90.
The car’s rhythm changed and the very poor road surface made Jacob stir.
“What the hell…?” he said, confused, as he sat up straight. “Are we there?”
He looked around, astonished, at the early dawn light. Mist was lying in thin veils on the water, black fir trees reached up to the heavens, several deer fled across the fields.
“We’re exactly halfway to Haparanda,” Dessie said. “Those are reindeer, by the way.”
He looked at his watch.
“This whole midnight sun thing is pretty fucked up,” he said, shaking his watch. “And the reindeer, too. Where’s Santa?”
Dessie slowed the car and pointed ahead.
“See that?” she said. “Wästerlunds Bakery. I lost my virginity in the parking lot around the back.”
This nugget of information woke him up properly.
“So these are your old stomping grounds? Interesting. You’re really a hick.”
“Until I was seventeen. I spent a year at Ådal high school in Kramfors, then went to New Zealand as an exchange student. I ended up staying there nine years.”
Jacob looked at her.
“Your weird English accent,” he said. “I’ve been trying to place it. Why New Zealand?”
She glanced over at him.
“It was as far away as I could get… from being a hick. See that? There’s the memorial to the workers who were shot by the military in nineteen thirty-one. Remember our talk, fascist?”
She pointed to a sculpture of a horse and a running man that was just visible down by the water.
They drove up onto Sandö Bridge, and Jacob peered down at the river below.
“When it was built, this was the longest single-span concrete bridge in the world. I had to cross it every day to get to school.”
“Lucky you,” Jacob said.
“It scared me every single time, every day, twice a day. The bridge collapsed once, killing eighteen people. The most forgotten tragedy of the last century, because it happened on the afternoon of August thirty-first, nineteen thirty-nine.