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a few meters. It would probably be there for weeks before anyone noticed it.
    The free bus to the airport’s terminal buildings was almost empty. Sylvia sat on one of the seats, Mac standing beside her,
     wearing the backpack. No one paid any attention to them. Why should they?
    They got off at International Terminal 5 and went straight to the departure hall.
    Sylvia had managed to get a fair ways ahead before she noticed that Mac wasn’t right behind her. Now where was he?
    She turned all the way around and saw him standing and looking up at one of the large screens where departures were listed.
    She hurried back quickly.
    “Darling,” she whispered, sidling up to him. “What are you doing?”
    Mac’s light gray eyes were staring fixedly at the flashing destinations.
    “We could take a plane,” he said.
    Sylvia put her tongue in his ear.
    “Come on, baby,” she said in a low voice. “We’ve got lots left to do. Today is party time!”
    “We could go home,” Mac said. “We could stop this game of ours now. Quit while we’re ahead. Retire as legends.”
    She wound her arm around his waist and blew softly on his neck.
    “The train leaves in four minutes,” she said. “You. Me. We’re on it.”
    He let her lead him off to the escalators, down into the underground, and out onto the platform. Only when the doors had closed
     and the express train had set off for the center of Stockholm did Sylvia let go of him.
    “Legends,” she said, “always die young. But not us.”

Chapter 17
    Sunday, June 13
    A UNIFORMED SECURITY GUARD STOOD up in a glass cubicle over to Jacob’s left. He pressed a button and said something incomprehensible
     in a metallic loudspeaker voice.
    “I don’t speak Swedish,” Jacob said. “Can you tell Dessie Larsson that I’m here?”
    “What about?”
    “The postcard killings,” he said, holding up his New York police badge. “I’m homicide.”
    The man pulled his stomach in and yanked up his baggy trousers.
    “Take a seat for a moment.”
    He gestured toward the row of wooden benches over by the door.
    The stone floor of the
Aftonposten
lobby was slippery from the rain outside.
    Jacob slid a couple of steps before getting his balance back, along with his dignity. He straightened his shoulders, wondering
     if perhaps he was not entirely sober yet.
    With a groan, he sank onto the nearest bench. It was hard and cold.
    He had to pull himself together. Never before, never during all those years raising Kimmy, had he let himself sink this low.
     The previous day had vanished in a haze of vodka and aquavit. The Swedes also had something they called
brännvin
, a spirit made from potatoes that was pure dynamite.
    Hoping he wasn’t about to be sick, he rested his head in his hands.
    The killers weren’t far away. Even though he felt hazy about many things, he could sense their proximity.
    They were still walking the city’s streets, hiding in the rain, and had probably already found their next victims—if they
     hadn’t already dealt with them…
    Jacob shivered slightly and realized how cold and wet he was. His hands were filthy. There was no shower in his room in the
     youth hostel where he was staying, and he hadn’t bothered trying to find the shared bathroom. The building depressed him.
     It was an old prison, and his room was a cell from the 1840s, which he was sharing with a Finnish poet. He and the poet had
     squeezed onto the lower bunk of the bed and drunk their way through the vodka, aquavit, and
brännvin
, and afterward the poet had gone into the city to dance the tango somewhere.
    Jacob had spent the night throwing up into the wastepaper basket and feeling miserable. There wasn’t enoughalcohol in the whole of the country to drown his thoughts about Kimmy and her murder.
    He beat on his forehead with his fists.
    Now that he was so close to the bastards, his own failings were overtaking him.
    He got gingerly to his feet and set off toward the glass cubicle again. The