The Snowman (3 page)

‘Why do you think Norwegians are so sceptical about George Bush, Arve Støp?’

‘Because we’re an overprotected nation which has never fought in any wars. We’ve been happy to let others do it for us: England, the Soviet Union and America. Yes, ever since the Napoleonic Wars we’ve hidden behind the backs of our elder brothers. Norway has based its security on others taking the responsibility when things get tough. That’s been going on for so long that we’ve lost our sense of reality and we believe that the earth is basically populated by people who wish us – the world’s richest country – well. Norway, a gibbering, pea-brained blonde who gets lost in a backstreet in the Bronx and is now indignant that her bodyguard is so brutal with muggers.’

Harry dialled Rakel’s number. Aside from Sis’s, Rakel’s telephone number was the only one he knew off by heart. When he was young and inexperienced, he thought that a bad memory was a handicap for a detective. Now he knew better.

‘And the bodyguard is Bush and the USA?’ the host asked.

‘Yes, Lyndon B. Johnson once said that the US hadn’t chosen this role, but he had realised there was no one else, and he was right. Our bodyguard is a born-again Christian with a father complex, a drink problem, intellectual limitations and not enough backbone to do his military service with honour. In short, a guy we should be pleased is going to be re-elected President today.’

‘I assume you mean that ironically?’

‘Not at all. Such a weak president listens to his advisers, and the White House has the best, believe you me. Even though on that laughable TV series about the Oval Office one may have formed the impression that the Democrats have a monopoly on intelligence, it is on the extreme right wing of the Republicans, surprisingly enough, that you find the sharpest minds. Norway’s security is in the best possible hands.’

‘A girlfriend of a girlfriend has had sex with you.’

‘Really?’ said Harry.

‘Not you,’ Rakel said. ‘I’m talking to the other guy. Støp.’

‘Sorry,’ Harry said, turning down the radio.

‘After a lecture in Trondheim. He invited her up to his room. She was interested, but drew his attention to the fact that she’d had a mastectomy. He said he would give that some thought and went to the bar. And came back and took her with him.’

‘Mm. I hope expectations were fulfilled.’

‘Nothing fulfils expectations.’

‘No,’ Harry said, wondering what they were talking about.

‘What’s happening this evening?’ Rakel asked.

‘Palace Grill at eight is fine. But what’s all this rubbish about not being able to reserve tables in advance?’

‘It gives the whole place cachet, I suppose.’

They arranged to meet in the bar next door first. After they had rung off, Harry sat thinking. She had sounded pleased. Or bright. Bright and cheery. He tried to sense if he had succeeded in being pleased on her behalf, pleased that the woman he had loved so much was happy with another man. Rakel and he had had their time, and he had been given chances. Which he wasted. So why not be pleased that she was well, why not let the thought that things could have been different go, and move on with his life? He promised to try a bit harder.

The morning meeting was soon over. As head of Crime Squad,
Politioverbetjent
– POB for short – Gunnar Hagen ran through the cases they were working on. Which were not many, as for the time being there weren’t any fresh murder cases under investigation, and murder was the only thing that got the unit’s pulse racing. Thomas Helle, an officer from the Missing Persons Unit of the uniformed police, was present and gave a report on a woman who had been missing from her home for a year. Not a trace of violence, not a trace of the perpetrator and not a trace of her. She was a housewife and had last been seen at the nursery where she had left her son and daughter in the morning. Her husband and everyone in her closer circle of acquaintances had an alibi and had been cleared. They agreed that Crime Squad should investigate further.

Magnus Skarre passed on regards from Ståle Aune – Crime Squad’s resident psychologist – whom he had visited at Ullevål Hospital. Harry felt a pang of conscience. Ståle Aune was not just his adviser on criminal cases, he was his personal supporter in his fight against alcohol and the closest thing he had to a confidant. It was over a week since Aune had been admitted with some vague diagnosis, but Harry had still not overcome his reluctance to enter hospitals. Tomorrow, Harry thought. Or Thursday.

‘We have a new officer,’ Gunnar Hagen announced. ‘Katrine Bratt.’

A young woman in the first row stood up unbidden, but without offering a smile. She was very attractive. Attractive without trying, thought Harry. Thin, almost wispy hair hung lifelessly down both sides of her face, which was finely chiselled, pale and wore the same serious, weary features Harry had seen on other stunning women who had become so used to being observed that they had stopped liking or disliking it. Katrine Bratt was dressed in a blue suit that underlined her femininity, but the thick black tights under the edge of her skirt and her practical winter boots invalidated any possible suspicions that she was playing on it. She stood letting her eyes run over the gathering, as if she had risen to see them and not vice versa. Harry guessed that she had planned both the suit and this little first day appearance at Police HQ.

‘Katrine worked for four years at Bergen Police HQ dealing mainly with public decency offences, but she also did a stint at Crime Squad,’ Hagen continued, looking down at a sheet of paper Harry presumed was her CV. ‘Law degree from Bergen University 1999, Police College and now she’s an officer here. For the moment no children, but she’s married.’

One of Katrine Bratt’s thin eyebrows rose imperceptibly, and either Hagen saw this, or he thought this last scrap of information was superfluous, and added, ‘For those who may be interested . . .’

In the oppressive and telling pause that followed, Hagen seemed to think he had made matters worse, coughed twice, with force, and said that those who had not yet signed up for the Christmas party should do so before Wednesday.

Chairs scraped and Harry was already in the corridor when he heard a voice behind him.

‘Apparently I belong to you.’

Harry turned and looked into Katrine Bratt’s face. Wondering how attractive she would be if she made an effort.

‘Or you to me,’ she said, showing a line of even teeth but without letting the smile reach her eyes. ‘Whichever way you look at it.’ She spoke Bergen-flavoured standard Norwegian with moderately rolled ‘r’s, which suggested, Harry wagered, that she was from Fana or Kalfaret or some other solidly middle-class district.

He continued on his way, and she hurried to catch up with him. ‘Seems the
Politioverbetjent
forgot to inform you.’

She pronounced the word with a slightly exaggerated stress on all the syllables of Gunnar Hagen’s rank.

‘But you should show me round and take care of me for the next few days. Until I’m up and running. Can you do that, do you think?’

Harry eased off a smile. So far he liked her, but of course he was open to changing his opinion. Harry was always willing to give people another chance to wind up on his black list.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, stopping by the coffee dispenser. ‘Let’s start with this.’

‘I don’t drink coffee.’

‘Nevertheless. It’s self-explanatory. Like most things here. What are your thoughts on the case of the missing woman?’

Harry pressed the button for Americano which, in this machine, was as American as Norwegian ferry coffee.

‘What about it?’ Bratt asked.

‘Do you think she’s alive?’ Harry tried to ask in a casual manner so that she wouldn’t realise it was a test.

‘Do you think I’m stupid?’ she said and watched with undisguised revulsion as the machine coughed and spluttered something black into a white plastic cup. ‘Didn’t you hear the
Politioverbetjent
say that I worked at the Sexual Offences Unit for four years?’

‘Mm,’ Harry said. ‘Dead then?’

‘As a dodo,’ said Katrine Bratt.

Harry lifted the white cup. He pondered the possibility that he had just been allocated a colleague he might come to appreciate.

Walking home in the afternoon, Harry saw that the snow was gone from the pavements and streets, and the light, flimsy flakes whirling through the air were eaten up by the wet tarmac as soon as they hit the ground. He went into his regular music shop in Akersgata and bought Neil Young’s latest even though he had a suspicion it was a stinker.

As he unlocked his flat he noticed that something was different. Something about the sound. Or perhaps it was the smell. He pulled up sharp at the threshold to the kitchen. The whole of one wall was gone. That is, where early this morning there had been bright, flowery wallpaper and plasterboard, he now saw rust-red bricks, grey mortar and greyish-yellow studwork dotted with nail holes. On the floor was the mould man’s toolbox and on the worktop a note saying he would be back the following day.

He went into the sitting room, slipped in the Neil Young CD, glumly took it out again after a quarter of an hour and put on Ryan Adams. The thought of a drink came from nowhere. Harry closed his eyes and stared at the dancing pattern of blood and total blindness. He was reminded of the letter again. The first snow. Toowoomba.

The ringing of the telephone interrupted Ryan Adams’s ‘Shakedown on 9th Street’.

A woman introduced herself as Oda, said she was calling from
Bosse
and it was nice to talk to him again. Harry couldn’t remember her, but he did remember the TV programme. They had wanted him to talk about serial killers, because he was the only Norwegian police officer to have studied with the FBI, and furthermore he had hunted down a genuine serial killer. Harry had been stupid enough to agree. He had told himself he was doing it to say something important and moderately qualified about people who kill, not so that he could be seen on the nation’s most popular talk show. In retrospect, he was not so sure about that. But that wasn’t the worst aspect. The worst was that he’d had a drink before going on air. Harry was convinced that it had only been one. But on the programme it looked as if it had been five. He had spoken with clear diction; he always did. But his eyes had been glazed, his analysis sluggish and he hadn’t managed to draw any conclusions, so the show host had been forced to introduce a guest who was the new European flower-arranging champion. Harry had not said anything, but his body language had clearly shown what he thought about the flower debate. When the host, with a surreptitious smile, had asked how a murder investigator related to flower arranging, Harry had said that wreaths at Norwegian burials certainly maintained high international standards. Perhaps it had been Harry’s slightly befuddled, nonchalant style that had drawn laughter from the studio audience and contented pats on the back from the TV people after the programme. He had ‘delivered the goods’, they said. And he had joined a small group of them at Kunstnernes Hus, had been indulged and had woken up the next day with a body from which every fibre of his being screamed, demanded, had to have more. It was a Friday and he had continued to drink all weekend. He had sat at Schrøder’s and shouted for beer as they were flashing the lights to encourage customers to leave, and Rita, the waitress, had gone over to Harry and told him that he would be refused admission in the future unless he went now, preferably to bed. On Monday morning Harry had turned up for work at eight on the dot. He had contributed nothing useful to the department, thrown up in the sink after the morning meeting, clung to his office chair, drunk coffee, smoked and thrown up again, but this time in the toilet. And that was the last time he had succumbed; he hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol since.

And now they wanted him back on the screen.

The woman explained that the topic was terrorism in Arab countries and what turned well-educated middle-class people into killing machines. Harry interrupted her before she was finished.

‘No.’

‘But we would so much like to have you. You are so . . . so . . . rock ’n’ roll!’ She laughed, with an enthusiasm whose sincerity he could not be sure of, but he recognised her voice now. She had been with them at Kunstnernes Hus that night. She had been good-looking in a boring, young way, had talked in a boring, young way and had eyed Harry hungrily, as though he were an exotic meal she was considering; was he
too
exotic?

‘Try someone else,’ Harry said and rang off. Then he closed his eyes and heard Ryan Adams wondering why he missed her so much.

The boy looked up at the man standing beside him at the kitchen worktop. The light from the snow-covered garden shone on the hairless skin drawn tightly around his father’s massive skull. Mummy had said that Dad had such a big head because he was such a brain. He had asked her why she said he
was
a brain and not that he
had
a brain, and when she had laughed, she had stroked his forehead and said that was the way it was with physics professors. Right now the brain was rinsing potatoes under the tap and putting them straight into a pan.

‘Aren’t you going to peel the potatoes, Dad? Mummy usually –’

‘Your mother isn’t here, Jonas. So we’ll have to do it my way.’

He hadn’t raised his voice, yet there was an irritation that made Jonas cringe. He never quite knew what made his father so angry. Or, now and then, even
whether
he was angry. Until he saw his mother’s face with the anxious droop round the corners of her mouth, which seemed to make Dad even more irritable. He hoped she would soon be there.

‘We don’t use them plates, Dad!’

His father slammed the cupboard door and Jonas bit his bottom lip. His father’s face came down to his. The square, paper-thin glasses sparkled.

‘It’s those plates, not them plates,’ his father said. ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Jonas?’