The Snowman (39 page)

She pushed him into a sitting position.

‘Can you see what this is?’ he heard her whisper.

But his mask had slipped sideways, he couldn’t see anything.

‘I don’t need to,’ he said. ‘I can smell it’s your cunt.’

The blow hit him over the temple. It was like a CD skipping, and when he had the sound back he was still sitting upright in bed. He could feel something running down between his cheek and the inside of his mask.

‘What the hell are you hitting me with?’ he shouted. ‘I’m bleeding, you madwoman!’

‘This.’

Arve Støp felt something hard pressed against his nose and mouth.

‘Smell,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it good? It’s steel and gun oil. Smith & Wesson. Smells like nothing else, doesn’t it? The smell of powder and cordite is even better. If you ever get to smell it, that is.’

Just a violent game, Arve Støp told himself. A role play. But there was something else, something in her voice, something about the whole situation. Something that put all that had happened in a new light. And for the first time in ages – so long ago he had to think back to his childhood, so long that intially he didn’t recognise the feeling – Arve Støp noticed: he was frightened.

‘Sure we shouldn’t fire her up?’ shivered Bjørn Holm, pulling the leather jacket round him more tightly. ‘When the Amazon came out she was well known for having a helluva heater.’

Harry shook his head and looked at his watch. Half past one. They had been sitting in Bjørn Holm’s car outside Katrine’s flat for over an hour. The night was blue-grey, the streets empty.

‘She was actually California white,’ Bjørn Holm continued. ‘Volvo colour number 42. Previous owner sprayed it black. Qualifies as a veteran car and all that now. Mere 365 kroner road tax a year. A krone a day . . .’

Bjørn Holm paused when he saw Harry’s warning look and instead turned up David Rawlings and Gillian Welch, which was the only new music he could tolerate. He had recorded it from a CD onto a cassette, not just so that it could play on the newly installed cassette player in the car, but because he belonged to that extremely small yet unbending faction of music lovers who opined that the CD had never managed to reproduce the cassette’s uniquely warm sound quality.

Bjørn Holm knew he was talking too much because he was nervous. Harry hadn’t told him any more than that Katrine had to be eliminated from some inquiries. And that Bjørn Holm’s daily grind for the next few weeks would be eased if he didn’t know the details. And being the peaceful, laid-back, intelligent person he was, Bjørn Holm didn’t try to cause any trouble. That didn’t mean he liked the situation though. He checked his watch.

‘She’s gone back to some guy’s place.’

Harry reacted. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘She’s not married after all. Wasn’t that what you said? Single women are like us single guys nowadays.’

‘And by that you mean?’

‘Four steps. Go out, observe the herd, select the weakest prey, attack.’

‘Mm, you need four steps?’

‘The first three,’ said Bjørn Holm, adjusting the mirror and his red hair. ‘Just prick-teasers in this town.’ Bjørn Holm had considered hair oil, but concluded it was too radical. On the other hand, perhaps that was just what was needed. Go the whole hog.

‘Fuck,’ Harry burst out. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

‘Eh?’

‘Wet shower cabinet. Perfume. Mascara. You’re right.’ The inspector had taken out his mobile, maniacally punched the numbers in and got an almost immediate answer.

‘Gerda Nelvik? This is Harry Hole. Are you still doing the tests? . . . OK. Anything on the preliminary results?’

Bjørn Holm watched as Harry mumbled two
mm
s and three
right
s.

‘Thank you,’ Harry said. ‘And I was wondering if any other officers had called earlier this evening and asked you the same . . . What? . . . I see. Yes, just ring me when the tests are finished.’

Harry rang off. ‘You can start the engine now,’ he said.

Bjørn Holm twisted the key in the ignition. ‘What’s the deal?’

‘We’re going to the Plaza Hotel. Katrine Bratt called the institute earlier this evening to ask about paternity.’

‘This evening?’ Bjørn Holm put his foot down and turned right towards Schous plass.

‘They’re running preliminary tests to establish paternity to ninety-five per cent probability. Then they’ll try to increase the certainty to ninety-nine point nine.’

‘And?’

‘It’s ninety-five per certain that the father of the Ottersen twins and Jonas Becker is Arve Støp.’

‘Holy moly.’

‘And I think Katrine’s followed your recommendations for a Saturday evening. And the prey is Arve Støp.’

Harry rang the Incident Room and asked for assistance as the old reconditioned engine roared through the night-still streets of Grünerløkka. And as they passed Akerselva A&E and skidded on the tramlines in Storgata, the heater was indeed blowing red-hot air on them.

Odin Nakken, a newspaper reporter at
Verdens Gang
, stood freezing on the pavement outside the Plaza Hotel cursing the world, people in general and his job in particular. As far as he could judge, the last guests were leaving the
Liberal
celebrations. And the last, as a rule, were the most interesting, the ones who could create the next day’s headlines. But the deadline was approaching; in five minutes he would have to go. Go to the office in Akersgata a few hundred metres away and write. Write to the editor that he was a grown-up now, that he was fed up with standing outside a party like a teenager, with his nose pressed against the windowpane staring in and hoping someone would come out and tell him who had danced with whom, who had bought drinks for whom, who had been in a clinch with whom. Write that he was handing in his notice.

A couple of rumours had been floating about that had been too fantastic to be true, but naturally they couldn’t print those. There was a limit, and there were unwritten rules. Rules to which, at least in his generation, journalists adhered. For what that was worth.

Odin Nakken took stock. There were only a couple of reporters and photographers still holding out. Or who had the same deadlines for celebrity gossip as his newspaper. A Volvo Amazon came hurtling towards them and pulled into the kerb with a squeal of brakes.

Out jumped a man from the passenger seat, and Odin Nakken immediately recognised him. He signalled to the photographer, and they ran after the police officer sprinting for the door.

‘Harry Hole,’ panted Nakken when he had caught up. ‘What are the police doing here?’

The red-eyed policeman turned to him. ‘Going to a party, Nakken. Where is it?’

‘Sonja Henie Room on the first. But I reckon it’s finished now, I’m afraid.’

‘Mm. Seen anything of Arve Støp?’

‘Støp went home early. What do you want with him?’

‘No. Was he alone?’

‘To all outward appearances.’

The inspector pulled up sharply and turned to him. ‘What do you mean?’

Odin Nakken angled his head. He had no idea what this was about, but he was in no doubt that there was something.

‘A rumour was going round that he was negotiating with a pretty foxy lady. With fuck-me eyes. Nothing we can print, more’s the pity.’

‘So?’ growled the inspector.

‘A woman answering the description left the party twenty minutes after Støp. She got into a taxi.’

Hole was soon walking back the same way he had come. Odin hung on his coat-tails.

‘And you didn’t follow her, Nakken?’

Odin Nakken ignored the sarcasm. It was water off a duck’s back. Now.

‘She wasn’t a celebrity, Hole. A celeb shagging a non-celeb is non-news, if I can put it like that. Unless the lady decides to talk, of course. And this one’s long gone.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Slim, dark. Good-looking.’

‘Clothes?’

‘Long black leather coat.’

‘Thanks.’ Hole jumped into the Amazon.

‘Hey,’ Nakken shouted. ‘What do I get in return?’

‘A good night’s sleep,’ Harry said. ‘The knowledge that you’ve helped to make our town a safer place.’

Grimacing fiercely, Odin Nakken watched the old boar of a car embellished with rally stripes accelerate away with a throaty roar of laughter. It was time to get out of this. Time to hand in his notice. It was time to grow up.

‘Deadline,’ the photographer said. ‘We’ll have to go and write this shit up.’

Odin Nakken heaved a sigh of resignation.

Arve Støp stared into the darkness of the mask wondering what she was doing. She had dragged him into the bathroom by the handcuffs, pressed what she claimed was a revolver against his ribs and ordered him into the bath. Where was she? He held his breath and heard his heart and a crackling electric hum. Was one of the neon tubes in the bathroom on its way out? The blood from his temple had reached the corner of his mouth; he could taste the sweet metallic tang with the tip of his tongue.

‘Where were you the night Birte Becker went missing?’ Her voice came from over by the sink.

‘Here in my flat,’ Støp answered, trying to think. She had said she was from the police and then he remembered where he had seen her before: in the curling hall.

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the night Sylvia Ottersen was killed?’

‘The same.’

‘Alone all evening without talking to anyone?’

‘Yes.’

‘So no alibi?’

‘I’m telling you I was here.’

‘Good.’

Good? thought Arve Støp. Why was it good that he didn’t have an alibi? What was it she wanted? To force a confession out of him? And why did it sound as if the electric hum was getting louder as she came closer?’

‘Lie down,’ she said.

He did as instructed and felt the cold bath enamel sting the skin of his back and thighs. His breath had condensed on the inside of the mask, made it wet, made it even more difficult to breathe. Then the voice was there again, close by now.

‘How do you want to die?’

Die? She was out of her mind. Insane. Stark raving mad. Or was she? He told himself to keep a clear head; she was just trying to frighten him. Could Harry Hole be behind this? Could it be that he had underestimated the drunken sot of a policeman? But his whole body was shaking now, shaking so much that he could hear his Tag Heuer watch clink against the enamel, as if his body had accepted what his brain still had not. He rubbed the back of his head against the bottom of the bath, trying to straighten the pig mask so that he could see through the small holes. He was going to die.

That was why she had put him in the bath. So that there wouldn’t be so much mess, so all the traces could be quickly removed. Rubbish! You’re Arve Støp and she’s with the police. They know nothing.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Lift up your head.’

The mask. At last. He did as she said, felt her hands touch his forehead and at the back, but she didn’t loosen the mask. Something thin and strong tightened around his neck. What the fuck? A noose!

‘Don’t . . .’ he began, but his voice died as the noose pressed against his windpipe. The handcuffs rattled and scraped against the bottom of the bath.

‘You killed them all,’ she said and the noose was tightened a notch. ‘You’re the Snowman, Arve Støp.’

There. She had said it out loud. The lack of blood to his brain was already making him dizzy. He shook his head frantically.

‘Yes, you are,’ she said, and as she jerked it felt as if his head was being severed. ‘You’ve just been appointed.’

The darkness came all of a sudden. He raised a leg and let it fall again, the heel of his foot banged impotently against the bath. A hollow boom reverberated around.

‘Do you know that rushing sensation, Støp? It’s the brain not getting sufficient oxygen. Quite wonderful, isn’t it? My ex-husband used to jerk himself off while I had him in a stranglehold.’

He tried to scream, tried to force the little air that was left in his body past the iron grip of the noose, but it was impossible. Jesus, didn’t she even want a confession? Then he felt it. A slight swishing sound in his brain, like the hiss of champagne bubbles. Was that how it would happen? So easy. He didn’t want it to be easy.

‘I’m going to hang you in the living room,’ said the voice by his ear as a hand affectionately patted his head. ‘Facing the fjord. So that you have a view.’

Then came a thin peeping sound, like the alarm on one of those heart monitors you see in films, he thought. When the curve flattens out and the heart no longer beats.

26

DAY 20.

The Silence.

H
ARRY PRESSED
A
RVE
S
TØP’S DOORBELL AGAIN.

A night owl, minus prey, was walking over the canal bridge peering down at the black Amazon parked in the middle of the car-free square in Aker Brygge.

‘Not gonna open up if he’s got a dame there, I s’pose,’ Bjørn Holm said, looking up at the three-metre-high glass door.

Harry pressed the other doorbells.

‘Those are just offices,’ Bjørn Holm said. ‘Støp lives alone at the top. I’ve read that.’

Harry looked around.

‘No,’ said Holm, who had guessed what he was thinking. ‘It won’t work with the crowbar. And the steel glass is unbreakable. We’ll have to wait until the careta— . . .’

Harry was on his way back to the car. And this time Holm was unable to follow the inspector’s train of thought. Not until Harry got into the driver’s seat and Bjørn remembered the key was still in the ignition.

‘No, Harry! No! Don’t . . .’

The remainder was drowned in the roar of the engine. The wheels spun on the rain-slippery surface before gaining purchase. Bjørn Holm stood waving in the road, but caught a glimpse of the inspector’s eyes behind the wheel and leapt out of the way. The Amazon’s bumper hit the door with a muffled crash. The glass in the door turned to white crystals as for one noiseless second it hovered in the air before tinkling to the ground. And before Bjørn could gauge the extent of the damage Harry was out of the car and striding through the now glassless entrance.