The Snowman (46 page)

He went up the steps by the front door, opened the hatch of the bird box, put Rakel’s watch inside and closed it again. He had turned round to leave as the door behind him was wrenched open.

‘Harry!’

Harry spun round, swallowed and essayed a smile. Before him stood a man naked but for a towel around his waist.

‘Mathias,’ he said bewildered, staring at the other man’s chest. ‘You gave me a shock. Thought you’d be working at this time of day.’

‘Sorry,’ Mathias laughed, quickly crossing his arms. ‘I was working late last night. Day off today. I was on my way to the shower when I heard some noise at the door. I assumed it would be Oleg; his key sticks a bit, you see.’

Sticks, Harry mused. That must mean Oleg has the key he used to have. And that Mathias has Oleg’s. A woman’s mind.

‘Can I help you, Harry?’ Harry noticed that his crossed arms were unnaturally high up his chest, as though he were trying to hide something.

‘Nope,’ Harry said casually. ‘I was just driving by and had something for Oleg.’

‘Why didn’t you knock?’

Harry swallowed. ‘I suddenly realised he wasn’t back from school yet.’

‘Oh? How did you know that?’

Harry nodded to Mathias, as though bestowing approval for an apposite question. There wasn’t a shred of suspicion in Mathias’s friendly, open face, only a genuine desire to have something clarified that he couldn’t grasp.

‘The snow,’ Harry said.

‘The snow?’

‘Yes. It stopped snowing two hours ago, and there are no prints on the steps.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned, Harry,’ Mathias burst out enthusiastically. ‘Now that’s what I call applying deductive reasoning to your everyday life. You’re a detective all right, no question about that.’

Harry’s laughter was strained. Mathias’s crossed arms had sunk a little, and now Harry could see what Rakel must have meant by Mathias’s physical quirk. Where you expected to see two nipples the skin just continued, white and unbroken.

‘It’s hereditary,’ said Mathias, who had clearly been following Harry’s eyes. ‘My father didn’t have any, either. It’s rare but quite harmless. And what are we men supposed to do with them anyway?’

‘No, indeed,’ Harry said, feeling his earlobes go warm.

‘Would you like me to give the something to Oleg?’

Harry shifted his gaze. It settled instinctively on the bird box, then moved on.

‘I’ll drop it off another time,’ Harry said, grimacing in a way he hoped inspired trust. ‘You have a shower.’

‘OK.’

‘See you.’

The first thing Harry did when he got back into the car was to smack both hands on the wheel and curse aloud. He had behaved like a twelve-year-old pilferer caught red-handed. He had lied to Mathias’s face. Lied and crawled and been a shit.

He gunned the engine and let the clutch go with a jerk to punish the car. He didn’t have the energy to think about it now. Had to focus on other things. But he couldn’t and his mind was racing in a chaotic chain of associations as he tore down to Oslo city centre. He thought of blemishes, of flat, red nipples that looked like bloodstains on bare skin. Of bloodstains on untreated wood. And for some reason the mould man’s words came into his head: ‘The alternative would have been to paint the wall red.’

The mould man had bled. Harry half closed his eyes and visualised the cut. It must have been a deep cut to have made such a mess that . . . that the alternative would have been to paint the wall red.

Harry jumped on the brakes. He heard hooting, looked in the mirror and saw a Hiace sliding on new snow until the tyres got a grip and it skidded alongside him and past.

Harry kicked open the car door, leapt out and saw that he was by the stadium at the bottom of Holmenkollveien. He took a deep breath and broke his tower of thoughts into pieces, dismantled it to see if he could reassemble it. Rebuilt it quickly, without forcing any of the bits. For they slotted in by themselves. His pulse was accelerating. If this made credible sense, everything was turned upside down. And it all fitted, it fitted that the Snowman had planned how to infiltrate Harry and had just walked in off the street and made himself comfortable. And the bodies – that would explain what had happened to the bodies. Trembling, Harry lit a cigarette and started to try to reconstruct what he had seen in a flash. The chicken feathers with blackened edges.

Harry didn’t believe in inspiration, divine insights or telepathy. But he did believe in luck. Not the luck you were born with, but the systematic luck you earned through hard work and spinning yourself such a fine-meshed net that at some point chance would play into your hands. But this was not that kind of luck. This was just a fluke. An atypical fluke. If he was right of course. Harry looked down and discovered that he was wading through snow. That in fact – quite literally – he had his feet on the ground.

He walked back to the car, took out his mobile phone and rang Bjørn Holm’s number.

‘Yes, Harry?’ answered a sleepy, almost unrecognisable nasal voice.

‘You sound hung-over,’ Harry said, his suspicions alerted.

‘I wish,’ sniffled Holm. ‘Soddin’ cold. Freezing under two duvets. Ache all over –’

‘Listen,’ Harry interrupted. ‘Do you remember when I asked you to take the temperature of the chickens to find out how long it had been since Sylvia had been in the barn slaughtering them?’

‘Yes?’

‘And you said afterwards that one was warmer than the other two.’

Bjørn Holm sniffed. ‘Yes. Skarre suggested it had a temperature. A theory that’s perfectly plausible.’

‘I think it was warmer because it was killed after Sylvia was killed, in other words, at least an hour later.’

‘Oh? Who by?’

‘By the Snowman.’

Harry heard a long, loud snort as snot travelled backwards before Holm answered. ‘You mean she took Sylvia’s hatchet, went back and –’

‘No, it was in the forest. I should have reacted when I saw it, but of course I’d never heard of this cutting loop when we were there looking at the chicken carcasses.’

‘And what did you see?’

‘A sliced feather with a blackened edge. You see, I think the Snowman was using the cutting loop.’

‘Right,’ said Holm. ‘But why on earth would she kill a chicken?’

‘To paint the whole wall red.’

‘Eh?’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Harry said.

‘Shit,’ mumbled Bjørn Holm. ‘I suppose this idea means I have to get out of bed.’

‘Well . . .’ Harry began.

The snowy weather must have just been taking a breather, for at three it started again and thick, furry flakes began to sweep down over Østland. A grey glazed coat of slush lay on the E16 winding upward from Bærum.

At the highest point on the road, Sollihøgda, Harry and Holm turned off and skidded their way along the forest road.

Five minutes later Rolf Ottersen was standing in front of them in the doorway. Behind him, in the sitting room, Harry could see Ane Pedersen sitting on the sofa.

‘We just wanted to have another look at the barn floor,’ Harry said.

Rolf Ottersen pushed his glasses back up his nose. Bjørn Holm let out a rasping chesty cough.

‘Help yourselves,’ Ottersen said.

As Holm and Harry walked towards the barn Harry could feel that the thin man was still standing by the door watching them.

The chopping block was in the same place, but there was no sign of any chickens, living or dead. Leaning against the wall there was a spade with a pointed blade. To dig the ground, not to shovel snow. Harry headed for the tool board. The outline of the hatchet that should have been hanging there reminded Harry of the chalk outlines after bodies have been removed from crime scenes.

‘It’s my belief the Snowman came here and slaughtered the third chicken to spray blood over the floorboards. The Snowman couldn’t turn the boards and the alternative was to paint them red.’

‘You told me that in the car as well, but I’m still lost.’

‘If you want to hide red stains you can either remove them or paint everything red. I think the Snowman was trying to hide something. A clue.’

‘What kind of clue?’

‘Something red that’s impossible to remove because untreated wood soaks it up.’

‘Blood? She was trying to hide blood with more blood? Is that your idea?’

Harry snatched a broom and swept away the sawdust around the chopping block. He crouched down and felt Katrine’s revolver pressing into him under his belt. Studied the floor. There was still a pink glow.

‘Have you got the photos we took here with you?’ Harry asked. ‘Start checking the places where there was most blood. It was some way from the chopping block, around here.’

Holm took the photos from his bag.

‘We know that it was chicken blood on top,’ Harry said. ‘But imagine that the first blood that was spilt here had time to saturate the wood and be absorbed into it and therefore didn’t mix with the new blood that was poured on top a good while later. What I’m wondering is whether you can still get samples of the first blood, in other words, the blood that soaked into the wood?’

Bjørn Holm blinked in dismay. ‘What the fuck am I supposed to answer to that?’

‘Well,’ Harry said, ‘the only answer I will accept is yes.’

Holm responded with a prolonged fit of coughing.

Harry strolled over to the farmhouse. He knocked, and Rolf Ottersen came out.

‘My colleague will be here for a while,’ Harry said. ‘Would you mind if he popped in now and again to get warm?’

‘Fine,’ Ottersen said with reluctance. ‘What are you digging for now?’

‘I was going to ask you the same thing,’ Harry said. ‘I saw there was soil on the spade over there.’

‘Oh, that. Fence posts.’

Harry scoured the snow-covered ground stretching into the dense, dark forest. Wondering what it was Ottersen wanted to fence in. Or out. For he had seen it: the fear in Rolf Ottersen’s eyes.

Harry motioned towards the sitting room. ‘You’ve got a visitor . . .’ He was interrupted by a call on his mobile.

It was Skarre.

‘We’ve found another one,’ he said.

Harry stared into the forest and felt the large snowflakes melting on his cheeks and forehead.

‘Another what?’ he mumbled in response, even though he had already heard the answer in Skarre’s tone.

‘Another snowman.’

The psychologist Kjersti Rødsmoen contacted POB Knut Müller-Nilsen as he and Espen Lepsvik from Kripos were leaving the police station.

‘Katrine Bratt has talked,’ she said. ‘And I think you should come to the hospital to hear what she has to say.’

32

DAY 21.

The Tanks.

S
KARRE TROD IN THE TRACKS IN THE SNOW LEADING TO
the trees, ahead of Harry. Early-afternoon darkness presaged that winter was on its way. Above them flashed Tryvann communications tower, and below them twinkled Oslo. Harry had driven straight from Sollihøgda and parked in the large empty car park where school-leavers collected like lemmings every spring for the obligatory enaction of adult rituals of the species: cavorting round the fire, stupefying themselves with alcohol, and indulging in sex with wild abandon. Harry’s school-leaving celebrations had not included the prommers’ truck. He had had just two companions, Bruce Springsteen and ‘Independence Day’ which shrieked from his ghetto blaster on top of the German bunker on Nordstrand beach.

‘A walker found it,’ Skarre said.

‘And considered it necessary to report a snowman in the forest to the police?’

‘He had a dog with him. It . . . well . . . you’ll see for yourself.’

They emerged into open terrain. A young man straightened up on catching sight of Skarre and Harry and went towards them.

‘Thomas Helle, Missing Persons Unit,’ he said. ‘We’re glad you’re here, Hole.’

Harry sent the young officer a look of surprise, but saw that he really meant it.

On a hill in front of him Harry watched the Crime Scene Unit at work. Skarre crawled under the red police cordon and Harry stepped over. A path marked out where they were to walk so as not to destroy any forensic evidence that had not already been destroyed. The Crime Scene officers became aware of Harry and Skarre’s presence and silently moved aside to observe the newcomers. As if they had been waiting for this: a chance to display. To collate reactions.

‘Oh, shit,’ Skarre said, recoiling a step.

Harry felt his head go cold, as if all the blood had drained from his brain, leaving a numb, dead sensation of nothing.

It was not the details, because at first glance the naked woman did not seem to have been brutally mutilated. Not like Sylvia Ottersen or Gert Rafto. What scared the living daylights out of him was the construction, the studied, cold-blooded nature of the arrangement. The body sat on top of two large balls of snow that had been rolled up against a tree trunk, one on top of the other like an incomplete snowman. The body leaned against the tree but any sideways movement would have been prevented by a steel wire attached to the thick branch over her head. The wire ended in a rigid noose around her neck, bent in such a way that it touched neither her shoulders nor her neck, like a lasso frozen in motion as it falls perfectly over the victim. Her arms were tied behind her back. The woman’s eyes and mouth were closed, affording the face a peaceful expression; she could have been asleep.

It was almost possible to believe the body had been arranged with loving attention. Until the stitches on the naked, pale skin became evident. The edges of the skin under the nigh-on invisible thread were separated only by a fine, even join of black blood. One welt of stitches ran across her torso, just under her breasts. The other around her neck. Immaculate workmanship, Harry mused. Not a stitch hole visible, not a line askew.

‘Looks like that abstract art shite,’ Skarre said. ‘What’s it called?’