The Snowman

by Jo Nesbo

  He smiled briefly, did as she said and stole a glance at her. Thought about her face when the freezer door fell open. But now her face revealed no fear or tension, just concentration. He put the phone in his jacket pocket and heard it clunk against his revolver.

  They got out of the car, crossed the road and opened the gate. The wet gravel sucked greedily at their shoes. Harry kept his eyes on the large window, watching for shadows and any movement toward the white wall.

  Then they were standing on the doorstep. Katrine glanced at Harry, who nodded. She rang the bell. A deep, hesitant ding-dong sounded from inside.

  They waited. No footsteps. No shadows against the wavy glass of the oblong window beside the front door.

  Harry moved forward and placed his ear against the glass, a simple and surprisingly effective way of monitoring a house. But he could hear nothing, not even the TV. He took three paces back, grabbed the eaves that protruded over the front steps, held on to the gutter with both hands and pulled himself up until he was high enough to see the whole of the living room through the window. On the floor sat a figure, legs crossed, with its back to him, wearing a gray coat. A pair of enormous headphones encircled the cranium like a black halo. A cable stretched from the headphones to the TV.

  “He can’t hear us because he’s got headphones on,” Harry said, dropping down in time to see Katrine grip the door handle. The rubber seal around the frame released the door with a sucking noise.

  “Seems we’re welcome,” Katrine said in a soft voice and entered.

  Caught unawares and quietly cursing, Harry strode in after her. Katrine was already by the living-room door, and opened it. She stood there until Harry came alongside. She stepped back, banged into a pedestal where a vase teetered perilously until it decided to stay upright.

  There were at least fifteen feet between them and the person still sitting with his back to them.

  On the screen a baby was trying to walk while holding the index fingers of a smiling woman. The blue light of the DVD player button shone under the TV. Harry experienced a moment of déjà vu, a sense that a tragedy was going to repeat itself. Exactly like this: silence, home movie of happy times with the family, the contrast between then and now, the tragedy that has already been played out and just needs a conclusion.

  Katrine pointed, but he had already seen it.

  The gun was lying behind the figure, between a half-finished puzzle and a Game Boy, and looked like a toy. A Glock 21, Harry guessed, feeling queasy as his body geared up and more adrenaline entered his bloodstream.

  They had a choice. Stay by the door, shout Becker’s name and risk the consequences of confronting an armed man. Or disarm him before he saw them. Harry placed a hand on Katrine’s shoulder and pushed her behind him while visualizing how long it would take for Becker to turn, pick up the gun, aim and fire. Four long strides would be enough, and there was no light behind Harry that would cast a shadow and too much light on the screen for him to be reflected there.

  Harry took a deep breath and set off. Placed his foot as gently as possible on the parquet floor. The back did not react. He was in the middle of his second stride when he heard the crash behind him. And knew instinctively it was the vase. He saw the figure spin around, saw Filip Becker’s agonized expression. Harry froze and the two of them stared at each other. The TV screen behind Becker went black.

  Becker’s mouth opened as if he wanted to say something. The whites of his eyes contained rivers of red, and his cheeks were puffy, as though he had been crying.

  “The gun!”

  It was Katrine shouting and Harry automatically lifted his eyes and saw her reflection in the dark screen. She was standing by the door, legs apart with her arms stretched out in front, her hands squeezed around a revolver.

  Time seemed to slow, to become a thick, shapeless material in which only his senses continued to function in real time.

  A trained policeman like Harry should have instinctively thrown himself to the ground and drawn his gun. But there was something else, something that was tardier than his instincts, but worked with greater power. Harry would later change his opinion, but at first he thought he acted as he did because of another déjà vu experience, the sight of a dead man on a floor struck by a police bullet because he knew he had reached the end of the road, that he didn’t have the energy to grapple with any more ghosts.

  Harry stepped to the right, into Katrine’s line of fire.

  He heard a smooth, oiled click behind him. The sound of the revolver hammer being uncocked, of the finger easing the pressure on the trigger.

  Becker’s hand was pressed against the floor near the pistol. His fingers and the flesh between them were white. Which meant that Becker was supporting his body weight on them. The other hand—his right—was holding the remote control. If Becker went for his gun with his right hand as he was sitting now, he would lose balance.

  “Don’t move,” Harry said loudly.

  Becker’s only move was to blink twice, as though wishing to erase the sight of Harry and Katrine. Harry moved forward calmly but efficiently. Bent down to pick up the gun, which was surprisingly light. So light that it would have been impossible for there to have been bullets in the magazine, he reflected.

  Harry stowed the gun in his jacket pocket, beside his own revolver, and crouched down. On the screen he could see Katrine’s gun pointed at them as she nervously shifted her weight from foot to foot. He stretched out a hand to Becker, who retreated like a timid animal, and removed the man’s headphones.

  “Where’s Jonas?” Harry asked.

  Becker scrutinized Harry as if he understood neither the situation nor the language.

  “Jonas?” Harry repeated. Then he shouted. “Jonas! Jonas, are you here?”

  “Shh,” Becker said. “He’s asleep.” His voice was somnambulant, as if he had taken tranquilizers.

  Becker pointed to the headphones. “He mustn’t wake up.”

  Harry swallowed. “Where is he?”

  “Where?” Becker angled his head and looked at Harry, seeming only then to recognize him. “In bed, of course. All boys have to sleep in their own beds.” His voice rose and fell as if he were quoting from a song.

  Harry plunged his hand down into his other jacket pocket and took out the handcuffs. “Put out your hands,” he said.

  Becker blinked again.

  “It’s for your own safety,” Harry said.

  It was a well-used line, one they drilled into you back at the police academy, and was primarily intended to relax arrestees. However, when Harry heard himself say it, he knew at once why he had stepped into the firing line. And it was not because of ghosts.

  Becker raised his hands to Harry as though in supplication, and the steel snapped shut around his narrow, hairy wrists.

  “Stay where you are,” Harry said. “She’ll take care of you.”

  Harry straightened up and went toward the doorway where Katrine stood. She had lowered her gun, and she smiled at him with a curious gleam in her eyes. The coals deep inside seemed to be smoldering.

  “Are you OK?” Harry asked in an undertone. “Katrine?”

  “ ’Course.” She laughed.

  Harry hesitated. Then he continued up the stairs. He remembered where Jonas’s room was, but opened the other doors first. Trying to delay the dreaded moment. Although the light was off in Becker’s bedroom, he could make out the double bed. The duvet had been removed from one side. As if he already knew that she would never return.

  Then Harry was outside Jonas’s room. He emptied his mind of thoughts and images before opening the door. An off-key assortment of delicate tinkles rang out in the dark, and even though he couldn’t see anything, he knew that the draft from the door had set off a small array of thin metal pipes, because Oleg had the same wind chimes hanging from the ceiling in his room. Harry went in and glimpsed someone or something under the duvet. He listened for breathing. But all he could hear was the tones continuing to vibrate, not wanting
to die away. He placed his hand on the duvet. And for a moment he was numb with horror. Even though there was nothing in this room that presented a physical danger, he knew what he was afraid of. Because someone else, his old boss Bjarne Møller, had once formulated it for him. He was afraid of his own humanity.

  Carefully, he pulled back the duvet from the body lying there. It was Jonas. In the dark he really did seem to be sleeping. Apart from his eyes, which were open and staring at the ceiling. Harry noticed a bandage on his forearm. He stooped over the boy’s half-open mouth and touched his forehead. And gave a start when he felt warm skin and a current of air against his ear. And heard a sleepy voice mumble: “Mommy?”

  Harry was completely unprepared for his own reaction. Perhaps it was because he was thinking of Oleg. Or perhaps because he was thinking of himself when once, as a boy, he woke up, thinking she was still alive, and charged into his parents’ bedroom in Oppsal and saw the double bed with the duvet removed from one side.

  Harry was unable to stem the flow of tears that suddenly welled up in his eyes, filling them until Jonas’s face blurred before him, and they ran down his cheeks, leaving hot trails before finding grooves that led them to the corners of his mouth and Harry became aware of his own salty taste.

  20

  DAY 17

  The Sunglasses

  It was seven o’clock in the morning when Harry unlocked Cell 23 in the custody block. Becker was sitting fully clothed on the prison bed, regarding him with a blank expression. Harry brought in the chair he had found in the duty room, sat astride it and offered Becker a cigarette from his crumpled Camel pack.

  “Hardly legal to smoke here,” Becker said.

  “If I were sitting here awaiting a life sentence,” Harry said, “I think I’d take the risk.”

  Becker just stared.

  “Come on,” Harry said. “You won’t find a better place for a sly puff.”

  The professor smirked and took the cigarette Harry had flipped out.

  “Jonas is fine, under the circumstances,” Harry said, taking out his lighter. “I’ve spoken to the Bendiksens, and they’ve agreed to have him with them for a few days. I had to argue with social services a bit, but they went for it. And we haven’t released news of your arrest to the press yet.”

  “Why not?” Becker asked, inhaling over the flame from the lighter with care.

  “I’ll come back to that. But I’m sure you understand that if you don’t cooperate I can’t continue to sit on the news.”

  “Aha, you’re the good cop. And the one who questioned me yesterday is the bad cop, right?”

  “That’s right, Becker, I’m the good cop. And I’d like to ask you a few questions off the record. Whatever you tell me will not and cannot be used against you. Are you with me on this?”

  Becker shrugged.

  “Espen Lepsvik, who interviewed you yesterday, thinks you’re lying,” Harry said, blowing blue cigarette smoke at the smoke alarm on the ceiling.

  “About what?”

  “When you said you only spoke to Camilla Lossius in the garage and then you left.”

  “It’s the truth. What does he think?”

  “What he told you last night. That you kidnapped, killed and hid her.”

  “That’s just crazy!” Becker erupted. “We were talking, that was all, and that’s the truth!”

  “Why are you refusing to tell us what you talked about?”

  “It’s a private matter. I’ve told you.”

  “And you admit that you called Idar Vetlesen the day he was found dead, but you regard that conversation as a private matter, too, I take it?”

  Becker cast around as if thinking there ought to be an ashtray somewhere. “Listen, I haven’t done anything illegal, but I didn’t want to answer any more questions without my lawyer being present. And he’s not coming until later today.”

  “Last night we offered you a lawyer who would have been able to come at once.”

  “I want to have a decent lawyer, not one of those … local government employees. Isn’t it time you told me why you think I’ve done something to this wife of Lossius’s?”

  Harry was taken aback by the phraseology: “This wife of Lossius’s.”

  “If she’s missing, you should arrest Erik Lossius,” Becker went on. “Isn’t it always the husband who does it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Harry said. “But he has an alibi; he was working at the time she disappeared. The reason you’re sitting here is that we think you’re the Snowman.”

  Becker’s jaw half dropped and he blinked as he had done in the living room on Hoffsveien the night before. Harry pointed to the spiraling cigarette smoke from between his fingers. “You’ll have to inhale a bit so we don’t set off the alarm.”

  “The Snowman?” Becker blurted. “That was Vetlesen, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” Harry said. “We know it wasn’t.”

  Becker blinked twice before bursting into laughter so dry and bitter that it sounded like coughing. “So that’s why you haven’t leaked anything to the press. They can’t find out that you’ve screwed up. And in the meantime you’re desperate to find the right man. Or a potential right man.”

  “Correct,” Harry said, sucking on his own cigarette. “And at the moment that’s you.”

  “ ‘At the moment’? I thought your role was to persuade me that you knew everything, so I might as well confess right away.”

  “But I don’t know everything,” Harry said.

  Becker scrunched up one eye. “Is this a trick?”

  Harry shrugged. “It’s just a gut instinct. I need you to convince me that you’re innocent. The short interview reinforced the impression that you’re a man with a lot to hide.”

  “I had nothing to hide. I mean, I have nothing to hide. And I just don’t see why I should tell you anything if I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Listen to me carefully, Becker. I don’t think you’re the Snowman or that you killed Camilla Lossius. And I think you’re a rational, thinking person. The kind who can appreciate that it will damage you less if you reveal private matters to me here and now rather than read in tomorrow’s papers that Professor Filip Becker has been arrested on suspicion of being Norway’s most notorious killer. Because you know that even if you were cleared and released the day after tomorrow, your name would be forever connected with these headlines. And your son’s.”

  Harry watched Becker’s Adam’s apple rise and fall in his unshaven neck. Watched his brain drawing the logical conclusions. The simple conclusions. And then it came, in an anguished tone that Harry initially thought was due to the unaccustomed cigarette.

  “Birte, my wife, was a whore.”

  “Eh?” Harry tried to conceal his astonishment.

  Becker dropped his cigarette on the floor, leaned forward and pulled a black notebook from his back pocket. “I found this the day after she disappeared. It was in her desk drawer, wasn’t even hidden. At first sight it looked quite innocent. Commonplace memoranda to herself and telephone numbers. It was just that when I checked the numbers with directory assistance, they didn’t exist. They were codes. But my wife wasn’t much good at writing in code, I’m afraid. It took me less than a day to crack them all.”

  Erik Lossius owned and ran Rydd & Flytt, a moving company that had found a niche in an otherwise less than lucrative market by dint of standardized prices, aggressive marketing, cheap foreign labor and contracts that demanded cash payment as soon as the vehicles were loaded up but before they left for their destination. He had never lost any money on a customer, because, among other things, the small print stated that any complaints regarding damage or theft had to be made within two days, which in practice meant that 90 percent of the fairly numerous complaints came too late and could therefore be dismissed. As far as the final 10 percent were concerned, Erik Lossius had devised routines to make himself inaccessible or to slow the usual procedures, which became so draining that even those who had lost plasma TVs or had had pianos
wrecked during the move gave up in the end.

  Erik Lossius had started in the industry at a young age with the former owner of Rydd & Flytt. The owner was a friend of Erik’s father, and his father had got him a job there.

  “The boy’s too restless to go to school and too smart to be a crook,” the father had said. “Can you take him?”

  As a salesman working on commission Erik soon distinguished himself with his charm, efficiency and brutality. He had inherited his mother’s brown eyes and his father’s thick curly hair and had an athletic build; women in particular decided not to collect quotes from other moving companies and signed on the spot. And he was intelligent and nifty with figures and ploys on the rare occasions the company was asked to bid for bigger jobs. The price was set low and the loss or damage excess set high. After five years the firm enjoyed a substantial profit and Erik had become the owner’s right hand in most areas of the business. However, during a relatively easy job just before Christmas—moving a table up to Erik’s new office next to the boss’s on the first floor—the owner had suffered a heart attack and dropped dead. In the days that followed, Erik comforted the owner’s wife as well as he was able—and he was well able—and a week after the funeral they agreed on an almost symbolic transfer sum that reflected what Erik had emphasized was “a little business in a less than lucrative market with high risks and nonexistent profit margins.” But, he asserted, the most important thing for him was that someone would carry on her husband’s life’s work. A tear glistened in his brown eyes as he said that, and she laid a trembling hand on his and said that he personally should visit her to keep her informed. With that Lossius became the owner of Rydd & Flytt and the first thing he did was to throw all the letters of complaint into the garbage, rewrite the contracts and send circulars to all the households in Oslo’s wealthy West End, where residents moved most frequently and were most price-sensitive.

  By the time Erik Lossius was thirty, he had enough money to buy two BMWs, a summer residence to the north of Cannes and a five-thousand-square-foot detached house somewhere in Tveita, where the high-rise flats he had grown up in didn’t block the sun. In short, he could afford Camilla Sandén.