The Snowman

by Jo Nesbo

  He went to the place where the floorboards had absorbed the blood and crouched down.

  If the Snowman had killed the last chicken, why had he used the loop and not the hatchet? Simple. Because the hatchet had disappeared in the depths of the forest somewhere. So this must have happened after the murder. He had come all the way back here and slaughtered a chicken. But why? A kind of voodoo ritual? A sudden inspiration? Bullshit—this killing machine stuck to the plan, followed the pattern.

  There was a reason.

  Why?

  “Why?” Katrine asked.

  Harry hadn’t heard her come in. She stood in the doorway of the barn, the light from the solitary bulb falling on her face, and she was holding up two plastic bags containing Q-tips. Harry shuddered to see her standing like that again, in a doorway with her hands pointing in his direction. Just like at Becker’s. But there was something else, another realization, too.

  “As I said,” Harry mumbled, studying the pink residue, “I think this is about family relationships. About covering things up.”

  “Who?” she asked and moved toward him. The heels of her boots clicked on the wooden floor. “Who have you got in mind?”

  She crouched down beside him. Her masculine perfume wafted past him, rising from her warm skin into the cold air.

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “This is not systematic processing; this is an idea you’ve had. You’ve got a theory,” she stated simply and ran her right index finger through the sawdust.

  Harry held back. “It’s not even a theory.”

  “Come on, out with it.”

  Harry took a deep breath. “Arve Støp.”

  “What about him?”

  “According to Arve Støp, he went to Idar Vetlesen for medical help with his tennis elbow. But, according to Borghild, Vetlesen didn’t have any records for Støp. I’ve been asking myself why that might be.”

  Katrine shrugged. “Perhaps it was more than an elbow. Perhaps Støp was afraid it might be documented that he was having cosmetic surgery.”

  “If Idar Vetlesen had agreed not to keep records for all the patients who were afraid of that, he wouldn’t have had a single name in his files. So I thought it had to be something else, something that really couldn’t bear close scrutiny.”

  “Like what?”

  “Støp was lying on Bosse. He said there was no madness or hereditary illness in his family.”

  “And there is?”

  “Let’s assume there is, as a theory.”

  “The theory that’s not even a theory?”

  Harry nodded. “Idar Vetlesen was Norway’s most secret expert on Fahr’s Syndrome. Not even Borghild, his own assistant, knew about it. So how on earth did Sylvia Ottersen and Birte Becker find their way to him?”

  “How?”

  “Let’s assume Vetlesen’s specialty was not hereditary illness but discretion. After all, he said himself that’s what his business was founded on. And that was why a patient and friend went to him and said he had Fahr’s Syndrome, a diagnosis that he had been given somewhere else, by a real specialist. But this specialist did not have Vetlesen’s expertise in discretion, and this was something that had to be kept secret. The patient insisted, perhaps paid extra for it. Because this person could really pay.”

  “Arve Støp?”

  “Yes.”

  “But he’s already been diagnosed by someone and that might leak out.”

  “This is not what Støp is primarily afraid of. He’s afraid that it could come to light that he goes there with his offspring. Whom he wants checked to see if they have the inherited illness. And this has to be treated with the utmost confidentiality because no one knows they’re his children. In fact there are some people who believe them to be their own. As indeed Filip Becker thought he was Jonas’s father. And …” Harry nodded toward the farmhouse.

  “Rolf Ottersen?” Katrine whispered, breathless. “The twins? Do you think”—she lifted the plastic bags—“that they have Arve Støp’s genes?”

  “Possibly.”

  Katrine looked at him. “The missing women … the other children …”

  “If the DNA test shows that Støp is the father of Jonas and the twins, we’ll do tests on the children of the other missing women on Monday.”

  “You mean … that Arve Støp has been bonking his way around Norway? Impregnating a variety of women and then killing them years after they’ve given birth?”

  Harry rolled his shoulders.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “If I’m right, we’re talking about madness, of course, and this is pure speculation. There’s often a pretty clear logic behind madness. Have you heard about Berhaus seals?”

  Katrine shook her head.

  “The father of the species is cold and rational,” Harry said. “After the female has given birth to their young and it has survived the first critical phase, the father tries to kill the mother. Because he knows she won’t want to breed with him again. And he doesn’t want other young seals to compete with his own offspring.”

  Katrine seemed to be having trouble absorbing this.

  “It’s madness, yes,” she said. “But I don’t know what’s more insane: thinking like a seal or thinking that someone’s thinking like a seal.”

  “As I said”—Harry stood up with an audible creak of his knees—“it’s not even a theory.”

  “You’re lying,” she said, peering up at him. “You’re already certain that Arve Støp’s the father.”

  Harry responded with a crooked smile.

  “You’re as crazy as I am,” she said.

  Harry subjected her to a searching gaze. “Let’s get going. The institute is waiting for your Q-tips.”

  “On a Saturday?” Katrine ran her hand over the sawdust, smoothing over her doodles, and stood up. “Haven’t they got a life?”

  After delivering the plastic bags to the institute and receiving a promise that they would get back to him that evening or early the following morning, Harry drove Katrine home to Seilduksgata.

  “No lights on in the windows,” Harry said. “On your own?”

  “Good-looking girl like me?” She smiled, grasping the door handle. “Never on my own.”

  “Mm. Why didn’t you want me to tell your colleagues at the Bergen Police Station that you were there?”

  “What?”

  “Thought they would be amused to hear you were working on a big murder case in the capital.”

  She shrugged and opened the door. “Bergensians don’t think of Oslo as a capital. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Harry drove to Sannergata.

  He wasn’t certain, but he thought he had seen Katrine stiffen. But what could you be certain of? Not even a click, which you took to be a gun being cocked but turned out to be a girl cracking a dry twig out of sheer fright. He couldn’t pretend any longer, though, couldn’t pretend he didn’t know. Katrine had pointed her service revolver at Filip Becker’s back that evening. And when Harry had stepped into her firing line he had heard the sound, the sound he had thought he heard when Salma cracked a twig in the yard. It was the lubricated click of a revolver hammer being released. Which meant that it had been raised, that Katrine had squeezed the trigger more than two-thirds of the way and that the gun could have gone off at any time. She had meant to shoot Becker.

  No, he couldn’t pretend. Because the light had fallen on her face in the doorway to the barn. And he had recognized her. And, as he had said to her, this was all about family relationships.

  POB Knut Müller-Nilsen loved Julie Christie. So much that he had never dared to tell his wife the whole truth. However, since he suspected her of having an extramarital affair with Omar Sharif, he didn’t feel too guilty as he sat beside her, devouring Julie Christie with his eyes. The only fly in the ointment was that his Julie at this moment was in a passionate embrace with said Sharif. And when the telephone on the living-room table rang and he answered, his wife pressed the
PAUSE button, causing the frame of this wonderful yet unbearable moment of their favorite movie, Doctor Zhivago, to freeze in front of them.

  “Well, good evening, Hole,” said Müller-Nilsen after the inspector had introduced himself. “Yes, I imagine you’ve got enough to keep you busy for the time being.”

  “Have you got a minute?” asked the hoarse but soft voice at the other end.

  Müller-Nilsen gazed at Julie’s quivering red lips and raised misty eyes. “We’ll take the time we need, Hole.”

  “You showed me a photo of Gert Rafto when I was in your office. There was something about it I recognized.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “And then you said something about his daughter. She had turned out very well, of course, you said. It was this understood ‘of course.’ As if this were information I already knew.”

  “Yes, but she did turn out well, didn’t she?” said Müller-Nilsen.

  “Depends on how you look at it,” Harry said.

  24

  DAY 19

  Toowoomba

  There was an expectant buzz under the chandeliers in the Sonja Henie Ballroom at the Plaza Hotel. Arve Støp stood in the doorway where he had received the guests. His jaw was aching from all the smiling, and the glad-handing had given him back the sensation of tennis elbow. A young woman from the publicity firm who was responsible for logistics slid alongside him and told him that the guests were now seated around the table. Her neutral black suit and headset with its almost invisible microphone made him think of a female agent in Mission Impossible.

  “We’re going in,” she said, adjusting his bow tie with a friendly, quasi-tender movement.

  She wore a wedding ring. Her hips swayed in front of him toward the room. Had those hips given birth to a child? Her black trousers were tight against her well-exercised bottom, and Arve Støp visualized the same bottom, without trousers, in front of him on the bed in his Aker Brygge apartment. But she seemed too professional. It would be too much hassle. Too much heavy persuasion. He met her eyes in the big mirror beside the door, knew he had been caught and beamed an apology. She laughed at the same time as a slightly unprofessional flush shot up into her cheeks. Mission impossible? Hardly. But not tonight.

  Everyone at his table of eight rose as he entered. His dinner partner was his own assistant editor. A dull but necessary choice. She was married and had children and the ravaged face of a woman who worked twelve to fourteen hours every day. Poor kids. And poor him the day she found out that life consisted of more than Liberal. The table reacted with a skål for him as Støp’s gaze swept across the room. The sequins, jewels and smiling eyes sparkled under the chandeliers. And the dresses. Strapless, shoulderless, backless, shameless.

  Then the music erupted. The vast tones of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” boomed out of the loudspeakers. At the meeting with the publicists Arve Støp had pointed out that it wasn’t exactly an original introduction—it was pompous and made him think of the creation of man. And was told that was the idea.

  Onto the large stage, wreathed in smoke and light, stepped a TV celebrity who had demanded—and been given—a six-figure sum to be the master of ceremonies.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” he shouted into a large cordless microphone that reminded Støp of a large, erect penis. “Welcome!” The celeb’s famous lips were almost touching the black dick. “Welcome to what I promise you is going to be a very special evening!”

  Arve Støp was already looking forward to it being over.

  Harry stared at the photographs on the bookshelf in his office, the Dead Policemen’s Society. He tried to think, but his mind was spinning, unable find a foothold, an entire image. He had felt the whole time that there was someone on the inside; someone had known what he would do at all times. But he hadn’t expected it to be like this. It was so unimaginably easy. And at the same time so incomprehensibly complicated.

  Knut Müller-Nilsen had told him that Katrine had been regarded as one of the most promising Crime Squad detectives at the Bergen HQ, a rising star. Never any problem. Yes, there was of course the incident that led to her application for a transfer to the Sexual Offenses Unit. A witness from a shelved case had called to complain that Katrine Bratt was still bothering him with new questions. She wouldn’t stop, even though he had made it plain that he had already made a statement to the police. It came to light that Katrine had been independently investigating this case for months without notifying her superiors. As she had been doing it in her own free time, this would not normally have been a problem, but this particular case was not one they wanted her raking up. She had been made aware of this, and her reaction had been to point out several flaws in the original investigation, but she didn’t gain a sympathetic ear, and in her frustration she had applied for a transfer.

  “This case must have been an obsession for her,” was the last Müller-Nilsen had said. “As far as I remember, that was the time her husband left her.”

  Harry got up, went into the corridor and over to Katrine’s office door. It was, as office regulations stipulated, locked. He continued down the corridor to the photocopy room. On the lowest shelf beside the packs of paper he pulled out the guillotine, a large, heavy iron base with a mounted blade. It had never been used as far as he could recall, but now he carried it with both hands into the corridor and back to Katrine Bratt’s door.

  He raised the paper cutter over his head and took aim. Then he brought his arms down hard.

  The guillotine hit the handle, knocking the lock into the frame, which split with a loud crack.

  Harry just managed to shift his feet before the machine landed on the floor with a muffled groan. The door spat splinters of wood and swung open at the first kick. He picked up the guillotine and carried it inside.

  Katrine Bratt’s office was identical to the one he had shared with Jack Halvorsen in times gone by. Tidy, bare, no pictures or any other personal possessions. The desk had a simple lock at the top controlling all the drawers. After two doses of the guillotine, the top drawer and the lock were smashed. Harry rifled through, pushing papers to the side and rummaging through plastic folders, hole punches and other office equipment until he found a knife. He removed the sheath. The top edge was serrated. Definitely not a scout’s knife. Harry pressed the blade into the pile of papers it was lying on and the knife sank without resistance into the wad.

  In the drawer beneath there were two unopened boxes of bullets for her service revolver. The only personal belongings Harry found were two rings. One was studded with gems that glinted angrily in the light of the desk lamp. He had seen it before. Harry closed his eyes trying to visualize where. A large, gaudy ring. Las Vegas–style. Katrine would never have worn such a ring. And then he knew where he had seen it. He felt his pulse throbbing: hard, but steady. He had seen it in a bedroom. In Birte Becker’s bedroom.

  In the Sonja Henie Ballroom dinner was over and the tables were cleared away. Arve Støp leaned against the rear wall while staring toward the stage. The guests had huddled together next to it and were gazing in rapture at the band. It was a big sound. It was an expensive sound. It was the sound of megalomania. Arve Støp had had his doubts, but in the end the publicists had convinced him that investing in an experience was a way to buy his employees’ loyalty, pride and enthusiasm for their workplace. And by buying a bit of international success he was underscoring the magazine’s own success and building the Liberal brand, a product with which advertisers would want to be associated.

  The vocalist held a finger against his earpiece as he attacked the highest note of their song, which had been an international hit in the eighties.

  “No one hits a bum note as beautifully as Morten Harket,” said a voice next to Støp.

  He turned. And knew at once that he had seen her before, because he never forgot a beautiful woman. What he was beginning to forget more and more was who, where and when. She was slim and wearing a plain black dress with a slit that reminded him of someone. Of Birte. Birte had ha
d a dress like that.

  “It’s scandalous,” he said.

  “It’s a difficult note to hit,” she said, without taking her eyes off the vocalist.

  “It’s scandalous I can’t remember your name. I only know we’ve met before.”

  “We haven’t met,” she said. “You just gave me the once-over.” She brushed her black hair off her face. She was attractive in a stern, classical way. Kate Moss–attractive. Birte had been Pamela Anderson–attractive.

  “That, I think, can definitely be excused,” he said, with a feeling that he was waking up, that his blood was beginning to surge through his body, bringing Champagne to parts of his brain that relaxed him rather than making him drowsy.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Katrine Bratt,” she said.

  “Oh, yes. Are you one of our advertisers, Katrine? A bank connection? A lessor? A freelance photographer?”

  To every question Katrine shook her head with a smile.

  “I’m a gate-crasher,” she said. “One of your female journalists is a friend of mine. She told me who was playing after dinner, and said I could just put on a dress and slip in. Feel like throwing me out?”

  She raised her Champagne glass to her lips. They weren’t as full as he usually liked, but nevertheless deep red and moist. She was still looking at the stage, so he could study her profile at his leisure. The whole of her profile. The hollow back, the perfect arch of her breasts. No need for any silicone, maybe just a good bra. But could they have suckled a child?

  “I’m considering the option,” he said. “Any arguments you would like to put forward?”

  “Will a threat do?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I saw the paparazzi outside waiting for your celebrity guests to emerge with the evening’s catch. What if I told them about my journalist friend? That she was given to understand her prospects at Liberal were poor after she had rejected your advances?”

  Arve Støp laughed aloud and from his heart. He saw that they had already been attracting inquisitive looks from other guests. Leaning toward her, he noticed that the aroma of her perfume was not unlike the cologne he used.