The Snowman: A Harry Hole Novel

by Jo Nesbo

  Later she had often wondered how things would have been if Andreas had not been a priest and his view of abortion so uncompromising, and if she had not been such a coward. If Trygve had not been born. But by then the wall had already been built, an unshakable wall of silence.

  That Trygve and Andreas were so similar was a silver lining. It had even sparked a little hope, so she had gone to a doctor’s office where no one knew her, given them two strands of hair that she had taken from their pillows and that she had read were enough to find a code of something called DNA, a kind of genetic fingerprint. The doctor had sent the hairs to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Rikshospitalet, which was employing this new method in paternity cases. And after two months, all doubt was gone. It had not been a dream: the parking lot, the black prints, the panting, the pain.

  She looked at the telephone again. Of course it had been a wrong number. The breathing she had heard at the other end was the perplexed reaction to hearing an unexpected voice, indecision as to whether to put the receiver down or not. That was all.

  Harry went into the hall and picked up the entry phone.

  “Hello?” he shouted over Franz Ferdinand on the sitting-room stereo.

  No answer, just a car whizzing past on Sofies Gate.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi! It’s Rakel. Were you in bed?”

  He could hear from her voice that she had been drinking. Not much but enough for her pitch to be half a tone higher, and her laughter, that beautifully deep laughter, rippled over her words.

  “No,” he said. “Nice evening?”

  “Quite.”

  “It’s only eleven o’clock.”

  “The girls wanted an early night. It’s a workday and so on.”

  “Mm.”

  Harry visualized her. The teasing look, the alcohol sheen in her eyes.

  “I’ve got the film,” she said. “If I’m going to drop it in the mailbox, I think you might have to open up.”

  “Right.”

  He raised his finger to press the bell to let her in. Waited. Knowing that this was a window of time. They had two seconds at their disposal. For the moment they had all the fall-back positions. He liked fall-back positions. And he knew very well that he didn’t want this to happen—it was too complicated, too painful to go through again. So why was his chest heaving as if he had two hearts? Why hadn’t he immediately pressed the button, so that she would have been in and out of the building and out of his head? Now, he thought, placing the tip of his finger against the hard plastic of the button.

  “Or,” she said, “I could come up with it.”

  Harry already knew before speaking that his voice was going to sound strange.

  “You don’t need to,” he said. “My mailbox is the one without a name. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  He pressed the button. Went into the sitting room, turned up Franz Ferdinand, loud, tried to blast out his thoughts, forget the idiotic jangling of nerves, just absorb the sound, the jagged attack of guitars. Angry, frail and not especially well played. Scottish. But the feverish series of chords was joined by another sound.

  Harry turned down the music. Listened. He was going to turn up the volume again when he heard a sound. Like sandpaper on wood. Or shoes shuffling on the floor. He went into the hall and saw a figure behind the door’s wavy glass.

  He opened up.

  “I rang the bell,” Rakel said, looking up at him apologetically.

  “Oh?”

  She waved a DVD box. “It wouldn’t go in the slot.”

  He was going to say something, wanted to say something. But he had already thrust out his arm, caught her, pulled her to him, heard her gasp as he held her tight, saw her mouth opening and her tongue moving toward his, taunting and red. And basically there was nothing to say.

  She snuggled up to him, soft and warm.

  “Goodness,” she whispered.

  He kissed her on the forehead.

  The sweat was a thin layer that both separated them and glued them together.

  It had been exactly as he knew it would be. It had been like the first time, though without the nerves, the fumbling and the unspoken questions. It had been like the last time, without the sadness, without her sobbing afterward. You can leave someone with whom you have good sex. But Katrine was right; you always go back. But Harry knew this was different, too. For Rakel this was an essential, final visit to old pastures, a good-bye to what they had both called the great love of their lives. Before she entered a new era. To a lesser love? Maybe, but to an endurable love.

  She was making purring sounds as she stroked his stomach. He could still feel the tension in her body. He could make it difficult or easy for her. He decided on the latter.

  “Bad conscience?” he asked and felt her flinch.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  He didn’t want to talk about it, either. He wanted to lie quite still, listen to her breathing and feel her hand on his stomach. But he knew what she had to do, and he didn’t want any more postponements. “He’s waiting for you, Rakel.”

  “No,” she said. “He and the technician are preparing a body for an Anatomy Department lecture early tomorrow morning. And I told him he wasn’t coming near me after touching a corpse. He’ll sleep at his place.”

  “What about me?” Harry smiled in the dark, thinking that she had planned this, known it would happen. “How do you know I haven’t touched a corpse?”

  “Have you?”

  “No,” Harry said, thinking about the pack of cigarettes in the bedside-table drawer. “We don’t have any corpses.”

  They fell silent. Her hand described ever larger circles on his stomach.

  “I have a feeling I’ve been infiltrated,” he said out of the blue.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t quite know. I just have the feeling someone is watching me the whole time, that someone is watching me now. I’m part of someone’s plan. Do you understand?”

  “No.” She snuggled up closer to him.

  “It’s this case I’m working on. It’s as though my person is involved in—”

  “Shh.” She bit his ear. “You’re always involved, Harry. That’s your problem. Relax.”

  Her hand placed itself on his flaccid member and he closed his eyes, listened to her whispers and felt his erection come.

  At three o’clock she got out of bed. He saw her back in the light from the streetlamps through the window. The arched back and the shadow of her spine. And he fell to thinking about something Katrine had said, that Sylvia Ottersen had had the Ethiopian flag tattooed on her back; he would have to remember to mention that in the briefing. And Rakel was right: He never stopped thinking about cases; he was always involved.

  He accompanied her to the door. She kissed him quickly on the mouth and dashed down the stairs. There was nothing to say. He was going to close the door when he saw wet boot prints outside the door. He followed them to where they disappeared down into the darkness of the stairwell. They must have been left by Rakel. And he thought about the Berhaus seals, about the female who finished mating with the male in the breeding period and never went back to him in the next breeding period. Because it wasn’t biologically rational. The Berhaus seals must be clever creatures.

  13

  DAY 8

  Paper

  It was nine-thirty and the sun was shining on a solitary car negotiating the roundabout on the Sjølyst overpass above the highway. It turned up Bygdøyveien, which led to the idyllic rural peninsula located a mere five minutes’ drive from the City Hall Square. It was quiet, there was almost no traffic, no cows or horses in the Kongsgården estate, and the narrow sidewalks where people made pilgrimages to the beaches in summer were deserted.

  Harry steered the car around the bends in the rolling terrain and listened to Katrine.

  “Snow,” Katrine said.

  “Snow?”

  “I did as you said. I concentra
ted on the married women with children who had disappeared. And then I began to look at the dates. Most were in November and December. I isolated them and considered the geographical spread. Most were in Oslo; there were some in other parts of the country. Then it struck me, because of the letter you received. The part about the snowman reappearing with the first snow. And the day we were in Hoffsveien was the first snow in Oslo.”

  “Really?”

  “I had the Meteorological Institute check the relevant dates and places. And do you know what?”

  Harry knew what. And he should have known it long ago.

  “The first snow,” he said. “He kills them the day the first snow falls.”

  “Exactly.”

  Harry smacked the wheel. “Christ, we had it spelled out for us. How many missing women are we talking about?”

  “Eleven. One a year.”

  “And two this year. He’s broken the pattern.”

  “There was a murder and two disappearances when the first snow fell in Bergen in 1992. I think we should start there.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because the victim was a married woman with a child. And the woman who disappeared was her best friend. Thus we have one body, one crime scene and case files. As well as a suspect who vanished and has never been seen since.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A policeman. Gert Rafto.”

  Harry glanced over quickly. “Oh, that case, yes. Wasn’t he the one who stole stuff from crime scenes?”

  “So it was rumored. Witnesses saw Rafto going into the apartment of one of the women, Onny Hetland, a few hours before she disappeared. And extensive searches turned up nothing. He disappeared without a trace.”

  Harry stared at the road, at the leafless trees along Huk Aveny leading down to the sea and the museums for what Norwegians regarded as the nation’s greatest achievements: a voyage in a raft across the Pacific Ocean and a failed attempt to reach the North Pole.

  “And now you think it’s conceivable that he didn’t disappear after all?” he said. “That he might reappear every year at the first sign of snow?”

  Katrine hunched her shoulders. “I think it’s worth investing the time to find out what happened there.”

  “Mm. We’ll have to start by asking Bergen for assistance.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” she said quickly.

  “Oh?”

  “The Rafto case is still an extremely sensitive issue for the police in Bergen. The resources they put into that case were largely spent burying rather than investigating it. They were terrified of what they might unearth. And since the guy had disappeared all by himself …” She drew a big X in the air.

  “I see. What do you suggest?”

  “That you and I go on a little trip to Bergen and do a bit of investigating on our own. After all, it’s part of an Oslo murder case now.”

  Harry parked in front of the address, a four-story brick building right by the water, surrounded by a mooring quay. He switched off the engine, but remained in his seat looking across Frognerkilen Bay to Filipstad Harbor.

  “How did the Rafto case get onto your list?” he asked. “First of all, it’s further back than I asked you to check. Second, I believe it’s not a missing-persons case but murder.”

  He turned to look at Katrine. She met his gaze without blinking.

  “The Rafto case was pretty famous in Bergen,” she said. “And there was a photo.”

  “A photo?”

  “Yes. All new trainees at Bergen Police Station are shown it. It was of the crime scene at the top of Ulriken Mountain and a kind of baptism of fire. I think most were so terrorized by the details in the foreground that they never looked at the background. Or maybe they had never been to the top of Ulriken. At any rate there was something there that didn’t make sense, a mound farther back. When you magnify it, you can see quite clearly what it is.”

  “Oh?”

  “A snowman.”

  Harry nodded slowly.

  “Speaking of photos,” Katrine said, taking a padded envelope from her bag and throwing it into Harry’s lap.

  The clinic was on the second floor, and the waiting room had been immaculately designed at horrendous expense with Italian furniture, a coffee table as low off the ground as a Ferrari, glass sculptures by Nico Widerberg and an original Roy Lichtenstein print showing a smoking gun.

  Instead of the obligatory reception area with glass partition, a woman sat behind a beautiful old desk in the middle of the room. She was wearing an open white coat over a blue business suit and a welcoming smile. A smile that did not stiffen appreciably when Harry introduced himself and stated the purpose of their visit and his assumption that she was Borghild.

  “Would you mind waiting for a moment?” she said, pointing to the sofas with the practiced elegance of a stewardess gesturing toward the emergency exits. Harry refused the offer of espresso, tea or water, and he and Katrine took a seat.

  Harry noticed that the magazines laid out were up to date; he opened a copy of Liberal and his attention was caught by the headline in which Arve Støp claimed that politicians’ willingness to appear on entertainment shows to “flaunt themselves” and assume the role of clown was the ultimate victory for government by the people—with the populace on the throne and the politician as the court jester.

  Then the door marked DR. IDAR VETLESEN opened and a woman strode quickly through the waiting room, said a brief “Bye” to Borghild and was gone without so much as a glance left or right.

  Katrine stared after her. “Wasn’t that the woman from TV2 News?”

  At that moment Borghild announced that Vetlesen was ready to receive them, went to the door and held it open for them.

  Idar Vetlesen’s office was CEO–size, with a view of the Oslo Fjord. Framed diplomas hung on the wall behind the desk.

  “Just a moment,” Vetlesen said, without looking up from the computer screen. Then, with a triumphant expression, he pressed a final key, swiveled around in his chair and removed his glasses.

  “Face-lift, Hole? Penis enlargement? Liposuction?”

  “Thank you for the offer,” Harry said. “This is Police Officer Bratt. We’ve come once again to request your help with information about Ottersen and Becker.”

  Idar Vetlesen sighed and began to clean his glasses with a handkerchief.

  “How can I explain this to you in a way that you can understand, Hole? Even for someone like me, who has a genuine burning desire to help the police and basically couldn’t care less about principles, there are some things that are sacrosanct.” He raised an index finger. “In all the years I’ve worked as a doctor I have never, ever”—the finger wagged in time with his words—“broken my Hippocratic oath. And I do not intend to start now.”

  A long silence ensued in which Vetlesen just looked at them, clearly satisfied with the effect he had created.

  Harry cleared his throat.

  “Perhaps we can still fulfill your burning desire to help, Vetlesen. We’re investigating possible child prostitution at a so-called hotel in Oslo, known as the Leon. Last night two of our officers were outside in a car taking photographs of people going in and out.”

  Harry opened the brown padded envelope he had been given by Katrine, leaned forward and placed the photographs before the doctor.

  “That’s you there, isn’t it?”

  Vetlesen looked as though something had become lodged in his gullet; his eyes bulged and the veins in his neck stuck out.

  “I …,” he stuttered. “I … haven’t done anything wrong or illegal.”

  “No, not at all,” Harry said. “We’re just considering summoning you as a witness. A witness who can say what’s going on there. It’s common knowledge that Hotel Leon is a center for prostitutes and their clients; what’s new is that children have been seen there. And unlike other prostitution, child prostitution is, as you know, illegal. Thought we should inform you before we go to the press with the whole business.”
/>   Vetlesen stared at the photograph, rubbing his face hard.

  “By the way, we just saw the TV2 News lady coming out,” Harry said. “What’s her name again?”

  Vetlesen didn’t answer. It was as if all the smooth youthfulness had been sucked out of him before their very eyes, as if his face had aged in the space of a second.

  “Call us if you can find a loophole in the Hippocratic oath,” Harry said.

  Harry and Katrine were halfway to the door before Vetlesen stopped them.

  “They were here for an examination,” he said. “That’s all.”

  “What kind of examination?” Harry asked.

  “A disease.”

  “The same disease? Which one?”

  “It’s of no importance.”

  “OK,” Harry said, walking to the door. “When you’re summoned as a witness you can take that view. It’s of no importance, either. After all, we haven’t found anything illegal.”

  “Wait!”

  Harry turned. Vetlesen was supporting himself on his elbows with his face in his hands.

  “Fahr’s Syndrome.”

  “Father Syndrome?”

  “Fahr’s. F-a-h-r. A rare hereditary disease, a bit like Alzheimer’s. Motor skills deteriorate, especially in cognitive areas, and there is some spasticity of movement. Most develop the syndrome after the age of thirty, but it is possible to have it in childhood.”

  “Mm. And so Birte and Sylvia knew their children had this disease?”

  “They suspected it when they came here. Fahr’s Syndrome is hard to diagnose, and Birte Becker and Sylvia Ottersen had been to several doctors, although nothing conclusive was found in their children. I seem to remember that both of them had searched the Internet, typed in the symptoms and discovered Fahr, which matched alarmingly well.”