The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘No, but there was something odd about the acoustics. He certainly wasn’t calling from his
consulting room. It sounded as if he was in a church or a cave – do you understand what I mean?’
‘I understand. Thank you, Mathias. We’ll call you back if we need to know any more.’
‘Just happy to –’
Harry didn’t catch the rest as he pressed the end-call button and the line was cut.
Inside K1, the whole of the small investigation team was sitting with cups of coffee – a fresh pot
was simmering on the machine – and jackets were hanging from chairs. Skarre had just returned
from Bygdøy. He reported back on the conversations he had had with Idar Vetlesen’s mother, who
had repeated that she didn’t know anything and the whole thing must be an enormous
misunderstanding.
Katrine had phoned his assistant, Borghild Moen, who had expressed the same sentiments.
‘We’ll question them tomorrow if need be,’ Harry said. ‘Now, I’m afraid, we have a more pressing
problem.’
The three others looked at Harry as he summarised the conversation with Mathias. Reading from
the back of a tram ticket. Carnadrioxide.
‘Do you think he murdered them?’ Holm asked. ‘With paralysing medicine?’
‘There we have it,’ Skarre interrupted. ‘That’s why he has to hide the bodies. So that the medicine
isn’t discovered at the autopsy and traced back to him.’
‘The only thing we know,’ Harry said, ‘is that Idar Vetlesen is out of control. And if he’s the
Snowman, he’s breaking the pattern.’
‘The question,’ Katrine said, ‘is who he’s after now. Someone’s definitely going to die from that
stuff soon.’
Harry rubbed his neck. ‘Did you get a printout of Vetlesen’s phone calls, Katrine?’
‘Yes, I was given names for the numbers and went through them with Borghild. Most were patients.
And there were two conversations with Krohn, his solicitor, and the one you just summarised with
Lund-Helgesen. In addition, there was a number registered under Popper Publishing.’
‘We haven’t got much to work on,’ Harry said. ‘We can sit here and drink coffee and scratch our
stupid heads. Or we can go home and return with the same stupid, but not quite so exhausted, heads
tomorrow.’
The others just stared at him.
‘I’m not joking,’ he said. ‘Get the hell home.’
Harry offered to drop Katrine off in the former workers’ district of Grünerløkka where, following
her instructions, he stopped outside an old four-storey block in Seilduksgata.