The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘That’s what you ask when you’re visiting folk in prison, Harry, not in a hospital.’
Harry nodded again.
Ståle Aune sighed. ‘I know you’re concerned about me, Harry. But I know you too well, so I know
this is not a courtesy visit. Come on, spit it out.’
‘It can wait. They said you weren’t well.’
‘Being well is a relative thing. And, relatively speaking, I’m tremendously well. You should have
seen me yesterday. By which I mean, you should not have seen me yesterday.’
Harry smiled at his hands.
‘Is it the Snowman?’ Aune asked.
Harry nodded.
‘At long last,’ Aune said. ‘I’ve been bored to death in here. Out with it.’
Harry breathed in. Then he gave a résumé of all that had happened in the case. Trying to trim the
tedious, irrelevant information without losing the essential details. Aune interrupted him only a few
times with pithy questions, otherwise he listened in silence with a concentrated, quasi-entranced
expression on his face. And when Harry had finished the sick man appeared to have perked up;
there was colour in his cheeks and he was sitting up straighter in bed.
‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘But you already know who the guilty person is, so why come to me?’
‘This woman is insane, isn’t she?’
‘People who commit such crimes are without exception insane. Though not necessarily in a
criminal sense.’
‘Nevertheless, there are one or two things I don’t understand about her,’ Harry said.
‘Goodness me – there are only one or two things I do understand about people, so in that case
you’re a better psychologist than me.’
‘She was just nineteen years old when she killed the two women in Bergen and Gert Rafto. How
can a person who is that crazy get through the psychological tests for Police College and function in
a job for all these years with no one being any the wiser?’
‘Good question. Perhaps she’s a cocktail case.’
‘Cocktail case?’
‘Someone with a bit of everything. Schizophrenic enough to hear voices, but capable of concealing
her illness from those around her. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder mixed with a dash of
paranoia, which creates delusions about the situation she is in and what she has to do to escape, but
which to the outside world is simply perceived as a certain reticence. The bestial fury that emerges
during the murders you describe tallies with a borderline personality, though one which can control