The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘I saw two death masks hanging by the door,’ Katrine said. ‘Very beautiful.’
Ane smiled in response. ‘I have several of them. They’re from Lesotho.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘Of course. Wait here a moment.’
She was gone, and Harry looked at Katrine.
‘I just thought it might be useful to have a chat with her,’ she said, to answer his unspoken question.
‘To check if there were any family secrets, you understand?’
‘I understand. And you’d do that best on your own.’
‘You’ve got something to do?’
‘I’ll be in my office. If Rolf Ottersen turns up, remember to get a written statement waiving patient
confidentiality.’
By the door, as he left, Harry cast a glance at the human faces, leathery, shrunken and frozen in a
scream. He assumed they were imitations.
Eli Kvale trundled her shopping trolley between the shelves of the ICA supermarket at Ullevål
Stadium. It was huge. A bit more expensive than other supermarkets, but with a much better
selection. She didn’t come here every day, only when she wanted to make something nice. And
tonight her son, Trygve, was coming home from the States. He was in his third year of economics at
a university in Montana, but didn’t have any exams this autumn and was going to study at home
until January. Andreas would drive straight from the church office to pick him up at Gardemoen
Airport. And she knew that by the time they were home they would be deep in conversation about
fly fishing and canoe trips.
She leaned over the freezer and felt the cold rise as a shadow passed her. And without looking up
she knew it was the same one. The same shadow that had passed her when she was standing by the
fresh-food counter, and in the car park when she was locking the car. It meant nothing. It was just
the old stuff surfacing. She had come to terms with the fact that her fears would never quite let go,
even though it was half a human life away now. At the checkout she chose the longest queue; her
experience was that this was generally the quickest. Or at least she thought it was her experience.
Andreas believed she was mistaken. Someone joined the queue behind her. So there were more
mistaken people, she noted. She didn’t turn round, just thought the person must have been carrying
a load of frozen goods: she could feel the cold on her back.
But when she did turn round, there was no longer anyone there. Her eyes wanted to scour the other
queues. Don’t start, she thought. Don’t start this again.
Once outside, she forced herself to walk slowly to the car, not to look around, to unlock the car, put
in the shopping, sit down and drive off. And as the Toyota slowly crawled up the long hills to the
duplex flat in Nordberg, her mind was on Trygve and the dinner that had to be ready the moment
they came in through the door.
Harry was listening to Espen Lepsvik on the telephone and gazing up at the photographs of dead
colleagues. Lepsvik already had his group assembled and was asking Harry for access to all the