The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

Harry could hear a curious quiver in her voice and glanced across at her, but her face gave nothing
away.
‘I’d like to check out some of the things Vetlesen told us with someone I know,’ he said. ‘And who
knows Vetlesen.’
Mathias was wearing a white coat and regulation yellow washing-up gloves when he received Harry
and Katrine in the garage beneath Preclinical, the usual name for the brown building in the part of
Gaustad Hospital that faces the Ring 3 motorway.
He directed their car into what turned out to be his own unused parking space.
‘I try to cycle as often as I can,’ Mathias explained, using his swipe card to open the door leading
from the garage into a basement corridor in the Anatomy Department. ‘This kind of access is
practical for transporting bodies in and out. Would have liked to offer you coffee, but I’ve just
finished with one group of students and the next will be here shortly.’
‘Sorry for the hassle. You must be tired today.’
Mathias sent him a quizzical look.
‘Rakel and I were talking on the phone. She said you had to work late last night,’ Harry added,
cursing himself inside and hoping his face gave nothing away.
‘Rakel, yes.’ Mathias shook his head. ‘She was out late herself. Out with the girls and has had to
take the day off work. But when I rang her she was in the midst of a big clean-up at home. Women,
eh! What can you say?’
Harry put on a stiff smile and wondered if there was a standard response to that question.
A man in green hospital gear trundled a metal table towards the garage door.
‘Another delivery for Tromsø University?’ Mathias asked.
‘Say bye-bye to Kjeldsen,’ smiled the man in green. He had a cluster of small rings in one ear, a bit
like a Masai woman’s neck rings, except that these rings gave his face an irritating asymmetry.
‘Kjeldsen?’ Mathias exclaimed, and stopped. ‘Is that true?’
‘Thirty years of service. Now it’s Tromsø’s turn to dissect him.’
Mathias lifted the blanket. Harry caught sight of the body. The skin over the cranium was taut, it
smoothed out the old man’s wrinkles into a genderless face, as white as a plaster mask. Harry knew
that this was because the body had been preserved, that is, the arteries had been pumped full of a
mixture of formalin, glycerine and alcohol to ensure the body did not decompose from inside. A
metal tag with an engraved three-digit number had been attached to one ear. Mathias stood
watching the assistant trundle Kjeldsen towards the garage door. Then he seemed to wake up again.
‘Sorry. It’s just that Kjeldsen has been with us for so long. He was a professor at the Anatomy
Department when it was down in the centre of town. A brilliant anatomist. With well-defined
muscles. We’re going to miss him.’