The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘On the syndrome your father has, I suppose.’
‘Right. Is Idar Vetlesen in?’
‘He’s gone for today.’
‘Already?’
‘They’ve got a curling match. Try again tomorrow.’
She radiated impatience. Harry assumed she was in the process of leaving for the day.
‘Bygdøy Curling Club?’
‘No, the private one. The one down from Gimle.’
‘Thanks. Have a good evening.’
Harry gave Katrine the phone back.
‘We’ll bring him in,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘The specialist who has an assistant who’s never heard of the disease he specialises in.’
After asking the way, they found Villa Grande, a luxurious property that, during the Second World
War, had belonged to a Norwegian whose name, unlike that of the raft sailor and the Arctic
explorer, was also widely known outside Norway: Quisling, the traitor.
At the bottom of the slope to the south of the building there was a rectangular wooden house
resembling an old military barracks. As soon as you entered the building you could feel the cold hit
you. And inside the next door the temperature fell further.
There were four men on the ice. Their shouts bounced off the wooden walls, and none of them
noticed Harry and Katrine come in. They were shouting at a shiny stone gliding down the rink. The
twenty kilos of granite, the type known as ailsite, from the Scottish island of Ailsa Craig, stopped
against the guard of three other stones on the front edge of two circles painted into the ice at the end
of the sheet. The men slid around the rink balancing on one foot and kicking off with the other,
discussing, supporting themselves on their brooms and preparing for the next stone.
‘Snob sport,’ Katrine whispered. ‘Look at them.’
Harry didn’t answer. He liked curling. The meditative element as you watched the stone’s slow
passage, rotating in an apparently friction-free universe, like one of the spaceships in Kubrick’s
odyssey, accompanied not by Strauss but by the stone’s quiet rumble and the furious sweeping of
brooms.
The men had seen them now. And Harry recognised two of the faces from media circles. One was
Arve Støp’s.