The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

He went in and found Rakel on her knees in front of the bed with a long-handled scrubbing brush.
‘I thought you did the cleaning at the weekend?’
‘Yes, but not well enough,’ his mother said, getting up and wiping a hand across her forehead.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To the stadium. I’m going skating. Karsten’s waiting outside. Be back home for tea.’ He pushed
off from the door and slid across the floor on stockinged feet, gravity low, the way Erik V, one of
the skating veterans at Valle Hovin, had taught him.
‘Wait a minute, young man. Talking of skates ’
Oleg stopped. Oh no, he thought. She’s found the skates.
She stood in the doorway, tilted her head and clocked him. ‘What about homework?’
‘Haven’t got much,’ he said with a relieved smile. ‘I’ll do it after tea.’
He saw her hesitate and added quickly: ‘You look so nice in that dress, Mum.’
She lowered her eyes, at the old sky-blue dress with the white flowers. And even though she gave
him an admonitory look, a smile was playing at the corners of her mouth. ‘Watch it, Oleg. Now
you’re sounding like your father.’
‘Oh? I thought he only spoke Russian.’
He hadn’t meant anything with that comment, but something happened to his mother, a shock
seemed to run through her.
He tiptoed. ‘Can I go now?’
‘Yes, you can go?’ Katrine Bratt’s voice lashed the fitness-room walls in the basement at Police
HQ. ‘Did you really say that? That Idar Vetlesen could just go?’
Harry stared up at her face bent over the bench he was lying on. The dome-shaped ceiling light
formed a shining yellow halo round her head. He was breathing heavily because an iron bar was
lying across his chest. He had been about to perform a bench press of ninety-five kilos and had just
lifted the bar off the stand when Katrine had marched in and ruined his attempt.
‘I had to,’ Harry said, managing to push the bar a bit higher so that it was on his breastbone. ‘He
had his solicitor with him. Johan Krohn.’
‘So what?’
‘Well, Krohn started by asking what sort of methods we employed to blackmail his client. Then he
said the buying and selling of sexual services in Norway is legal, and that our methods for forcing a
respected doctor to break his Hippocratic oath would also be worth a headline.’
‘But bloody hell!’ Katrine shouted in a voice that was shaking with fury. ‘This is a murder case!’