The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘What about a tip for me? Have you and she got something going?’
‘My tip,’ Harry said, throwing a hundred-krone note on the table, ‘is that you leave your car here.’
14
DAY 9.
Bergen.
AT PRECISELY 08.26, THE WHEELS OF DY 604 TOUCHED down on the wet tarmac at
Flesland Airport, Bergen. So hard that Harry was suddenly wide awake.
‘Sleep well?’ Katrine asked.
Harry nodded, rubbed his eyes and stared out at the rain-heavy dawn.
‘You were talking in your sleep,’ she smiled.
‘Mm.’ Harry didn’t want to ask about what. Instead he quickly went back over what he had been
dreaming. Not about Rakel. He hadn’t dreamt about her for nights. He had banished her. Between
them they had banished her. But he had dreamt about Bjarne Møller, his old boss and mentor, who
had walked onto the Bergensian plateaus and been found in Lake Revurtjern two weeks later. It was
a decision Møller had taken because he – just like Zenon with the sore big toe – didn’t think life
was worth living any longer. Had Gert Rafto come to the same conclusion? Or was he really still
out there somewhere?
‘I’ve rung Rafto’s ex-wife,’ Katrine said as they were walking through the arrivals hall. ‘Neither
she nor the daughter want to talk to the police again, they don’t want to reopen old wounds. And
that’s fine. The reports from that time are more than adequate.’
They got into a taxi outside the terminal.
‘Lovely to be home?’ Harry asked in a loud voice over the drumming of the rain and the rhythmical
swish of the windscreen wipers.
Katrine, indifferent, shrugged. ‘I always hated the rain. And I hated Bergensians who maintained it
didn’t rain here as much as eastern Norwegians made out.’
They passed Danmarksplass, and Harry looked up at the top of Ulriken. It was covered with snow,
and he could see the cable cars in motion. Then they drove through the viper’s nest of slip roads by
Store Lungegårdsvann bay and reached the centre, which for visitors was always a welcome
surprise after the drab approach.
They entered the SAS hotel by Bryggen on the harbour front. Harry had enquired whether she
would stay with her parents, but Katrine had answered that for one night it would be too much
stress, they would go to too much trouble, and in fact she hadn’t even told them she was here.
They were given key cards for their rooms, and in the lift they were silent. Katrine looked at Harry
and smiled as though silence in lifts was an implicit joke. Harry looked down, hoping his body