The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘We know it wasn’t.’
Becker blinked twice before bursting into laughter so dry and bitter that it sounded like coughing.
‘So that’s why you haven’t leaked anything to the press. They mustn’t find out that you’ve cocked
up. And in the meantime you’re desperate to find the right man. Or a potential right man.’
‘Correct,’ Harry said, sucking on his own cigarette. ‘And at the moment that’s you.’
‘At the moment? I thought your role was to persuade me that you knew everything, so I might as
well confess right away.’
‘But I don’t know everything,’ Harry said.
Becker scrunched up one eye. ‘Is this a trick?’
Harry shrugged. ‘It’s just a gut instinct. I need you to convince me that you’re innocent. The short
interview reinforced the impression that you’re a man with a lot to hide.’
‘I had nothing to hide. I mean, I have nothing to hide. And I just don’t see why I should tell you
anything if I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Listen to me carefully, Becker. I don’t think you’re the Snowman or that you killed Camilla
Lossius. And I think you’re a rational, thinking person. The kind who can appreciate that it will
damage you less if you reveal private matters to me here and now rather than read in tomorrow’s
papers that Professor Filip Becker has been arrested on suspicion of being Norway’s most notorious
killer. Because you know that even if you were cleared and released the day after tomorrow, your
name would be forever connected with these headlines. And your son’s.’
Harry watched Becker’s Adam’s apple rise and fall in his unshaven neck. Watched his brain
drawing the logical conclusions. The simple conclusions. And then it came, in an anguished tone
that Harry initially thought was due to the unaccustomed cigarette.
‘Birte, my wife, was a whore.’
‘Eh?’ Harry tried to conceal his astonishment.
Becker dropped his cigarette on the floor, leaned forward and pulled a black notebook from his
back pocket. ‘I found this the day after she went missing. It was in her desk drawer, wasn’t even
hidden. At first sight it looked quite innocent. Commonplace memoranda to herself and telephone
numbers. It was just that when I checked the numbers with directory enquiries, they didn’t exist.
They were codes. But my wife wasn’t much good at writing in code, I’m afraid. It took me less than
a day to crack them all.’
Erik Lossius owned and ran Rydd & Flytt, a removal company that had found a niche in an
otherwise less than lucrative market by dint of standardised prices, aggressive marketing, cheap
foreign labour and contracts that demanded cash payment as soon as the vehicles were loaded up
but before they left for their destination. He had never lost any money on a customer, because
among other things the small print stated that any complaints regarding damage or theft had to be
made within two days, which in practice meant that 90 per cent of the fairly numerous complaints
came too late and could therefore be dismissed. As far as the final 10 per cent was concerned, Erik
Lossius had devised routines to make himself inaccessible or to slow the usual procedures, which
became so draining that even those who had lost plasma TVs or had had pianos wrecked during the