The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

reached the street door when a sound, a click, made him spin round and peer into the yard where the
darkness was denser than in the street. He was intending to go on his way, and would have done.
Had it not been for the prints. The boot prints on the lino. So he went into the yard. The yellow
lights from the windows above him bounced off the remnants of snow that still lay where the sun
could not quite reach. It stood by the entrance to the cellar storerooms. A crooked figure with its
head at an angle, pebbles for eyes and a gravel grin laughing at him. Silent laughter reverberated
between the brick walls and blended into a hysterical shriek he recognised as his own as he grabbed
the snow shovel beside the cellar steps and swung it in violent fury. The sharp metal edge of the
shovel struck below the head, lifting it off the body and sending the wet snow flying against the
wall. The next hefty swipe sliced the snowman’s torso into two and the third scattered the remains
across the black tarmac in the middle of the yard. Harry stood there gasping for breath when he
heard another click behind him. Like the sound of a revolver being cocked. In one smooth
movement he swirled round, dropped the shovel and drew the black revolver.
Muhammad and Salma stood by the wooden fence, underneath the old birch, mutely staring at their
neighbour with big, frightened children’s eyes. In their hands they were holding dry branches. The
branches looked as if they might have been elegant arms for a snowman had Salma not snapped
hers in two, out of sheer terror.
‘Our s-snowman,’ Muhammad stammered.
Harry returned the revolver to his coat pocket and closed his eyes. Cursing himself, he swallowed
and instructed his brain to let go of the gunstock. Then he opened his eyes again. Tears were
welling under Salma’s brown irises.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll help you to make another one.’
‘I want to go home,’ Salma whispered in a thick voice.
Muhammad took his little sister by the hand and accompanied her home, giving Harry a wide berth.
Harry felt the revolver grip against his hand. The click. He had thought it was the sound of the
hammer being raised. But he was wrong, of course; this phase of the firing procedure is noiseless.
What you hear is the sound of the hammer being cocked, the sound of the shot that has not been
fired, the sound of being alive. He took out his service revolver again. Pointed it at the ground and
pressed the trigger. The hammer still didn’t move. Only when he had forced the trigger a third of
the way back and he was thinking that the gun could fire at any moment did the hammer begin to
rise. He let go of the trigger. The hammer fell back into position with a metallic click. And again he
heard the sound. And realised that anyone who pressed the trigger so far back that the hammer rose
intended to shoot.
Harry looked up at the windows of his flat on the second floor. They were dark, and a thought
struck him: he had no idea what went on behind them when he wasn’t there.
Erik Lossius sat listlessly staring out of the window in his office and musing. About how little he
had known of what went on behind Birte’s brown eyes. About how it felt worse that she had been
with other men than that she had disappeared and was perhaps dead. And wishing he had lost
Camilla to a murderer than in this way. But mostly Erik Lossius was thinking that he must have
loved Camilla. And still did. He had rung her parents, but they hadn’t heard from her, either.
Perhaps she was living with one of those Oslo West girlfriends he knew about only from hearsay.
He gazed at the afternoon gloom slowly descending on Groruddalen as it became thicker and erased