The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘What?’
‘What makes a person like this woman so psychologically sick?’
Aune groaned. ‘Everything in existence! And nothing! Nature and nurture.’
‘A violent, alcoholic father?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. Ninety points for that. Add a mother with a psychiatric history, a traumatic
experience or two in her childhood and you have the round hundred.’
‘Does it seem likely that if she had become stronger than her violent, alcoholic father she would try
to hurt him? Kill him?’
‘By no means impossible. I remember a ca –’ Ståle Aune stopped mid-word. Stared at Harry. Then
leaned forward and whispered with a gleam dancing wildly in his eyes. ‘Are you saying what I
think you’re saying?’
Harry Hole studied his fingernails. ‘I was given a photo of a man at Bergen Police Station. It struck
me there was something strangely familiar about him, as if I had met him before. It’s only now that
I understand why. It was the family likeness. Before Katrine Bratt got married her name was Rafto.
Gert Rafto was her father.’
On his way to the airport express train Harry received a call from Skarre. He had been mistaken.
They hadn’t found her mobile phone in the toilet; it had been on the luggage rack in one of the
coaches.
Eighty minutes later he was enshrouded in grey. The captain announced low-lying clouds and rain
in Bergen. Zero visibility, Harry thought. They were flying on instruments alone now.
The front door was torn open seconds after Thomas Helle, from the Missing Persons Unit, had
pressed the doorbell over the sign reading Andreas, Eli and Trygve Kvale.
‘Thank the Lord you came so quickly.’ The man standing in front of Helle looked over his shoulder.
‘Where are the others?’
‘There’s just me. You still haven’t heard anything from your wife?’
The man, whom Helle presumed was the Andreas Kvale who had rung HQ, stared at him in
amazement. ‘She’s gone, I told you.’
‘We know, but they usually come back.’
‘Who’s they?’
Thomas Helle sighed. ‘May I come in, herr Kvale? This rain ’
‘Oh, sorry! Please ’ The man in his fifties stepped aside, and in the gloom behind him Helle caught
sight of a dark-haired lad in his twenties.
Thomas Helle decided to do the business standing in the hallway. They barely had enough staff to