The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

hasn’t turned up by this evening we’ll intensify the search. In ninety-nine per cent of cases she’ll
have found her way home by then. So this is my card ’
Helle felt Andreas Kvale’s hand on his upper arm.
‘There’s something I want to show you, officer.’
Thomas Helle followed Kvale through a door at the end of the hall, down a staircase into the cellar.
He opened a door to a room which smelt of soap and clothes hanging out to dry. In the corner stood
an old-fashioned clothes mangle beside an Electrolux washing machine of older vintage. The brick
floor sloped down to a drain in the middle. The floor was wet and there was water on the wall, as
though the floor had recently been sluiced with the green hosepipe lying there. But that was not
primarily what attracted Thomas Helle’s attention. It was the garment hanging on the washing line,
attached with a clothes peg at each shoulder. Or to be precise: what was left of it. It had been cut off
under the chest. The edge was crooked and black with burnt, shrivelled threads of cotton.
29
DAY 20.
Tear Gas.
THE RAIN LEAKED THROUGH THE HEAVENS DOWN ONTO Bergen, which lay bathed in
the blue afternoon dusk. The boat Harry had reserved was ready at the quayside by the foot of
Puddefjord Bridge when Harry’s taxi stopped outside the boat-hire firm.
The boat was a well-used twenty-seven-foot Finnish cabin cruiser.
‘I’m going fishing,’ Harry said, pointing to the nautical chart. ‘Any submerged rocks or anything I
ought to know about if I go here?’
‘Finnøy island?’ said the boat-hire man. ‘Take a rod with a sinker and a spinner, but fishing’s poor
out there.’
‘Soon find out, won’t I. How do you start this thing?’
As Harry chugged past Nordnes headland in the gathering gloom he could make out the totem pole
among the bare trees in the park. The sea lay flat under the rain, which whipped up the surface and
made it foam. Harry thrust the lever next to the wheel forward, the bow lifted – he had to take a step
back for balance – and the boat powered away.
A quarter of an hour later Harry pulled the lever back and swung in towards a quay, on the far side
of Finnøy, hidden from Rafto’s cabin. He moored the boat, took out the fishing rod and listened to
the rain. Fishing was not his thing. The spinner was heavy, the hook got snagged at the bottom and
Harry pulled up seaweed that swirled round the rod as he tugged. He freed the hook and cleaned it.
Then he tried to drop the spinner in the water again, but something in the reel had locked and the
spinner hung twenty centimetres under the tip of the rod and would neither go up nor down. Harry
looked at his watch. If someone had been alerted by the throb of the boat engine they would have
relaxed by now and he had to get this done before dark. He placed the rod on the seat, opened his
bag, removed the revolver, opened the box of bullets and eased them into the chamber. Stuffed the
Thermos-like CS canisters in his pockets and went ashore.