The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘No, indeed,’ Harry said, feeling his earlobes go warm.
‘Would you like me to give the something to Oleg?’
Harry shifted his gaze. It settled instinctively on the bird box, then moved on.
‘I’ll drop it off another time,’ Harry said, grimacing in a way he hoped inspired trust. ‘You have a
shower.’
‘OK.’
‘See you.’
The first thing Harry did when he got back into the car was to smack both hands on the wheel and
curse aloud. He had behaved like a twelve-year-old pilferer caught red-handed. He had lied to
Mathias’s face. Lied and crawled and been a shit.
He gunned the engine and let the clutch go with a jerk to punish the car. He didn’t have the energy
to think about it now. Had to focus on other things. But he couldn’t and his mind was racing in a
chaotic chain of associations as he tore down to Oslo city centre. He thought of blemishes, of flat,
red nipples that looked like bloodstains on bare skin. Of bloodstains on untreated wood. And for
some reason the mould man’s words came into his head: ‘The alternative would have been to paint
the wall red.’
The mould man had bled. Harry half closed his eyes and visualised the cut. It must have been a
deep cut to have made such a mess that that the alternative would have been to paint the wall red.
Harry jumped on the brakes. He heard hooting, looked in the mirror and saw a Hiace sliding on new
snow until the tyres got a grip and it skidded alongside him and past.
Harry kicked open the car door, leapt out and saw that he was by the stadium at the bottom of
Holmenkollveien. He took a deep breath and broke his tower of thoughts into pieces, dismantled it
to see if he could reassemble it. Rebuilt it quickly, without forcing any of the bits. For they slotted
in by themselves. His pulse was accelerating. If this made credible sense, everything was turned
upside down. And it all fitted, it fitted that the Snowman had planned how to infiltrate Harry and
had just walked in off the street and made himself comfortable. And the bodies – that would explain
what had happened to the bodies. Trembling, Harry lit a cigarette and started to try to reconstruct
what he had seen in a flash. The chicken feathers with blackened edges.
Harry didn’t believe in inspiration, divine insights or telepathy. But he did believe in luck. Not the
luck you were born with, but the systematic luck you earned through hard work and spinning
yourself such a fine-meshed net that at some point chance would play into your hands. But this was
not that kind of luck. This was just a fluke. An atypical fluke. If he was right of course. Harry
looked down and discovered that he was wading through snow. That in fact – quite literally – he
had his feet on the ground.
He walked back to the car, took out his mobile phone and rang Bjørn Holm’s number.
‘Yes, Harry?’ answered a sleepy, almost unrecognisable nasal voice.
‘You sound hung-over,’ Harry said, his suspicions alerted.