The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

hundred metres to the Bendiksens’ house, and fortunately there were two street lamps on the way.
She had to be there. He glanced to the left and to the right to make sure there was no one who could
stop him. Then he caught sight of the snowman. It stood there as before, immovable, facing the
house, bathed in the cold moonlight. Yet there was something different about it, something almost
human, something familiar. Jonas looked at the Bendiksens’ house. He decided to run. But he
didn’t. Instead he stood feeling the tentative, ice-cold wind go right through him. He turned slowly
back to the snowman. Now he realised what it was that had made the snowman so familiar. It was
wearing a scarf. A pink scarf. The scarf Jonas had given his mother for Christmas.
4
DAY 2.
The Disappearance.
BY THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY THE SNOW HAD MELTED IN Oslo city centre. But in Hoff
there were still patches in gardens on both sides of the road as Harry Hole and Katrine Bratt drove
along. On the radio Michael Stipe was singing about a sinking feeling, about what was bringing it
on, knowing that something had gone wrong and about the boy in the well. In the middle of a quiet
estate in an even quieter street Harry pointed to a shiny silver Toyota Corolla parked by the fence.
‘Skarre’s car. Park behind him.’
The house was large and yellow. Too big for a family of three, Harry thought, as they walked up the
shingle path. Everything around them dripped and sighed. In the garden stood a snowman with a
slight list and poor future prospects.
Skarre opened the door. Harry bent and studied the lock.
‘No signs of a break-in anywhere,’ Skarre said.
He led them into the living room where a boy was sitting on the floor with his back to them
watching a cartoon channel on TV. A woman got up off the sofa, shook hands with Harry and
introduced herself as Ebba Bendiksen, a neighbour.
‘Birte has never done this type of thing before,’ she said. ‘Not as long as I’ve known her anyway.’
‘And how long’s that?’ Harry asked, looking around. In front of the TV were large pieces of heavy
leather furniture and an octagonal coffee table of darkened glass. The tubular steel chairs around the
dining table were light and elegant, the type Rakel liked. Two paintings hung on the walls, both
portraits of bank-manager-like men staring down at him with solemn authority. Beside them,
modernist abstract art of the kind that had succeeded in becoming un-modern and so very modern
again.
‘Ten years,’ said Ebba Bendiksen. ‘We moved into our house over the road the day Jonas was
born.’ She nodded towards the boy, who was still motionless, staring at careering birds and
exploding wolves.
‘I understand it was you who rang the police last night?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’