The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘All hell broken loose, has it?’
‘Yeah,’ Harry said. The rubber screamed on the concrete as he let the clutch go.
He thought of Jonas. For some reason he thought of Jonas.
One of the six patrol cars Harry had asked the Incident Room for was already at the crossing by
Åsengata as Harry came down Vogts gate from Storo. Harry drove up onto the pavement, jumped
out and went over to them. They rolled down the window and passed Harry the walkie-talkie he had
requested.
‘Switch off the blender,’ Harry ordered, pointing to the rotating blue light. He pressed the talk
button and told the patrol cars to turn off the sirens well before they got to the scene.
Four minutes later six patrol cars were assembled at the crossing. The police officers, among them
Skarre and Ola Li from Crime Squad, had thronged around Harry’s car where he sat with a street
map in his lap, pointing.
‘Li, you take three cars to cut off any possible escape routes. Here, here and here.’
Li leaned over the map nodding.
Harry turned to Skarre. ‘The caretaker?’
Skarre raised the phone. ‘Talking to him now. He’s on his way over to the main door with keys.’
‘OK. You take six men and position yourselves by the entrance, back stairs and, if possible, on the
roof. And you bring up the rear, OK? Has the Delta car arrived?’
‘Here.’ Two of the officers, identical to the others from the outside, signalled that they were driving
the regular vehicle for Delta, the Special Forces Unit trained particularly for this kind of operation.
‘OK, I want you in front of the main entrance now. Are you all armed?’
The officers nodded. Some of them were armed with MP5 machine guns they had unlocked from
car boots. The others had only service revolvers. It was a fiscal matter, as the Chief Constable had
once explained.
‘The caretaker says Lund-Helgesen lives on the second floor,’ Skarre said, slipping the mobile
phone into his jacket pocket. ‘There’s just one flat on each floor. No exits to the roof. To reach the
rear staircase he’d have to go up to the third and through a locked attic.’
‘Good,’ Harry said. ‘Send two men up the rear stairs and tell them to wait in the attic.’
‘OK.’
Harry took with him the two uniformed officers from the car that had arrived first. An older officer
and a young, pimply whippersnapper who had both worked with Skarre before. Instead of going
into Åsengata 12, they crossed the street and went into the block opposite.
Both young boys from the Stigson family living on the second floor stared wide-eyed at the two