The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

seemed to move slower and the room began to revolve. Mathias took aim. Harry took aim. And
swung his right arm. The handcuff made a low whine through the air as Mathias pressed the trigger.
The dry click was followed by a metallic smack as the open cuff struck his wrist.
‘Rakel survived,’ Harry said. ‘You failed, you satanic bastard.’
Harry saw Mathias’s eyes widen. Then narrow. Saw them stare at the revolver that had not fired, at
the iron around his wrist binding him to Harry.
‘You you removed the bullets.’
Harry shook his head. ‘Katrine Bratt never had bullets in her revolver.’
Mathias looked up at Harry and leaned backwards. ‘Come on.’
Then he jumped.
Harry was jerked forward and lost his balance. He tried to hold on but Mathias was too heavy and
Harry a diminished giant, weakened by the loss of flesh and blood. The policeman screamed as he
was dragged over the steel rail and sucked towards the window and the abyss. What he saw as he
threw his free left arm above his head and behind him was a chair leg and himself sitting alone in a
filthy windowless bedsit in Cabrini Green in Chicago. Harry heard the sound of metal on metal,
then he tumbled through the night in free fall. The game was at an end now.
Gunnar Hagen stared at the ski jump tower but the swirling snowflakes that had started again
obscured his vision.
‘Harry!’ he repeated on his walkie-talkie. ‘Are you there?’
He released the button, but again the answer was intense rustling nothingness.
There were four patrol cars in the open car park by the jump now, and total confusion had reigned
when they had heard the scream from the tower a few seconds before.
‘They fell,’ said the officer beside him. ‘I’m sure I saw two figures falling out of the glass cage.’
Gunnar Hagen lowered his head in resignation. He didn’t quite know how or why, but for a moment
it seemed to him there was an absurd logic in things ending this way; there was a kind of cosmic
balance.
Nonsense. What utter nonsense.
Hagen couldn’t see the police vehicles in the drifting snow, but he could hear the lament of the
sirens, like wailing women; they were already on their way. And he knew that the sound would
attract the scavengers: the media vultures, the nosy neighbours, the bloodthirsty bosses. They would
come to get their favourite titbit off the body, their delicacy. And this evening’s two-course meal –
the repugnant snowman and the repugnant policeman – would be to their liking. There was no logic,
no balance, just hunger and food. Hagen’s walkie-talkie crackled.
‘We can’t find them! Over.’
Hagen waited, wondering how he would tell his superiors that he had let Harry go alone. How he