The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

nineties. While she chose a dining table in white oiled oak with aluminium legs. And Vitra.’
‘Vitra?’
‘Dining-room chairs. Swiss. Expensive. So expensive that with what she could have saved by
buying slightly more reasonably priced copies, she could have changed all the bloody furniture.’
Harry noticed that ‘bloody’ didn’t sound like a regular swear word in Katrine Bratt’s mouth; it was
a linguistic counterpoint that merely underlined her class affiliation.
‘Meaning?’
‘That big house, at that Oslo address, means it’s not money that’s the problem. She isn’t allowed to
change his sofa and table. And when a man with no taste, or no apparent interest in interior design,
does that kind of thing, it tells me something about who dominates whom.’
Harry nodded, mostly as a marker for himself. Her first impression had not been mistaken. Katrine
Bratt was good.
‘Tell me what you think,’ she said. ‘It’s me who should be learning here.’
Harry looked out of the window, at the old, traditional, though never particularly venerable,
licensed café, Lepsvik.
‘I don’t think Birte Becker left the house of her own free will,’ he said.
‘Why not? There were no signs of violence.’
‘Because it was well planned.’
‘And who’s the guilty party? The husband? It’s always the husband, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Harry, aware his mind was wandering. ‘It’s always the husband.’
‘Except that this one had gone to Bergen.’
‘Looks like it, yes.’
‘On the last plane, so he couldn’t have come back and still managed to catch the first lecture.’
Katrine accelerated and raced across the Majorstuen crossroads on amber. ‘Had Filip Becker been
guilty he would have taken the bait you set for him anyway.’
‘Bait?’
‘Yes. The bit about her mood swings. You suggested to Becker that you suspected suicide.’
‘And so?’
She laughed. ‘Come on, Harry. Everyone, including Becker, knows that the police don’t commit
resources to a case resembling suicide. In a nutshell, you gave him the chance to espouse a theory
which, if he’d been guilty, would have solved most of his problems. However, he replied that she
was as happy as a lark.’