The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

in Eidsvågneset the year before, when a lorry coming round a bend too fast had lost its load of
aluminium sheeting and had literally sliced up an oncoming car.
‘The killer has murdered her and carved her up right here,’ one of the officers said.
The information seemed somewhat superfluous to Rafto since the snow around the body was
bespattered with blood and the thick streaks to the side suggested that at least one artery had been
cut while the heart was still beating. He made a mental note to find out when it had stopped
snowing last night. The last cable car had left at five in the afternoon. Of course, the victim and the
killer may have taken the path that wound up beneath the cable cars, though. Or they could have
taken the Fløyen funicular up to Fjelltoppen beside it and walked from there. But they were
demanding walks and his gut instinct told him: cable car.
There were two sets of footprints in the snow. The small prints were undoubtedly the woman’s,
even though there was no sign of her shoes. And the others had to be the killer’s. They led to the
path.
‘Big boots,’ said the young technician, a hollow-cheeked coastal man from Sotra. ‘At least size 48.
Guy must have been pretty beefy.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Rafto said, sniffing the air. ‘The print is uneven and yet the ground here is flat.
That suggests the man’s foot is smaller than his boot. Perhaps he was trying to fool us.’
Rafto felt everyone’s eyes on him. He knew what they were thinking. There he went again, trying to
dazzle, the star of bygone times, the man the media had adored: big gob, hard face and driving
energy to match. In short, a man made for headlines. But at some point he had become too grand for
them, for all of them, the press and his colleagues. Indirect jibes had begun to circulate that Gert
Rafto was only thinking about himself and his place in the limelight, that in his egotism he was
treading on a few too many toes and over a few too many dead bodies. But he hadn’t taken any
notice. They didn’t have anything on him. Not much anyway. The odd trinket had disappeared from
the crime scenes. A piece of jewellery or a watch belonging to the deceased, things you assumed no
one would miss. But one day one of Rafto’s colleagues had been searching for a pen and had
opened a drawer in his desk. At least that was what he said. And found three rings. Rafto had been
summoned to the POB and had explained himself, and had been told to keep his mouth shut and his
fingers to himself. That was all. But the rumours had started. Even the media had picked up on it.
So perhaps it was not so surprising that when charges of police brutality were levelled against the
station, there was one man against whom concrete evidence was soon found. The man who was
made for headlines.
Gert Rafto was guilty of the accusations; no one was in any doubt about that. But everyone knew
that the inspector had been made a scapegoat for a culture that had permeated Bergen police for
many years. Just because he had signed a number of reports on prisoners – most of them child
molesters and dope dealers – who had fallen down the ancient iron stairs to the remand cells and
bruised themselves here and there.
The newspapers had been remorseless. The nickname they had given him, Iron instead of Gert, was
not exactly original, but nonetheless appropriate. A journalist had interviewed several of his longstanding
enemies on both sides of the law and of course they had taken the opportunity to settle old
scores. So when Rafto’s daughter came home crying from school, saying she was being teased, his
wife had said enough was enough, he couldn’t expect her to sit and watch while he dragged the
whole family through the mud. As so often before, he had lost his temper. Afterwards she had taken
their daughter with her, and this time she didn’t return.