The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘Eh?’ Skarre said.
‘Where are we going to begin then?’ Holm repeated with exaggerated diction.
Harry went back to the desk.
‘Holm goes over Becker’s house and garden as if it were a murder scene. Check the mobile phone
and the scarf in particular. Skarre, you make a list of ex-murderers, rapists, suspects in –’
‘—comparable cases and other scum on the loose,’ Skarre completed.
‘Bratt, you go through the missing persons reports and see if you can spot a pattern.’
Harry waited for the inevitable question: What type of pattern? But it was not forthcoming. Katrine
Bratt just gave a brief nod.
‘OK,’ Harry said. ‘Get going.’
‘And you?’ Bratt asked.
‘I’m going to a gig,’ Harry said.
When the others had left the office, he looked down on his pad. At the only words he had jotted
down. Hidden statistics.
Sylvia ran as fast as she could. She ran towards the trees where they were most dense, in the
growing murk. She was running for her life.
She hadn’t tied up her boots, and now they were full of snow. She held the little hatchet in front of
her as she burst through layer after layer of low, leafless branches. The blade was red and sleek with
blood.
She knew the snow that had fallen yesterday had melted in town, but even though Sollihøgda was
barely half an hour’s drive away, the snow could lie on the ground until spring up here. And right
now she wished they had never moved to this godforsaken place, to this bit of wilderness by the
town. She wished she were running on black tarmac, in a city where the noise drowned the sounds
of escape and she could hide in the secure mass of humanity. But here she was completely alone.
No.
Not completely.
8
DAY 3.
Swan Neck.
SYLVIA RAN INTO THE FOREST. N IGHT WAS ON THE WAY. Usually she hated the way
November evenings drew in so early, but today she thought the night couldn’t come soon enough.
She sought the darkness in the depths of the forest, the darkness that could erase her footprints in