The Snowman ( PDFDrive )

‘Yup.’
‘Eh?’ Skarre said.
‘I want to know when she ran off,’ Harry said. ‘Did you get anything from the shoeprints outside,
Holm?’
The forensic officer shook his head. ‘Too trampled, and I need more light. I found several of Rolf
Ottersen’s bootprints. Plus a couple of others going to the barn, but none from the barn. Perhaps she
was carried out of the barn?’
‘Mm. Then the prints of the carrier would have been deeper. Shame no one stepped in the blood.’
Harry peered at the dark walls outside the range of the bulb. From the yard they heard a dog’s
pitiful whine and a policeman’s furious curses.
‘Go and see what’s up, Skarre,’ Harry said.
Skarre went, and Harry switched the torch back on and walked towards the wall. He ran his hand
along the unpainted boards.
‘What’s ?’ Holm began, but stopped when Harry’s boot hit the wall with a dull thud.
The starry sky came into view.
‘A back door,’ Harry said, staring at the black forest and the silhouette of spruce trees against the
dome of dirty-yellow light from the town in the distance. He shone the torch on the snow. The light
immediately found the tracks.
‘Two people,’ Harry said.
‘It’s the dog,’ Skarre said on his return. ‘It won’t budge.’
‘Won’t budge?’ Harry lit up the trail of footprints. The snow reflected the light, but the trail
vanished in the darkness beneath the trees.
‘The dog handler doesn’t understand. He says the dog seems petrified. At any rate it refuses to go
into the forest.’
‘Perhaps it can smell fox,’ Holm said. ‘Lots of foxes in this forest.’
‘Foxes?’ Skarre snorted. ‘That big dog can’t be afraid of foxes.’
‘Perhaps it’s never seen a fox,’ Harry said. ‘But it knows it can smell a predator. It’s rational to be
afraid of what you don’t know. The dog that isn’t won’t live long.’ Harry could feel his heart begin
to quicken. And he knew why. The forest. The dark. The type of terror that was not rational. The
type that had to be overcome.
‘This is to be treated as a crime scene until further notice,’ Harry said. ‘Start work. I’ll check where
this trail leads.’
‘OK.’