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Speaker 1: Icy's audio books presents an unabridged recording of The Snowman, written by Yoh Nisbe, read by Sean Barrett.
Speaker 1: The moral right of the author has been asserted, this performance is owned by Icy's publishing limited.
Speaker 1: Part 1 Chapter 1 Wednesday 5th November 1980 The Snowman It was the day the snow came.
Speaker 1: At eleven o'clock in the morning large flakes appeared from a colourless guy and invaded the fields, gardens and lawns of Rumarika, like an armada from outer space.
Speaker 1: At two the snow plows were in action in Lillistrum, and when, at half past two, Sarah Queeness Lund slowly and carefully steered her Toyota Corolla SR5 between the detached houses in Kualovane, the November snow was lying like a down duvet over the rolling countryside.
Speaker 1: She was thinking that the houses looked different in daylight.
Speaker 1: So different that she almost passed his drive.
Speaker 1: The car skidded as she applied the brakes, and she heard a groan from the back seat.
Speaker 1: In the rear-view mirror she saw her son's disgruntled face.
Speaker 1: It won't take long my love, she said.
Speaker 1: In front of the garage there was a large patch of black tarmac amid all the white, and she realised that the removal van had been there.
Speaker 1: Her throat constricted.
Speaker 1: She hoped she wasn't too late.
Speaker 1: Who lives here came from the back seat.
Speaker 1: Just someone I know, Sarah said, automatically checking her hair in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Ten minutes my love.
Speaker 1: I leave the key in the ignition so you can listen to the radio.
Speaker 1: She went without waiting for a response, slithered in her slippery shoes up to the door she had been through so many times, but never like this, not in the middle of the day, in full view of all the neighbours prying eyes.
Speaker 1: Not that late night visits would see many more innocent, but for some reason acts of this kind felt more appropriate when performed after the fall of darkness.
Speaker 1: She heard the buzz of the doorbell inside like a bumblebee in a jam jar.
Speaker 1: Feeling her desperation mount she glanced at the windows of the neighbouring houses.
Speaker 1: They gave nothing away, just returned reflections of bare black apple trees, grey sky and milky white terrain.
Speaker 1: Then at last she heard footsteps behind the door and heaved a sigh of relief.
Speaker 1: The next moment she was inside and in his arms.
Speaker 1: Go darling, she said, hearing the sob already straining at her vocal cords.
Speaker 1: I have to, he said in a monotone, that suggested a refrain he had tired of long ago.
Speaker 1: His hands sought familiar paths of which they never tired.
Speaker 1: No, you don't. She whispered into his ear, but you want to. You don't dare any longer.
Speaker 1: This has nothing to do with you and me. She could hear the irritation creeping into his voice at the same time as his hand, the strong but gentle hand, slid down over her spine and inside the waistband first skirt and tights. They were like a pair of practiced dancers who knew their partners every move, step, breath, rhythm. First the white love-making, the good one.
Speaker 1: Then the black one, the pain. His hand caressed her coat, searching for her nipple under the thick material. He was eternally fascinated by her nipples.
Speaker 1: He always returned to them. Perhaps it was because he didn't have any himself. | |
Speaker 1: Did you park in front of the garage? He asked with a firm tweak. She nodded and felt the pain shoot into her head like a dart of pleasure. Her sex had already opened for the fingers which would soon be there. My son's waiting in the car. His hand came to an abrupt halt. She knows nothing. She groaned, sensing his hand falter. And your husband, where's he now? Where do you think, at work, of course? Now it was she who sounded irritated. Both because he had brought her husband into the conversation, and it was difficult for her to say anything at all about him without getting irritated, and because her body needed him quickly, Sala Queen's lung opened his flies. Don't, he began grabbing her around the wrist. She slapped him hard with her other hand. He looked at her in amazement as a red flush spread across his cheek. She smiled, grabbed his thick black hair and pulled his face down to hers. You couldn't go, she hissed, but first you have to shag me.
Speaker 1: He sat understood. She felt his breath against her face. It was coming in hefty gasp, now. Again, she slapped him with her free hand, and his dick was growing in her other.
Speaker 1: He thrust a bit harder each time, but it was over now. She was numb, the magic was gone, the tension had dissolved, and all that was left was despair. She was losing him.
Speaker 1: Now as she lay there, she had lost him. All the years she had yearned, all the tears she had cried, the desperate things he had made her do, without giving anything back, except for one thing.
Speaker 1: He was standing at the foot of the bed and taking her with closed eyes. Sada stared at his chest.
Speaker 1: To begin with, she had thought it strange, but after a while she had begun to like the sight of unbroken white skin over his petrol muscles. It reminded her of old statues, where the nipples had been omitted out of consideration for public modesty. His groans were getting louder.
Speaker 1: She knew that soon he would let out a furious roar. She had loved that roar, the ever-surprised ecstatic almost pained expression as though the orgasms have passed his wildest expectation each and every time. Now she was waiting for the final roar, a bellowing fair well to his freezing box of a bedroom, divested of pictures, curtains and carpets. Then he would get dressed and travel to a different part of the country, where he said he had been offered a job he couldn't say no to. But he could say no to this, this, and still he would roar with pleasure.
Speaker 1: She closed her eyes, but the roar didn't come. He had stopped.
Speaker 1: What's up? She asked, opening her eyes. His features were distorted all right, but not with pleasure.
Speaker 1: A face. He whispered. She flinched. Where? Outside the window.
Speaker 1: The window was at the other end of the bed, right above her head. She heaved herself round, felt him slip out, already limp. From where she was lying, the window above her head was set too high in the wall for her to see out, and too high for anyone to stand outside and peer in.
Speaker 1: Because of the already dwindling daylight, all she could see was the double-exposed reflection of the ceiling lamp. You saw yourself, she said almost pleading.
Speaker 1: That's what I thought at first. He said, still staring at the window.
Speaker 1: Sarah pulled herself up on her knees, got up and looked into the | |
Speaker 1: and there. There was the face. She laughed out loud with relief. The face was white, with eyes and a mouth made with black pebbles, probably from the drive, and arms made from twigs off the apple trees.
Speaker 1: Huffins, she gasped. It's only a snowman. Then her laugh turned into tears. She sobbed helplessly until she felt his arms around her.
Speaker 1: I have to go now, she sobbed.
Speaker 1: Stay for a little while longer, he said.
Speaker 1: She stayed for a little while longer. As Sara approached the garage, she saw that almost forty minutes had passed. He had promised to ring now and then. He'd always been a good liar, and for once she was glad. Even before she got to the car she saw her son's pale face staring at her from the back seat. She pulled at the door and found to her astonishment that it was locked. She peered in at him through steamed-up windows. He only opened it when she knocked on the glass. She sat in the driver's seat. The radio was silent and it was ice cold inside. The key was on the passenger seat. She turned to him. Her son was pale and his lower lip was trembling.
Speaker 1: «Is there anything wrong,» she asked. «Yes,» he said. «I saw him!» There was a thin, shrill tone of horror in his voice. That she couldn't recall hearing since he was a little boy jammed between them on the sofa in front of the TV with his hands of his eyes.
Speaker 1: And now his voice was changing. He had stopped giving her a good night hug and had started being interested in car engines and girls, and one day he would get in a car with one of them and also leave her. «What do you mean» she said inserting the key in the ignition and turning. «The snowman» there was no response from the engine and panic gripped her without warning. Quite what she was afraid of, she didn't know. She stared out of the windscreen and turned the key again. At the battery died.
Speaker 1: «And what did the snowman look like?» she asked, pressing the accelerator to the floor and desperately turning the key so hard it felt as though she would break it. He answered, but his answer was drowned by the roar of the engine. Sarah put the car in gear and let go of the clutch as if in a sudden hurry to get away. The wheels spun in the soft slushy snow. She accelerated harder but the rear of the car slid sideways. By then the tires had spun their way down to the tarmac and they lurched forward and skidded into the road.
Speaker 1: «Dad's waiting for us» she said, «We'll have to get him move on». She switched on the radio and turned up the volume to fill the cold interior with sounds other than her own voice. The newsreader said for the hundredth time today that last night Ronald Reagan had beaten Jimmy Carter in the American election. The boy said something again and she glanced in the mirror. «What did you say?» she said in a loud voice. He repeated it but still she couldn't hear. She turned down the radio while heading towards the main road and the river which ran through the countryside like two mournful black stripes.
Speaker 1: And gave a start when she realised he had leaned forward between the two front seats.
Speaker 1: His voice sounded like a dry whisper in her ear as if it was important no one else heard them. «We are going to die» Chapter 2 The 2nd of November 2004. Day 1. Pebble eyes Three hula gave a start and opened his eyes wide. It was freezing cold and from the | |
Speaker 1: came the sound of the voice that had awoken him. It announced that the American people would decide today whether their president for the next four years would again be George Walker Bush.
Speaker 1: November. Hurry was thinking they were definitely heading for dark times.
Speaker 1: He threw off the duvet and placed his feet on the floor. The liner was so cold it stung.
Speaker 1: He left the news blaring from the radio alarm clock and went into the bathroom.
Speaker 1: regarded himself in the mirror. November there too, drawn, greyish, pale and overcast. As usual his eyes were bloodshot and the pores on his nose large black craters. The bags under his eyes, with their light blue alcohol washed irises, would disappear after his face had been ministered to with hot water, a towel and breakfast.
Speaker 1: He assumed they would, that is. Hurry was not sure exactly how his face would fare during the day, now that he had turned forty, whether the wrinkles would be eye-and-out and peace would fall over the hunted expression he worked with after nights of being ridden by nightmares, which was most nights. For he avoided mirrors after he left his small Spartan flat in Sophie's gutter to become Inspector Hula of the Crime Squad at Oslo Police HQ. Then he stared into others' faces to find their pain, their Achilles' heels, their nightmares, motives and reasons for self-deception. Listening to their fatiguing lies and trying to find a meaning in what he did, imprisoning people who were already imprisoned inside themselves, prisons of hatred and self-contempt he recognized all too well. He ran a hand over the shorned bristles of blonde hair that grew precisely 192 centimetres above the frozen souls of his feet. His collar bones stood out under his skin like a clothes hanger. He had trained a lot since the last case, in a frenzy some maintained, as well as cycling he had started to lift weights in the fitness room in the bowels of police HQ.
Speaker 1: He liked the burning pain and the repressed thoughts. Nevertheless, he just became Lena.
Speaker 1: The fact disappeared and his muscles were layered between skin and bone.
Speaker 1: And well before he had been broad-shouldered, and what Raquel called a natural athlete, now he had begun to resemble the photograph he had once seen of a skinned polar bear, a muscular but shockingly gaunt predator. Quite simply, he was fading away.
Speaker 1: Not that it actually mattered. Harry said, November, it was going to get even darker.
Speaker 1: He went into the kitchen, drank a glass of water to relieve his headache, and peered through the window in surprise. The roof of the block on the other side of Sophie's gutter was white, and the bright reflected light made his eyes smart. The first snow had come in the night.
Speaker 1: He thought of the letter. He did occasionally get such letters, but this one had been special.
Speaker 1: He had mentioned to Wumba.
Speaker 1: On the radio and nature program had started, and an enthusiastic voice was waxing lyrical about seals. Every summer, bare house seals collect in the bearing straits to mate.
Speaker 1: Since the males are in the majority, the competition for females is so fierce that those males which have managed to procure themselves a female will stick with her during the whole of the breeding period. The male will take care of his partner until the young have been born and can cope by themselves. Not out of love for the female, but out of love for his own genes and her red-itre material.
Speaker 1: Dominist theory would say that it is natural selection that makes the bare house seal monogamous, not morality. I wonder, thought, Harry? | |
Speaker 1: This on the radio was almost hitting full setter with excitement, but before the seals leave the bearing straits to search for food in the open sea, the male will try to kill the female.
Speaker 1: Why? Because a female barehouse seal will never make twice with the same male.
Speaker 1: For her this is about spreading the biological risk of her registry material just like on the stock market.
Speaker 1: For her it makes biological sense to be promiscuous, and the male knows this.
Speaker 1: By taking her life he wants to stop the young of other seals competing with his own progeny for the same food.
Speaker 1: We are entering Darwinian waters here, so why don't humans think like the seal? Another voice said, but we don't, don't we? Our society is not as monogamous as it appears, and never has been.
Speaker 1: A Swedish study showed recently that between 15 and 20% of all children born have a different father from the one they, and for the matter of the postulated fathers, think.
Speaker 1: 20%, that's every fifth child, living a lie, and ensuring biological diversity.
Speaker 1: Harry fiddled with the frequency dial to find some tolerable music.
Speaker 1: He stopped at an ageing Johnny Cash's version of Desperado.
Speaker 1: There was a firm knock on the door.
Speaker 1: Harry went into the bedroom, put on his jeans, returned to the hall, and opened up.
Speaker 1: Harry Hula, the man outside, was wearing a blue boiler suit and looking at Harry through thick lenses.
Speaker 1: His eyes were as clear as a child.
Speaker 1: Harry nodded.
Speaker 1: Have you got fungus? The man asked the question with a straight face, a long whisper of hair traversed his forehead and was stuck there.
Speaker 1: Under his arm he was holding a plastic clipboard with a densely printed sheet.
Speaker 1: Harry waited for him to explain further, but nothing was forthcoming, just this clear open expression.
Speaker 1: That, Harry said, strictly speaking, is a private matter.
Speaker 1: The man gave the suggestion of a smile in response to a joke he was heartily sick of hearing.
Speaker 1: Fungus in your flat, mold.
Speaker 1: I have no reason to believe that I have, said Harry.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about mold.
Speaker 1: It seldom gives anyone reason to believe that it's there.
Speaker 1: The man sucked to his teeth and rocked on his heels.
Speaker 1: But Harry said at length, but it is.
Speaker 1: What makes you think that? Your neighbor's got it.
Speaker 1: Huh? And you think it may have spread? Mold doesn't spread.
Speaker 1: Dry rot does.
Speaker 1: So then there's a construction fault with the ventilation along the walls in this block.
Speaker 1: It allows dry rot to flourish.
Speaker 1: May I take a peep at your kitchen? Harry stepped to the side, the man powered into the kitchen, where at once he pressed an orange hairdryer like apparatus against the wall.
Speaker 1: It squeaked twice.
Speaker 1: Damped detector, the man said, studying something that was obviously an indicator.
Speaker 1: Just as I thought, sure you haven't seen or smelled anything suspicious, Harry didn't have a clear perception of what that might be.
Speaker 1: A coating, like on stale bread, the man said, moldy smell, Harry shook his head, have you had sore eyes? The man asked, felt tired, had headaches.
Speaker 1: Harry shrugged, of course, for as long as I can remember.
Speaker 1: Do you mean for as long as you've lived here? Maybe.
Speaker 1: Listen, but the man wasn't listening.
Speaker 1: He'd taken a knife from his belt.
Speaker 1: Harry stood back and watched the hand holding the knife being raised. | |
Speaker 1: and thrust with great force. There was a sound like a groan as the knife went through the plasterboard behind the wallpaper. The man pulled out the knife, thrust it in again, and bent back a powdery piece of plaster, leaving a large gap in the wall. Then he whipped out a small pen light and shone it into the cavity. A deep frown developed behind his oversized glasses. Then he stuck his nose deep into the cavity and sniffed.
Speaker 1: Right, he said. Hello there, boys. Hello there, who? Harry asked, edging closer.
Speaker 1: Aspergillus, said the man. A genus of mold. We have three or four hundred types to choose between, and it's difficult to say which one this is, because the growth on these hard surfaces is so thin it's invisible. But there's no mistaking the smell.
Speaker 1: That means trouble, right? Harry asked, trying to remember how much he had left in his bank account, after he and his father had sponsored a trip to Spain for Sis, his little sister, who had what she deferred to as a touch of Down syndrome.
Speaker 1: It's not like real dry rot. The block won't collapse, the man said. But you might. Me.
Speaker 1: If you're prone to it, some people get ill from breathing the same air as the mold.
Speaker 1: They're ailing for years, and of course they get accused of being hyper-condriacs, since no one can find anything, and the other residents are fine. And then the pest eats up the wallpaper and the plasterboard.
Speaker 1: Hmm. What do you suggest? Did I eradicate the infection, of course? And my personal finances while you're at it? Covered by the building's insurance, I won't cost you a cronum. Well, I need his access to the flat for the next few days. Harry found the spare set of keys in the kitchen drawer and passed them to him. It'll just be me, the man said. I should mention that in passing.
Speaker 1: Lots of strange things going on out there. Oh, there. Harry smiled sadly, staring out of the window. Hey? Nothing, Harry said. There's nothing to steal here anyway. I'll be off now.
Speaker 1: The low morning sun sparkled off all the glass on Oslo police HQ, starting there as it had for the last thirty years on the summit of the ridge by the main street, Groenlunds earlier. From there the police were, all know this had not been exactly intentional, near to the high crime areas in East Oslo and the prison located on the site of the old brewery was its closest neighbour. The police station was surrounded by a brown withering lawn and maple and linden trees, which had been covered with a thin layer of grey white snow during the night, making the park look like a deceased shrouded chattels.
Speaker 1: Harry walked up the black strip of tarmac to the main entrance and entered the central hall, where Cody Christensen's porcelain wall decoration with running water whispered its eternal secrets. He nodded to the security guard in reception and went up to crime scored on the sixth floor. Although it was almost six months since he had been given his new office in the red zone, he often went to the cramped, windalous one he had shared with police officer Jack Halverson. Now Magnus Skara was in there, and Jack Halverson had been interred in the ground of Vestra Akasimetry. At first the parents had wanted their son to be buried in their hometown, Stancher, as Jack and Beata learned the head of Krimteknisk, the forensics unit, had not been married. They hadn't even been living together, but when they found out that Beata was pregnant and Jack's baby would be born in the summer, they agreed that Jack's baby would be born in the summer. | |
Speaker 1: they've should be in Oslo. Harry entered his new office, which he knew would be known as that forever, the way the 50-year-old home-ground of Barcelona football club was still called Camp No, Catalan for New Stadium. He dropped on to his chair, switched on the radio, and nodded good morning to the photos, perched on the bookcase, and propped against the wall.
Speaker 1: One day, in an uncertain future, if he remembered to buy picture-pins, they would hang on the wall. Ellen Yelton, and Jack Halverson, and Björner Möhler. There they stood, in chronological order, the Dead Policeman Society. On the radio, Norwegian politicians and social scientists were giving their views on the American presidential election. Harry recognized the voice of Arva Stup, the owner of the successful magazine, Liberal, and famous for being one of the most knowledgeable, arrogant, and entertaining opinion-formers in the country.
Speaker 1: Harry turned up the volume until the voices bounced off the brick walls and grabbed his peerless handcuffs lying on the new desk. He practiced speed-cuffing on the table-leg, which was already splintered as a result of this bad habit he had picked up on the FBI course in Chicago, and perfected during lonely evenings in a lousy bed sit and cabrini green to the screams of roving neighbors, and in the company of Jim Beam. The aim was to bang the cuffs against the RST's wrist in such a way that the spring-loaded arm closed around the wrist, and the lock clicked on the other side. With the right amount of force and accuracy, you could cuff yourself to an RST in one simple movement before he had a chance to react.
Speaker 1: Harry had never had any use for this on the job, and only once for the other thing he had learned over there, how to catch a serial killer.
Speaker 1: The cuffs clicked around the table-leg, and the radio voices turned on.
Speaker 1: Why do you think Norwegians are so sceptical about George Bush our RSTub? Because we're an over-protected nation which has never fought in any wars, we've been happy to let others do it for us. England, the Soviet Union, and America? Yes, ever since the Napoleonic Wars, we've hidden behind the backs of our elder brothers. Norway has basted security on others taking the responsibility when things get tough. That's been going on for so long that we've lost our sense of reality, and we believe that the earth is basically populated by people who wish us the world's richest country. Well, Norway, a gibbering pea-brained blonde who gets lost in a backstreet in the Bronx, and is now indignant that her bodyguard is so brutal with muggers.
Speaker 1: Harry dialed Rackle's number. Aside from Cicis, Rackle's telephone number was the only one he knew off by heart. When he was young and inexperienced, he thought that a bad memory was a handicap for a detective. Now he knew better.
Speaker 1: And the bodyguard is Bush and the USA? The host asked.
Speaker 1: Yes, Lyndon B. Johnson once said that the US hadn't chosen its role, but he had realized there was no one else, and he was right. Our bodyguard is a born-again Christian with a father complex, a drink problem, intellectual limitations, and not enough backbone to do his military service with honor. In short, a guy we should be pleased is going to be reelected President today. I assume you mean that ironically. Not at all. Such a weak President listens to his advisors, and the White House has the best believe you may. Even though on that laughable TV series about the Oval Office, one may have formed the impression that the Democrats have a monopoly on intelligence, it is on the extreme right wing of the Republicans that surprisingly enough that you find the shot. | |
Speaker 1: Vist mines, Norway's security is in the best possible hands.
Speaker 1: A girlfriend of a girlfriend has had sex with you.
Speaker 1: "'Really,' said Harry.
Speaker 1: "'Not you,' Rackle said, "'I'm talking to the other guy.
Speaker 1: Step.' "'Sorry,' Harry said, turning down the radio.' After a lecture in Trondheim, he invited her up to his room.
Speaker 1: She was interested, but drew his attention to the fact that she'd had a mistake to me.
Speaker 1: He said he would give that some thought and went to the bar, and came back and took her with him.
Speaker 1: "'Mmm.
Speaker 1: I hope the expectations were fulfilled.
Speaker 1: Nothing fulfills expectations.' "'No,' Harry said, wondering what they were talking about.
Speaker 1: "'What's happening this evening?' Rackle asked.
Speaker 1: "'Tilus, grill at eight is fine, but what's all this rubbish about not being able to reserve tables in advance? It gives the whole place cashier, I suppose?' They arranged to meet in the bar next door first.
Speaker 1: After they had run off, Harry sat thinking, she had sounded pleased, or bright.
Speaker 1: Bright and cheery.
Speaker 1: He tried to sense if he had succeeded in being pleased on her behalf, pleased that the woman he had loved so much was happy with another man.
Speaker 1: Rackle and he had had their time, and he had been given chances, which he wasted.
Speaker 1: So why not be pleased that she was well? Why not let the thought that things could have been different go and move on with his life?' He promised to try a bit harder.
Speaker 1: The morning meeting was soon over, as head of Crime Squad, Politio Varbiciant, POB for short, Gunut Hagen ran through the cases they were working on, which were not many, as for the time being there weren't any fresh murder cases under investigation, and murder was the only thing that got the unit's pulse racing.
Speaker 1: Thomas Hiller, an officer from the Missing Person's Unit of the Uniform Police, was present, and gave a report on a woman who had been missing from her home for a year.
Speaker 1: Not a trace of violence, not a trace of the perpetrator, and not a trace of her.
Speaker 1: She was a housewife and had last been seen at the nursery, where she had left her son and daughter in the morning.
Speaker 1: Her husband and everyone in had closed a circle of acquaintances, had an alibi, and had been cleared.
Speaker 1: They agreed that Crime Squad should investigate further.
Speaker 1: Magnus Skara passed on regards from Stoler Auna, Crime Squad's resident psychologist, whom he had visited at Ulevol Hospital.
Speaker 1: Harry felt a pang of conscience.
Speaker 1: Stoler Auna was not just his adviser on criminal cases, he was his personal supporter in his fight against alcohol, and the closest thing he had to a confidant.
Speaker 1: There was over a week since Auna had been admitted with some vague diagnosis, but Harry had still not overcome his reluctance to enter hospitals.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow Harry thought, or Thursday.
Speaker 1: We have a new officer, who is going to Hagen announced, Katrina Bratt.
Speaker 1: A young woman in the first row stood up unbidden, but without offering a smile.
Speaker 1: She was very attractive, attractive without trying, thought Harry.
Speaker 1: Hagen almost wispy hair hung lifelessly down both sides of her face, which was finely chiseled, pale, and wore the same serious, weary features Harry had seen on other stunning women, who had become so used to being observed that they had stopped liking or disliking it.
Speaker 1: Katrina Bratt was dressed in a blue suit that underlined her femininity, but the thick black tides under the edge of her skirt and her practical winter boots invalidated any possible suspicions that she was playing on it.
Speaker 1: She stood, letting her eyes run over the gathering, as if she had risen to see them and not vice versa.
Speaker 1: Harry guessed that she had planned both the suit and this little first-day appearance of police HQ.
Speaker 1: Katrina worked for four... | |
Speaker 1: He has a Bergen police HQ, dealing mainly with public decency offenses, but he also did a stint at Climbscord.
Speaker 1: Hagen continued, looking down at a sheet of paper Harry presumed was her CV.
Speaker 1: Law degree from Bergen University in 1999, police college, and now she's an officer here.
Speaker 1: For the moment no children, but she's married.
Speaker 1: One of Katrina Bratz's thin eyebrows rose imperceptibly, and either Hagen saw this or he thought this last scrap of information was superfluous and added, for those who may be interested.
Speaker 1: In the oppressive and telling pause that followed, Hagen seemed to think he had made matters worse, coughed twice with force, and said that those who had not yet signed up for the Christmas party should do so before Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Chair scraped, and Harry was already in the corridor when he heard a voice behind him.
Speaker 1: Apparently I belonged to you.
Speaker 1: Harry turned and looked into Katrina Bratz's face, wondering how attractive she would be if she made an effort.
Speaker 1: Or you to me, she said, showing a line of even teeth but without letting the smile reach her eyes.
Speaker 1: Which ever way you look at it.
Speaker 1: She spoke Bergen flavoured standard Norwegian with moderately rolled ours, which suggested Harry wagered that she was from Fauna or Calfarid or some other solidly middle-class district.
Speaker 1: He continued on his way and she hurried to catch up with him, seems the politio far bit yint forgot to inform you.
Speaker 1: She pronounced the word with a slightly exaggerated stress on all the syllables of Gunnar Hagen's rank.
Speaker 1: But you should show me round and take care of me for the next few days, until I'm up and running.
Speaker 1: Can you do that, do you think? Harry eased off a smile, so far he liked her, but of course he was open to changing his opinion.
Speaker 1: Harry was always willing to give people another chance to wind up on his black list.
Speaker 1: I don't know, he said, stopping by the coffee dispenser.
Speaker 1: Let's start with this.
Speaker 1: I don't drink coffee.
Speaker 1: Nevertheless, it's self-explanatory, like most things here.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on the case of the missing woman? She pressed the button for Americana, which in this machine was as American as Norwegian ferry coffee.
Speaker 1: What about it? Brat asked.
Speaker 1: Do you think she's alive? Harry tried to ask in a casual manner so that she wouldn't realize it was a test.
Speaker 1: Do you think I'm stupid? She said and watched with undisguised revulsion as the machine coughed and spluttered something black into a white plastic cup.
Speaker 1: Didn't you hear the politio far bit yint? Did I say that I worked in the sexual offences unit for four years? Hmm, Harry said, dead then? As a dodo, Sir Katrina Brat.
Speaker 1: Harry lifted the white cup.
Speaker 1: He pondered the possibility that he had just been allocated a colleague he might come to appreciate.
Speaker 1: Walking home in the afternoon, Harry saw that the snow was gone from the pavements and streets, and the light flimsy flecks whirling through the air were eaten up by the wet tarmac as soon as they hit the ground.
Speaker 1: He went into his regular music shop in Arcasgata and bought Neil Young's latest, even though he had a suspicion it was a stinker.
Speaker 1: As he unlocked his flat, he noticed that something was different.
Speaker 1: Something about the sound, or perhaps it was the smell.
Speaker 1: He pulled up sharp at the threshold to the kitchen.
Speaker 1: The whole of one wall was gone.
Speaker 1: That is, where early this morning there had been bright flowery wallpaper and plasterboard.
Speaker 1: He now saw rust-red bricks, grey mortar and greyish yellow studwork dotted with nail holes.
Speaker 1: On the floor was the Moldman's toolbox, and on the worktop a note saying he would be back the following day.
Speaker 1: He went into the sitting room, slipped in the Neil Young CD, glumly took it out again after a quarter of an hour, and put on Ryan Adams. | |
Speaker 1: The thought of a drink came from nowhere. Harry closed his eyes and stared at the dancing pattern of blood and total blindness. He was reminded of the letter again, the first snow, to Womber. The ringing of the telephone interrupted Ryan Adams's shake down on 9th Street. A woman introduced herself as order, said she was calling from Bossa, and it was nice to talk to him again. Harry couldn't remember, but he did remember the TV program. They had wanted him to talk about serial killers because he was the only Norwegian police officer to have studied with the FBI, and furthermore he had hunted down a genuine serial killer. Harry had been stupid enough to agree. He had told himself he was doing it to say something important and moderately qualified about people who kill, not so that he could be seen on the nation's most popular talk show. In retrospect, he was not so sure about that, but that wasn't the worst aspect. The worst was that he'd had a drink before going on air. Harry was convinced that it had only been one, but on the program it looked as if it had been five. He had spoken with clear diction, he always did, but his eyes had been closed, his analysis sluggish, and he hadn't managed to draw any conclusions, so the show host had been forced to introduce a guest who was the new European flower arranging champion. Harry had not said anything, but his body language had clearly shown what he thought about the flower debate. When the host, with a surreptitious smile, had asked how a murder investigator related to flower arranging, Harry had said that wreaths at Norwegian burials certainly maintained high international standards. Perhaps it had been Harry's slightly befuddled, nonchalant style that had drawn laughter from the studio audience and contented pats on the back from the TV people after the program. He had delivered the goods, they said. And he had joined a small group of them at Kuntzneneshus, had been indulged, and had woken up the next day with a body from which every fiber of his being screamed, demanded had to have more. It was a Friday, and he had continued to drink all weekend. He had sat at Frooders and shouted for beer as they were flashing the lights to encourage customers to leave, and Rita, the waitress, had gone over to Harry, and told him that he would be refused admission in the future unless he went now, preferably to bed. On Monday morning, Harry had turned up for work at eight on the dot. He had contributed nothing useful to the department, thrown up in the sink after the morning meeting, clung to his office chair, drunk coffee, smoked, and thrown up again, but this time in the toilet. And that was the last time he had succumbed. He hadn't touched a drop of alcohol since. And now they wanted him back on the screen. The woman explained that the topic was terrorism in Arab countries, and what turned well-educated middle-class people into killing machines. Harry interrupted her before she was finished. No. But we would so much like to have you—you're so—so rock and roll!—She laughed with an enthusiasm whose sincerity he could not be sure of, but he recognized her voice now. She had been with them at Constantinus was that night. She had been good-looking in a boring, young way, a talk in a boring, young way, and a dyed Harry hungrily as though he were an exotic meal she was considering. Was he too exotic? Try someone else, Harry said, and rang off. Then he closed his eyes and heard Ryan Adams wondering, oh, baby, why do I miss you like I do? The boy looked up at the man standing beside him at the kitchen-worktop. The light from the snow covered garden shone on the hairless skin drawn tightly around his father's massive skull. | |
Speaker 1: Mummy had said that Dad had such a big head because he was such a brain. He had asked her why she said he was a brain, and not that he had a brain, and when she had laughed, she had stroked his forehead and said, that was the way it was with physics professors. Right now the brain was rinsing potatoes under the tap and putting them straight into a pan.
Speaker 1: Aren't you going to peel the potatoes, Dad? Mummy usually, your mother isn't here, so we'll have to do it my way. He hadn't raised his voice, yet there was an irritation that made Jonas cringe. He never quite knew what made his father so angry, or now and then, even whether he was angry. Until he saw his mother's face, with the anxious trooper on the corners of her mouth, which seemed to make Dad even more irritable. He hoped she would soon be there. We don't use them plates, Dad. His father slammed the cupboard door and Jonas bit his bottom lip. His father's face came down to his. The square, paper-thin glasses sparkled. It's those plates. Not them plates, as father said. How many times do I have to tell you, Jonas? But Mummy says Mummy doesn't speak properly. Do you understand? Mummy comes from a place and a family where they're not bothered about language. His father's breath smelt salty, of rotten seaweed. The front door banged.
Speaker 1: Hello! She sang out from the hall. Jonas was about to run to her, but his father held him by the shoulder and pointed to the unlaid table.
Speaker 1: How good you are! Jonas could hear the smile in her breathless voice as she stood in the kitchen door way behind him, while he set out glasses and cucklery as quickly as he could.
Speaker 1: And what a big snowman you've made! Jonas turned in surprise to his mother. It was unbuttoning her coat. She was so attractive. Dark skin, dark hair, just like him, and those gentle, gentle eyes she almost always had. Almost. She wasn't quite as slim as in the photos from the time she and Dad got married, but he had noticed that men looked at her whenever the two of them took a stroll in town.
Speaker 1: We haven't made a snowman, Jonas said. Haven't you? His mummy frowned as she unfilled the big pink scarf he had given her for Christmas. Dad went over to the window.
Speaker 1: Must be the neighbor's boys, he said. Jonas stood up on one of the kitchen chairs and peered out. And sure enough, there on the lawn in front of the house was a snowman. It was, as his mother had said, big. Its eyes and mouth were made with pebbles, and the nose was a carrot. The snowman had no hat, cap or scarf, and only one arm, a thin twig, Jonas guessed had been taken from the hedge. However, there was something odd about the snowman.
Speaker 1: It was facing the wrong way. He didn't know why, but it ought to have been looking out onto the road towards the open space. Why? Jonas began, but was interrupted by his father.
Speaker 1: I'll talk to them.
Speaker 1: Why's that? Mummy said from the hall where Jonas could hear unzipying her high black leather boots. It doesn't matter. I don't want that sort roaming around our property. I'll do it when I'm back.
Speaker 1: Why isn't it looking out? Jonas asked. In the hall his mother sighed.
Speaker 1: When will you be back, love? Tomorrow sometime.
Speaker 1: What time? Why? Have you got a date? There was a likeness of turn in his father's voice that made him shiver.
Speaker 1: I was thinking I would have dinner ready, Mummy said, coming into the kitchen, going over to the stove, checking the pans, and turning up the temperature on two of the hot plates.
Speaker 1: Just have it ready, his father said, turning to the pile of newspapers on the worktop, and I'll be home at some point.
Speaker 1: Okay. Mummy went over to... | |
Speaker 1: Dad's back and put her arms around him.
Speaker 1: Would you really have to go to Bergen tonight, already? My lectures at eight tomorrow, Dad said, it takes an hour to get to the university from the time the plane learns, so I wouldn't make it if I caught the first flight tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Jonas could see from the muscles in his father's neck that he was relaxing, that once again mummy had managed to find the right words.
Speaker 1: Why is this no man looking at our house? Jonas asked, go wash your hands, mummy said.
Speaker 1: They ate in silence, broken only by mummy's tiny questions about how school had been, and Jonas's brief vague answers.
Speaker 1: Jonas knew that detailed answers could evoke unpleasant questions from Dad about what they were learning, or not learning, at the excuse of a school.
Speaker 1: Or quick fire interrogation about someone Jonas mentioned he had been playing with, about what their parents did and where they were from, questions which Jonas could never answer to his father's satisfaction.
Speaker 1: When Jonas was in bed, on the floor below he heard his father say goodbye to his mother, a door close, and the car start up outside and fade into the distance.
Speaker 1: They were alone again.
Speaker 1: His mother switched on the TV.
Speaker 1: He thought about something she had asked.
Speaker 1: My Jonas hardly ever brought his friends home to play anymore.
Speaker 1: He hadn't known what to answer.
Speaker 1: He hadn't wanted her to be sad.
Speaker 1: But now he became sad instead.
Speaker 1: He chewed the inside of his cheek, feeling the bitter sweet pain extend into his ears and stared at the metal tubes of the wind chime hanging from the ceiling.
Speaker 1: He got out of bed and shuffled over to the window.
Speaker 1: The snow in the garden reflected enough light for him to make out the snowman down below.
Speaker 1: He looked alone.
Speaker 1: Someone should have given it a cap and scarf, and maybe a broomstick to hold.
Speaker 1: At that moment the moon slid from behind the cloud.
Speaker 1: The black row of teeth came into view, and the eyes.
Speaker 1: Jonas automatically sucked in his breath and recoiled two steps.
Speaker 1: The petal eyes were gleaming, and they were not staring into the house.
Speaker 1: They were looking up, up here.
Speaker 1: Jonas drew the curtains and crept back into bed.
Speaker 1: Chapter 3.
Speaker 1: Day 1.
Speaker 1: Cauchy Neal.
Speaker 1: Harry was sitting on a bar stool in Palace Grill, reading the signs on the walls.
Speaker 1: The good natured remind us to barclay until not to ask for credit, not to shoot the pianist, and to be good or be gone.
Speaker 1: It was still early evening, and the only other customers in the bar were two girls sitting at a table, frenetically pressing the buttons of their mobile phones, and two boys playing darts with practiced refinement of stance and aim, but poor results.
Speaker 1: Dolly Parton, who Harry knew had been brought back in from the cold by arbiters of good country and Western taste, was whining over the loudspeakers with her nasal southern accent.
Speaker 1: Harry checked his watch again and had a wager with himself that Raka Falker would be standing at the door at exactly seven minutes past eight.
Speaker 1: He felt the clackle of tension he always felt at seeing her again.
Speaker 1: He told himself it was just a conditioned response, like Pavlov's dog starting to salivate when they heard the bell for food, even when there wasn't any.
Speaker 1: And they wouldn't be having food this evening.
Speaker 1: That is, they would be having food but only food.
Speaker 1: And a cursy chart about the lives they were leading now, or to be more precise the life she was leading now.
Speaker 1: And about Oleg, the son she had had with her Russian ex-husband from when she had been working at the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow.
Speaker 1: The boy with the | |
Speaker 1: closed, weary nature, that Harry had reached, and with whom he had gradually developed bonds that in many ways were stronger than those with his own father.
Speaker 1: And when Raquel had, in the end, been unable to tolerate any more and had left, he didn't know whose loss had been greater. But now he knew. For now it was seven minutes past eight, and she was standing by the door, with that erect posture of hers, the arch of her back he could feel on his fingertips, and the high cheekbones under the glowing skin he could feel against his. He had hoped she wouldn't look so good, so happy.
Speaker 1: She walked over to him, and their cheeks touched. He made sure he let go first.
Speaker 1: What are you looking at, she asked, unbuttoning her coat? You know, Harry said, and her that he should have cleared his throat first.
Speaker 1: She chuckled, and the laughter had the same effect on him as the first swig of Jim Beam.
Speaker 1: He felt warm and relaxed.
Speaker 1: Don't, she said. He knew exactly what her don't meant. Don't start. Don't be embarrassing.
Speaker 1: We're not going there. She had said it softly. It was practically inaudible, yet it felt like a stinging slab.
Speaker 1: You're thin, she said. So they say. The table, the waiter, will come and get us.
Speaker 1: She sat down on the stool opposite him, and ordered an imperative.
Speaker 1: Campari went without saying. Harry used to call her Cochignil after the natural pigment that gave the spicy sweet wine its characteristic colour. Because she liked to dress in bright red, Rackle had herself claimed that she used it as a warning, the way animals use strong colours to tell others to keep their distance. Harry ordered another Coke.
Speaker 1: Why you so thin? She asked.
Speaker 1: Fungus. What? Apparently you see me up, brain, eyes, lungs, concentration, sucking out colours and memory.
Speaker 1: The fungus is growing, I'm disappearing. It's becoming me, I'm becoming it.
Speaker 1: What are you babbling about? She exclaimed with a grim as cemented in a disgust, but Harry caught the smile in her eyes. She liked to hear him talking, even when it was just gobbledy-gook. He told her about the mold and his flat.
Speaker 1: Now are you doing, Harry asked? Fine, I'm good. Well, it's fine, but he misses you.
Speaker 1: As he said that, you know he has. You should keep tabs on him better.
Speaker 1: May, Harry looked at her dumbfounded. It wasn't my decision.
Speaker 1: So, she said, taking the drink from the barman. Just because you and I are not together, doesn't mean that you and Oleg don't have an important relationship.
Speaker 1: For you both. Neither of you finds it easy to commit to people, so you should nurture the relationships you do have.
Speaker 1: Harry said his Coke.
Speaker 1: I was Oleg getting on with your doctor. His name's Matthias.
Speaker 1: But Oleg doesn't exactly make it easy for him. Harry experienced a sweet tingle of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: Matthias works long hours as well. Now I thought you didn't like your men working.
Speaker 1: Harry replied and regretted it the moment he had said it, but instead of getting angry, ruggleside with sadness. It wasn't the long hours, Harry. You were obsessed. You are your job, and what drives you isn't love or a sense of responsibility. It's not even personal ambition.
Speaker 1: It's anger and the desire for revenge. And that's not right, Harry. It shouldn't be like that.
Speaker 1: You know what happened. Yes, thought, Harry. I allowed the dise- | |
Speaker 1: is to enter your house as well. He cleared his throat, but your doctor is driven by the right things, then. Matthias still does the night shift at A&E, voluntary, at the same time as lecturing full-time at the anatomy department, and he's a blood donor and a member of Amnesty International. She sighed, be negative is a rare blood group, Harry, and you also support Amnesty, I know that, for a fact. She stirred her drink with an orange plastic stick that had a horse on top, the red mixture swirled round the ice cubes, cochineal.
Speaker 1: Harry, she said, something in her inflection made him tense up. Matthias is going to move in with me, over Christmas. So soon Harry ran his tongue over his pallet in an attempt to find moisture. You haven't known each other for long? Long enough, we're planning to get married in the summer. Magnus Kura studied the hot water running over his hands and into the sink, where it disappeared. No, nothing disappeared, it was just somewhere else. Like these people about whom he had spent the past few weeks collecting information, because Harry had asked him, because Harry had said there might be something in it, and he had wanted Magnus's report before the weekend, which meant that Magnus had been obliged to work overtime, even though he knew that Harry gave them jobs like this to keep them busy in these feet on desk times. The uniform division's tiny missing persons unit of three refused to delve into old cases. They had more than enough to do with the new ones.
Speaker 1: When the deserted corridor and his way back to his office, Magnus noticed that the door was ajar. He knew he had closed it, and it was past nine so the cleaners had finished long before. Two years ago they had had problems with thieving from the offices. Magnus Kura pulled the door open with a vengeance. Katrina Bracht was standing in the middle of the room, and launched at him with a funneled bra, as if it was he who had burst into her office. She turned her back on him. I just wanted to see, she said, casting her eye over the walls.
Speaker 1: See what? Scarlet looked around. His office was like all the others, except that it didn't have a window. This was his office, wasn't it? Scarlet Frowned. What do you mean? Hooless.
Speaker 1: This was his office for all those years, even when he was investigating the serial killers in Australia. Scarlet shrugged. I think so. Why? Katrina Bracht ran a hand over the desktop. Why did he change offices? Magnus walked around her and plopped down on the swivel chair. It hasn't got any windows. And he shared the office, first with Ellen Yelton, and then Jack Harerson. Katrina Bracht said, and both were killed.
Speaker 1: Katrina Scarlet put his hands behind his head. This new officer had class. A legal tour above him. He better husband was the boss of something or other, and had money. A suit seemed expensive. But when he looked at her a bit closer, there was a little floor somewhere.
Speaker 1: A slight blemish he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Speaker 1: Do you think he heard their voices? Was that why he moved? Bracht asked, scrutinizing a worn map of Norway on which Scarlet circled the hometowns of all the missing persons in Ursland, Eastern Norway, since 1980. Scarlet laughed, but didn't answer. Her waist was slim and her back willowy. He knew she knew he was ogling, huh? What do you like, actually? She asked. Why'd you ask? I suppose everyone with a new boss does, don't they? She was right. | |
Speaker 1: It was just that he had never thought of Harry Hula as a boss, not in that way.
Speaker 1: Okay, he gave them jobs to do and led investigations but beyond that, all he asked was that they kept out of his way.
Speaker 1: He is, as you probably know, somewhat infamous, Scara said.
Speaker 1: She shrugged.
Speaker 1: I've heard about his alcoholism, yes, and that he has reported colleagues, and that all the heads wanted him booted out, but the previous POB held a protective wing over him.
Speaker 1: His name was Bjanna Muller.
Speaker 1: Scara said, looking at the map, at the ringer down Bergen.
Speaker 1: That was where Muller had been seen last, before he disappeared.
Speaker 1: And the people at HQ don't like the media turning him into a kind of pop idol.
Speaker 1: Scara chewed his lower lip.
Speaker 1: He's a bloody good detective, not enough for me.
Speaker 1: You like him, Brad asked.
Speaker 1: Scara grinned.
Speaker 1: He turned and looked straight into her eyes.
Speaker 1: Like, dislike, he said, I don't think I could say one or the other.
Speaker 1: He pushed back his chair, put his feet on the desk, stretched, and gave a sort of yawn.
Speaker 1: What are you working on, so late at night? It was an attempt to gain the upper hand, and after all she was only a low-ranking detective, and knew.
Speaker 1: But Katrina Brad just smiled as if he had said something funny, walked out of the door and was gone.
Speaker 1: Disappeared.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, Scara cursed, sat up in the chair, and went back to his computer.
Speaker 1: Harry woke up and lay on his back staring at the ceiling.
Speaker 1: How long had he been asleep? He turned and looked at the clock on his bedside table.
Speaker 1: A quarter to four.
Speaker 1: The dinner had been an odd deal.
Speaker 1: He had watched Rackel's mouth speaking, drinking wine, chewing meat, and devouring him, as she told him about how she and Matthias were going to Botswana for a couple of years, where the government had a good setup in place to fight HIV, but were short of doctors.
Speaker 1: She had asked whether he had met anyone.
Speaker 1: And he had answered that he had met his childhood pals, Oestin and Trisco.
Speaker 1: The former was an alky, taxi-driving computer freak, the latter an alky gambler, who would have been the world poker champion if he had been as good at maintaining his own poker face as he was at greeting others.
Speaker 1: He had even begun to tell her about Trisco's fatal defeat in the world championships in Las Vegas, before he realised he had told her before.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't true that he had met them.
Speaker 1: He hadn't met anyone.
Speaker 1: He had seen the waiter pouring booze into the glasses on the adjacent table, and for one crazy moment he had been on the point of tearing the bottle out of his hands and putting it to his mouth.
Speaker 1: Instead he had agreed to take Oleg to a concert he had begged Rukhil to let him see.
Speaker 1: Slipknot.
Speaker 1: Harriet omitted to tell her what kind of band she was letting loose on her son, since he fancied seeing Slipknot himself.
Speaker 1: Even though bands with the obligatory death-rattle satanic symbols and speeded up bass drum usually made him laugh, Slipknot was, in fact, interesting.
Speaker 1: Harriet threw off the duvet and went into the kitchen, let the water from the tarp run rolled, cupped his hands and drank.
Speaker 1: He had always thought water tasted better like that, drunk from his own hands off his own skin.
Speaker 1: Then he suddenly let the water run into the sink again and stared at the black wall.
Speaker 1: Had he seen anything? Something moving? No.
Speaker 1: Not a thing.
Speaker 1: Just movement itself, like the invisible waves underwater that caressed the seagrass, over dead fibers, fingers so thin that they can't be seen, spores that rise at the smallest movement of air and settle in new areas and begin to eat and suck.
Speaker 1: Harriet switched on the radio in the sitting room.
Speaker 1: It had been decided, George W. Bush. | |
Speaker 1: had been given another term in the White House. Harry went back to bed and pulled the duvet over his head.
Speaker 1: Jonas was a work on by a sound and lifted the duvet off his face. At least he thought it had been a sound, a crunching sound like sticky snow underfoot in the silence between the houses on a Sunday morning. He must have been dreaming, but sleep would not return even when he closed his eyes. Instead fragments of the dream came back to him.
Speaker 1: Dad had been standing motionless and silent in front of him with a reflection in his glasses that lent them an impenetrable, ice-like surface. It must have been a nightmare because Jonas was scared. He opened his eyes again and saw that the chimes hanging from the ceiling were moving. Then he jumped out of bed, opened the door and ran across the corridor. By the stairs to the ground floor he managed to stop himself looking down into the darkness and didn't pause until he was in front of his parents bedroom and pressing down the handle with infinite caution. Then he remembered that he start was away and he would wake his mum whatever he did. He slipped inside, a white square of moonlight extended across the floor to the undisturbed double bed. The numbers on the digital alarm clock were lit up, 01-11. For a moment Jonas stood there, bewildered. Then he went out into the corridor.
Speaker 1: He walked towards the staircase. The darkness of the stairs lay there waiting for him like a vast open void. Not a sound could be heard from below.
Speaker 1: Mummy! He regretted shouting the moment he heard his own terror in the brief harsh echo.
Speaker 1: For now it knew too the darkness. There was no answer. Jonas swallowed. Then he began to tiptoe down the stairs. On the third step he felt something wet under his feet, the same on the sixth and the eighth as if someone had been walking with wet shoes or wet feet.
Speaker 1: In the living room the light was on, but there was no mummy. He went to the window to look at the Bendickson's house. Mummy occasionally went over to see Ebba, but all the windows were dark.
Speaker 1: He walked into the kitchen and over to the telephone successfully keeping his thoughts at bay not letting the darkness in. He dialed his mother's mobile phone number and was jubilant to hear her soft voice, but it was a message asking him to leave his name and wishing him a nice day.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't day, it was night. In the porch he stuffed his feet into a pair of his father's large shoes, put on a padded jacket over his pajamas and went outside. Mum had said the snow would be gone tomorrow, but it was still cold and a light wind whispered and mumbled in the oak tree by the gate. It was no more than a hundred metres to the Bendickson's house. Unfortunately there were two street lamps on the way. She had to be there. He glanced to the left and to the right to make sure there was no one who could stop him. Then he caught sight of the snowman. It stood there as before immovable facing the house bathed in the cold moonlight. Yet there was something different about it, something almost human, something familiar. Jonas looked at the Bendickson's house.
Speaker 1: He decided to run, but he didn't. In sturdy stood, feeling the tentative ice cold wind go right through him. He turned slowly back to the snowman. Now he realised what it was that had made the snowman so familiar. It was wearing a scarf. | |
Speaker 1: A pink scarf. The scarf Jonas had given his mother for Christmas.
Speaker 1: End of CD1 | |
Speaker 1: and so very modern again.
Speaker 1: Ten years, said Evervendixson, we moved into our house over the road the day Jonas was born.
Speaker 1: She nodded towards the boy, who was still motionless, staring at careering birds and exploding wolves.
Speaker 1: I understand it was you who rang the police last night? Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: The boy rang the bell at about a quarter past one, Scala said, looking down at his words, police were phoned at one thirty.
Speaker 1: My husband and I went back with Jonas and searched the house first, Evervendixson explained.
Speaker 1: Where did you look, Harry asked, in the cellar, in the bathrooms, in the garage, everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's very odd that anyone would do a runner like that.
Speaker 1: Do a runner.
Speaker 1: Disappear, go missing.
Speaker 1: The policeman I spoke to on the phone asked if we could take care of Jonas and said we should ring everyone be at a new and who she might be staying with.
Speaker 1: And then wait until early today to find out if be at her had gone to work.
Speaker 1: In eight out of ten cases he explained, the missing person reappeared after a few hours.
Speaker 1: We tried to get hold of Philip, the husband, Scala interjected.
Speaker 1: He was in Bergen lecturing.
Speaker 1: He's a professor of something or other.
Speaker 1: Physics, Evervendixson smiled.
Speaker 1: However his mobile switched off, and we didn't know the name of the hotel where he was staying.
Speaker 1: He was contacted in Bergen this morning, Scala said.
Speaker 1: He should be here soon.
Speaker 1: Yes, thank God, Everv said.
Speaker 1: So when we rang Beaters' workplace this morning, and she hadn't turned up at the customary time, we rang you back.
Speaker 1: Scala nodded in confirmation.
Speaker 1: Harry signalled that Scala could continue his conversation with Evervendixson.
Speaker 1: Went over to the TV and sat down on the floor beside the boy.
Speaker 1: On the screen a wolf was lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite.
Speaker 1: Hello, Janice, my name's Harry.
Speaker 1: Did the other policeman tell you that things like this almost always turn out fine? People disappear and then they turn up of their own accord. | |
Speaker 1: The boy shook his head, but they too, and he said, if you had to guess, where do you think your mother would be now? The boy shrugged.
Speaker 1: I don't know where she is.
Speaker 1: I know you don't know, Jonas.
Speaker 1: None of us does right now, but what's the first place that would occur to you if she wasn't here or at work? Don't think about whether it's likely or not.
Speaker 1: The boy didn't answer, just stared at the wolf desperately trying to throw away the stick of dynamite that had got stuck to his hand.
Speaker 1: Is there a cabin or something like that where you go? Jonas shook his head, a special place where she likes to go if she wants to be on her own.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want to be on her own.
Speaker 1: Jonas said, she wants to be with me.
Speaker 1: Just with you? The boy turned and looked at Harry.
Speaker 1: Jonas had brown eyes like Oleg, and in the brown Harry saw the horror he had been expecting and the anger he had not.
Speaker 1: Why did they go? The boy asked, the ones who come back.
Speaker 1: Same eyes Harry thought, same questions, the important ones.
Speaker 1: For all sorts of reasons Harry said, some got lost.
Speaker 1: There were various ways of getting lost, and some only needed a break and went off to get some peace.
Speaker 1: The front doors lammed and Harry saw the boy start.
Speaker 1: At that moment the dynamite exploded in the wolf's hand and behind them the living room door opened.
Speaker 1: Hello? A voice said, sharp and controlled at the same time.
Speaker 1: What's the latest? Harry turned in time to see a man of around fifty, wearing a suit, stride towards the coffee table and pick up the rumored control.
Speaker 1: The next moment the TV picture imploded to a white dot as the set hissed in protest.
Speaker 1: You know what I've said about watching TV during the day, Jonas? He said, with a resigned tone. | |
Speaker 1: as if to tell the others in the room what a hopeless job raising children was nowadays.
Speaker 1: Harry stood up and introduced himself, Magnus Skada and Katrina Brat, who until now had many stood by the door observing. Philip Becker, the man said, pushing his glasses, although they were already high up his nose. Harry tried to catch his eye to form the crucial first impression of a potential suspect should it ever come to that, but his eyes were hidden behind the reflection from his glasses. I spent my time ringing everyone who might conceivably have been in contact, but no one knows anything. Philip Becker said, what do you know? Nothing, said Harry.
Speaker 1: But the first thing you can do to help us is to find out of any suitcases, rucksacks or clothes of missing so that we can formulate a theory. Harry studied Becker before continuing, as to whether this disappearance is spontaneous or planned.
Speaker 1: Becker returned Harry's searching case before nodding and going upstairs to the first floor.
Speaker 1: Harry crouched down beside Jonas, who was still staring at the black TV screen.
Speaker 1: So you like robe runners, do you? Harry asked, the boy shook his head mutely.
Speaker 1: Why not? Jonas's whisper was barely audible.
Speaker 1: I feel sorry for Wiley's coyote.
Speaker 1: Five minutes later Becker came back down and said that nothing was missing, neither travel bags nor clothing, apart from what she was wearing when he left, plus her coat boots and a scarf.
Speaker 1: Harry scratched his unshaven chin and glanced across at Eber Bendixen.
Speaker 1: Can you and I go into the kitchen, Harbecker? Becker led the way, and Harry signalled to Katrina to join them. In the kitchen, the professor immediately began to spoon coffee into a filter and pour water into the machine. Katrina stood by the door while Harry went over to the window and looked out. The snowman's head- | |
Speaker 1: It had sunk between its shoulders.
Speaker 1: When did you leave last night on which flight did you take to Bergen, Harry asked? I left it around half past nine, Becker said, without hesitation.
Speaker 1: The plane went at five minutes past eleven.
Speaker 1: Did you have any contact with Peter after leaving home? No.
Speaker 1: What do you think could have happened? I have no idea, Inspector, I really don't.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Harry had launched out into the street.
Speaker 1: Once they had been there he hadn't heard a single car pass, a really quiet neighborhood.
Speaker 1: The peace and quiet alone probably cost half a million in this area of town.
Speaker 1: What sort of marriage do you and your wife have? Harry heard Philip Becker stop what he was doing and he added, I have to ask because spouses do simply upsticks and leave.
Speaker 1: Philip Becker cleared his throat.
Speaker 1: I can assure you that my wife and I have a perfectly good marriage.
Speaker 1: Have you considered that she may be having an affair, I'm been on to you? That's out of the question.
Speaker 1: Out of the question is pretty strong, how Becker, and extra-marital relationships are pretty common.
Speaker 1: Philip Becker gave a weak smile.
Speaker 1: I'm not naive, Inspector, be it as an attractive woman and a good deal younger than me, and she comes from a relatively liberal family, it has to be said, but she's not the type, and I have a relatively good perspective on how active it is if I may put it like that.
Speaker 1: The coffee machine rumbled ominously as Harry opened his mouth to pursue the point.
Speaker 1: He changed his mind.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed any mood changes in your wife? Becker is not depressed, Inspector.
Speaker 1: She has not gone into the forest and hung herself or thrown herself into the lake.
Speaker 1: She's out there somewhere, and she's alive.
Speaker 1: I've read that people go missing all the time, and then they turn up again with a natural and fairly banal explanation, isn't that so? Harry nodded slowly. | |
Speaker 1: Would you mind if I had a look around the house? Why's that? There was a bruistness to Philip Becker's question that made Harry think he was a man who was used to being in control, to being kept informed, and that argued against his wife having left without a word, which, for that matter, Harry had already excluded in his mind, while adjusted healthy mothers do not abandon ten-year-old sons in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: And then there was all the rest.
Speaker 1: Usually they used minimal resources at such an earlier stage of a missing person's case, unless there were indications which suggested something criminal or dramatic.
Speaker 1: It was all the rest that had made him drive up to hoof himself.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you don't know what you're looking for until you find it, Harry answered.
Speaker 1: It's a methodology.
Speaker 1: He caught Becker's eyes behind the glasses now.
Speaker 1: They were, unlike his sons, light blue, and shone with an intense, clear gleam.
Speaker 1: By all means, Becker said, go ahead.
Speaker 1: The bedroom was chilly, aroma-free, and tidy.
Speaker 1: On the double bed was a crocheted quilt.
Speaker 1: On one bedside table a photograph of an elderly woman.
Speaker 1: The similarity led Harry to assume this side of the bed was Philip Becker's.
Speaker 1: On the other bedside table was a photograph of Yunus.
Speaker 1: There was a faint scent of perfume in the wardrobe containing ladies' clothing.
Speaker 1: Harry checked that the corners of the clothes hang as hung with equal distance from each other, as they would if they had been allowed to hang undisturbed for a while.
Speaker 1: Black dresses with slits, short jumpers with pink motifs and glitter.
Speaker 1: At the bottom of the wardrobe there was a drawer section.
Speaker 1: He pulled out the top drawer, underwear, black and red, next drawer, suspender belts and stockings, third drawer, dual-replaced in holes in bright red felt.
Speaker 1: He noticed a lot. | |
Speaker 1: Gordy ring with precious stones that glittered and sparkled. Everything here was a bit vagus.
Speaker 1: There were no empty gaps in the felt. The bedroom had a door leading into a newly decorated bathroom with a steam shower and two steel washstands. In Eunice's room Harry sat down on a small chair by a small desk. On the desk there was a calculator with a series of advanced mathematical functions. It looked new and unused. Above the desk there was a poster with a picture of seven dolphins inside a wave and a calendar for the whole year. Several of the dates were ringed and had tiny reminders added. Harry noted birthdays for Mummy and Grandpa, holiday and Denmark, dentist at 10am, and two July dates with Doctor above. But Harry couldn't see any football matches, cinema trips or birthday parties. He caught sight of a pink scarf lying on the bed.
Speaker 1: A colour no-boy of Eunice's age would be seen dead wearing. Harry lifted the scarf.
Speaker 1: It was damp, but he could still smell the distinctive fragrance of skin, hair and feminine perfume.
Speaker 1: The same perfume was in the wardrobe. He went back downstairs, stopped outside the kitchen and listened to Skada holding forth on procedures regarding missing persons' cases. There was a clink of coffee cups inside. The sofa in the living room seemed enormous, perhaps because of the slight figure sitting there reading a book. Harry went closer and saw a photo of Charlie Chaplin in full regalia. Harry sat down beside Eunice. Did you know that Chaplin was a serve? Harry asked, sir, Charlie Chaplin. Eunice nodded, but a chucked him out of the USA.
Speaker 1: Eunice flicked through the book. We will this summer, Eunice? No. But you went to the doctors, twice. Mum wanted to- | |
Speaker 1: me examined. Mum, his voice suddenly failed him. She'll be back soon, you'll see, how he said, putting a hand on his narrow shoulders. She didn't take the scarf with her, did she? The pink one on your bed. Someone hung it round the snowman's neck, Eunice said. I brought it in. Your mother didn't want the snowman to freeze then.
Speaker 1: She would never have given her favorite scarf to the snowman. Then it must have been your dad.
Speaker 1: No, someone did it after he'd left. Last night, the person who took mum.
Speaker 1: Harry nodded slowly. Who made the snowman, Eunice? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Harry looked through the window to the garden. This was the reason he had come.
Speaker 1: An ice-cold draft seemed to run through the wall and the room.
Speaker 1: Harry and Katrina drove down Sir Cadol's vein towards Mayerstoon.
Speaker 1: What was the first thing that struck you when we went in, Harry asked? That the couple living there were not exactly soulmates, Katrina said, steering through the toll booth without breaking. It may have been a happy marriage, a lift so she was the one who suffered more. Well, did you think that? It's obvious, Katrina smiled, glancing in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Clash of taste. Explain. Didn't you see the dreadful surfer in the coffee table? Typical 80-style, bought by men in the 90s? 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 Katrina blood. | |
Speaker 1: smoth. It was a linguistic counterpoint that merely underlined her class affiliation.
Speaker 1: Meaning? That big house at that Oslo address means it's not money that's the problem.
Speaker 1: 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 mark-up for himself. Her first impression had not been mistaken.
Speaker 1: Katrina Brat was good.
Speaker 1: Tell me what you think, she said. It's me who should be learning here.
Speaker 1: Harry looked out of the window at the old traditional, the never particularly venerable, licensed cafe, Lipsfick. I don't think beer to beaker left the house of her own free will.
Speaker 1: He said, why not? There were no signs of violence, because it was well planned.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: Except that this one had gone to Bergen.
Speaker 1: Looks like it, yes. On the last plane, so he couldn't have come back and still managed to catch the first lecture. Katrina accelerated and raised across the Mayors two and crossroads on Amber.
Speaker 1: Had Philip Becker been guilty, you would have taken the bait you set for him anyway.
Speaker 1: Bait? Yes, the bait about her mood swings, you suggested to Becker that you suspected suicide.
Speaker 1: 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 expose a theory which, if he'd been guilty, would have solved most of his problems.
Speaker 1: However, he replied that she was as happy as a lark.
Speaker 1: So you think the question was a test? You test people all the | |
Speaker 1: I'm Harry, including me.
Speaker 1: Harry didn't answer until they were well down Bogstad fame.
Speaker 1: People are often smarter than you think, he said, and then said nothing until they were in the police HQ car park.
Speaker 1: I have to work on my own for the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: And he said that because he had been thinking about the pink scarf and come to a conclusion that he urgently needed to go through a scar as missing person's report, and he urgently needed to have his nagging suspicion confirmed.
Speaker 1: And if it was what he feared, he would have to go to POB Gunnar Hagen with the letter.
Speaker 1: That's Sodding Letter.
Speaker 1: Chapter 5 The Fourth of November 1992 The Totem Pole When William Jefferson Blithe III came into the world on the 19th of August 1946 in the little town of Hope, Arkansas, exactly three months had passed since the death of his father in a traffic accident.
Speaker 1: Four years later, William's mother remarried and William took his new father's surname.
Speaker 1: And on November night forty-six years later in 1992, white confetti fell like snow onto the streets of Hope in celebration of their own hope and hometown boy William or just Bill Clinton after he had been elected the USA's 42nd president.
Speaker 1: The snow falling on Bergen at same night did not reach the streets, but melted in the air as usual and turned to rain over the town, which had been happening since mid-September.
Speaker 1: But as the following morning unfolded, there was a nice sprinkling of sugar on the top of the seven peaks guarding this beautiful town.
Speaker 1: An inspector Gert Raffko had already arrived on the highest of them, Ulrichen.
Speaker 1: He was breathing in the mountain air with a shiver, hunching up his shoulders around his | |
Speaker 1: said, his face so covered with folds of skin that it seemed to have been punctured.
Speaker 1: The yellow cable car that had brought him and three crime scene officers from Bergen Police HQ, up the 642 metres above the town, was swaying gently from the solid steel wires, waiting. The service had been discontinued as soon as the first tourists who had dismounted onto the popular mountain top that morning had sounded the alarm.
Speaker 1: Out and about! One of the crime scene officers let slip. The town's tourism slogan had become such a parody of Bergen Norwegian that Bergencians had almost stopped using it, but in situations where fear prevails, your innermost lexicon takes over. Yes, out and about, wrapped up repeated sarcastically, his eyes shining from behind the pancake batter of skin folds.
Speaker 1: The body lying in the snow had been cut into so many pieces that it was only thanks to a naked breast that they had been able to determine the gender. The rest reminded rafter of a traffic accident in Ed's Fongnessid 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.
Speaker 1: The kidder has murdered her and carved her up right here, one of the officers said.
Speaker 1: The information seemed somewhat superfluous to her after 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 flea and funicular up to field up and beside it and walked from there. But they were demanding walks and he- | |
Speaker 1: got 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 killers. They led to the path.
Speaker 1: Big boots, said the Amtechnition, a hollow-cheeked coastal man from Sutra.
Speaker 1: At least size 48, guy must have been pretty beefy.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily, Rhafter 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. Rhafter 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, garb, hard-faced, and driving energy to match. In short, a man made for headlines.
Speaker 1: But at some point he had become too grand for them, for all of them, the press and his colleagues.
Speaker 1: In direct jives had begun to circulate, that Rhafter 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.
Speaker 1: Not much, anyway. The odd trinket had disappeared from the crime scenes, a piece of jewelry or a watch belonging to the deceased. Things you assumed no one would miss.
Speaker 1: But one day one of Rhafter'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. Rhafter 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 leveled again. | |
Speaker 1: the station, there was one man against whom concrete evidence was soon found. The man who was made for headlines. Goed after 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 Roman cells and bruised themselves here and there. The newspapers had been remorseless. The nickname they had given him, iron, instead of dirt, was not exactly original, but nonetheless appropriate. A journalist had interviewed several of his long-standing enemies on both sides of the law, and of course they had taken the opportunity to settle old scores. So when Raftos 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. So often before he had lost his temper, afterwards she had taken their daughter with her, and this time she didn't return. It had been a tough time, but he had never forgotten who he was. He was iron-raftos, and when the quarantine period was over he had gone for broke, worked day and night to regain last ground.
Speaker 1: But no one was in forgiving mood, the wounds were too deep, and he noticed the internal resistance to letting him succeed. Of course they didn't want him to shine again, and remind them and the media of what they were so desperately trying to put behind them.
Speaker 1: Photographs of battered bodies in handcuffs. But he would show them, show them that good Raftos was not a man to let himself be buried before his time. That the town below belonged to him, not to the social workers, to the cream puffs to the smooth talker sitting in their offices with tongue-solving. | |
Speaker 1: long, they could lick the limp arseholes of both the local politicians and the pink old journalists.
Speaker 1: ''Take a few snaps and get me an ID,'' Rhaftar said to the technician with the camera.
Speaker 1: ''And who'd be able to identify this?'' the young man pointed.
Speaker 1: Rhaftar didn't care for his tone.
Speaker 1: Someone has reported, or will soon report, this woman missing.
Speaker 1: Just get on with it, Jr. Rhaftar went up to the peak and looked back across what her gensium skull, he didn't, the platter.
Speaker 1: His gaze swept the countryside and stopped at a hill, and what seemed to be a person on the summit.
Speaker 1: But if so, they weren't moving.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it was a can.
Speaker 1: Rhaftar pinched his eyes.
Speaker 1: He must have been there hundreds of times, walking with his wife and daughter, but he couldn't recall seeing a can.
Speaker 1: He went down to the cable car, spoke to the operator and borrowed his binoculars.
Speaker 1: Fifteen seconds later, he established that it wasn't a can, just three balls of snow that someone must have piled one on top of the other.
Speaker 1: Rhaftar didn't like the sloping district of Bergen known as Fjell Sieden, with its oh-so-picture-esque, crooked, uninsulated timber houses with stairs and cellars, situated in narrow alleys where the sun never shone.
Speaker 1: Trendy children of rich parents frequently paid millions to own an authentic Bergen house, then did them up until there wasn't an original splinter left.
Speaker 1: Here you no longer heard the sound of children's running feet on the cobbled stones, the prices had driven young Bergencian families into the suburbs on the other side of the mountains a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Yet here it was as quiet and deserted as a barren row of shops.
Speaker 1: Nonetheless he had the feeling he was being observed, as he stood on the stone steps ringing the bell.
Speaker 1: After a while the door opened and a pale, anxious woman's face looked out at him with a startled expression. | |
Speaker 1: Only Hittland, rough-to-queeried, holding up his ID, it's about your friend, Laila Osson.
Speaker 1: The apartment was tiny and the layout baffling. The bathroom was located behind the kitchen and between the bedroom and living room. Amid the patterned burgundy wallpaper in the living room, only Hittland had just managed to squeeze a sofa and a green and orange arm chair, and on the little floor space that remained there was a pile of wiggly magazines and heaps of books and CDs. Raptor stepped over an upturned dish of water and a cat to reach the sofa. Only Hittland sat on the armchair fidgeting with her necklace. There was a black crack in the green stone in the pendant. Maybe a floor, or perhaps it was meant to be like that. Only Hittland had learned about her friend's death early that morning from Laila's husband, Bastian, but still her face displayed several dramatic changes as Raptor mercilessly spelt out the details.
Speaker 1: Tretful, whispered only Hittland. Bastian didn't say anything about that.
Speaker 1: That's because we didn't want to publicize it. Raptor said, Bastian told me you were Laila's best friend. Only nodded. Do you know what Laila was doing up on Ulrike? Her husband had no idea, you see. He and the children were with his mother in Florida yesterday.
Speaker 1: Only shook her head. It was a firm shake. One that should not have left any doubt. It wasn't the shake that was the problem. It was the hundredth of a second's hesitation before it started. And this hundredth of a second was all Gertracht or needed.
Speaker 1: This is a murder case, Frick and Hittland. I hope you appreciate the gravity and the rescue run by not telling me everything you know. She shot the policeman with a bulldog face of a black slug. He smelt prey. | |
Speaker 1: If you think you're being considerate to her family, you have misunderstood. These things will come out, whatever. She swallowed. She looked frightened. It already looked frightened when she opened the door. So he gave her the final nudge, this actually quite trifling threat that still worked so amazingly well on the innocent as well as the guilty.
Speaker 1: You can tell me now, or will come to the station for questioning.
Speaker 1: Tears welled up in her eyes, and the barely audible voice came from somewhere at the back of her throat. She was meeting someone there, who, when he had learned, inhaled with the tremble, Lila told me only the first name and profession, until it was a secret. No one was to know, especially not Bastion.
Speaker 1: After a look down into his notebook to hide his excitement, and the first name and profession were, he noted down what only had said, peer to his pad. It was a relatively common name, and a relatively common profession, but since Bergen was a relatively small town, he thought this would be enough. He knew with the whole of his being that he was on the right track, and by the whole of his being, Gert Raftov meant thirty years of police work and a knowledge of humanity based on general misanthropy.
Speaker 1: ''Promise me one thing,'' Raftov said. ''Don't tell what you have just told me to assault. Not to anyone in the family, not to the press, not even to any other police officers you might talk to. Have you understood? Not to? Police officers? Definitely not.
Speaker 1: I'm leading the investigation, and I must have full control over this information. Until I tell you anything different, you know nothing.'' | |
Speaker 1: Last thought Rafto, standing outside on the step again.
Speaker 1: Last clinted as a window swung open further along the alley, and again he had the feeling he was being watched.
Speaker 1: But then so what? Revenge was his.
Speaker 1: His alone.
Speaker 1: Gert Rafto buttoned up his coat, hardly noticing the pissing rain, as, in silent triumph, he strode down the slippery streets to Bergen Town Centre.
Speaker 1: It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and the rain trickled over Bergen from a sky with a blown gasket.
Speaker 1: On the desk in front of Gert Rafto was a list of names he had requested from the professional organisation.
Speaker 1: He had started looking for candidates with the right first name, just three so far.
Speaker 1: It was only two hours since he had been with only Hetland, and Rafto was thinking that soon he would know who had killed Laila Arsene.
Speaker 1: He sold in less than 12 hours, and no one could take that away from him.
Speaker 1: The honour was his and his alone, because he was going to inform the press in person.
Speaker 1: The country's major media had flown in over the mountains and were already besieging police HQ.
Speaker 1: The chief constable had given orders that no details about the body would be released, but the vultures had already sent it a blood bath.
Speaker 1: There must have been a leak that chief had said, looking at Rafto, who hadn't answered, nor formed the green that yearned to surface.
Speaker 1: For there they were sitting out there now, ready to make their reports.
Speaker 1: And soon Gert Rafto would be king of Bergen police HQ again.
Speaker 1: He turned down the radio from which Whitney Houston had insisted all autumn that she would always love you, but before he could lift the telephone it rang.
Speaker 1: Rafto, he said with irritation, impatient to get going, it's me you're looking for.
Speaker 1: The voice was what immediately told the discredited detective that this was... | |
Speaker 1: not just a hoax or a crank. It was cool and controlled with clear business-like diction, which excluded the usual nutters and drunks, but there was something else about the voice too which he couldn't quite place.
Speaker 1: Rafto coughed aloud twice, took his time as if to show that he had not been taken a bag.
Speaker 1: Who am I talking to? You know. Rafto closed his eyes and cursed silently and roundly.
Speaker 1: Damn, damn, damn! The killer was going to give himself in, and that would not have anywhere near the same impact as if he Rafto arrested the perpetrator.
Speaker 1: What makes you think I'm looking for you? The policeman asked between clenched teeth.
Speaker 1: I just know, so the voice. And if we can do this my way, you'll get what you want.
Speaker 1: And what do I want? You want to arrest me, and you'll be able to.
Speaker 1: Alone. Are you listening now, Rafto? The officer nodded before he could gather himself to say yes.
Speaker 1: Meet me by the totem pole in Nordeness Park, the voice said, in exactly ten minutes.
Speaker 1: Rafto tried to think. Nordeness Park was by the aquarium. He could get there in under ten minutes.
Speaker 1: But why meet there of all places in a park at the end of a headland? So that I can see if you come alone, the voice said, as if in answer to his thoughts.
Speaker 1: If I see any other police or your late, I'll be gone. Forever.
Speaker 1: Rafto's brain processed, calculated, and drew a conclusion.
Speaker 1: He would not be able to organize an arrest team in time. He would have to explain in his written report why he had been forced to undertake the arrest on his own.
Speaker 1: It was perfect. Okay, said Rafto, what happens now? I'll tell you everything and give you the conditions for my surrender. | |
Speaker 1: sort of conditions. I don't want to wear handcuffs at the trial. The press will not be allowed in, and I serve my time somewhere where I don't have to mix with other prisoners.
Speaker 1: Or after almost choked.
Speaker 1: "'Okay,' he said, looking at his watch. Wait, there are more conditions. TV in my room, all the books I might wish for.
Speaker 1: "'We'll arrange that,'' or after, said, "'when you sign the deal with my conditions, I'll go with you.' What about, after began, but an accelerated beep, beep, beep, told him that the other person had rung off? Raffto parked his car by Bergen Shipyard. It wasn't the shortest route, but it meant he would have a better view of Nordeness when he went in. The big park was on undulating terrain with well-trodden paths and hillocks of yellow withered grass. The trees pointed with black knalled fingers to heavy clouds sweeping in from the sea behind the island of Askoi.
Speaker 1: A man hurried away behind a nervy rot-viler on a tort-lead. Raffto felt the smith and western revolver in his coat-pocket as he strode past Nordeness seawater pool. The empty white person looked like an oversized bath by the water's edge. Beyond the bend he could make out the ten-meter-high totem-pole, a two-ton gift from Seattle on the occasion of Bergen's 900th anniversary. He could hear his own breathing and the squelch of wet leaves beneath his shoes. It started to rain, small, pin-like droplets drove into his face.
Speaker 1: A solitary figure stood by the totem-pole facing Raffto as if the person had known that Raffto would come from that direction and not the other end. Raffto squeezed the revolver as he walked the last few steps. Two meters away he stopped, pinched his eyes against the rain. It could not be true. | |
Speaker 1: Surpised, said the voice he could place only now.
Speaker 1: Raftor didn't answer.
Speaker 1: His brain had started processing again.
Speaker 1: "'You thought you knew me,' the voice said.
Speaker 1: "'But it was just me who knew you.
Speaker 1: That was how I guessed you would try to do this alone.' Raftor stared.
Speaker 1: "'It's a game,' the voice said.' Raftor cleared his throat.
Speaker 1: "'Again?' "'Yes.
Speaker 1: You like playing games.' Raftor closed his hand around the stock of the revolver, held it in such a way he could be sure it would not snag on his pocket if he had to draw quickly.
Speaker 1: "'Why me particularly?' he asked.
Speaker 1: Because you were the best, I only play against the best.
Speaker 1: "'You're crazy,' Raftor whispered, regretting it immediately.
Speaker 1: "'Of that,' the other said with a tiny smile.
Speaker 1: "'There is little doubt.' "'But you're also crazy, my man.
Speaker 1: We're all crazy.
Speaker 1: We're restless spirits that cannot find their way home.
Speaker 1: It's always been like that.
Speaker 1: Do you know why the Indians made these?' The person in front of Raftor banged the knuckle of a bit loved index finger against the tree.
Speaker 1: The carved figures perched on top of each other, stared across the fjord with large, blind, black eyes.
Speaker 1: "'To watch over the souls,' the person continued, so that they don't get lost, but a totem pole rots, and it should rot, that's part of the point.
Speaker 1: And when it's gone, the soul has to find a new home.
Speaker 1: Perhaps in a mask, perhaps in a mirror, or perhaps in a newborn child.
Speaker 1: The sound of horse cries came from the penguin run at the aquarium.
Speaker 1: "'Will you tell me why you killed her?' Raftor said, and noticed that he toured gone horse. | |
Speaker 1: him's over, Ravto. It's been fun.
Speaker 1: And how did you find out that I was on your trail? The other person raised a hand and Ravto automatically stepped back a pace. There was something hanging from it, a necklace.
Speaker 1: At the end there was a green, tear-shaped stone with a black crack. Ravto felt his heart pounding.
Speaker 1: In fact, only Hitler wouldn't say anything at first. But she allowed herself, what shall we say, to be persuaded, you're lying.
Speaker 1: Ravto said it without breathing and without conviction.
Speaker 1: She said you instructed her not to tell your colleagues. That was when I knew you would accept my offer and come here alone. Because you thought this would be the new home for your soul, your resurrection, didn't you? The cold, thin rain lay like sweat on Ravto's face. He had placed his finger on the trigger of his revolver and concentrated on speaking slowly and with restraint.
Speaker 1: You chose the wrong place. You were standing with your back to the sea and there are police cars on all the roads out of here. No one can escape. The person facing him sniffed the air.
Speaker 1: Can you smell it, Gert? What? Fear. A adrenaline has quite a distinctive smell.
Speaker 1: But you know all about that. I'm sure you smelt it on the prisoners you beat up.
Speaker 1: Lila smelt like that, too. Especially when she saw the tools I would use.
Speaker 1: And only even more. Probably because you told her about Lila, so she knew what would happen to her.
Speaker 1: It's quite a stimulating smell, don't you think? I've read that it's the smell some carnivores used to find that. | |
Speaker 1: Ray. Imagine the trembling victim trying to hide, but knowing that the smell of its own fear will kill it.
Speaker 1: After saw the others bit loved hands, hanging down, empty. It was broad daylight, close to the centre of Norway's second-largest city. Despite his age, after the last years without alcohol, he was in good physical shape. His reflexes were fast and his combat techniques were more or less intact. Drawing the revolver would take a fraction of a second.
Speaker 1: So why was he so frightened that his teeth were chattering in his mouth? Chapter 6. Day 2. Cellular phone. Police officer Magnus Skara leaned back in his swivel chair and closed his eyes. And the image that immediately appeared to him water's suit stood facing the other way. He opened his eyes again in a flash and checked his watch.
Speaker 1: 6. He decided that he deserved a break since he had been through the standard procedure for locating missing persons. He'd run all the hospitals to hear if they had admitted a bit of becker, run to taxi firms, Norway's taxi and Oslo taxi, and check the journeys they had made near the Hofer Dress the previous night. Spoken to her bank and received a confirmation that she had not taken out large amounts from her account before disappearing, nor were there withdrawals registered for the previous evening or today. The police at Gardemurian airport had been allowed to see passenger lists for last night, but the only passenger called becker they found was her husband, Philip, on the Bergen flight.
Speaker 1: Skara had also spoken to the ferry company sailing to Denmark and England, although she could hardly have gone to England if her husband kept her passport and had showed it to them.
Speaker 1: The ambitious officer had sent the usual security. | |
Speaker 1: He faxed all the hotels in Oslo and Akaswus, and finally instructed all operational units, including the patrol cars in Oslo, to keep their eyes peeled.
Speaker 1: The only thing left was the question of the mobile phone.
Speaker 1: Magnus rang Harry and informed him of the situation.
Speaker 1: He inspected was out of breath, and in the background he heard the shrill twittering of birds.
Speaker 1: He asked a couple of questions about the mobile before ringing off.
Speaker 1: Then Skara got up and went into the corridor.
Speaker 1: The daughter Katrina Brat's office was open, and the light was on, but no one was there.
Speaker 1: It lined the stairs to the canteen on the floor above.
Speaker 1: No food was being served, but there was warmish coffee in a thermos and crisp bread and jam on a trolley by the door.
Speaker 1: Only four people were sitting in the room, but one of them was Katrina Brat at a table by the wall.
Speaker 1: She was reading documents in a ring binder.
Speaker 1: In front of her was a glass of water and a lunchbox containing two open sandwiches.
Speaker 1: She was wearing glasses, thin frames, thin glass, you could hardly see them against her face.
Speaker 1: Skara poured himself some coffee and went over to her table.
Speaker 1: Planted to do some overtime, did you? He asked taking a seat.
Speaker 1: Magnus Skara thought he heard a sigh before she looked up from the sheet.
Speaker 1: How I guessed, he smiled, all made summages.
Speaker 1: You knew before you left home that out canteen would close at five, and you would be working late.
Speaker 1: Sorry, but that's how you get when you're a detective.
Speaker 1: To you.
Speaker 1: She said without batting an eyelid, as she sought to return to the pages in her file.
Speaker 1: Yep! Skara said, slurping his coffee and using the occasion to get a good look at her.
Speaker 1: She was leaning forward and he could see the list trim off her bra down the front of her blouse.
Speaker 1: Take this missing person's case today.
Speaker 1: I don't have any information that anyone else hasn't got.
Speaker 1: Yet I'm sitting here and thinking that she might. | |
Speaker 1: still be in hoof. Perhaps she's lying under snow or foliage somewhere. Or perhaps in one of the many small lakes as dreams there." Katrina Brout didn't answer.
Speaker 1: And you know why I think that? No. She answered in a monotone without raising her eyes from the file.
Speaker 1: Scarra stretched across the table and placed a mobile phone directly in front of her.
Speaker 1: Katrina raised her face with a resigned expression.
Speaker 1: This is a mobile phone, he said.
Speaker 1: You think, I assume, it's a pretty new invention.
Speaker 1: But back in April 1973, the father of the mobile phone Martin Cooper had the first conversation on one with his wife at home. And of course, he had no idea that this invention would become one of the most important ways in which we in the police force can find missing persons.
Speaker 1: If you want to become an okay detective, you have to listen and learn these things, Brout.
Speaker 1: Katrina had moved her glasses and looked at Scarra with a small smile, which she liked, but couldn't quite interpret. I'm all ears. Good, said Scarra, because Beard De Becker is the owner of a mobile phone.
Speaker 1: And a mobile phone sends out signals that can be picked up by base stations in the area where it is located. Not only when you ring, but in fact when you carry a phone on you.
Speaker 1: That's why the Americans called it a cellular phone from the very start, because it's covered by base stations in small areas, in other words, cells.
Speaker 1: I've checked with Talinor, and the base station covering Hof is still receiving signals from Beard De Becker's phone. But we've been through the whole house, and there's no phone. And you could hardly have lost it by the house. That would be too much of a coincidence.
Speaker 1: Ergo, Scarra raised his hands like a conjurer after putting off a trick.
Speaker 1: After this coffee, I'm going to contact the incident room and send out a search party. | |
Speaker 1: Good luck," Katrina said, passing him the mobile phone and turning the page.
Speaker 1: That's one of Hula's old cases, isn't it, Scotty said.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: He thought a serial killer was on the rampage.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 1: Do you? So perhaps you know that he was wrong as well.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't the first time.
Speaker 1: He's morbidly obsessed with serial killers, Hula's.
Speaker 1: He thinks this is the USA, but he still hasn't found his serial killer in this country.
Speaker 1: There are several serial killers in Sweden.
Speaker 1: Thomas Quick, John Asunius, Tura Hadin, Magnus Gara laughed.
Speaker 1: He's done your own work.
Speaker 1: But if you'd like to learn a couple of things about proper crime detection, I suggest you and I go for a beer.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm not a memya bite to eat.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a big lunch box.
Speaker 1: Gara finally caught her eye and kept it.
Speaker 1: Her gaze had a strange gleam, as if deep inside there was a fire smoldering.
Speaker 1: He had never seen a gleam like that before.
Speaker 1: And he thought he was responsible for it.
Speaker 1: He had lit the fire.
Speaker 1: And through the conversation he had moved up into her league.
Speaker 1: You could view it as he began and pretended to be searching for the right word.
Speaker 1: Training! She smiled, a broad smile.
Speaker 1: Gara felt his pulse racing.
Speaker 1: He was hot, thinking he could already feel her body against his, a stocking knee against his fingertips, the crackle as his hands lit upwards.
Speaker 1: What do you want Gara to check out the new skirt in the unit? Her smile became even broader and the gleam even fiercer.
Speaker 1: To shag her as soon as you can, the way boys spit on the biggest slices of birthday cake so they can enjoy them in peace before the others.
Speaker 1: Magnus Gara had a feeling his jaw had dropped.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a few well-intentioned tips, Gara.
Speaker 1: Keep... | |
Speaker 1: away from women at work. Don't waste your time drinking coffee in the canteen if you think you've got a hot lead. And don't try to tell me you can call the incident room.
Speaker 1: You ring Inspector Hula, and he's the one who decides whether a search party will be set up. And then he'll ring the emergency operation centre, where there are people ready, not just a team from here.
Speaker 1: Katrina scrunched up the grease-proof paper and loved it towards the rubbish bin behind Scara. He didn't even need to turn to know that she hadn't missed. She packed her file and stood up, but by then Scara had managed to collect himself to some degree. I don't know what you're imagining, Brad. You know, married slug, who maybe doesn't get enough at home, so you're hoping a guy like me can be bothered. He couldn't find the words.
Speaker 1: Shit, he couldn't find the words. I'm just offering to teach you a thing or two you're whore. Something happened to her face. It was like a curtain being drawn aside to allow him to see into the flames. For a moment he was convinced that she would hit him. But nothing happened. And when she spoke again, he realised that everything had happened in her eyes alone. She hadn't lifted a finger and her voice was totally under control.
Speaker 1: I picked your pardon if I've misunderstood you. She said, although her facial expression suggested she considered that highly improbable. By the way, Martin Cooper did not ring his wife. He rang his rival, Joel Engel, at Bell Laboratories. Do you think that was to teach him a thing or two, Scara? Or to brag? Scara watched her leave, watched her suit rubbing against her backside as she wiggled towards the canteen door. Shit, the woman was offered trolley. He felt like getting up and throwing something at her. But he knew he would miss. Besides, he didn't want to move. He was afraid his erection was still visible.
Speaker 1: Harry felt his lungs pressing against the inside of his ribs. | |
Speaker 1: his breathing was beginning to settle, but not his heart, which was running like a hair in his chest. His training clothes were heavy with sweat as he stood at the edge of the forest by Ecobair Restaurant. The functionalist restaurant built between the wars had once been Oslo's pride and joy, towering above the town on the precipitous ridge-face in the east. But customers had stopped taking the long trip up from the city-center to the forest. The place had become unprofitable. It had declined and become a peeling shark for super-annuated dance fiends, middle-aged drinkers, and lonely souls on the lookout for other lonely souls. In the end they had closed the restaurant.
Speaker 1: Howdy had always liked driving up here above the town's lair of yellow exhaust fumes, and running along the network of pals on the steep terrain that provided a challenge and caused the lactic acid to burn in his muscles? He had liked to stop by the crumbling beauty of a restaurant, sitting on the rain-wet, overgrown terrace, overlooking the town that had once been his, but which was now emotionally bankrupt, all assets transferred, an ex-lover, with transferred affections. The town lay below in a hollow with ridges on all sides, and a soul retreat fire the fjord. Geologists said that Oslo was a dead volcanic crater. And on evenings like this, Harry could imagine that the town's lights were perforations in the earth's surface, with the glowing lava shining through. From the Holman-Colon's ski-jump, which lay like an illuminated white comma on the ridge on the opposite side of the town, he tried to work out where Rakil's house was. He thought about the letter, and the telephone call he had just received from Skara about the signals transmitted by Beater's missing phone. His heart was beating slower now, pumping blood and transmitting calm, regular signals to the brain, that there was still life. | |
Speaker 1: mobile phone to a base station, heart, Harry thought, signal, the letter. It was a sick thought.
Speaker 1: So why hadn't he already dismissed it? Why was he already calculating how long it would take him to run to the car, drive to Hove, and check which of them was sicker? Rako stood by the kitchen window looking across her property to the spruce trees blocking her view of the neighbours.
Speaker 1: At a local residence meeting she had suggested that some of the trees might be cut down to let in more light, but the unspoken absence of enthusiasm that greeted her was so obvious that she didn't even ask for a vote. The spruce trees prevented people from looking in, and that was how they liked it on a home and call and reach. The snow still lay on the ground high above the town where BMW's and Volvo's gently threaded their way up through the bends, on their way home to electric garage doors and dinners on tables prepared by fitness center slim housewives taking their courier breaks with just a little help from nannies.
Speaker 1: Even through the solid floors of the wooden house she had inherited from her father, Rako could hear the music from Oleg's room on the first floor, Led Zeppelin and the Who. When she had been 11 years old it would have been unthinkable to listen to music from her parents' generation, but Oleg had been given these CDs by Harry and he played them with genuine love. She thought about how thin Harry had become, how he had shrunk, just like her memory of him. It was almost frightening how someone you have been intimate with can fade and vanish. Or perhaps that was why. You had been so close to each other that afterwards when you no longer were it seemed unreal like a dream you soon forget because it had happened only in your head. Perhaps that was why it had been a shock to see him again, to embrace him, to smell his aroma, to hear his voice. | |
Speaker 1: not on the telephone, but from a mouth with those strangely soft glips in that hard and ever-more lined face of his. To look into those blue eyes with the gleam that varied in intensity as he talked, just like before. Yet she was glad it was over, that she had put it behind her, that this man had become a person with whom she would not share her future, a person who would not bring his grubby reality into their lives. She was better now, much better.
Speaker 1: She looked at her watch. He would be here soon. For unlike Harry, he tended to be on time.
Speaker 1: Matthias had suddenly stood there one day. At a garden party, under the auspices of the Home and Collin Residence Association, he didn't even live in the neighborhood, he had been invited by friends, and he and Raquel had sat talking all evening, mostly about her, in fact, and he had listened attentively a bit like doctors do, she had thought.
Speaker 1: But then he had run her two days later and asked her whether she would like to see an exhibition at the Haney Onestar Art Centre in Hovey Collin. Allegh was welcome to join them because there was a children's exhibition too. The weather had been terrible, the art mediocre, an olig fractures, but Matthias had managed to lift the mood with his good humour and acid comments about the artist's talent. And afterwards he had driven them home, apologized for his idea, and promised with a smile never to take them anywhere ever again, unless they asked him, of course.
Speaker 1: After that, Matthias had gone to Botswana for a week and had run her the evening he came home to ask if he could meet her again. She heard the sound of a car changing down to tackle the steep drive, he drove a Honda accord of older vintage, she didn't know why, but she liked the idea of that. He parked in front of the garage, never inside, and she liked that too. She liked the | |
Speaker 1: fact that he brought a change of underwear and a toilet bag in a hold-all he then took away with him the next morning. She liked him asking her when she wanted to see him again and taking nothing for granted. That might change now, of course, but she was ready for it. He stepped out of the car. He was tall, almost as tall as Harry, and smiled to the kitchen window with his open, boyish face, even though he must have been dead on his feet after the inhumanly long shift. Yes, she was ready for it, for a man who was present, who loved her and prioritized their little trio above everything else. She heard a key being turned in the front door, the key she had given him the previous week.
Speaker 1: Matthias had looked like one big question market first, like a child who had just received a ticket to a chocolate factory. The door opened. He was inside, and she was in his arms. She thought even his woolen coat smelled good. The material was soft and autumn-cold against her cheek, but the secure warmth inside was already radiating out to her body.
Speaker 1: What is it? He laughed in her hair.
Speaker 1: I've been waiting for this for so long, she whispered. She closed her eyes, and they stood like that for a while. She released him and looked up into his smiling face. He was a good-looking man, better looking than Harry. He freed himself, unbuttoned his coat, hung it up and walked over to the slop-sync where he washed his hands. He always did that when he came from the anatomy department where they handled real bodies during the lectures.
Speaker 1: As indeed Harry always had done when he came straight from murder cases. Matthias opened the cupboard under the sink, emptied potatoes from the bag into the kitchen-sync and turned on the tap. How was your day, darling? She thought that most men would have asked about the previous night. | |
Speaker 1: After all, he knew she had met Harry, and she liked him for that, too. She talked while looking out of the window. Her gaze ran across the spruce trees to the town beneath them where lights had started to twinkle. He was down there somewhere now, on a hopeless hunt for something he had never found, and never would. She felt sorry for him. Simpathy was all that was left. In truth, there had been a moment last night when they were both silent, and their eyes had held each other, unable to free themselves straight away.
Speaker 1: It had felt like an electric shock, but it had been over in an instant. Completely over. No lasting magic. She had made her decision. She stood behind Matthias, put her arms around him, and rested her head on his broad back. She could feel muscles and sinews at work under his shirt as he peeled the potatoes and put them in the saucepan.
Speaker 1: "'We could do with a couple more,' he said. She became aware of a movement by the kitchen door, and turned. Oleg was standing there looking at them.
Speaker 1: "'Could you fetch some more potatoes from the cellar,' she said, and saw Oleg's dark eyes darken. Matthias turned. Oleg was still there.
Speaker 1: "'I can go,' Matthias said, taking the empty bucket from under the sink.
Speaker 1: "'No,' said Oleg, stepping forward two paces.
Speaker 1: "'I'll go.' He took the bucket from Matthias, turned and went out of the door.
Speaker 1: "'What was that about?' Matthias asked.
Speaker 1: "'He's just a bit frightened of the dark,' Ruckail sighed.
Speaker 1: "'I thought so, but why did he go anyway?' "'Because Harry said he should. Should do what?' Ruckail shook her head. The thing he's frightened of, and doesn't want to be frightened of.
Speaker 1: When Harry was here, he used to send Oleg down to the cellar all the time.
Speaker 1: Matthias. | |
Speaker 1: found. Raquel put on a sad smile. Harry's not exactly a child psychiatrist, and all they wouldn't listen to me if Harry had given his opinion first. On the other hand, there are no monsters down there. Matthias turned a knob on the stove and said in a low voice, how can you be so sure of that? Matthias, Raquel laughed. Were you afraid of the dark? Who's talking about wars? Matthias grinned mischievously.
Speaker 1: Yes, she liked him. This was better. A better life. She liked him. Yes, she did.
Speaker 1: She did like him.
Speaker 1: End of CD2 | |
Speaker 1: someone else pulling invisible strings. It had been too simple. They had been meant to find it.
Speaker 1: Harry walked to the front door and rang the bell.
Speaker 1: Philip Becker opened up. His hair was disheveled and his entire skew. He blinged hard several times as though he had been sleeping. Yes, he answered to Harry's question. That's the kind of fern she's got. Could I ask you to ring her number? Philip Becker disappeared into the house and Harry waited. Suddenly Jonas poked his face out of the porch doorway. Harry was about to say hi, but at that moment the red phone began to play a children's tune. Blah man, blah man, book and mean. And Harry remembered the next line from his school songbook, Tinkpo Vesla Gutindine. Think about your little boy.
Speaker 1: And he saw Jonas's face light up. So the inexorable process of reasoning in the boy's brain, the immediate bewilderment, and then the joy of hearing his mother's ring-turn fade into intense naked fear. Harry swallowed. It was a fear he knew all too well.
Speaker 1: As Harry let himself into his flat, he could smell the plaster and the sawdust.
Speaker 1: The plasterboard forming the corridor walls had been taken down and lay piled up on the floor.
Speaker 1: There were some light stains on the brick wall behind. Harry ran a finger over the white coating that had drifted onto the parking floor. He put a fingertip into his mouth. It tasted of salt.
Speaker 1: Did mold taste like that? Or was it just salt bloom, the structure sweating? Harry flicked a lighter and leaned over to the wall. Nothing to smell, nothing to see.
Speaker 1: When he had gone to bed and was lying staring into the rooms hermetically sealed blackness, he thought about Jonas and his own mother about the smell of illness. | |
Speaker 1: to her face slowly fading into the pillow's whiteness. For days and weeks he had played with sis and dad had gone quiet, and everyone had tried to act as if nothing was happening.
Speaker 1: He thought he could hear a faint rustle outside in the hall, as if the invisible puppet strings were multiplying, lengthening, and sneaking around as they consumed the darkness, and formed a faint shimmering light which quivered and shook.
Speaker 1: Chapter 7. Day 3. Hidden Statistics The frail morning light seeped through the blinds and the POB's office, coating the two men's faces in grey. POB Hagen was listening to Harry with a pensive furrow over pushy black eyebrows that met in the middle. On the huge desk stood a small plinth, bearing a white knuckleburn which, according to the inscription, had belonged to the Japanese battalion commander Yoshitou Yasuda. In his years at the military academy, Hagen had lectured about this little finger that Yasuda had cut off in desperation in front of his men during the retreat from Burma in 1944. It was just a year since Hagen had been brought back to his old employer, the police, to hedge crime squad, and, as a lot of water had passed under the bridge in the meantime, he listened with relative patience to his veteran inspector holding forth on the theme of missing persons. In Oslo alone, over 600 people are reported missing every year. After a couple of hours only a handful of these are not found, as good as none remain missing for more than a couple of days. Hagen struck the finger over the hairs on the bridge of his nose, binding his eyebrows together. He had to prepare for the budget meeting in the Chief Constable's office, the theme was cutbacks. Most missing persons are escaped from mental institutions or elderly people suffering from dementia. Harry continued, but even | |
Speaker 1: Relatively compass meant is who have run off to Copenhagen, or committed suicide, have found.
Speaker 1: Their names appear on passenger lists, they withdraw cash from an ATM or wash up on a beach.
Speaker 1: "'What's your point?'' Gunnar Hagen said, looking at his watch.
Speaker 1: "'Liss,' Harry said, tossing a yellow file that landed on the POB's desk with a smack.
Speaker 1: Hagen leaned forward and flicked through the staple documents.
Speaker 1: "'My goodness, Harry. You are not normally the report-writing type?' "'Liss is Scarlett's work,' Harry said, wasting no words, but the conclusion is mine, and I'll give it to you now, orally. Make it brief, please.' Harry stared down at his hands, which he had placed in his lap. His long legs were stretched out in front of the chair. He took a deep breath. He knew that when he had said this out loud there was no going back.
Speaker 1: "'Too many people have disappeared,' Harry said.
Speaker 1: The right half of Hagen's eyebrow shot into the air.
Speaker 1: Explain.
Speaker 1: You'll find it on page 6. A list of missing women aged between 25 and 50 from 1994 until today. Women who in the last ten years have never been found.
Speaker 1: I've been talking to the missing persons unit, and they agree. It's simply too many.
Speaker 1: In relation to before, in relation to Denmark and Sweden, and in relation to other demographic groups, married and cohabiting women are hugely overrepresented.
Speaker 1: Women are more independent than they used to be, Hagen said.
Speaker 1: Some go their own way, break with the family, go abroad with a man maybe, let her some bearing on statistics.
Speaker 1: They become more independent in Denmark and Sweden too, but they find them again there.
Speaker 1: Hagen said, "'If the figures are so divergent from the norm as you claim, why has no one discovered this before?' Because | |
Speaker 1: Carras figures are valid for the whole country, and usually the police only look at those missing in their own district.
Speaker 1: There is a national missing persons register at Creepos, however, detailing 1800 names.
Speaker 1: But it's for the last 50 years, and include shipwrecks and disasters like the Alexander Schillan Oil rig.
Speaker 1: The point is that no one has looked at country-wide patterns, not until now.
Speaker 1: Fine, but our responsibility is not for the country, Harry. It's for Oslo Police District.
Speaker 1: Argonne smacked both palms down to indicate that the audience was over.
Speaker 1: The problem, Harry said, rubbing his chin, is that it's come to Oslo. What it? Last night I found Birter Becker's mobile phone in a snowman.
Speaker 1: I don't know quite what it is, boss, but I think we need to find out. Quick.
Speaker 1: These statistics are interesting. Argonne said, absentmindedly taking battalion commander Yasfer does little finger and pressing his thumb into it.
Speaker 1: And I also appreciate that this latest disappearance is grounds for concern. But it's not enough.
Speaker 1: So tell me, what was it that actually made you ask Skara to write this report? Harry looked at Argonne. Then he pulled a dog-eared envelope from his inside pocket and passed it to Argonne.
Speaker 1: This was in my mailbox after I did the TV show at the beginning of September.
Speaker 1: Until now I had thought it was a madman's work.
Speaker 1: Argonne took out the letter, and after reading the six sentences shook his head at Harry.
Speaker 1: The snowman, and what is the moody? That's exactly the point, Harry said.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid this is the it. The POB gave him a non-plast look.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm wrong, Harry said, but I think we have some hellishly dark days ahead of us. | |
Speaker 1: Argonne's side, what do you want, Harry? I want an investigation team. Argonne studied Harry. In common with most other officers at police HQ, he regarded Harry as a self-willed, arrogant, argumentative, unstable alcoholic. Nevertheless, he was glad they were on the same side, and that he wouldn't have this man snapping at his heels.
Speaker 1: How many, he asked at length, and for how long? Ten detectives, two months.
Speaker 1: Two weeks, said Magnus Gara, and four people, he's not supposed to be a murder investigation.
Speaker 1: He looked around with his approval that the other three squeezed into Harry's office, Katrina Bratt, Harry Hula, and Björn Horm from Krim Technisk, the forensics unit.
Speaker 1: That's what Argonne's given me, Harry, said, tipping back on his chair, and this is not a murder investigation for the moment. What is it actually, Katrina Bratt asked, for the moment? A missing person's case, Harry, said, but one which bears a certain similarity to other recent cases.
Speaker 1: I swive so one day in late autumn suddenly upsticks, asked Björn Horm with remnants of the rural Tutton dialect, he had added to the goods he had removed from the village of Sclair, along with an LP collection consisting of Elvis, Hardcore, Hillbilly, the Sex Pistols, Jason and the Scorches, three hand-sewn suits from Nashville, an American Bible, a slightly undersized sofa bed, and a dining-room suite that had outlived three generations of Horms.
Speaker 1: All piled up on a trailer and towed to the capital by the last Amazon to roll off the 1970 Volvo assembly line. Björn Horm had bought the Amazon for 1200 Krona, but even at that time, no one knew how many kilometers it had done, because the clock only went up to 100,000.
Speaker 1: However, the car expert | |
Speaker 1: Everything Björnholm was and believed in. It smelt better than anything he knew. A mixture of imitation leather, metal, engine oil, sunfaded real-edge, Volvo factory and seats impregnated with personality perspiration, which Björnholm explained was not common body perspiration, but a select veneer of all the previous owner's souls, karma, eating habits and lifestyles.
Speaker 1: The furry dice hanging from the mirror were original fuzzy dice, which expressed the right mix of genuine affection for and ironical distance from a bygone American culture and aesthetic, that perfectly suited a Norwegian farmer's son who had grown up with Jim Reeves in one ear, the Ramones in the other, and loved both. Now he was sitting in Harry's office with a raster hat that made him look more like an undercover drug's cop than a forensic officer. To immense fire-engine-red, cutlet-shaped sideburns framing Björnholm's plump round face emerged from the hat, and he had a pair of slightly protruding eyes which gave him a fish-like expression of constant wonderment. He was the only person Harry had insisted on having in his small investigation team.
Speaker 1: There's one more thing, Harry said, reaching out to switch on the overhead projector between the piles of paper on his desk. Magnus Skara cursed and shielded his eyes as blurred writing suddenly appeared on his face. He moved, and Harry's voice came from behind the projector. This letter landed in my mailbox exactly two months ago, no address, postmarked Oslo, produced on a standard inkjet printer. Before Harry could ask, Katrina Bratt had pressed the light switch by the door, plunging the room into darkness. A square of light loomed up on the white wall. They read in silence. Soon the first snow would come, and then he will appear again. The snowman. | |
Speaker 1: When the snow has gone, he will have taken someone else.
Speaker 1: What you should ask yourself is this, who made the snowman, who makes snowmen, who gave birth to the moorie, for the snowman doesn't know, poetic, mumble, pure, and home.
Speaker 1: What's the moorie, Skara asked, the monotonous word of the projector fan was the answer.
Speaker 1: The most interesting part is who the snowman is, Katrina Brat said.
Speaker 1: Obviously, someone on Nijie's head testing, Bjorn Holm said.
Speaker 1: Skara's lone laughter was cut short.
Speaker 1: The moorie was the nickname of a person who is now dead, Harry said from out of the darkness.
Speaker 1: A moorie is an aborigany from Queensland in Australia, while this moorie was alive he killed women all over Australia.
Speaker 1: No one knows for certain how many.
Speaker 1: His real name was Robin to Wumba.
Speaker 1: The fan word and buzzed.
Speaker 1: "'See a real killer,' said Bjorn Holm.
Speaker 1: The one you killed?' Harry nodded.
Speaker 1: "'Tis I mean you think we're dealing with one now?' As a result of this letter we can't rule out the possibility.
Speaker 1: "'Wall there, hold your horses,' Skara raised his palms.
Speaker 1: How many times have you cried wolf since you became a celeb because of the Aussie stuff, Harry? Three times,' Harry said, at least.
Speaker 1: "'And still we haven't seen a serial killer in Norway,' Skara glanced at Brat, as if to make sure she was following.
Speaker 1: Is it because of that FBI course she did on serial killers? Is that what's making you see them everywhere?' "'Maybe,' Harry said.
Speaker 1: "'Let me remind you that apart from that nurse fellow, she gave injections to a couple of old fuggies who were at death's door anyway.
Speaker 1: We haven't had a single serial killer in Norway, ever.
Speaker 1: Those guys exist in the USA, but even there, usually only in films.
Speaker 1: Wrong,' said Katrina Brat.
Speaker 1: The others turned to face. | |
Speaker 1: her. She stifled a yarn. Sweden, France, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Russia, and Finland. And we're only talking solve cases here. No one out as a word about hidden statistics. Harry couldn't see Scara's flushed face in the dark, just the profile of his chin jutting forward aggressively in Brad's direction.
Speaker 1: We haven't even got a body, and I can show you a draw full of letters like this one. People are a lot nuttier than this snow guy. The difference, Harry said, getting up and strolling over to the window, is that this head Kershis Tharam. The name Moury was never mentioned in the papers at the time. It was the nickname Robyn to Wumba used when he was a boxer with the traveling circus.
Speaker 1: The last of the daylight leaked out through a crack in the cloud cover. He looked at his watch, or they could insist it on going early so that they could take in slayer as well.
Speaker 1: Where are we going to begin, then? Be on a home mumbled.
Speaker 1: Eh? Scara said. Where are we going to begin, then? Home repeated with exaggerated diction.
Speaker 1: Harry went back to the desk. Home goes over Becker's house in garden as if it were a murder scene. Check the mobile phone and the scarf in particular.
Speaker 1: Scara, you make a list of ex-murderers, rapists, suspects, incomparable cases and others come on the loose. Scara completed.
Speaker 1: Brad, you go through the missing person's reports and see if you can spot a pattern.
Speaker 1: Harry waited for the inevitable question. What type of pattern? But it was not forthcoming.
Speaker 1: Katrina Brad just gave a brief nod.
Speaker 1: Okay, Harry said. Get going.
Speaker 1: And you? Brad asked.
Speaker 1: I'm going to a gig, Harry said.
Speaker 1: When the others had left the office, he looked down on his pad. At the only words he had jotted down. | |
Speaker 1: Hiddon statistics Sylvia ran as fast as she could.
Speaker 1: She ran towards the trees where they were most dense in the growing muck.
Speaker 1: She was running for her life.
Speaker 1: She hadn't tied up her boots, and now they were full of snow.
Speaker 1: She held a little hatchet in front of her, she burst through layer after layer of low leafless branches.
Speaker 1: The blade was threaded and sleek with blood.
Speaker 1: She knew the snow that had fallen yesterday had melted in town, but even though solely hugged her, was barely half an hour's drive away, the snow could lie on the ground until spring up here.
Speaker 1: And right now she wished they had never moved to this godforsaken place, to this bit of wilderness by the town.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: But here she was completely alone.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 1: Not completely.
Speaker 1: Chapter 8.
Speaker 1: Day 3.
Speaker 1: Swanneck.
Speaker 1: Sylvia ran into the forest.
Speaker 1: Night was on the way.
Speaker 1: Usually she hated the way November evenings drew in so early, but today she thought the night couldn't come soon enough.
Speaker 1: She saw the darkness in the depths of the forest.
Speaker 1: The darkness that could erase her footprints in the snow and conceal her.
Speaker 1: She knew her way around here.
Speaker 1: She could find her bearings so that she didn't run back to the farm or straight into, into its arms.
Speaker 1: The problem was that the snow had changed the landscape overnight, covered the paths, the familiar rocks, and leveled out all the contours, and to task everything was distorted and disfigured by the blackness, and by her own panic.
Speaker 1: She stopped to listen.
Speaker 1: Her heaving, rasping breathlessness rent the tranquility.
Speaker 1: It sounded as if she were tearing the grease-proof paper wrapped around her daughter's packed lunches.
Speaker 1: She managed to bring her breathing under control. | |
Speaker 1: All she could hear was the blood pounding in her ears, and the low gurgle of a stream.
Speaker 1: The stream! they usually followed the stream when they were picking berries, setting traps or searching for chickens which in their heart of hearts they knew the fox had taken.
Speaker 1: The stream led down to a gravel road, and there sooner or later a car would pass.
Speaker 1: She no longer heard any footsteps, no twigs cracking, no crunching of snow.
Speaker 1: Perhaps she had escaped.
Speaker 1: With her body hunched over she moved swiftly towards the gurgling sounds.
Speaker 1: The stream looked as though it was flowing over a white bedsheet through a depression in the forest floor.
Speaker 1: Sylvia trampled straight in, the water which reached mid-ancle soon penetrated her boots.
Speaker 1: It was so cold that it froze her leg muscles, then she began to run again, in the same direction as the water flowed.
Speaker 1: She made loud splashes as she lifted her legs for long, ground-gaining strides.
Speaker 1: No tracks, she thought triumphantly, and her pulse slowed even though she was running.
Speaker 1: That had to be a result of the hours she had spent on the treadmill at the fitness centre last year.
Speaker 1: She had lost six kilos and ventured to maintain that her body was in better shape than those of most thirty-five-year-olds.
Speaker 1: That was what he said anyway, Ingver, whom she had first met at the so-called Inspiration Seminar last year, where she had been all too inspired.
Speaker 1: My God, if only she could turn back the clock, back ten years, all the things she would have done differently, she wouldn't have married Rolf, and she wouldn't have had an abortion.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course it was an impossible thought, now that the twins had come into the world.
Speaker 1: But before they were born, before she had seen Emma and Olga, it would have been possible, and she wouldn't have been in this prison that she had constructed around herself with such care.
Speaker 1: She swept away the branches over hanging the stream, and from the corner of her eye she | |
Speaker 1: or something, an animal react with a startled movement and disappear into the great gloom of the forest. It went through her mind that she would have to be careful swinging her arms so that she didn't hit her leg with the hatchet. Minutes had passed, but it felt like an eternity since she had been standing in the barn slaughtering chickens. She had cut off two heads, and had been about to cut off a third when she heard the barn door creek behind her. Of course, she had been alarmed. She was alone and hadn't been aware of either footsteps or a car in the yard. The first thing she had noticed was the strange apparatus, a thin metal loop attached to a handle. It looked like the snares they used to catch foxes, and when the holder of this instrument began to talk, it slowly dawned on her that she was the prey. She was the one who was going to die. She had been told why, and she had listened to the sick but limpid logic as the blood slowed in her veins as if it were already coagulating. Then she had been told how, in detail, and the loop had begun to glow first red then white. That was when she had swung her arm in horror, felt the recently sharpened hatchet blade cut through the material under the raised arm, seen the jacket and sweater open as if she had unzipped them and seen the steel slice a red line through the bare skin. As the figure had staggered backwards and fallen on the floorboard, slippery with chicken's blood, she had raced to the door at the back of the barn, the one leading into the forest, into the darkness.
Speaker 1: The numbness had spread over her knees, and her clothes were soaked up to her navel, but she knew she would soon be on the gravel road, and from there it was no more than a quarter of an hour's run to the nearest farm. The stream turned. Her left foot kicked something protruding from the water. There was a crack, it felt like someone had grabbed her foot, and the next moment Sylvia Autison was falling headlong. She landed on her stomach, swallowed water, tasting a earth and rotten leaf. | |
Speaker 1: he was, then pushed herself into a kneeling position.
Speaker 1: Once she knew she was still alone, and the first panic had passed, she discovered that her foot was trapped.
Speaker 1: She dropped with her hand under the water, expecting to find entwined tree roots around her foot.
Speaker 1: But instead her fingers felt something smooth and hard.
Speaker 1: Metal.
Speaker 1: A metal ring.
Speaker 1: Sylvie's gaze scarred around for what she had kicked.
Speaker 1: And there on the snowy bank she saw it.
Speaker 1: She had eyes, feathers, and a pale red cox coon.
Speaker 1: She felt her terror mounting again.
Speaker 1: It was a severed chicken's head.
Speaker 1: Not one of the heads she had just cut off, but one of the ones were all fused, as bait.
Speaker 1: After writing to the local council that a fox had killed sixteen chickens last year, they had been given permission to set a limited number of fox traps, so-called swan necks, at a certain radius around the farm well off the beaten track.
Speaker 1: The best place to hide traps was underwater, with the bait sticking up.
Speaker 1: After the fox had taken the bait, the traps snapped shut, breaking the neck of the animal and killing it instantly.
Speaker 1: At least in theory.
Speaker 1: She felt with her hand.
Speaker 1: When they had bought the traps at Yuck Dipute in Drummond, they had said the springs were so strong that the jaws could break the leg of an adult, but she couldn't feel any pain in her frozen foot.
Speaker 1: Her fingers found the thin steel wire attached to the swan neck.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't be able to force open the trap without the lever, which was in the farm tool shed.
Speaker 1: In any way, they usually tied the swan neck to a tree with steel wire, so that a half dead fox or anything else would not be able to run off with the expensive equipment.
Speaker 1: Her hand traced the wire through the water, and up onto the bank.
Speaker 1: There was the metal sign bearing their names, as per regulations.
Speaker 1: She stiffened.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that a twig she heard breaking in the distance? She felt her heart pounding again as she stared into the dense murk.
Speaker 1: Some fingers followed the wire. | |
Speaker 1: through the snow as she crawled up onto the bank of the stream. The wire was fastened around the trunk of a solid young birch tree. She searched for and found the knot under the snow. The metal had frozen into a stiff, unyielding lump. She had to open it, had to get away. Another twig cracked, closer this time. She leaned against the trunk on the opposite side to where she had heard the sound.
Speaker 1: Like herself, not to panic, that the knot would come loose after she had yanked it for a while, that her leg was intact, that the sound she heard coming closer were made by a deer. She tried pulling it one end of the knot and didn't feel the pain when a fingernail broke down the middle. But it was no use. She bent over and her teeth crunched as she bit into the steel. Shit! She could hear light, quiet footsteps in the snow and held her breath. The steps paused somewhere on the other side of the tree. She might have been imagining things, but she thought she could hear it, sent in the air, inhaling the smell. She sat utterly motionless. Then it began to move again. The sounds were softer.
Speaker 1: It was going away. She took a deep, quivering breath. Now she would have to free herself.
Speaker 1: Her clothes were soaked, and she would certainly freeze to death at night if no one found her.
Speaker 1: At that moment she remembered. The hatchet. She had forgotten the hatchet. The wire was thin, put it on a stone, a couple of well-aimed blows, and she would be free. The hatchet must have fallen in the stream. She crawled back into the black water, put her hands down and searched the stony bottom. Nothing. In despair she sank to her knees, scanning the snow on both banks. And then she caught sight of the blade, poking up out of the water two meters in front of her. And already she knew, before she felt the wire jerk. | |
Speaker 1: Before she lay down flat in the water with the melted snow gurgling over her, so cold that she thought her heart would stop, stretching like a desperate beggar for the hatchet, already she knew that it was half a meter too far. Her fingers curled around air fifty centimetres from the handle. Tears came, but she forced them back, she could cry afterwards.
Speaker 1: Is this what you're looking for? She'd never seen nor heard a thing, but in front of her sata figure crouched down. It, Sylvia scrambled back with the figure followed with the hatchet held out to her. Just take it. Sylvia got her knees and took the hatchet.
Speaker 1: What are you going to do with it? The voice asked. Sylvia felt the fury surge up inside her.
Speaker 1: The fury that always accompanies fear and the result was ferocious. She lunged forward with the hatchet raised and swung low with an outstretched arm, but the wire tugged at her. The hatchet just sliced the darkness and the next moment she was lying in the water again. The voice chuckled.
Speaker 1: Sylvia fell onto her side, go away, she groaned, spitting pebbles.
Speaker 1: I want you to eat snow, the voice said, getting up and briefly holding the side where the jacket had been slashed open. What? Sylvia exclaimed in spite of herself. I want you to eat snow until you piss yourself. The figure stood slightly outside the radius of the steel wire, tilted its head and watched Sylvia. Until your stomach is self frozen and full, that it can't melt the snow any longer, until its ice inside, until you've become your true self, something that can't feel. Sylvia's brain perceived the words, but could not absorb the meaning.
Speaker 1: Never! She screamed. | |
Speaker 1: A sound came from the figure and blended into the gurgle of the stream.
Speaker 1: Now's the time to scream, dear Sylvia.
Speaker 1: For no one will hear you again.
Speaker 1: Ever! Sylvia saw it raise something, which lit up.
Speaker 1: A loop formed the outline of a red glowing raindrop against the dark.
Speaker 1: It hissed and smoked as it came into contact with the surface of the stream.
Speaker 1: You choose to eat snow.
Speaker 1: Believe me! Sylvia realized with the paralyzing certainty that her final hour had come.
Speaker 1: There was only one possibility left.
Speaker 1: In the past minutes, knight had fallen quickly, but she tried to focus her gaze on the figure between the trees as she weighed the hatchet in her hand.
Speaker 1: The blood tingled in her fingers as it streamed back, seeming to know that this was the last chance.
Speaker 1: They had practiced this, the twins and her, on the barn-war.
Speaker 1: And every time she had thrown, and one of them had pulled the hatchet out of the fox-shaped target, they had cheered with jubilation.
Speaker 1: You killed the beast, mummy! You killed the beast! Sylvia put one foot slightly in front of the other.
Speaker 1: A one-step run-up that was the optimum to get the right combination of power and accuracy.
Speaker 1: You're crazy! She whispered.
Speaker 1: Of that, the figure said.
Speaker 1: And Sylvia thought she could discern a little smile.
Speaker 1: There is little doubt.
Speaker 1: The hatchet worked through the thick, almost tangible darkness with a low hum.
Speaker 1: Sylvia stood perfectly balanced with her right arm pointed forward and watched the lethal weapon.
Speaker 1: Watched it whistle through the trees, heard it cut off a thin branch.
Speaker 1: Watched it disappear into the darkness and heard the dull thud as the hatchet buried itself in the snows. | |
Speaker 1: somewhere deep in the forest. She leaned back against the tree trunk and slowly slumped to the ground, felt the tears come without attempting to stop them this time, because now she knew there would be no afterwards.
Speaker 1: Shall we begin? The voice said softly.
Speaker 1: Chapter 9. Day 3. The Pit.
Speaker 1: Was that great? Oh, what? Allegs' enthusiastic voice drowned out the spitting fat in the cabab shop, crowded with people pouring in after the concert at Oslo Spectrum. Harry nodded to Orleg, who was standing in his hoodie, still sweaty, still moving to the beat, as he prattled on about the members of Slippnot by name. Names Harry didn't even know, since Slippnot CDs were sparing with personal data, and music magazines like Mojo and Uncut didn't write about pans like that. Harry ordered hamburgers and looked at his watch. Rackel had said she would be standing outside at ten o'clock. Harry looked at Orleg again. He was talking nonstop. When did it happen? When had the boy turned eleven and decided to like music about various stages of death, alienation, freezing, and general doom? Perhaps it ought to have worried Harry, but it didn't. It was a starting point, a curiosity that had to be satisfied, clothes the boy had to try on to see if they fitted. Other things would come along. Better things? Worse things. You liked it too, didn't you, Harry? Harry nodded. He didn't have the heart to tell him the concert had been a bit of an anticlimax for him. He couldn't put his finger on what it was. Perhaps it just wasn't his night. As soon as they had joined the crowd in Spectrum, he had felt the paranoia which regularly accompanied drunkenness, but which during the last year had come. | |
Speaker 1: and he was sober. And instead of getting into the mood, he had had the feeling he was being observed, and stood scanning the audience, studying the wall of faces around them.
Speaker 1: "'Slipp not rules,' Oleg said, and the masks were uber cool, especially the one with a long thin nose. It looked like a sort of—' Harry was listening with half a near, hoping Morocco would come soon. The air inside the cabab shop suddenly felt dense and suffocating, like a thin film of grease lying on your skin and over your mouth. He tried not to think his next thought, but it was on its way, had already rounded the corner, the thought of a drink.
Speaker 1: "'It's an Indian death mask,' Oman's voice behind them said. And Slayer was better than Slip not?' Harry spun round in surprise.
Speaker 1: "'Lots opposing with Slip not, isn't there?' She continued, recycled ideas and empty gestures.
Speaker 1: She was wearing a shiny, figure-hugging, ankle-length black coat, buttoned up to her neck. All you could see under the coat was a pair of black boots. Her face was pale and her eyes made up.' "'I would never have believed in,' Harry said. You liking that kind of music?' Katrina brought, managed a brief smile.
Speaker 1: "'I suppose I would say the opposite.' She gave him no further explanation and signaled to the man behind the counter that she wanted a furries mineral water.
Speaker 1: "'Slayer sucks,' Oleg mumbled under his breath.
Speaker 1: "'Catrina turned to him. You must be Oleg?' "'Yes,' Oleg said, sulquely, pulling up his army trousers and looking as if he both liked and disliked this attention from a mature woman.
Speaker 1: "'How do you know?' Katrina smiled.
Speaker 1: "'How do you know?' Living on Holman's colon ridges you do, shouldn't you say, "'How do you know?' "'Is Harry teaching you bad habits?' Bloods of Hughes, Oleg's cheeks. | |
Speaker 1: Katrina laughed quietly and patted Oleg shoulder.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I'm just curious.
Speaker 1: The boy's face went so red that the whites of his eyes were shining.
Speaker 1: I'm more so curious," Harry said, passing a burger to Oleg.
Speaker 1: I assume you found the pattern I asked for, Brat, since you've got time to come to a gig.
Speaker 1: Harry looked at her in a way that spelt out his warning.
Speaker 1: Don't teach the boy.
Speaker 1: I found something.
Speaker 1: Katrina said, twisting the plastic top off the farthest bottle.
Speaker 1: But you were busy, so we can sort it out tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I'm not so busy, Harry said.
Speaker 1: You'd already forgotten the film of Greece, the feeling of suffocation.
Speaker 1: It's confidential, and there are a lot of people here.
Speaker 1: Katrina said, but I can whisper a couple of key words.
Speaker 1: She leaned closer, and over the fat he could smell the almost masculine fragrance of perfume and feel her warm breath on his ear.
Speaker 1: A silver vux-fagon passat has just pulled up on the pavement outside.
Speaker 1: There's a woman sitting inside trying to catch your attention.
Speaker 1: I would guess it's Oleg's mother.
Speaker 1: Harry straightened up with a jolt and looked out of the large window towards the car.
Speaker 1: Raquel had won down the window and was peering in at them.
Speaker 1: Don't make a mess, Raquel said, as Oleg jumped onto the back seat with the burger in his hand.
Speaker 1: Harry stood beside the open window.
Speaker 1: She was wearing a plain light blue sweater.
Speaker 1: He knew that sweater well.
Speaker 1: knew how it smelled, how it felt against the palm of his hand and cheek.
Speaker 1: Good gig, she asked.
Speaker 1: Ask Oleg.
Speaker 1: What sort of band was it, actually? She looked at Oleg in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Those people outside are a bit oddly dressed.
Speaker 1: Quite songs about love and so on, Oleg said, sending a quick wink to Harry when her eyes were off the mirror.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Harry, she said.
Speaker 1: My pleasure. Drive carefully.
Speaker 1: Who's that woman inside? A colleague. | |
Speaker 1: knew on the job. Oh, looked as if you knew each other pretty well already. Ah, so, you—she stopped in mid-sentence, and she slowly shook her head and laughed, a deep but bright laugh that came from down in her throat, confident and carefully at the same time, the laugh that at once made him fall in love. Sorry, Harry. Good night.
Speaker 1: The windowed lighted upwards, the silver card lighted off the pavement.
Speaker 1: Harry walked the gauntlet down Brigata, between bars with music blaring out of open doors.
Speaker 1: He considered a coffee at Teddy's soft bar, but knew it would be a bad idea, so he made up his mind to walk on by.
Speaker 1: Coffee repeated the guy behind the counter in disbelief. The jukebox at Teddy's was playing Johnny Cash, and Harry passed a finger over his top lip.
Speaker 1: You got a better suggestion? Harry heard the voice that came out of his mouth. It was familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
Speaker 1: Well, said the guy, running a hand through his oily, gistening hair, the coffee's not exactly fresh from the machine, so what about a freshly pulled beer? Johnny Cash was singing about God, baptism, and new promises.
Speaker 1: Right, Harry said. The man behind the counter grinned. At that moment Harry felt the mobile phone in his pocket vibrate. He grabbed it quickly and greedily, as though it was a call he had been expecting. It was Sikara. We've just received a missing person's call that fits, married woman with children. She wasn't at home when the husband and children returned a few hours ago. They live way out in the woods in Solly Huggda, none of the neighbours has seen her, and she can't have left by car because the husband had it, and there are no footprints on the path. Footprints, there's still snow up there. The beer was banged down in front of Harry. | |
Speaker 1: Harry, are you there? Yes, I am. I'm thinking. What about? Is there a snowman there? Hey? Snowman. How should I know? Well, let's go and find out. Jump in the car and pick me up outside.
Speaker 1: Gunerius Shopping Centre in Storgata.
Speaker 1: Can't we do this tomorrow, Harry? I've got some action lined up for tonight and this woman is only missing, so there's no immediate hurry.
Speaker 1: Harry watched the foam coiling its way down the outside of the beard laughs like a snake.
Speaker 1: Basically, Harry said, there's one hell of a hurry.
Speaker 1: Amazed, the barman looked at the untouched beard, the fifty-corner nut on the counter, and the broad shoulders making off through the door as Johnny Cash faded out.
Speaker 1: Sylvia would never have simply left, said Ralph Autison.
Speaker 1: Autison was thin, or to be more precise he was a bag of bones.
Speaker 1: His flannel shirt was buttoned all the way up, and from it protruded a gunt neck, and a head that reminded Harry of a waiting bird.
Speaker 1: A pair of narrow hands, with long, scrawny fingers, that continually curled, twisted and twirled, protruded from his shirt sleeves.
Speaker 1: The nails of his right hand had been filed long and sharp, like claws.
Speaker 1: His eyes behind thick glasses in plain round steel frames, the type that had been popular among seventy's radicals seemed unnaturally large.
Speaker 1: A poster on the mustard yellow wall showed Indians carrying an anaconda.
Speaker 1: Harry recognized the cover of a Johnny Mitchell LP from hippie Stone Age Times.
Speaker 1: Next to it hung a reproduction of a well-known self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, a woman who suffered Harry thought, a picture chosen by a woman.
Speaker 1: The floor was untreated pine, and the room was lit by a combination of old-fashioned paraffin lamps and brown clay lamps, which looked as if they might have been homemade.
Speaker 1: Linear against the wall in the corner was a guitar with nylon strings, which | |
Speaker 1: Harry took to be the explanation for Ralph Ottison's filed nails.
Speaker 1: What do you mean she would never have left, Harry asked? In front of him on the living room table, Ralph Ottison had placed a photograph of his wife with their twin daughters Olga and Emma, ten years old.
Speaker 1: Sylvia Ottison had big sleepy eyes, like someone who had worn glasses all her life, and then started wearing contact lenses or had laser eyes surgery.
Speaker 1: The twins had their mother's eyes.
Speaker 1: She would have said, Ralph Ottison said, left a message, something must have happened.
Speaker 1: In spite of his despair his voice was mutated and gentle.
Speaker 1: Ralph Ottison pulled a hangature from his trouser pocket and put it to his face.
Speaker 1: His nose seemed abnormally big for his narrow pale face.
Speaker 1: He blew his nose in one single trumpet blast.
Speaker 1: Scarra poked his head inside the door.
Speaker 1: The dog patrols here, they've got a cadaver dog with him.
Speaker 1: Go going then, Harry said, have you spoken to all the neighbours? Yep, still nothing.
Speaker 1: Scarra closed the door, and Harry saw that Ottison's eyes had become even bigger behind the glasses.
Speaker 1: Cadaver dog, Ottison whispered.
Speaker 1: Just a generic term, Harry said, making a mental note that he would have to give Scarra a couple of tips on how to express himself.
Speaker 1: So you use them to search for living people as well? From his intonation the husband appeared to be pleading.
Speaker 1: Yes, of course, Harry lied, rather than tell him that cadaver dogs sniffed out places where dead bodies had been.
Speaker 1: They were not used for drugs, lost property, or living people.
Speaker 1: They were used for deaths, full stop.
Speaker 1: So you last saw her today at four.
Speaker 1: Harry said, looking down at his notes, before you and your daughters went to town.
Speaker 1: What did you do there? I took care of the shop while the girls had their violin list. | |
Speaker 1: shop. We have a small shop in Mayorsdwin, selling and made African goods, art, furniture, fabric, clothes, all sorts of things. They're imported directly from the artisans, and they're paid properly. Sylvia is there most of the time, but on Thursdays we're open late, so she comes back home with the car and I go in with the girls. I'm at the shop while they have violin lessons, at the Barat Dua Institute of Music, from five until seven, then I pick them up and we come home. We were home a little after half seven.
Speaker 1: Hmm. Who else works in the shop? No one. I must mean you're closed for a while on Thursdays, about an hour. Roll-fortus and gave a rice mile. It's a very small shop. We don't have many customers, almost none until the Christmas sales to be honest. How, not spread. They support shops and our suppliers as part of the government trade program with third-world countries. He coughed quietly. The message it sends is more important than money and shortsighted gain, isn't it? Harry nodded, even though he wasn't thinking about development aid and fair trade in Africa, but about the clock and driving time in Oslo and District. From the kitchen where the twins were eating a late snack came the sound of a radio. He hadn't seen a TV in the house. Thank you. We'll be cracking on.
Speaker 1: Harry got up and went outside. Three cars stood parked in the yard. One was Burene Holmes, Volvo, Amazon, repainted black with a checkered rally stripe over the roof and boot. Harry looked up at the clear, starry sky arching over the tiny farm in the forest clearing. He breathed in the air, the air of spruce and woodsmog. From the edge of the wood he heard the panting of a dog and cries of encouragement from the policemen.
Speaker 1: To get to the barn, Harry walked in the arc they had determined so as not to destroy any clues they might be able. | |
Speaker 1: to use. Voices were emanating from the open door. He crouched turn and studied the footprints in the snow in the light from the outside lamp. Then he stood up, leaned against the frame and tugged out a packet of cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Looks like a murder scene, he said, blood, bodies, and overturned furniture.
Speaker 1: Beer in home and Magnus Scara fell silent, turned and followed Harry's gaze.
Speaker 1: The big open room was lit by a single bulb, hanging from a cable wrapped around one of the beams. At one end of the barn there was a laith, and behind it a board with tools attached, hammer, saws, pliers, drills, no electric gadgets. At the other end there was a wire fence, and behind it chickens perched on shelves in the wall, or strutted around, stiff-legged on the straw. In the middle of the room, on grey, untreated blood-stained floorboards lay three headless bodies. Harry poked a cigarette between his lips without lighting it, entered, taking care not to step in the blood, and squatted down beside the chopping block to examine the chicken heads. The light from his pen-light flashed on matte black eyes. First he held half a white feather that looked as if it had been scorched black along the edge. Then he studied the smooth severing of the chicken's necks. The blood had coagulated and was black. He knew this was a quick process, not much more than half an hour.
Speaker 1: See anything interesting? Aspire in home. My brain has been damaged by my profession home. Right now it's analysing chicken's bodies.
Speaker 1: Scarrow laughed and painted the newspaper headlines in the air. Savage, triple chicken murder, voodoo parish, harihula assigned.
Speaker 1: What I can't see is more interesting, Harry said. Pure in home, raised in eyebrow, looked | |
Speaker 1: and began to nod slowly.
Speaker 1: Scara looked at them skeptically, and that is the murder weapon, Harry said.
Speaker 1: A hatchet, whom said, the only sensible way to kill chickens.
Speaker 1: Scara sniffed.
Speaker 1: If the woman did the killing, she must have put the hatchet back in its place, tidy source these farmers.
Speaker 1: I agree, Harry said, listening to the crackle of the chickens, which seemed to be coming from all sides.
Speaker 1: That's why it's interesting that the chopping block is upside down, and the chicken's bodies scattered around, and the hatchet is not in its place.
Speaker 1: Its place, Scara faced home and rolled his eyes.
Speaker 1: If you can be bothered to take a peek, Scara, Harry said, without moving.
Speaker 1: Scara was still looking at home, who nodded towards the board behind the lathe.
Speaker 1: SHIT, said Scara.
Speaker 1: In the empty space between a hammer and a rusty saw, was the outline of a small hatchet.
Speaker 1: From outside came the sound of a dog barking, whimpering, and then the policeman's loud shout, which was no longer encouraging.
Speaker 1: Harry rubbed his chin.
Speaker 1: We've searched the whole barn, so for the moment it looks as if Sylvia Otterson left the place, while slaughtering the chickens, taking the hatchet with her.
Speaker 1: Well, can you take the body temperatures of these chickens and estimate the time of death? Yupp.
Speaker 1: A? Scara said.
Speaker 1: I want to know when she ran off, Harry said.
Speaker 1: Did you get anything from the shoe prints outside, home? The forensic officer shook his head.
Speaker 1: Two trampled, and I need more light.
Speaker 1: I found several of Rolf Otterson's boot prints, plus a couple of others going to the barn, but none from the barn.
Speaker 1: Perhaps she was carried out of the barn.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 1: Then the prints of the carrier would have been deeper.
Speaker 1: Shame. | |
Speaker 1: 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 wine and a policeman's furious curses.
Speaker 1: "'Can't see what's up, Scutter,' Harry said. Scutter went, and Harry switched the torch back on and walked towards the wall. He ran his hand along the unpainted boards.
Speaker 1: "'What's,' hung began, but stopped when Harry's boot hit the wall with a dull thud. The starry sky came into view. At 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.
Speaker 1: He shone the torch on the snow. The light immediately found the tracks.
Speaker 1: "'Two people,' Harry said. "'It's the dog,' Scutter said on his return.
Speaker 1: "'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-hungller doesn't understand.
Speaker 1: He says the dog seems petrified. At any rate yet refuses to go into the forest.
Speaker 1: "'Perhaps he can smell fox?' Holmes said. Lots of foxes in this forest. Foxes,' Scutter snorted.
Speaker 1: "'That big dog can't be afraid of foxes.' Perhaps it's never seen a fox,' Harry said, but it knows he can smell a predator. It's rational to be afraid of what you don't know.
Speaker 1: The dog that isn't won't live long. Harry could feel his heart begin to quicken.
Speaker 1: 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. Okay? Harry swallowed before stepping out of the back door. | |
Speaker 1: It had been more than thirty years ago, and still his body bristled.
Speaker 1: He had been staying at his grandfather's house in Ondolsness during the autumn holiday, the farm lay on a mountainside with the mighty Rumsdall mountains towering above.
Speaker 1: How he had been ten and had gone into the forest to look for the cow his grandfather was searching for.
Speaker 1: He wanted to find it before his grandfather, before anyone, so he hurried, ran like a maniac over hills of soft, blueberry bushes and funny crooked dwarf birch trees.
Speaker 1: The paths came and went as he ran in a straight line towards the bell he thought he had heard among the trees, and there it was again a bit further to the right now.
Speaker 1: He jumped over a stream, ducked under a tree, and his boots squelched as he ran across a marsh with a rain cloud edging towards him.
Speaker 1: He could see the veil of drizzle beneath the cloud, showering the steep mountainside.
Speaker 1: And the rain was so fine that he had not noticed the darkness descending.
Speaker 1: It slunk out of the marsh, it crept between the trees, it spilt down through the shadows of the mountainside like black paint, and collected at the bottom of the valley.
Speaker 1: He looked up at a large bird circling high above, so dizzyingly high, because he could see the mountain behind it.
Speaker 1: And then a boot got stuck and he fell, faced down and without anything to grab.
Speaker 1: He went dark, and his nose and mouth were filled with the taste of marsh, of death, decay and darkness.
Speaker 1: He could taste the darkness for a few seconds he was under.
Speaker 1: And then he came up again, and discovered that all the light had gone.
Speaker 1: Gone across the mountain, tiring above him in its silent, heavy majesty, whispering that he didn't know where he was, that he hadn't known for a long time.
Speaker 1: Unaware that he had lost a boot, he stood up and began to run.
Speaker 1: He would soon see something he recognized, but the landscape... | |
Speaker 1: bewitched. Rocks had become heads of creatures growing up out of the ground. Bushes were fingers that scratched at his legs, and dwarf birch trees were witches bent with laughter as they pointed the way here or there, the way home or the way to perdition, the way to his grandmother's house or the way to the pit. Because adults had told him about the pit. The bottomless swamp where cattle, people and whole carts vanished, never to return. It was almost night when Harry totted into the kitchen and his grandmother hugged him and said that his father, grandfather and all the adults from the neighbouring farm were out looking for him. Where had he been? In the forest. But hadn't he heard their shouts? They had been calling Harry. She had heard them calling Harry all the time.
Speaker 1: He didn't remember it himself. But many times later he had been told that he had sat there trembling with cold on the wooden box in front of the stove, staring into the distance with an apathetic expression on his face, and had answered, I didn't think it was them calling. Who did you think it was then? The others. Did you know that darkness has a taste, grandma? Harry had walked barely a few metres into the forest when he was overtaken by an intense, almost unnatural silence. He shone the torch down on the ground in front of him, because every time he pointed it into the forest, shadows ran between the trees like jittery spirits in the pitch-black. Being isolated from the dark in a bubble of light didn't give him a sense of security. Quite the opposite. The certainty that he was the most visible object moving through the forest made him feel naked, vulnerable. The branches crept at his face like a blind man's fingers trying to identify a stranger. The tracks led to a stream whose gurgling noise drowned his quick and breathing. | |
Speaker 1: One of the trails disappeared while the other followed the stream on lower ground.
Speaker 1: He went on, the stream wound hitherto and thither, but he wasn't concerned about losing his bearings, all he had to do was retrace his steps.
Speaker 1: An owl, which must have been close by, hooted in and monetary to with two woo.
Speaker 1: The dial on his watch-clothed green ensured that he had been walking for over fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Time to go back and send in the team with proper footwear, gear, and a dog that was not afraid of foxes.
Speaker 1: Harry's heart stopped.
Speaker 1: It had darted past his face, soundless and so fast that he hadn't seen anything, but the current of air had given it away.
Speaker 1: Harry heard the owl's wings beating in the snow, and the pitiest squeak of a small rodent that had just become its prey.
Speaker 1: He slowly let out the air from his lungs, shone the torch over the forest ahead one last time and turned to go back, took one step, then came to a halt.
Speaker 1: He wanted to take another, two more, to get out.
Speaker 1: But he did what he had to do, shone the light behind him.
Speaker 1: And there it was again, a glint, a reflection of light that should not be there in the middle of the black forest.
Speaker 1: He went closer, looked back and tried to fix the spot in his mind.
Speaker 1: It was about fifteen meters from the stream.
Speaker 1: He crouched down, just the steels stuck up, but he didn't need to brush away the snow to see what it was, a hatchet.
Speaker 1: If there had been blood on it after killing the chickens, it was gone now.
Speaker 1: There were no footprints around the hatchet.
Speaker 1: Harry shone the torch, and saw a snap, twig on the snow a few meters away.
Speaker 1: Someone must have thrown the eggs here with enormous... | |
Speaker 1: strength. At that moment Harry felt it again, the sensation he had had at Spectrum earlier that evening, the sensation that he was being observed. Instinctively switched off the torch and the darkness descended over him like a blanket. He held his breath and listened.
Speaker 1: Don't, he thought. Don't let it happen. Evil is not a thing, it cannot take possession of you. It's the opposite. It's a void and absence of goodness. The only thing you can be frightened of here is yourself. Harry switched on the torch and pointed it towards the clearing. It was her. She stood erect and immobile between the trees, looking at him without blinking, the same large sleepy eyes as in the photograph. Harry's first thought was that she was dressed like a bride in white, that she was standing at the altar here in the middle of the forest. The light made her glitter. Harry breathed in with a shiver and grabbed his mobile phone from his jacket pocket. Burene home answered after the second ring.
Speaker 1: Corden of the whole area, Harry said. His throat felt dry, rough. I'm calling in the troops.
Speaker 1: What's happened? There's a snowman here. So? Harry explained.
Speaker 1: I didn't catch the last bit. Home shouted. Poor coverage here. The head, Harry repeated.
Speaker 1: It belongs to Sylvia Otisson. The other end went quiet. Harry told home to follow the footprints and rang off. Then he crouched against a tree, brought in his coat right up and switched off the torch to save the battery while he waited. Thinking he had almost forgotten what it tasted like. | |
Speaker 1: The Darkness.
Speaker 1: End of CD3. |
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