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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 da... | |
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, sensin... | |
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 helples... | |
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... | |
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 abo... | |
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... | |
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, pe... | |
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... | |
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.
Speake... | |
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, ... | |
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 ... | |
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 s... | |
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.... | |
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 ne... | |
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: 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... | |
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 ni... | |
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 ... | |
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 hi... | |
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 lea... | |
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 e... | |
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 sm... | |
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 sno... | |
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 ... | |
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... | |
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 discon... | |
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 fr... | |
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 man... | |
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 fo... | |
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 ha... | |
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 we... | |
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 noticin... | |
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... | |
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 ro... | |
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.' Ra... | |
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 f... | |
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, ... | |
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 inspec... | |
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... | |
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 wro... | |
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... | |
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 ... | |
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 ... | |
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 pe... | |
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, ... | |
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... | |
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, Raqu... | |
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... | |
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, len... | |
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, t... | |
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 th... | |
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 ... | |
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... | |
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 th... | |
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 Bra... | |
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, s... | |
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 t... | |
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 i... | |
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 ... | |
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 ti... | |
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 ... | |
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 dar... | |
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.
S... | |
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 so... | |
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 y... | |
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. Sor... | |
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... | |
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... | |
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... | |
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 furnitu... | |
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, tid... | |
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. H... | |
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 fore... | |
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 ... | |
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 monetar... | |
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... | |
Speaker 1: The Darkness.
Speaker 1: End of CD3. |
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