The Snowman by Jo Nesbø, Don Bartlett Read Free Book Online Page B

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 in Denmark, dentist at 10 a.m. 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. A colour no boy of Jonas’s age would be seen dead wearing. Harry lifted the scarf. It was damp, but he could still smell the distinctive fragrance of skin, hair and feminine perfume. The same perfume as in the wardrobe.
    He went back downstairs. Stopped outside the kitchen and listened to Skarre 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 Jonas.
    ‘Did you know that Chaplin was a sir?’ Harry asked. ‘Sir Charlie Chaplin.’
    Jonas nodded. ‘But they chucked him out of the USA.’
    Jonas flicked through the book.
    ‘Were you ill this summer, Jonas?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But you went to the doctor’s. Twice.’
    ‘Mum wanted to have me examined. Mum . . .’ His voice suddenly failed him.
    ‘She’ll be back soon, you’ll see,’ Harry said, putting a hand on his narrow shoulders. She didn’t take her scarf with her, did she. The pink one on your bed.’
    ‘Someone hung it round the snowman’s neck,’ Jonas said. ‘I brought it in.’
    ‘Your mother didn’t want the snowman to freeze then.’
    ‘She would never have given her favourite scarf to the snowman.’
    ‘Then it must have been your dad.’
    ‘No, someone did it after he’d left. Last night. The person who took Mum.’
    Harry nodded slowly. ‘Who made the snowman, Jonas?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Harry looked through the window to the garden. This was the reason he had come. An ice-cold draught seemed to run through the wall and the room.
    Harry and Katrine drove down Sørkedalsveien towards Majorstuen.
    ‘What was the first thing that struck you when we went in?’ Harry asked.
    ‘That the couple living there were not exactly soulmates,’ Katrine said, steering through the toll booth without braking. ‘It may have been an unhappy marriage, and if so, she was the one who suffered more.’
    ‘Mm. What made you think that?’
    ‘It’s obvious,’ Katrine smiled, glancing in the mirror. ‘Clash of taste.’
    ‘Explain.’
    ‘Didn’t you see the dreadful sofa and the coffee table? Typical eighties style bought by men in the nineties. 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 Katrine Bratt’s mouth; it was a linguistic counterpoint that merely underlined her class affiliation.
    ‘Meaning?’
    ‘That big house, at that Oslo address, means it’s not money that’s the problem. 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 marker for himself. Her first impression had not been mistaken. Katrine Bratt was good.
    ‘Tell me what you think,’ she said. ‘It’s me who should be learning here.’
    Harry looked out of the window, at the old, traditional, though never particularly venerable, licensed café, Lepsvik.
    ‘I don’t think Birte Becker left the house of her own free will,’ he