The Snowman

Oda is waiting for the show guests to arrive. One of them is Arve Støp, and after he arrives, the host, Bosse Eggen, takes him into another room so that he won’t see Harry Hole arrive. On air, Arve does well with the crowd, but Bosse surprises him with Harry’s appearance.

Harry tells the crowd an edited version of their investigation, and how they caught the Snowman, an intentional lie they are telling the public. Just as Bosse is beginning to wrap up the segment, Harry brings up, in a vague way, the letter he received. Then he turns to Arve and asks him strange questions to provoke him, including whether he builds snowmen. As the show is wrapping up, Harry announces that they haven’t caught the Snowman, and shock ripples through the audience.

Gunnar finds Harry at his local bar, avoiding the press but unrepentant about what he did on Bosse. Gunnar has ordered Katrine to submit regular reports to him as a way of supervising Harry. After Harry leaves the bar, Gunnar realizes that Harry’s drink, which he thought was alcohol, was actually non-alcoholic cider.

Filip, who has been released from prison, is waiting by Harry’s car. He says that, after Harry’s bravery on Bosse, he decided to be brave as well and tell the truth. He took a blood sample from Jonas the night he saw Camilla and sent it off for DNA testing. He found out that Jonas is not his son and learned that seven years ago, someone else had requested the same DNA test, from the clinic where Idar trained with Mathias.

Harry goes to Tresko’s apartment, where his friend has been watching the footage from his Bosse appearance. Tresko has discovered Arve’s tells, and knows when he is lying, which Tresko says he does when he says there is no mental or hereditary illness in his family.

Harry calls Mathias and asks about the Marienlyst Clinic, where he and Idar worked together, and about DNA test records. Mathias says that some of the doctors took their patient files. Harry asks Gerda Nelvik, who handles DNA paternity tests, to look up the records from Marienlyst Clinic, and she reports an unusual number of requests from the clinic. Gerda recognizes him from Bosse and understands that this is about the Snowman case.

Harry and Katrine go to swab Sylvia’s twin daughters, so that he can send them to Gerda. While there, he realizes that the Snowman returned to the barn after killing Sylvia and killed the third chicken she was planning to slaughter. However, he can’t figure out why. He and Katrine talk about Arve Støp and wonder how Sylvia and Birte had found Idar since his specialty was a secret. They theorize that Sylvia and Birte’s children are Arve’s, and he wanted them tested for Fahr’s Syndrome.

After dropping Katrine at home, Harry realizes that when Katrine had pointed her gun at Filip, he heard the hammer of her revolver click—if she squeezed the trigger, the gun would have fired. He believes now that she was going to kill Filip and, after seeing her face in just the right light in the barn, knows that Katrine plays a bigger part in this story. He calls Knut Muller Nilsen in Bergen, who confirms that Katrine Bratt is Gert Rafto’s daughter.

Harry can’t believe what Knut has told him and breaks into Katrine’s office. In her desk, he finds a large, serrated knife and a ring he recognizes from Birte Becker’s bedroom. He then breaks into her apartment and finds files on the older missing women cases. One wall is covered with articles about his own past investigations, and he finds a stack of paper, each sheet featuring a snowman doodle. He checks the paper in the printer and recognizes it as the same paper of his letter, and then, on her computer, he finds the text of the letter.

Arve Støp is hosting a celebrity event and hating every moment of it. He amuses himself by imagining having sex with nearly every woman he sees. When his speech is over, Katrine approaches him. She looks familiar, but he cannot remember how he knows her. After he finds out that she is married and has children, he invites her to his apartment.

When Katrine arrives at Arve’s apartment, she gives him a pig mask and tells him to put it on. He does so, but when he starts to speak, she hits him. Then he realizes that she has handcuffed him and had been hitting him with a gun. He becomes afraid.

Harry calls Gerda at the DNA testing center and finds out that Katrine called earlier to get the results of Sylvia’s daughters’ tests. He and Bjørn go to the Plaza Hotel, where Arve’s event is being held. When they arrive, Harry sees a journalist who tells him that Arve had left with a woman.

Katrine drags Arve into the bathroom and questions him about where he was when Birte and Sylvia disappeared. When she finds out he has no alibi, she says “good.” He can hear electric humming but doesn’t know what it is. Katrine slips a noose around his neck and tells him that he is the Snowman. She plans to kill him and hang him in the living room, making it look like suicide.

The entry to Arve’s building is locked, so Harry drives Bjørn’s car into the lobby. In the apartment, they find Arve, strangled, still wearing the pig mask. He is not dead but cannot tell Harry where Katrine is. Harry goes out onto the terrace and looks down at the pool, six floors below. He sees Katrine’s jacket on the water’s surface and jumps. When he comes to the surface of the water, he sees that Katrine’s jacket is empty, and realizes that she has fooled him.

Back in his apartment, Arve tells them that Katrine tried to kill him and asked about his alibis. Harry reveals that they know he is the father of Sylvia and Birte’s children. When Arve refuses to answer questions, Harry threatens to reveal the way they found him in the press, and Arve agrees to tell them everything.

The first time Arve sees Birte Becker is at a motivational seminar, and he passes her his business card. She contacts him long after the seminar, and they have sex in his apartment later that night. When she tells him she is pregnant and wants to keep the child, Arve tells her about the genetic disease he carries. After their conversation, Birte marries Filip. When Jonas is born, Birte calls Arve to tell him. He realizes that he will have to have Jonas tested for Fahr’s Syndrome, but it will need to be done discreetly. He calls Idar and pays for him to become an expert in the disease. From then on, Jonas is examined annually.

As for Sylvia, Arve meets her in her shop one day, and they have sex in the back room. Just as they are finished, her husband arrives, and Arve realizes that Sylvia knew he was coming and had tried to get caught on purpose. Two years later, Sylvia tells Arve that she had twins, and they are his. If he doesn’t invest in their shop, she will go to the press with the story. He agrees to her demands and arranges to have her twins examined by Idar as well. After Birte’s disappearance and Sylvia’s death, Idar wants to go to the police, but Arve refuses. Before they can meet and talk about the problem, Idar dies.

At headquarters, Harry relates Arve’s story and tells Gunnar that he believes Katrine is the Snowman. The next morning, Magnus reports that her phone has been found in Sweden. Harry knows that they won’t find Katrine in Sweden, just her abandoned phone. He goes to visit his mentor, Ståle Aune, for insight into Katrine. He mentions that she had been genuinely shocked when they found Rafto’s body, and Ståle, a psychiatrist, theorizes that she may have repressed the murders. Harry also reveals that Katrine is Rafto’s daughter, which he hasn’t told anyone else.

Eli Vale’s husband opens the door to Thomas Helle, from the Missing Persons Unit. As they talk, Thomas begins to see similarities between her disappearance and the Snowman case. Her husband shows him a garment, hanging in their laundry room, which has been cut and burned.

Harry flies to Bergen, where he rents a boat and even a fishing rod to appear as if he is going fishing. He goes ashore near Rafto’s cabin with a loaded gun and the tear gas canisters. When Katrine doesn’t come out, he prepares to leave, but she appears with a gun.

When she asks how he found her, Harry explains how the patterns of her behavior revealed her future actions. As they talk, she catches him moving subtly towards his gun. She tells him that she wanted him to find her—she chose him to help her find the Snowman.

Harry wonders how she will kill him, but as they continue to talk, he sees her confusion, and begins to doubt that she is the Snowman. He raises the fishing rod and casts towards her, and the hook embeds into the corner of her mouth. She falls, and he leaps at her and takes her gun away. Even though he is pointing a gun at her, she is smiling, her mouth bloody from the hook.

The Bergen police arrive and take Katrine into custody. Kjersti Rødsmoen, a psychiatrist, takes charge. When she asks how Katrine was caught, Harry hides her gun, and says that she surrendered. That night, Harry stays in Bergen. Rakel calls and wants to meet in person to talk about why they can’t see each other anymore. After hanging up, Harry wonders why, despite everything he knows, he still has hope that the case will turn out differently.

Gunnar is called to a meeting in which the chief superintendent announces that Katrine Bratt is the Snowman. They decide that, to avoid scandal, they want to make Harry the scapegoat. Gunnar hates the idea.

Rakel asks Harry to return her watch, which she left at his apartment, to her house. She asks whether the case is over, but Harry tells her they still haven’t found the victim’s bodies, and Katrine isn’t talking. Rakel reminds Harry that, even though he and Katrine are similar, they are not the same, but Harry isn’t so sure.

Before he goes home, Harry stops at the corner store for coffee. The owner, Ali, lives in his building and is president of the association. But when Harry mentions the mold man, Ali doesn’t know anything about it. Harry goes to bed, and when he wakes up, he has pain in his stomach, and a dry mouth. In the kitchen, he notices that all of his walls have been replaced. A note from the mold man says that he had to turn one section of wallboard because he got blood on it, and the only way to cover up blood is to paint it red. He also notices that his picture of Rakel and Oleg is gone.

Kjersti Rodsmoen tries to interview Katrine, who is unresponsive and silent until she asks to speak to Harry, and requests that Kjersti call her by her true surname, Rafto. She tells Kjersti that people are going to die because she is not the Snowman.

Harry drops Rakel’s watch off at her house, and sees Mathias there, fresh out of the shower. Harry notices that Mathias doesn’t have nipples and is trying to hide it with his arms crossed over his chest. In the car, Harry thinks about the mold man bleeding on the wall, and suddenly, the investigation comes together in a new way for him. He calls Bjørn and they return to Sylvia’s house.

Harry now believes that the Snowman killed the third chicken to cover his own blood on the floor, and tasks Bjørn with testing for human blood under the chicken blood. Before he can leave, Harry gets a call from Magnus—another victim of the Snowman has been found. Then Kjersti calls Knut at the Bergen police department and tells him he should come and listen to Katrine.

Magnus takes Harry to the crime scene, where a hiker found the snowman. They are shocked at how the body is displayed. The woman is sitting atop two balls of snow, held upright by a noose of wire from a branch above. She is stitched around her torso and neck. Thomas Helle tells them about the missing woman, Eli Kvale, and the dress that was burned in the same places that the woman had been cut. There is something clumsy about the scene, and Harry thinks it is practice.

The chief superintendent arrives at the crime scene. He explains to Harry that they need a scapegoat and asks him to sacrifice himself. Although Harry is angry and betrayed, he almost feels relieved to see the end of his career. However, after he agrees, the chief tells him that Gunnar wouldn’t agree to the plan and has offered to take the blame instead.

Harry gets call from Bjørn. They have discovered human blood, type B negative, on the barn floor. Harry knows that Katrine’s blood type will not match and asks Bjørn to meet him at the Anatomy Department.

Kjersti tells Knut and Espen about Katrine’s childhood, and her anger and confusion after Gert Rafto was scapegoated by the Bergen police. Katrine became a police officer to solve the mysteries and clear her father’s name. When she began working in Bergen, she had investigated her father’s case until they stopped her, and then transferred her to the Sexual Offenses Unit, where she investigated all the related cases. In the process, she found a pattern of missing women cases that matched the one her father was blamed for. She had written the Snowman letter to make Harry Hole curious and got hired in Oslo so that she could steer Harry towards the case. Kjersti tells them that Katrine is no longer psychotic and will be released in a few days.

At the Anatomy Department, an employee shows Harry and Bjørn where cadavers are stored until they are used for research. Harry asks if, hypothetically, someone could bring bodies without paperwork and hide them undiscovered. The employee answers that it is possible. When they begin searching, they find Sylvia’s headless body. After giving orders to go through the rest, Harry and Bjørn leave, knowing that they are getting closer to the Snowman.