The Snowman: A Harry Hole Novel (7) (Harry Hole series) by Jo Nesbø

Author:Jo Nesbø
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307599575
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-10T00:00:00+00:00

Standing outside Tresko’s door on the sixth floor of the only apartment building in Frogner Plass, Harry had that same feeling he had when he was small and everyone else in Oppsal was on vacation. This was the last resort, his last desperate action, having rung the doorbells at all the other houses. Tresko—or Asbjørn Treschow, which was his real name—opened up and stared sullenly at Harry. Because he knew now, just as he had then. Last resort.

The front door led straight into a three-hundred-square-foot living space one might call, charitably, a lounge with an open-plan kitchen, and uncharitably, an SRO. The stench was breathtaking. It was the smell of bacteria vegetating on damp feet and stale air, hence the vernacular but accurate Norwegian term tåfis, or toe-fart. Tresko had inherited his sweaty feet from his father. Just as he had inherited the sobriquet tresko, clogs, this dubious footwear he always wore in the belief that the wood absorbed the smell.

The only positive thing you could say about Tresko junior’s foot odor was that it masked the smell of the dishes piled up in the sink, the overflowing ashtrays and the sweat-impregnated T-shirts drying over chair backs. It occurred to Harry that in all probability Tresko’s sweaty feet had driven his opponents to the edge of sanity on his passage through to the semifinals of the world poker championship in Las Vegas.

“Been a long while,” Tresko said.

“Yes. Great that you had some time for me.”

Tresko laughed as if Harry had told him a joke. And Harry, who had no desire to spend any longer than necessary in the place, got straight to the point.

“So why is poker just about being able to see when your opponent is lying?”

Tresko didn’t seem to mind skipping the social niceties.

“People think poker’s about statistics, odds and probability. But if you play at the highest level all the players know the odds by heart, so that’s not where the battle takes place. What separates the best from the rest is their ability to read others. Before I went to Vegas I knew I was going to be up against the best. And I could see the best playing on the Gamblers’ Channel, which I received on satellite TV. I recorded it and studied every single one of the guys when they were bluffing. Ran it in slow motion, logged what went on in their faces down to the tiniest detail, what they said and did, every repeated action. And after I’d worked at it for long enough there was always something, some recurrent mannerism. One scratched his right nostril; another stroked the back of the cards. Leaving Norway, I was sure I was going to win. Sadly it turned out I had even more telltale tics.”

Tresko’s grim laughter sounded more like a kind of sobbing and caused his amorphous frame to shake.

“So if I bring a man in for questioning, you can see whether he’s lying or not?”

Tresko shook his head. “It’s not that simple. First of all, I need to have a recording.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.