Soft snow like cotton was dancing under the street lamps. One up, one down, aimlessly, letting itself be carried away by the cursed icy wind coming forcefully from the great darkness of the Oslo fjord. Together, snow and wind swirled around in the darkness between the large warehouses at the harbor pier, all closed for the night. Until the wind grew tired of the dance and left its partner beside the wall. There, the dry, wind-battered snow settled around the man's shoes, whom I had just shot in the chest and neck. Blood was dripping onto the snow from the lower part of his shirt. I don't know much about snow – honestly, I don't know much about anything – but I have read that the crystals formed when snow is very cold are completely different from thick snowflakes or from wet snow or from the other, the crackling kind. And that the shape of the crystals and the dryness of the snow are what allow the hemoglobin in blood to retain its vivid red color.
Anyway, the blood behind the man's body reminded me of a royal mantle, deep purple, with a white ermine trim, like in the illustrations in that book of Norwegian folk tales my mother used to read to me. She liked kings and fairy tales. Perhaps that's why she gave me a royal name. The Evening Post wrote that if this cold continued until New Year’s, 1977 would be the coldest year since the war and that we would remember it as the beginning of the new ice age that scientists had been predicting for some time. Who knows? All I knew was that the man standing opposite me would die any moment now. It was evident from how his body trembled. He was one of the Fisherman's men. I had nothing personal against him. That’s what I told him before he collapsed, leaving a big red stain on the wall.