The Thirst

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He’s here,’ Mehmet whispered.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes. In the hararet.’

  ‘Keep an eye on it, we’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘You’ve done what?’ Bjørn Holm said, taking his foot off the clutch as the lights turned green on Hausmannsgate.

  ‘I hired a civilian volunteer to watch the Turkish baths in Sagene,’ Harry said, looking in the wing mirror of Bjørn Holm’s legendary 1970 Volvo Amazon. Originally white, later painted black, with a chequered rally stripe across the roof and boot. The car behind disappeared in a cloud of black exhaust fumes.

  ‘Without asking us?’ Bjørn blew his horn and overtook an Audi on the inside.

  ‘It’s not entirely by the book, so there was no reason to make any of you accomplices.’

  ‘There are fewer traffic lights if you take Maridalsveien,’ Wyller said from the back seat.

  Bjørn changed into a lower gear and wrenched the car to the right. Harry felt the pressure of the three-point seat belt that Volvo had been the first to install, but they had no slack which meant you could hardly move.

  ‘How are you doing, Smith?’ Harry called over the roar of the engine. He wouldn’t usually have brought an external adviser on an active operation like this, but at the last moment he decided to take Smith in case they found themselves in a hostage situation, when the psychologist’s ability to read Valentin could come in handy. The way he had read Aurora. The way he had read Harry.

  ‘A bit carsick, that’s all,’ Smith smiled weakly. ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘Old clutch, heater and adrenalin,’ Bjørn said.

  ‘Listen up,’ Harry said. ‘We’ll be there in two minutes, so I repeat: Smith, you stay in the car. Wyller and I will go in through the front door, Bjørn will watch the back door. You said you know where it is?’

  ‘Yep,’ Bjørn said. ‘And your man is still online?’

  Harry nodded and put his phone to his ear. They pulled up in front of an old brick building. Harry had looked at the plans. It was a former factory which now housed a printing firm, some offices, a recording studio and the hamam, and there was only one other door apart from the front entrance.

  ‘Everyone loaded, safety off?’ Harry asked, breathing out as he unfastened the tight seat belt. ‘We want him alive. But if that’s not possible …’ He looked up at the glinting windows on either side of the main entrance as he heard Bjørn recite in a low voice: ‘Police, warning shot, then shoot the bastard. Police, warning shot, then—’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Harry said.

  They got out of the car, crossed the pavement and split up by the front entrance.

  Harry and Wyller went up the three steps and in through a heavy door. The hallways inside smelt of ammonia and printers’ ink. Two of the doors had shiny gilded signs with ornate writing: small, optimistic law firms that couldn’t afford to rent in the city centre. On the third door was an unassuming sign saying CAGALOGLU HAMAM, so unassuming that it gave the impression they didn’t want customers who didn’t already know where it was.

  Harry opened the door and walked in.

  He found himself in a passageway with peeling paint on the walls and a simple desk, where a broad-shouldered man with dark stubble and a tracksuit was sitting and reading a magazine. If Harry hadn’t known better, he would have thought he’d walked into a boxing club.

  ‘Police,’ Wyller said, sticking his ID between the magazine and the man’s face. ‘Sit completely still and don’t warn anyone. This will be over in a couple of minutes.’

  Harry carried on down the passageway and saw two doors. One said CHANGING ROOM, the other HAMAM. He went into the baths, and heard Wyller follow close behind him.

  There were three small pools laid out in a row. To their right were booths containing massage tables. To the left were two glass doors which Harry assumed led to the sauna and steam room, and a plain wooden door that he remembered from the plans as the door to the changing room. In the nearest pool two men looked up and stared at them. Mehmet was sitting on a bench by the wall, pretending to look at his phone. He hurried over to them and pointed towards the glass door with a misted plastic sign saying HARARET.

  ‘Is he alone?’ Harry asked quietly as he and Wyller each pulled out their Glocks. He heard frantic splashing from the pool behind him.

  ‘No one’s entered or left since I called you,’ Mehmet whispered.

  Harry went over to the door and tried to look in, but saw nothing but impenetrable whiteness. He gestured to Wyller to cover the door. He took a deep breath and was about to go in when he changed his mind. The sound of shoes. Valentin’s suspicions mustn’t be aroused by the entrance of someone who wasn’t barefoot. Harry pulled his shoes and socks off with his free hand. Then he pulled the door open and went in. The steam swirled around him. Like a bridal veil. Rakel. Harry didn’t know where the thought had come from, and thrust it aside. And managed to catch a glimpse of a solitary figure on the wooden bench in front of him before he closed the door behind him and was enveloped in whiteness again. That and silence. Harry held his breath and listened for the other man’s breathing. Had the man had time to see that the new arrival was fully clothed and holding a pistol? Was he scared? Was he scared the way Aurora had been scared when she saw his cowboy boots outside her toilet cubicle?

  Harry raised his pistol and moved towards where he had seen the figure. And he could make out the shape of a seated man against the white. Harry squeezed the trigger until it resisted.

  ‘Police,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.’ And another thought struck him. That in a situation like this he would usually say or we’ll shoot. It was simple psychology, it gave the impression that there were more of them, and increased the chances of the person surrendering immediately. So why had he said ‘I’? And now that his brain had accepted one question, others appeared: why was he on his own here, rather than the Delta team that specialised in this sort of job? Why had he really stationed Mehmet here in complete secrecy and not told anyone at all until after Mehmet had called?

  Harry felt the slight resistance of the trigger against his index finger. So slight.

  Two men in a room where no one else could see them.

  Who would be able to deny that Valentin, who had already killed several people with just his bare hands and iron teeth, had attacked Harry, forcing Harry to shoot him in self-defence?

  ‘Vurma!’ the figure in front of him said, and raised his arms in the air.

  Harry leaned closer.

  The skinny man was naked. His eyes were wide with terror. And his chest was covered with grey hair, but was otherwise unblemished.

  23

  TUESDAY, LATE AFTERNOON

  ‘WHAT THE HELL?!’ Katrine bratt yelled, throwing the rubber she’d picked up from her desk. It hit the wall just above Harry Hole’s head where he was sitting slumped in a chair. ‘As if we didn’t have enough problems, you manage to break pretty much every damn rule in the book, plus a couple of the country’s laws for good measure. What were you thinking?’

  Rakel, Harry thought, tipping backwards until his chair hit the wall. I was thinking about Rakel. And Aurora.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was thinking that if there was a shortcut which meant we could bring Valentin Gjertsen in just one day earlier, it might save someone’s life.’

  ‘Don’t give me that, Harry! You know bloody well that isn’t how it works. If everyone thought and acted—’

  ‘You’re right, I know that. And I know that Valentin Gjertsen came very close to being caught. He saw Mehmet, recognised him from the bar, realised what was going on and snuck out the back way while Mehmet was in the changing room phoning me. And I know that if it had been Valentin Gjertsen sitting in that steam room when we got there, you’d already have forgiven me and started praising proactive, creative police work. Exactly what you set up the boiler-room team for.’

  ‘You bast
ard!’ Katrine snarled, and Harry saw her searching her desk for something else to throw at him. Fortunately she rejected the stapler and the sheaf of judicial correspondence from America relating to Facebook. ‘I did not give you licence to act like cowboys. I haven’t seen a single newspaper that isn’t running the raid at the baths as the lead on their website. Weapons in a peaceful bathhouse, innocent civilians in the firing line, a naked ninety-year-old threatened with a pistol. And no arrest! It’s all just so …’ She raised her hands and looked up at the ceiling, as if she were surrendering judgement to higher powers. ‘… amateurish!’

  ‘Am I being fired?’

  ‘Do you want to be fired?’

  Harry saw her in front of him. Rakel, sleeping, her thin eyelids twitching, like Morse code from the land of coma. ‘Yes,’ he said. And he saw Aurora, the anxiety and pain in her eyes, the damage in there that could never be healed. ‘And no. Do you want to fire me?’

  Katrine groaned, stood up and went over to the window. ‘Yes, I want to fire someone,’ she said with her back to him. ‘But not you.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Mm,’ she mimicked.

  ‘Do you feel like elaborating?’

  ‘I’d like to fire Truls Berntsen.’

  ‘That goes without saying.’

  ‘Yes, but not for being useless and lazy. He’s the one who’s been leaking to VG.’

  ‘And how did you find that out?’

  ‘Anders Wyller set a trap. He went a bit too far – I think perhaps there was a degree of payback as far as Mona Daa was concerned. Either way, we won’t have any trouble from her if she’s been paying a public official for information, seeing as she should have known that could lead to charges for corruption.’

  ‘So why haven’t you fired Berntsen?’

  ‘Guess,’ she said, going back to her desk.

  ‘Mikael Bellman?’

  Katrine threw a pencil, not at Harry but the closed door. ‘Bellman came in here, sat where you’re sitting now, and said that Berntsen had convinced him of his innocence. And then he implied that it could have been Wyller himself who had been talking to VG and then tried to pin the blame on Berntsen. But that we couldn’t prove anything yet, so it would be best to let it go and concentrate on catching Valentin, that was the only thing that mattered. What do you make of that?’

  ‘Well, maybe Bellman’s right, maybe it’s best to delay washing our own dirty laundry until we’ve stopped wrestling in the gutter.’

  Katrine pulled a face. ‘Did you think of that one all by yourself?’

  Harry extracted his packet of cigarettes. ‘Speaking of leaks. The papers are saying I was at the bathhouse, and that’s OK, I got recognised. But no one apart from the boiler room and you know about Mehmet’s role in this. And I’d rather keep it that way, just to be on the safe side.’

  Katrine nodded. ‘I actually raised that with Bellman and he agreed. He says we’ve got a lot to lose if it gets out that we’re using civilians to do our work for us, that it makes us look desperate. He said that Mehmet and his role in this shouldn’t be mentioned to anyone, including the investigative team. I think that makes sense, even if Truls is no longer allowed to take part in meetings.’

  ‘Really?’

  Katrine raised one corner of her mouth. ‘He’s been given his own office where he can file away reports about cases that are nothing to do with the vampirist murders.’

  ‘So you have fired him after all,’ Harry said, sticking a cigarette between his lips. His phone vibrated against his thigh. He pulled it out. A text from Dr Steffens.

  Tests finished. Rakel’s back in 301.

  ‘I need to go.’

  ‘Are you still with us, Harry?’

  ‘I need to think about that.’

  Outside Police HQ Harry found his lighter in a hole in the lining of his jacket, and lit the cigarette. He looked at the people walking past him on the path. They seemed so calm, so untroubled. There was something very disconcerting about that. Where was he? Where the hell was Valentin?

  ‘Hi,’ Harry said as he walked into room 301.

  Oleg was sitting next to Rakel’s bed, which was back in place. He looked up from the book he was reading but didn’t respond.

  Harry sat down on the other side of the bed. ‘Any news?’

  Oleg leafed through the book.

  ‘OK, listen,’ Harry said, taking his jacket off and hanging it on the back of his chair. ‘I know you think that when I’m not sitting here it means I care more about work than I do about her. That there are others who could solve the murders, but that she only has you and me.’

  ‘Isn’t that true, then?’ Oleg said, without looking up from the book.

  ‘I’m of no use to her right now, Oleg. I can’t save anyone in here, but out there I can make a difference. I can save lives.’

  Oleg closed his book and looked at Harry. ‘Good to hear that you’re driven by philanthropy. Otherwise one might think it was something else.’

  ‘Something else?’

  Oleg dropped the book in his bag. ‘A desire for glory. You know, all that Harry-Hole-is-back-to-save-the-day stuff.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what it’s about?’

  Oleg shrugged. ‘The important thing is what you think. That you can convince yourself with that bullshit.’

  ‘Is that how you see me? A bullshitter?’

  Oleg stood up. ‘Do you know why I always wanted to be like you? It wasn’t because you were all that great. It was because I didn’t have anyone else. You were the only man in the house. But now I can see you more clearly, I need to do all I can not to end up like you. Deprogramming initiated, Harry.’

  ‘Oleg …’

  But he had already left the room.

  Damn, damn.

  Harry felt his phone buzz in his pocket and switched it off without looking at it. Listened to the machine. Someone had increased the volume so that it made a slightly delayed bleeping sound every time the green line jumped.

  Like a clock counting down.

  Counting down for her.

  Counting down for someone out there.

  What if Valentin was sitting looking at a clock right now, as he waited for the next one?

  Harry started to pull out his phone. Then let go of it again.

  The low, slanting light meant that when he put his broad hand on top of Rakel’s thin one, blue veins cast shadows across the back of his hand. He tried not to count the bleeps.

  By 806 he couldn’t sit still any longer, and stood up and walked round the room. He went out, found a doctor who didn’t want to go into any details but said that Rakel’s condition was stable, and that they had discussed bringing her out of the coma.

  ‘Sounds like good news,’ Harry said.

  The doctor hesitated before replying. ‘We’re only discussing it,’ he said. ‘There are arguments against it as well. Steffens is on duty tonight, you can talk to him when he gets here.’

  Harry found the cafeteria, got something to eat and went back to room 301. The police officer outside the door nodded.

  It had got dark in the room and Harry lit the lamp on the table next to the bed. He tapped a cigarette out of the packet as he studied Rakel’s eyelids. Her lips, which had become so dry. He tried to reconstruct the first time they met. He had been standing on the drive in front of her house, and she’d walked towards him, like a ballerina. After so many years, was he remembering it right? That first look. The first words. The first kiss. Maybe it was inevitable that you revised your memories, little by little, so that they eventually became a story, with the logic of a story, with weight and meaning. A story that said they had been on their way towards this all along, one that they repeated to each other, like a ritual, until they believed it. So when she disappeared, when the story of Rakel and Harry disappeared, what would he believe in then?

  He lit the cigarette.

  Inhaled, exhaled, saw the smoke swirl up towards the smoke alarm, dissipate.

  Disappea
r. Alarm, he thought.

  His hand slid into his pocket and grasped the cold, dormant phone.

  Damn, damn.

  A calling, as Steffens had put it: what did that mean? When you take a job you hate because you know you’re the best at it? Somewhere you can be useful. Like a self-effacing herd animal. Or was it like Oleg said, personal glory? Was he longing to be out there, shining, while she lay in here wasting away? OK, he’d never noticed any great sense of responsibility to society, and the recognition of colleagues or the public had never meant much. So what did that leave?

  That left Valentin. That left the hunt.

  There was a double knock, and the door slid open quietly. Bjørn Holm snuck in and sat down on the other chair.

  ‘Smoking inside a hospital,’ he said. ‘A six-year sentence, I reckon.’

  ‘Two years,’ Harry said, passing the cigarette to Bjørn. ‘Do me a favour and be my accomplice?’

  Bjørn nodded towards Rakel. ‘You’re not worried she might get lung cancer?’

  ‘Rakel loves passive smoking. She says she likes both the fact that it’s free, and that my body has already absorbed most of the toxins before I blow the smoke out again. I act as a combination of wallet and cigarette filter for her.’

  Bjørn took a drag. ‘Your voicemail’s switched off, so I figured you were here.’

  ‘Hm. For a forensics expert you’ve always been pretty good at deduction.’

  ‘Thanks. How’s it going?’

  ‘They’re talking about bringing her out of the coma. I’m choosing to see that as good news. Something urgent?’

  ‘No one we’ve spoken to from the bathhouse recognised Valentin from the photofit picture. The guy behind the desk said there were loads of people coming and going the whole time, but that he thought our man could be someone who usually shows up in a coat covering his bathrobe, with a cap pulled low, and that he always pays cash.’