The Thirst

by Jo Nesbo

  After Tord had left Harry rang the number of VG’s crime desk.

  ‘Harry Hole. Can I speak to Mona Daa?’

  ‘Long time, Harry.’ Harry recognised the voice of one of the older crime reporters. ‘You could have done, but Mona vanished a few days ago.’

  ‘Vanished?’

  ‘We got a text saying she was taking a few days off and that her phone would be switched off. Probably a good move, that girl’s worked bloody hard over the past year, but the editor was pissed off she didn’t ask, just sent that short message and pretty much disappeared. Kids these days, eh, Harry? Anything I can help you with?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Harry said, and hung up. He looked at his phone for a moment before slipping it into his pocket.

  By quarter past eleven Bjørn Holm had got hold of the name of the man who had imported the Ruger Redhawk into Norway, a sailor from Farsund. And at half past eleven Harry spoke to his daughter on the phone. She remembered the Redhawk because she had dropped the heavy revolver, which weighed more than a kilo, on her father’s big toe when she was little. But she couldn’t say where it had gone.

  ‘Dad moved to Oslo when he retired, to be closer to us children. But he was ill towards the end, and did a lot of peculiar things. He started giving away lots of his possessions, as we discovered afterwards when we were trying to sort out his will. I never saw the revolver again, so he could have given it away.’

  ‘But you don’t know who to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You said he was ill. I presume that was what led to his death?’

  ‘No, he died of pneumonia. It was fast and relatively painless, thank goodness.’

  ‘I see. So what was the other illness, and who was his doctor?’

  ‘That was just it, we realised he wasn’t very well, but Dad always thought of himself as a big, strong sailor. I suppose he thought it was embarrassing, so he kept it secret, both what was wrong with him and who he saw about it. It wasn’t until his funeral that I heard about it from an old friend he’d confided in.’

  ‘Would that friend know who your father’s doctor was, do you think?’

  ‘Hardly, Dad just mentioned the illness, no details.’

  ‘And what was the illness?’

  Harry wrote it down. Looked at the word. A rather lonely Greek term among all the Latin names in the world of medicine.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  39

  THURSDAY NIGHT

  ‘I’M SURE,’ HARRY said into the darkness of the bedroom.

  ‘Motive?’ Rakel said, curling up beside him.

  ‘Othello. Oleg was right. First and foremost, it’s not about jealousy. It’s about ambition.’

  ‘Are you still talking about Othello? Are you sure you don’t want to close the window, it’s supposed to be minus fifteen tonight.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not sure if the window should be closed, but you’re quite sure who the architect behind the vampirist murders is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re just missing that silly little thing called evidence.’

  ‘Yes.’ Harry pulled her closer to him. ‘That’s why I need a confession.’

  ‘So ask Katrine Bratt to call him in for questioning.’

  ‘Like I said, Bellman won’t let anyone touch the case.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  Harry stared at the ceiling. Felt the heat of her body. Would that be enough? Should they close the window?

  ‘I’m going to question him myself. Without him knowing that that’s what’s going on.’

  ‘Just let me remind you, as a lawyer, that an informal confession to you, one to one, has zero value.’

  ‘So we’ll have to make sure I’m not the only one who hears it, then.’

  Ståle Aune rolled over in bed and picked up the phone. Saw who was calling and pressed the button to answer. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I thought you’d be asleep.’ Harry’s gruff voice.

  ‘And you still called?’

  ‘You’ve got to help me with something.’

  ‘Still you rather than us?’

  ‘Still humanity. Do you remember we talked about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I need you to set a monkey trap during Hallstein’s disputation.’

  ‘Really? You, me, Hallstein and who else?’

  Ståle Aune heard Harry take a deep breath.

  ‘A doctor.’

  ‘And this is a person you’ve managed to link to the case?’

  ‘More or less.’

  Ståle felt the hairs on his arms stand up. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that I found a hair in Rakel’s room, and in a fit of paranoia I sent it for analysis. It turned out that there was nothing suspicious about the fact that it was there, because it came from this doctor. But then it turned out that the DNA profile of the hair ties him to the scenes of the vampirist murders.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And that there’s a link between this doctor and a young detective who’s been among us the whole time.’

  ‘What are you saying? You’ve got proof that this doctor and the detective are involved in the vampirist murders?’

  ‘No,’ Harry sighed.

  ‘No? Explain.’

  When Ståle Aune hung up twenty minutes later, he listened to the silence in the house. The calm. Everyone was asleep. But he knew he wasn’t going to get any more sleep.

  40

  FRIDAY MORNING

  WENCHE SYVERTSEN LOOKED out across Frognerparken as she used the step machine. One of her friends had advised her against it, saying it made your backside bigger. She evidently hadn’t understood the point: Wenche wanted a bigger backside. Wenche had read online that exercise only gave you a more muscular backside rather than one that was bigger and more perfectly formed, and that the solution was oestrogen supplements, eating more, or – simplest of all – implants. But Wenche had ruled out the last, because one of her principles was keeping her body natural, and she had never – never – submitted to the knife. Apart from getting her bust fixed, of course, but that didn’t count. And she was a woman of principle. That was why she had never been unfaithful to herr Syvertsen, in spite of all the offers she got, particularly in gyms like this. It was often young men, who took her for a cougar on the prowl. But Wenche had always preferred men who were more mature. Not as old as the wrinkled, battered old man on the cycle beside her, but like her neighbour. Harry Hole. Men who were inferior to her intellectually and in terms of maturity were actually a turn-off, she needed men who could stimulate her, entertain her, spiritually as well as in material terms. It really was that simple, there was no point pretending otherwise. And herr Syvertsen had done a good job of the last of these. But Harry was unavailable, apparently. And then there was that business of her principles, too. Besides, herr Syvertsen had become unreasonably jealous and had threatened to interfere with her privileges and lifestyle on the few occasions he had found out that she had been unfaithful. Which of course was before she had established the principle of not being unfaithful.

  ‘Why isn’t a beautiful woman like you married?’

  The words sounded like they were being ground out, and Wenche turned to face the old man on the bicycle. He smiled at her. His face was thin, with wrinkles like deep valleys, big lips and long, thick, greasy hair. He was thin, but broad-shouldered. A bit like Mick Jagger. Apart from his red bandanna and truck driver’s moustache.

  Wenche smiled and raised her ringless right hand. ‘Married. But I take it off when I exercise.’

  ‘Shame,’ the old man smiled. ‘Because I’m not married, and I could have offered a b-betrothal on the spot.’

  He raised his own right hand. Wenche started. She thought for a moment that she was seeing things. Was that really a big hole, right through his hand?

  ‘Oleg Fauke is here,’ the voice said over the intercom.

  ‘Send him in,’ John D. Ste
ffens said, pushing his chair away from his desk and looking out of the window at the laboratory building, the department of transfusion medicine. He had already seen young Fauke get out of the little Japanese car that was still in the car park with its engine running. Another young man was sitting behind the wheel, presumably with the heater at full blast. It was a sparklingly cold, sunny day. For many people it was a paradox that a cloudless sky in July promised heat but cold in January. Because many people couldn’t be bothered to understand the basics of physics, meteorology and the nature of the world. It no longer irritated Steffens that people thought that cold was a thing, and didn’t understand that it was merely the absence of heat. Cold was the natural, dominant state. Heat the exception. The way murder and cruelty were natural, logical, and mercy an anomaly, a result of the human herd’s intricate way of promoting the survival of the species. Because mercy stopped there, within the species, and it was humanity’s boundless cruelty towards other species that allowed it to survive. For instance, the growth of human beings as a species meant that meat wasn’t just hunted, but produced. The very words, meat production, the very idea! People kept animals in cages, stripping them of all their happiness and pleasure in life, inseminating them so that they involuntarily produced milk and tender young flesh, took their offspring away as soon as they were born, while the mothers bellowed with pain, and then made them pregnant again as soon as possible. People got furious if certain species were eaten, dogs, whales, dolphins, cats. But mercy, for unfathomable reasons, stopped there. The far more intelligent pigs could and would be humiliated and eaten, and we had been doing it for so long human beings no longer even thought about the calculated cruelty that was part and parcel of modern food production. Brainwashing!

  Steffens stared at the closed door that would soon be opening. Wondered if they would ever understand. That morality – which some people imagine is God-given and eternal – is as malleable and learned as our ideas of beauty, our enemies, our fashion trends. It seemed unlikely. And as a result, it was hardly surprising that humanity was unable to understand and accept radical research projects which went against their own engrained thoughts. Unable to understand that it was as logical and necessary as it was cruel.

  The door opened.

  ‘Good morning, Oleg. Come in, have a seat.’

  ‘Thanks.’ The young man sat down. ‘Before you take the sample, can I ask you for a favour?’

  ‘A favour?’ Steffens pulled on a pair of white rubber gloves. ‘You know that my research could benefit you, your mother and the whole of your future family?’

  ‘And I know that research is more important to you than a slightly longer life is to me.’

  Steffens smiled. ‘Wise words for such a young man.’

  ‘I’m asking on my father’s behalf if you could spare two hours to attend and give a professional opinion during a friend’s disputation. Harry would very much appreciate it.’

  ‘A disputation? By all means, it would be an honour.’

  ‘The only problem is …’ Oleg said, then cleared his throat, ‘that it starts now, or soon, and we’d need to go as soon as you’ve got your blood sample.’

  ‘Now?’ Steffens looked down at the diary that lay open in front of him. ‘I’m afraid I have a meeting which—’

  ‘He’d really appreciate it,’ Oleg said.

  Steffens looked at the young man as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘You mean … your blood in exchange for my time?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Oleg said.

  Steffens leaned back in his office chair and clasped his hands together in front of his mouth. ‘Just tell me one thing, Oleg. What is it that leads you to have such a close relationship to Harry Hole? After all, he isn’t your biological father.’

  ‘You tell me,’ Oleg said.

  ‘Answer that and give me your blood, and I’ll go with you to this disputation.’

  Oleg thought. ‘I almost said that it’s because he’s honest. That in spite of the fact that he isn’t the best father in the world or anything like that, I can trust what he says. But I don’t think that’s the most important thing.’

  ‘So what is the most important thing?’

  ‘That we hate the same groups.’

  ‘That you what?’

  ‘Music. We don’t like the same music, but we hate the same stuff.’ Oleg pulled his padded jacket off and rolled up his sleeve. ‘Ready?’

  41

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  RAKEL LOOKED UP at harry as they walked arm in arm across Universitetsplassen towards the Domus Academica, one of three buildings belonging to the University of Oslo in the centre of the city. She had persuaded him to wear the smart shoes she had bought him in London, even though he had said they were too slippery for this sort of weather.

  ‘You ought to wear a suit more often,’ she said.

  ‘And the council should grit more often,’ Harry said, pretending to slip again.

  She laughed and held him tight. Felt the hard yellow file he had folded and stuffed into his inside pocket. ‘Isn’t that Bjørn Holm’s car, and a very illegal piece of parking?’

  They passed the black Volvo Amazon, which was parked right in front of the steps.

  ‘Police authorisation behind the windscreen,’ Harry said. ‘Clear case of misuse.’

  ‘It’s because of Katrine,’ Rakel smiled. ‘He’s just worried she’ll fall.’

  There was a buzz of voices in the vestibule outside the Gamle festsal auditorium. Rakel looked for familiar faces. It was mostly professional colleagues and family. But there was someone she recognised at the other end of the room, Truls Berntsen. He evidently hadn’t understood that a suit was the correct attire for a disputation. Rakel forged a path for herself and Harry over to Katrine and Bjørn.

  ‘Congratulations, you two!’ Rakel said, and hugged them both.

  ‘Thanks!’ Katrine beamed, stroking her bulging stomach.

  ‘When …?’

  ‘In June.’

  ‘June,’ Rakel repeated, and saw Katrine’s smile twitch.

  Rakel leaned forward, put a hand on Katrine’s arm and whispered: ‘Don’t think about it, it’ll be fine.’

  Rakel saw Katrine look at her as if in shock.

  ‘Epidural,’ Rakel said. ‘They’re brilliant things. They get rid of any pain just like that!’

  Katrine blinked twice. Then she laughed. ‘Do you know, I’ve never been to a disputation before. I had no idea it was so formal until I saw Bjørn putting on his finest bootlace tie. What actually happens?’

  ‘Oh, it’s fairly straightforward really,’ Rakel said. ‘We go into the auditorium first, stand as the chair of the defence, the candidate and the two opponents come in. Smith is probably pretty tense even if he’s already had to give an examination lecture to them either yesterday or this morning. He’s probably most worried that Ståle Aune’s going to be awkward, but there can’t be much chance of that.’

  ‘No?’ Bjørn Holm said. ‘But Aune’s said he doesn’t believe in vampirism.’

  ‘Ståle believes in serious scholarship,’ Rakel said. ‘The opponents are supposed to be critical, and get to the heart of the subject of the dissertation, but they have to stay within the bounds of the subject and the premise of the occasion, not ride their own hobbyhorses.’

  ‘Wow, you’ve done your homework!’ Katrine said as Rakel took a deep breath.

  Rakel nodded and went on. ‘The opponents have three-quarters of an hour each, and between them brief questions from the hall are permitted, known as ex auditorio, but that doesn’t usually happen. After that there’s the disputation dinner, paid for by the candidate, but we’re not invited to that. Which Harry thinks is a great shame.’

  Katrine turned towards Harry. ‘Is that true?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘Who doesn’t like a bit of meat and gravy and dozing off to half-hour speeches made by the relatives of someone you really don’t know that well?’

  People started to move around
them, and a few cameras flashed.

  ‘The next Justice Minister,’ Katrine said.

  It was as if the waters parted before Mikael and Ulla Bellman as they walked in, arm in arm. They were smiling, but Rakel didn’t think that Ulla was really smiling. Perhaps she wasn’t the smiling type. Or perhaps Ulla Bellman had been that beautiful, bashful girl who had learned that an exaggerated smile only led to more unwanted attention, and that a chilly exterior made life easier. If that was the case, Rakel couldn’t help wondering what she was going to make of life as the wife of a cabinet minister.

  Mikael Bellman stopped next to them when a question was yelled out and a microphone stuck in front of his face.

  ‘Oh, I’m just here to celebrate one of the men who contributed to us solving the vampirist case,’ he said in English. ‘Dr Smith is the one you should be talking to today, not me.’ But Bellman did as he was asked and posed happily as the photographers called out their requests.

  ‘International press,’ Bjørn said.

  ‘Vampirism is hot,’ Katrine said, looking at the crowd. ‘All the crime reporters are here.’

  ‘Except Mona Daa,’ Harry said as he looked around.

  ‘And everyone from the boiler room,’ Katrine said, ‘except Anders Wyller. Do you know where he is?’

  The others shook their heads.

  ‘He called me this morning,’ Katrine said. ‘Asked if he could have a chat with me on his own.’

  ‘What about?’ Bjørn wondered.

  ‘God knows. Ah, there he is!’

  Anders Wyller had appeared at the far side of the crowd. He looked breathless and red-faced as he took his scarf off. At that moment the doors to the auditorium opened.

  ‘Right, we need to get seats,’ Katrine said, and hurried towards the door. ‘Make way, pregnant woman coming through!’

  ‘She’s so pretty,’ Rakel whispered, sticking her hand under Harry’s arm and leaning against his shoulder. ‘I’ve always wondered if you and she ever had a thing.’