The Thirst

by Jo Nesbo

  ‘A thing?’

  ‘Just a little one. When we weren’t together, for instance.’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ Harry said gloomily.

  ‘Afraid not? Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning sometimes I regret not making more use of our little gaps.’

  ‘I’m not joking, Harry.’

  ‘Nor am I.’

  Hallstein Smith opened the door to the imposing room a crack and peered in. Looked at the chandelier hanging above the crowd filling all the seats in the auditorium. There were even people standing in the gallery. Once this room had housed Norway’s national assembly, and now he – little Hallstein – was going to stand at the podium and defend his research, and be awarded the title of doctor! He looked at May, who was sitting in the front row, nervous, but as proud as a mother hen. He looked at his foreign colleagues who had come even though he had warned them that the disputation would be in Norwegian; he looked at the journalists, at Bellman, who was sitting with his wife in the front row, right in the middle. At Harry, Bjørn and Katrine, his new friends in the police, who had played such a part in his dissertation about vampirism, in which the case of Valentin Gjertsen had obviously become one of the central planks. And even if the image of Valentin had changed dramatically in light of the events of recent days, they had only strengthened his conclusions about the vampiristic personality. Because of course Hallstein had pointed out that vampirists primarily act on instinct, and are driven by their desires and impulses – so the revelation that Lenny Hell had been the mastermind behind the well-planned murders had come in the nick of time.

  ‘Let’s get started,’ the chairman said, picking a speck of dust from his academic gown.

  Hallstein took a deep breath and walked in. The audience rose to its feet.

  Smith and the two opponents sat down, while the chairman explained how the disputation was going to proceed. Then he gave the floor to Hallstein.

  The first opponent, Ståle Aune, leaned forward and whispered good luck.

  Hallstein walked up to the podium, and looked out across the auditorium. Felt silence descend. The examination lecture that morning had gone well. Well? It had been fantastic! He couldn’t help noting that the adjudication committee had seemed happy, and even Ståle Aune had nodded appreciatively at his best points.

  Now he was going to give a shorter version of the lecture, twenty minutes maximum. He began to speak, and soon got the same feeling he had had that morning, and departed from the script he had in front of him. His thoughts became words instantly, and it was as if he could see himself from outside, could see the audience, could see the expressions on their faces, hanging on his every word, their senses entirely focused on him, Hallstein Smith, professor of vampirism. Obviously there was no such thing yet, but he was going to change that, and today marked the start. He was approaching his conclusion. ‘During my brief time in the independent investigative group led by Harry Hole, I managed to learn many things. One of them was that the central question in any murder case is “Why?”. But that that doesn’t help if you can’t also answer “How?”.’ Hallstein went over to the table next to the podium, on which lay three objects covered by a felt cloth. He took hold of one end of the cloth and waited. A bit of theatre was forgivable.

  ‘This is how,’ he declared, and pulled the cloth away.

  A gasp ran through the audience as they saw the large revolver, the grotesque handcuffs, and the black iron teeth.

  He pointed at the revolver. ‘One tool to threaten and compel.’

  At the handcuffs. ‘One to control, incapacitate, imprison.’

  The iron teeth. ‘And one to get to the source, to gain access to the blood, to conduct the ritual.’

  He looked up. ‘Thank you to Detective Anders Wyller for letting me borrow these objects so that I could illustrate my point. Because this is more than three “hows”. It is also a “why”. But how is it a “why”?’

  Scattered, knowing laughter.

  ‘Because all the tools are old. Unnecessarily old, one might say. The vampirist has gone to the trouble of obtaining copies of artefacts from specific time periods. And that underlines what I say in my dissertation about the importance of ritual, and the fact that drinking blood can be traced back to a time when there were gods who needed to be worshipped and placated, and the currency for that was blood.’

  He pointed at the revolver. ‘This marks a link to America, two hundred years ago, when there were Native American tribes that drank their enemies’ blood in the belief that they would absorb their power.’ He pointed at the handcuffs. ‘This is a link to the Middle Ages, when witches and sorcerers had to be caught, exorcised and ritually burned.’ He pointed at the teeth. ‘And these are a link to the ancient world, when sacrifices and human bloodletting were a common way of appeasing the gods. Just as I with my answers today …’ He gestured towards the chair and two opponents. ‘… hope to appease these gods.’

  The laughter was more relaxed this time.

  ‘Thank you.’

  The applause was, as far as Hallstein Smith could judge, thunderous.

  Ståle Aune stood up, adjusted his spotted bow tie, stuck his stomach out and marched up to the podium.

  ‘Dear candidate, you have based your doctoral dissertation on case studies, and what I am wondering is how you were able to draw the conclusion you did given that your main example – Valentin Gjertsen – didn’t support your conclusions. That is, until Lenny Hell’s role was uncovered.’

  Hallstein Smith cleared his throat. ‘Within psychology, there is more scope for interpretation than in most other sciences, and naturally it was tempting to interpret Valentin Gjertsen’s behaviour within the frame of the typical vampirist I had already described. But, as a researcher, I have to be honest. Until a few days ago, Valentin Gjertsen didn’t entirely fit my theory. And even if it is the case that the map and the terrain are never identical in psychology, I have to admit that that was frustrating. It is hard to take any pleasure from the tragedy of Lenny Hell. But if nothing else, his case reinforces the theory of this dissertation, and therefore provides an even clearer illustration and more precise understanding of the vampirist. Hopefully this can help prevent future tragedies by enabling the vampirist to be caught earlier.’ Hallstein cleared his throat. ‘I must thank the adjudication committee, who had already devoted so much time to studying my original dissertation, for permitting me to incorporate the changes made possible by the discovery of Hell’s role in the case, and which therefore made everything fall into place …’

  When the chair discreetly signalled to the first opponent that his time was up, Hallstein felt that only five minutes had passed, not forty-five. It had gone like a dream!

  And when the chair went up to the podium to say that there would now be an interval in which questions could be submitted ex auditorio, Hallstein could hardly wait to show them this fantastic piece of work which, in all its grimness, was still about the greatest and most beautiful thing of all: the human mind.

  Hallstein used the break to mingle in the vestibule, to talk to people who weren’t invited to the dinner. He saw Harry Hole standing with a dark-haired woman, and made his way over to them.

  ‘Harry!’ he said, shaking the policeman’s hand, which was as hard and cold as marble. ‘This must be Rakel.’

  ‘It is,’ Harry said.

  Hallstein shook her hand as he saw Harry look at his watch, then over at the door.

  ‘Are we expecting someone?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘And here he is at last.’

  Hallstein saw two people coming through the door at the other end of the room. A tall, dark young man, and a man in his fifties with fair hair and thin, rectangular, frameless glasses. It struck him that the young man looked like Rakel, but there was also something familiar about the other man.

  ‘Where have I seen that man in the glasses?’ Hallstein wondered.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s a haematologist, John D. Steffens.’

&
nbsp; ‘And what’s he doing here?’

  Hallstein saw Harry take a deep breath. ‘He’s here to put an end to this story. He just doesn’t know it yet.’

  At that moment the chair rang a bell and announced in a booming voice that it was time to go back into the auditorium.

  John D. Steffens was making his way between two rows of seats with Oleg Fauke behind him. Steffens glanced around the room, trying to locate Harry Hole. And felt his heart stop when he caught sight of the fair-haired young man in the back row. At the same moment Anders caught sight of him, and Steffens saw the fear in the young man’s face. Steffens turned to Oleg to say he had forgotten a meeting and had to leave.

  ‘I know,’ Oleg said, and showed no sign of moving out of the way. Steffens noted that the boy was almost as tall as his pseudo-father, Hole. ‘But we’re going to let this run its course now, Steffens.’

  The boy gently put his hand on Steffens’s shoulder, but it still felt to the senior consultant that he was being pushed onto the chair behind him. Steffens sat and felt his pulse slow down. Dignity. Yes, dignity. Oleg Fauke knew. Which meant that Harry knew. And hadn’t given him any chance to escape. And it was obvious from Anders’s reaction that he hadn’t known about this either. They had been fooled. Fooled into being here together. What now?

  Katrine Bratt sat down between Harry and Bjørn just as the chair began to speak up at the podium.

  ‘The candidate has received a question ex auditorio. Harry Hole, please go ahead.’

  Katrine looked at Harry in surprise as he stood up. ‘Thank you.’

  She could see the looks of surprise on other people’s faces too, some of them with a smile on their lips, as if they were expecting a joke. Even Hallstein Smith seemed amused as he took over at the podium.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Harry said. ‘You’re very close to achieving your goal, and I must also thank you for your contribution to solving the vampirist case.’

  ‘I should be thanking you,’ Smith said with a small bow.

  ‘Yes, maybe,’ Harry said. ‘Because of course we found the person who was pulling the strings and directing Valentin. And, as Aune pointed out, your entire dissertation is based upon that. So you were lucky there.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘But there are a couple of other things I think we’d all like answers to.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, Harry.’

  ‘I remember when I saw the recording of Valentin entering your barn. He knew exactly where he was going, but he didn’t know about the scales inside the door. He marched in, unconcerned, convinced he had firm ground under his feet. And he almost lost his balance. Why does that happen?’

  ‘We take some things for granted,’ Smith said. ‘In psychology we call it rationalising, which basically means that we simplify things. Without rationalisation, the world would be unmanageable, our brains would become overloaded by all the uncertainties we have to deal with.’

  ‘That would also explain why we go down a flight of cellar steps without concern, without thinking that we might hit our heads on a water pipe.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But after we’ve done it once, we remember – or at least most of us do – the next time. That’s why Katrine Bratt takes care when she walks across those scales in your barn on only her second visit. So it’s no mystery that we found blood and skin on that water pipe in Hell’s cellar belonging to you and me, but not from Lenny Hell. He must have learned to duck as long ago as … well, when he was a child. Otherwise we would have found Hell’s DNA, because DNA can often be traced years after it ends up on something like that water pipe.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s correct, Harry.’

  ‘I’ll come back to that, but let me first deal with something that is a mystery.’

  Katrine sat up in her chair. She didn’t yet know what was going on, but she knew Harry, could feel the vibration of the inaudible, low-frequency growl that lay beneath his voice.

  ‘When Valentin Gjertsen goes into your barn at midnight, he weighs 74.7 kilos,’ Harry said. ‘But when he leaves, he weighs 73.2 kilos, according to the security camera footage. Exactly one and a half kilos lighter.’ Harry gestured with his hand. ‘The obvious explanation is, of course, that the weight difference is the result of the blood he lost in your office.’

  Katrine heard the chairman’s discreet but impatient cough.

  ‘But then I realised something,’ Harry said. ‘We’d forgotten the revolver! The one Valentin had brought with him, and which was still in the office when he left. A Ruger Redhawk weighs around 1.2 kilos. So, for the sums to add up, Valentin had only lost 0.3 kilos of blood …’

  ‘Hole,’ the chairman said. ‘If there is a question to the candidate here …’

  ‘First a question to an expert in blood,’ Harry said, and turned to face the audience. ‘Senior Consultant John Steffens, you’re a haematologist, and you happened to be on duty when Penelope Rasch was taken to hospital …’

  John Steffens felt sweat break out on his forehead when all eyes turned to look at him. Just as they had looked at him when he had been on the witness stand explaining how his wife had died. How she had been stabbed, how she had literally bled to death in his arms. All eyes, then as now. Anders’s eyes, then as now.

  He swallowed.

  ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘You demonstrated then that you have a good eye for estimating blood quantities. Based on a photograph from the crime scene, you estimated the amount of blood she had lost at one and a half litres.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Harry took a photograph out of his jacket pocket and held it up. ‘And based on this picture from Hallstein Smith’s office, which was shown to you by one of the paramedics, you estimated the amount of blood here also to be one and a half litres. In other words, one and a half kilos. Is that correct?’

  Steffens swallowed. Knew that Anders was staring at him from behind. ‘That’s correct. Give or take a decilitre or two.’

  ‘Just to be clear, is it possible for someone to get to their feet and escape even if they’ve lost a litre and a half of blood?’

  ‘It differs from individual to individual, but yes, if the person has the physique and determination.’

  ‘Which brings me to my very simple question,’ Harry said.

  Steffens felt a bead of sweat trickle down his forehead.

  Harry turned back to the podium.

  ‘How come, Smith?’

  Katrine gasped. The silence that followed felt like a physical weight in the room.

  ‘I’ll have to pass on that, Harry, I don’t know,’ Smith said. ‘I hope that doesn’t mean that my doctorate is at risk, but in my defence I would like to point out that this question is outside the frame of my dissertation.’ He smiled, but garnered no laughter this time. ‘But it’s within the parameters of the police investigation, so perhaps you ought to answer that yourself, Harry?’

  ‘Very well,’ Harry said, and took a deep breath.

  No, Katrine thought, and held her breath.

  ‘Valentin Gjertsen didn’t have a revolver on him when he arrived. It was already in your office.’

  ‘What?’ Smith’s laughter sounded like the cry of a lone bird in the auditorium. ‘How on earth could it have got there?’

  ‘You took it there,’ Harry said.

  ‘Me? I’ve got nothing to do with that revolver.’

  ‘It was your revolver, Smith.’

  ‘Mine? I’ve never owned a revolver in my life, you only have to check the firearms register.’

  ‘In which this revolver is registered to a sailor from Farsund. Whom you treated. For schizophrenia.’

  ‘A sailor? What are you talking about, Harry? You said yourself that Valentin threatened you with the revolver in the bar, when he killed Mehmet Kalak.’

  ‘You got it back after that.’

  A wave of anxiety spread around the auditorium, and there was a sound of low muttering and chairs being moved.

  The chairman s
tood up, and looked like a cockerel spreading his feathers as he raised his gowned arms to appeal for calm. ‘Sorry, herr Hole, but this is a disputation. If you have information for the police, might I suggest that you address it to the correct authorities and not bring it into the world of academe.’

  ‘Herr Chairman, opponents,’ Harry said, ‘is it not of fundamental importance to the examination of this doctoral thesis if it is based upon a misinterpreted case study? Isn’t that the sort of thing that’s supposed to be illuminated in a disputation?’

  ‘Herr Hole—’ the chairman began, with thunder in his voice.

  ‘—is right,’ Ståle Aune said from the front row. ‘My dear chairman, as a member of the adjudication committee, I am very interested to hear what herr Hole wishes to say to the candidate.’

  The chairman looked at Aune. Then at Harry. And finally at Smith, before sitting down again.

  ‘Well, then,’ Harry said. ‘I would like to ask the candidate if he held Lenny Hell hostage in his own house, and if it was him rather than Hell who was directing Valentin Gjertsen?’

  An almost inaudible gasp ran round the auditorium, followed by a silence so complete that it seemed to suck all the air out of the room.

  Smith shook his head in disbelief. ‘This is a joke, isn’t it, Harry? This is something you’ve cooked up in the boiler room to liven up the disputation, and now—’

  ‘I suggest you answer, Hallstein.’

  Perhaps it was the use of his first name that made Smith realise that Harry was serious. Katrine at least thought she saw something sink in as he stood there at the podium.

  ‘Harry,’ he said quietly, ‘I had never been in Hell’s house before Sunday, when you took me there.’

  ‘Yes, you had,’ Harry said. ‘You were very careful to get rid of the evidence from anywhere you might have left fingerprints and DNA. But there was one place you forgot. The water pipe.’

  ‘The water pipe? We all left our DNA on that damn water pipe on Sunday, Harry!’

  ‘Not you.’

  ‘Yes, me too! Ask Bjørn Holm, he’s sitting right there!’

  ‘What Bjørn Holm can confirm is that your DNA was found on the water pipe, not that it got there on Sunday. Because on Sunday you came down to the cellar when I was already there. Silently, I didn’t hear you come, if you remember? Silently, because you didn’t hit your head on the water pipe. You ducked. Because your brain remembered.’