Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘I prefer to do my sweating outdoors,’ Wyller said.

Mona Daa nodded. ‘Running with a dog. You look like a dog person. I like that.’

‘Why?’

‘Allergic to cats. OK, guys, in the spirit of collaboration I promise to call if I find out anything I think might help you.’

‘Thanks,’ Truls said.

‘But I’ll need a phone number to call.’ Mona Daa kept her eyes fixed on Wyller.

‘Sure,’ he said.

‘I’ll write it down.’

Wyller recited several digits until Mona Daa looked up. ‘That’s the number to reception here in Police HQ.’

‘This is where I work,’ Anders Wyller said. ‘And by the way, I’ve got a cat.’

Mona Daa closed her notebook. ‘We’ll be in touch.’

Truls watched her as she waddled like a penguin towards the exit and the weirdly heavy metal door with its staring porthole.

‘The meeting starts in three minutes,’ Wyller said.

Truls looked at his watch. The afternoon meeting of the investigative team. Crime Squad would have been great if it weren’t for the murders. Murders were shit. Murders meant long hours, writing reports, endless meetings and loads of stressed-out people. But at least they got free food from the cafeteria when they worked overtime. He sighed and turned to walk towards the airlock, but stiffened.

There she was.

Ulla.

She was on her way out, and her eyes swept over him as she passed, without letting on that she had seen him. She did that sometimes. Possibly because it had occasionally been a bit awkward when the two of them met without Mikael being present. In truth, they probably both tried to avoid that, even when they were younger. Him because he would start to sweat and his heart would beat too quickly and because he would always torment himself afterwards with the stupid things he had said and the smart, genuine things he hadn’t said. Her because … well, probably because he would start to sweat, his heart would beat too quickly, and because he either didn’t speak or said stupid things.

Even so, he almost called out her name in the atrium.

But she had already reached the door. In a moment she would be outside and the sunshine would kiss her fine blonde hair.

So he whispered her name silently to himself instead.

Ulla.

THURSDAY, LATE AFTERNOON

KATRINE BRATT LOOKED out across the conference room.

Eight detectives, four analysts, one forensics expert. They were all at her disposal. And they were all watching her like hawks. The new, female lead detective. And Katrine knew that the biggest sceptics in the room were her female colleagues. She had often wondered if she was fundamentally different to other women. They had a testosterone level somewhere between five and ten per cent of their male colleagues, whereas hers was closer to twenty-five per cent. That hadn’t yet turned her into a hairy lump of muscle with a clitoris the size of a penis, but as far back as she could remember it had made her far hornier than any of her female friends had ever admitted to being. Or ‘angry horny’, as Bjørn used to say when things got really bad, and she would break off from work to drive out to Bryn just so he could fuck her in the deserted storeroom behind the laboratory, making the boxes of flasks and test tubes rattle.

Katrine coughed, switched on the recording function of her phone, and began. ‘1600 hours on Thursday, 22 September, conference room 1 in the Crime Squad Unit, and this is the first meeting of the preliminary investigation into the murder of Elise Hermansen.’

Katrine saw Truls Berntsen come lumbering in, and sit down at the back.

She began explaining what most people in the room already knew: that Elise Hermansen had been found murdered that morning, that the probable cause of death was loss of blood as a result of injuries to her neck. That no witnesses had come forward so far. They had no suspect, and no conclusive physical evidence. The organic matter they had found in the flat, which might be human in origin, had been sent for DNA analysis, and they would hopefully be getting the results back within the space of a week. Other potential physical evidence was being examined by Forensics and the forensics officer. In other words: they had nothing.

She saw a couple of them fold their arms and breathe out heavily, on the brink of yawning. And she knew what they were thinking: that this was all obvious, repetitive, there was nothing for them to sink their teeth into, not enough to make them drop everything else they were working on. She explained how she had deduced that the murderer was already in the flat by the time Elise got home, but could hear for herself that it just sounded boastful. A new boss’s plea for respect. She started to feel desperate, and thought about what Harry had said when she had called to ask for advice.

‘Catch the murderer,’ he had replied.

‘Harry, that’s not what I asked. I asked how to lead an investigative team that doesn’t trust you.’

‘And I gave you the answer.’

‘Catching the odd murderer won’t solve—’

‘It will solve everything.’

‘Everything? So exactly what has it solved for you, Harry? In purely personal terms?’

‘Nothing. But you asked about leadership.’

Katrine looked out at the room, came to the end of yet another superfluous sentence, took a deep breath and noticed a hand drumming gently on the arm of a chair.

‘Unless Elise Hermansen let this individual into her flat earlier yesterday evening and left him there when she went out, we’re looking for someone she knows. So we’ve been examining her phone and computer. Tord?’

Tord Gren got to his feet. He had been given the nickname Wader, presumably because he resembled a wading bird with his unusually long neck, narrow beak-like nose and a wingspan far greater than his height. His old-fashioned round glasses and curly hair hanging down on both sides of his thin face made him look like something from the 1970s.

‘We’ve got into her iPhone and have checked the lists of texts and calls made and received in the last three days,’ Tord said, without taking his eyes from his tablet, as if he wasn’t big on eye contact in general. ‘Nothing but work-related calls. Colleagues and clients.’

‘No friends?’ This from Magnus Skarre, a tactical analyst. ‘Parents?’

‘I believe that’s what I said,’ Tord replied. Not unfriendly, just precise. ‘The same applies to her emails. Work-related.’

‘The law firm has confirmed that Elise did a lot of overtime,’ Katrine added.

‘Single women tend to,’ Skarre said.

Katrine looked in resignation at the thickset little detective, even though she knew the comment wasn’t directed at her. Skarre was neither malicious nor quick-witted enough for that.

‘Her PC wasn’t password-protected, but there wasn’t much to find on there,’ Tord went on. ‘The log shows that she mostly used it to watch the news or to google information. She visited a few porn sites, just the ordinary sort of thing, and there’s no sign that she ever contacted anyone via those websites. The only dodgy thing she seems to have done in the past two years is streaming The Notebook on Popcorn Time.’

Given that Katrine didn’t know the IT expert well enough, she wasn’t sure if by ‘dodgy’ he meant the use of a pirate server or the choice of film. She would have said the latter if it was up to her. She missed Popcorn Time.

‘I tried a couple of obvious passwords for her Facebook account,’ Tord continued. ‘No joy, so I’ve sent a freeze request to Kripos.’

‘A freeze request?’ Anders Wyller asked from the front row.

‘An application to the court,’ Katrine said. ‘Any request to access a Facebook account has to go through Kripos and the courts, and even with their approval it has to go to a court in the USA, and only then to Facebook. At best it will take several weeks, but more likely months.’