Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘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.’

‘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.