Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘Come on, Harry. I’m used to this, I ended up lying on the ground during every other break time at school. So come on!’

Harry stared down the barrel of the revolver. He had hit Smith’s nose, and a flash of white bone was visible through the broken skin. A trickle of blood ran down the side of one nostril.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Harry,’ Smith laughed. ‘ He didn’t manage to kill Valentin from two and a half metres away . So come on, then! Or unlock the car.’

Harry’s brain did the necessary calculations. Then he turned round, slowly opened the driver’s door and heard Smith get to his feet. Harry got in and took his time inserting the key in the ignition.

‘I’ll drive,’ Smith said. ‘Move.’

Harry did as he said, moving slowly and clumsily across the gearstick to the passenger seat.

‘Then slip your feet over the handcuffs.’

Harry looked at him.

‘I don’t want the chain round my neck while I’m driving,’ Smith said, and raised the revolver. ‘It’s your bad luck if you’ve been skipping yoga classes. And I can see that you’re trying to delay us. You have five seconds, starting now. Four …’

Harry leaned back, as far as the rigid seat would let him, held his chained hands out in front of him and bent his knees.

‘Three, two …’

With difficulty Harry managed to tuck his smartly polished shoes through the chain of the handcuffs.

Smith got in, leaned across Harry. Pulled the old-fashioned seat belt across his chest and waist, fastened it, then tightened it with a hard tug so that Harry was literally strapped to the back of the seat. He fished Harry’s mobile from his jacket pocket. He fastened his own seat belt and turned the key. He revved the engine and wrestled with the gearstick. He figured the clutch out and reversed in a semi-circle. Rolled down the window and threw Harry’s phone out, followed by his own.

They pulled out onto Karl Johans gate, turning right so that the Palace filled their field of vision. Green at the lights. They turned left, roundabout, another green, past the Concert House. Aker Brygge. The traffic was flowing smoothly. Far too smoothly, Harry thought. The further he and Smith managed to get before Katrine alerted the patrol cars and police helicopter, the larger the area they would have to cover, and the more roadblocks they would need to set up.

Smith looked out across the fjord. ‘Oslo rarely looks more beautiful than it does on days like this, does it?’

His voice sounded nasal, and was accompanied by a faint whistle. His nose was probably broken.

‘A silent travelling companion,’ Smith said. ‘Well, you’ve done enough talking for today.’

Harry looked at the motorway ahead of them. Katrine couldn’t use their mobile phones to track them, but as long as Smith kept to the main roads there was still hope that they might be found quickly. From a helicopter, a car with a rally check across the roof and boot would be easy to distinguish from the others.

‘He came to see me, calling himself Alexander Dreyer, and wanting to talk about Pink Floyd and the voices he was hearing,’ Smith said, shaking his head. ‘But as you noticed, I’m good at reading people, and I soon realised that this was no ordinary person, but an extremely rare type of psychopath. So I used what he told me about his sexual preferences to check with colleagues who are experts in questions of morality and eventually figured out who I was dealing with. And what his dilemma was. That he was desperate to follow his hunting instinct, but that one single mistake, one faint suspicion, one silly little detail might give him away and put the police on to Alexander Dreyer. Are you following this, Harry?’ Smith cast a quick glance at him. ‘That if he was going to hunt again, it had to be in the knowledge that he was absolutely safe. He was perfect, a man with no options, it was just a matter of putting a leash on him and opening the cage and he’d eat – and drink – everything he was offered. But I couldn’t present myself as the person offering this, I needed a fictional puppet master, a lightning conductor to whom the trail would lead if Valentin was caught and confessed. Someone who would end up being uncovered at some point, regardless, to show that the terrain matched the map, who confirmed the theory in my dissertation of the impulsive, childishly chaotic vampirist. And Lenny Hell was the hermit who lived in an isolated house and never had any visitors. But one day he received a surprise visit from his psychologist. A psychologist with something on his head that made him look like a chickenhawk, and a big red revolver in his hand. Caw, caw, caw!’ Smith laughed loudly. ‘You should have seen Lenny’s face when he realised he was my slave! First I got him to take my patient records up to his office. Then we found a cage that the family had used to transport pigs, and we carried it down to the cellar. That must have been when I hit my head on that damn water pipe. We put a mattress inside for Lenny before I chained him up using handcuffs. And there he sat. I didn’t actually have any use for Lenny once I’d pumped him for details of all the women he’d stalked, got copies of the keys to their flats, and the password so I could email Valentin from Lenny’s computer. But I still had to wait before staging his suicide. If Valentin got caught or ended up dead and the police were led to Hell too soon, I had to make sure he had a watertight alibi for the first murder. Because of course I knew they’d check his alibi seeing as he’d been in contact with Elise Hermansen by phone. So I took Lenny to that local pizzeria at the time when I had instructed Valentin to kill Elise, and made sure people saw him. In fact I was so busy concentrating on holding that bolt gun against Lenny under the table that I didn’t notice there were nuts in the pizza bases until it was too late.’ More laughter. ‘As a result of that, Lenny had to spend a lot of time on his own in that cage. I had to laugh when you found Lenny Hell’s sperm on the mattress and concluded that he had abused Marte Ruud there.’

They passed Bygdøy. Snarøya. Harry was counting the seconds automatically. Ten minutes since they had driven away from Universitetsplassen. He looked up at the empty blue sky.

‘Marte Ruud was never assaulted. I shot her as soon as I brought her from the forest down into the cellar. Valentin had wrecked her, so it was an act of mercy to put her down.’ Smith turned towards him. ‘I hope you appreciate that, Harry. Harry? Do you think I talk too much, Harry?’

They were approaching Høvikodden. The Oslo Fjord appeared again to their left. Harry calculated. The police might have time to set up a roadblock at Asker, they’d be there in ten minutes.

‘Can you imagine what a gift it was to me when you asked me to join the investigation, Harry? I was so surprised that I said no at first. Before I realised that if I was sitting there getting hold of all the information, I could warn Valentin when you were getting so close that he could no longer carry on. My vampirist was going to outshine Kürten, Haigh and Chase and become the greatest of them all. But I still didn’t know that his hamam was under surveillance until we were sitting in this car on the way there. And I was starting to lose control of Valentin – he killed that bartender, and kidnapped Marte Ruud. Luckily I found out that Alexander Dreyer had been identified at that cashpoint machine in time to be able to warn him to get out of his flat. By that point Valentin had worked out that it was me, his former psychologist, who was pulling the strings, but so what? The identity of the person who was in the boat with him didn’t make any difference. But I knew that the net was closing in. That it was time for the grand finale I had been planning for a while. I had got him to leave the flat and book into the Plaza Hotel, which obviously wasn’t somewhere he could stay for long, but I was at least able to send him an envelope containing copies of the keys to the barn and office, and instructions telling him to hide until midnight, when everyone had gone to bed. Naturally I couldn’t rule out that he might have started to suspect something, but what alternative did he have now that his cover was blown? He simply had to gamble that I could be trusted. And you have to give me credit for the way that was set up, Harry. Calling you and Katrine so that I had witnesses on the phone, as well as the security camera footage. Yes, of course it could be regarded as a cold-blooded liquidation, fabricating the story of the heroic researcher who had upset the serial killer with his public statements, and then killed him in self-defence. Yes, I accept that it meant that a perfectly ordinary disputation was attended by international media, and that fourteen companies have bought the rights to publish my thesis. But in the end it comes down to research, scholarship. It’s progress, Harry. And it’s possible that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but it’s also the road to an enlightened, humane future.’