Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Oleg turned the ignition key.

‘A&E at Ullevål!’ the young blond detective shouted from the back seat, where he was sitting with Truls Berntsen’s head in his lap. They were both soaked with Berntsen’s blood. ‘Foot on the floor and sirens on!’

Oleg was about to release the clutch when the back door was yanked open.

‘No!’ the detective shouted furiously.

‘Move, Anders!’ It was Steffens. He pushed his way in, forcing the young detective to move to the other side.

‘Hold his legs up,’ Steffens barked, now holding Berntsen’s head. ‘So he gets—’

‘Blood to his heart and brain,’ Anders said.

Oleg released the clutch and they pulled away from the car park, out onto the road between a clanging tram and an angry taxi.

‘How’s it looking?’

‘See for yourself,’ Anders snarled. ‘Unconscious, weak pulse, but he’s breathing. As you can see, the bullet hit him in the right hemithorax.’

‘That’s not the problem,’ Steffens said. ‘The big problem’s at the back. Help me turn him over.’ Oleg glanced in the rear-view mirror. Saw them turn Truls Berntsen onto his side and tear his sweater and shirt off. He concentrated on the road again, used his horn to get past a lorry, accelerated as he crossed a junction on red.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Anders groaned.

‘Yes, it’s a big hole,’ Steffens said. ‘The bullet probably blew part of his rib out. He’s going to bleed out before we get to Ullevål unless …’

‘Unless …?’

Oleg heard Steffens take a deep breath. ‘Unless we do a better job than I did with your mother. Use the backs of your hands on either side of the wound – like that – and press them together. Just close the wound as well as you can, there’s no other way.’

‘My hands are just sliding.’

‘Tear off some of his shirt and use that to get more friction.’

Oleg heard Anders breathing heavily. He glanced in the rear-view mirror again. Saw that Steffens had put one finger on Berntsen’s chest while he tapped it with another finger.

‘I’m trying percussion, but I’m too cramped to be able to put my ear alongside,’ Steffens said. ‘Can you manage to …?’

Anders leaned forward without taking his hands away from the wound. Put his head to Berntsen’s chest. ‘Very muffled,’ he said. ‘No air. Do you think …?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid it’s a haemothorax,’ his father said. ‘The pleural cavity’s filling with blood, and his lungs will soon collapse. Oleg …’

‘I hear you,’ Oleg said, and put his foot down.

Katrine was standing in the middle of Universitetsplassen with her phone pressed to her ear, looking up at the empty, cloudless sky. It wasn’t yet visible, but she had requisitioned the police helicopter from Gardermoen with orders to scan the E6 motorway as it approached Oslo from the north.

‘No, there are no mobile phones we can track,’ she called over the noise of sirens approaching from different parts of the city and merging together. ‘Nothing registered by the toll stations. We’re setting up roadblocks on the southbound E6 and E18. I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve got anything.’

‘OK,’ Falkeid said at the other end. ‘We’re on standby.’

Katrine ended the call. Another one came through.

‘Asker Police, on the E18,’ the voice said. ‘We’ve stopped an articulated lorry here and are positioning it across the road just after the slip road to Asker, and are filtering the traffic off there and back onto the motorway after the roundabout. A black 1970s Amazon with rally stripes?’

‘Yes.’

‘So we’re talking the world’s worst choice of getaway vehicle?’

‘Let’s hope so. Keep me informed.’

Bjørn jogged over. ‘Oleg and that doctor are driving Berntsen to Ullevål,’ he panted. ‘Wyller’s gone with them.’

‘What are his chances, do you think?’

‘I only have experience of dead bodies.’

‘OK, did Berntsen look like one?’

Bjørn Holm shrugged. ‘He was still bleeding, and at least that means he isn’t completely empty yet.’

‘And Rakel?’

‘She’s sitting in the auditorium with Bellman’s wife, she’s really cut up about it. Bellman himself had to rush off to manage the operation from somewhere he could get an overview of the situation, he said.’

‘Overview?’ Katrine snorted. ‘The only place we’ve got any sort of overview is here !’

‘I know, but take it easy, darling, we don’t want the little one to get stressed, do we?’

‘Bloody hell, Bjørn.’ She squeezed her phone. ‘Why couldn’t you have told me what Harry was planning?’

‘Because I didn’t know.’

‘You didn’t know? You must have known something if he’s brought Forensics in to examine Smith’s car.’

‘He hasn’t, that was a bluff. Like that bit about the dating of the DNA found on the water pipe.’

‘What?’

‘The Forensic Medical Institute can’t determine how old DNA is. What Harry said about them having found out that Smith’s DNA was more than two months old, that was a complete lie.’

Katrine looked at Bjørn. Put her hand in her bag and pulled out the yellow document folder Harry had given her. She opened it. Three sheets of A4. All blank.

‘A bluff,’ Bjørn said. ‘For stylometry to be able to reveal anything with any degree of accuracy, the text has to be at least five thousand characters long. Those short emails that were sent to Valentin reveal nothing about the identity of their author.’

‘Harry had nothing,’ Katrine whispered.

‘Not a damn thing!’ Bjørn said. ‘He was just going for a confession.’

‘Damn him!’ Katrine pressed her phone to her forehead, not quite sure if she wanted to warm it up or cool it down. ‘So why didn’t he say anything? Christ, we could have had armed police outside.’

‘Because he couldn’t say anything.’

The answer came from Ståle Aune, who had walked over and stopped beside them.

‘Why not?’

‘Simple,’ Ståle said. ‘If he’d informed anyone in the police of what he was planning, and the police hadn’t already intervened, then what happened in the auditorium would de facto have been a police interview. A police interview way outside the rules, in which the person being questioned wasn’t informed of his rights, and in which the interviewer lied intentionally in order to mislead. And then none of what Smith said today could have been used in a trial. But as it is now …’

Katrine Bratt blinked. Then she nodded slowly. ‘As it is, Harry Hole, lecturer and private citizen took part in a disputation in which Smith spoke out of his own volition and in the presence of witnesses. Did you know about this, Ståle?’

Ståle Aune nodded. ‘Harry called me yesterday. He told me all the things that were pointing to Hallstein Smith. But he had no proof. So he explained his plan to use the disputation to set a monkey trap, with my help. And using Dr Steffens as an expert witness.’

‘And how did you reply?’

‘I said Hallstein Smith, “the Monkey”, had walked into that sort of trap once before, and was hardly likely to do so again.’

‘But?’

‘But Harry used my own words against me by referring to Aune’s Thesis.’

‘Human beings are notorious,’ Bjørn said. ‘They make the same mistakes over and over again.’

‘Precisely,’ Aune nodded. ‘And Smith had apparently told Harry in the lift at Police HQ that he’d rather have his doctorate than a long life.’

‘And he walked straight into the monkey trap, of course, the idiot,’ Katrine groaned.

‘He lived up to his nickname, yes.’

‘Not Smith, I’m talking about Harry.’