Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Aune nodded. ‘I’m going back to the auditorium – Bellman’s wife needs help.’

‘I’ll come with you to secure the crime scene,’ Bjørn said.

‘Crime scene?’ Katrine asked.

‘Berntsen.’

‘Oh, yes. Yes.’

When the men had left her she looked up at the sky. Where had that helicopter got to?

‘Damn you,’ she muttered. ‘Damn you, Harry Hole.’

‘Is it his fault?’

Katrine turned round.

Mona Daa was standing there. ‘I don’t want to disturb you,’ she said. ‘I’m not actually working at the moment, but I saw it online so I came down. If you want to use VG to say anything, to send Smith a message or anything …?’

‘Thanks, Daa, I’ll let you know.’

‘OK.’ Mona Daa turned on her heel and started to leave, walking her penguin walk.

‘I was actually surprised not to see you at the disputation,’ Katrine said.

Mona Daa stopped.

‘You’ve been VG ’s lead reporter on the vampirist case from the start,’ Katrine said.

‘So Anders hasn’t spoken to you.’

Something about the way Mona Daa used Anders Wyller’s first name, so naturally, made Katrine raise an eyebrow. ‘Spoken to me?’

‘Yes. Anders and me, we …’

‘You’re kidding?’ Katrine said.

Mona Daa laughed. ‘No. I realise that there are certain practical issues, purely professionally, but no, I’m not joking.’

‘And when did you …?’

‘Now, really. We’ve both got a few days off, and have been spending them in claustrophobically close proximity in Anders’s little flat, to find out if we’d make a good match. We thought it made sense to know before we told anyone.’

‘So no one knows about it?’

‘Not until Harry very nearly caught us red-handed with a surprise visit. Anders reckons Harry realised. And I know he tried to get hold of me at VG . I’m assuming that was to confirm his suspicions.’

‘He’s pretty good at suspicions,’ Katrine said, looking up at the sky for the helicopter.

‘I know.’

Harry listened to the faint whistling sound as Smith breathed in and out. Then he noticed something odd out on the fjord. A dog that looked like it was walking on water. Meltwater. Seeping up through cracks in the ice even though it was below freezing.

‘I’ve been accused of seeing vampirism simply because I want it to exist,’ Smith said. ‘But now it’s been proven, once and for all, and soon the whole world will know what Professor Smith’s vampirism is, regardless of what happens to me. And Valentin isn’t the only one, there’ll be more. More opportunities to keep the world focused on vampirism. I promise you, they’ve already been recruited. You asked me once if recognition meant more than life. Of course it does. Recognition is eternal life. And you’re going to get eternal life too, Harry. As the man who almost caught Hallstein Smith, the man they once called the Monkey. Do you think I talk too much?’

They were approaching IKEA. They’d be at Asker in five minutes. Smith wouldn’t react if there was a bit of a queue, the traffic often built up there.

‘Denmark,’ Smith said. ‘Spring comes earlier there.’

Denmark? Was Smith turning psychotic? Harry heard a dry clicking sound. The car was indicating. No, no, he was turning off the main road! Harry saw a sign with the name Nesøya on it.

‘There’s enough meltwater for me to be able to get out to the edge of the ice, wouldn’t you say? A super-light aluminium boat with just one man on board won’t sit too deep.’

Boat. Harry clenched his teeth and swore silently. The boathouse. The boathouse Smith had said had formed part of his wife’s inheritance. That was where they were going.

‘The Skagerrak is 130 nautical miles across. Average speed, twenty knots. How long would that take, Harry, seeing as you’re so good at maths?’ Smith laughed. ‘I’ve already worked it out. On a calculator. Six and a half hours. And from there you can get all the way across Denmark by bus, that won’t take long. Then Copenhagen. Nørrebro. Red Square. Sit on a bench, hold up a bus ticket and wait for the travel agent. What do you think about Uruguay? A nice little country. It’s a good thing I’ve already cleared the road all the way to the boatshed, and made enough space inside for a car. Otherwise these stripes on the roof would have been easy to spot from a helicopter, wouldn’t they?’

Harry closed his eyes. Smith had had his escape route planned for a while. Just in case. And there was only one reason why he was telling Harry about it now. Because Harry wasn’t going to get the chance to tell anyone else.

‘Turn left up ahead,’ Steffens said from the back seat. ‘Block 17.’

Oleg turned and felt the wheels lose their grip on the ice before regaining it again.

He had a feeling there was a speed limit in the hospital grounds, but was well aware that time and blood were both running out for Berntsen.

He braked in front of the entrance, where two men in yellow paramedics’ tunics were waiting with a trolley. With practised movements they lifted Berntsen out of the back seat and up onto the trolley.

‘He’s got no pulse,’ Steffens said. ‘Straight into the hybrid room. The crash team—’

‘Already in place,’ the older paramedic said.

Oleg and Anders followed the trolley and Steffens through two sets of doors to a room where a team of six people in caps, plastic glasses and silver-grey tunics were standing waiting.

‘Thanks,’ a woman said, and made a gesture that Oleg interpreted as meaning that he and Anders could go no further. The trolley, Steffens and the team disappeared behind two wide doors that swung shut behind them.

‘I knew you worked at Crime Squad,’ Oleg said when everything was quiet again. ‘But I didn’t know you’d studied medicine.’

‘I haven’t,’ Anders said, looking at the closed doors.

‘No? It sounded like it in the car.’

‘I read a few medical books on my own when I was at college, but I never studied medicine properly.’

‘Why not? Grades?’

‘I had the grades.’

‘But?’ Oleg didn’t know if he was asking because he was interested, or to keep his mind off what was happening to Harry.

Anders looked down at his bloody hands. ‘I suppose it was the same for me as it is for you.’

‘Me?’

‘I wanted to be like my father.’

‘And?’

Anders shrugged. ‘Then I didn’t want that any more.’

‘You wanted to join the police instead?’

‘At least then I could have saved her.’

‘Her?’

‘My mother. Or people in the same situation. Or so I thought.’

‘How did she die?’

Anders shrugged again. ‘Our house got broken into, and it turned into a hostage situation. My father and I just stood there and watched. Dad got hysterical, and the burglar stabbed my mother and got away. Dad ran around like a headless chicken, shouting at me not to touch her while he looked for a pair of scissors.’ Wyller swallowed. ‘My father, the senior consultant, was looking for a pair of scissors while I stood there and watched her bleed to death. I talked to a few doctors afterwards, and found out that she could have been saved if we’d only done what needed to be done straight away. My father’s a haematologist, the state’s invested millions into teaching him everything there is to know about blood. Yet he still didn’t manage to do the simple things that were needed to stop it draining out of her. If a jury had known how much he knows about saving lives, they’d have convicted him of manslaughter.’

‘So your father made a mistake. Making mistakes is human.’

‘Even so, he sits there in his office and thinks he’s better than other people just because he can say he’s a senior consultant.’ Anders’s voice started to tremble. ‘A policeman with average qualifications and a week-long course in close combat could have overpowered that burglar before he stabbed her.’