Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Smith tried to hit Harry with his right hand, but the angle was too tight for him to get any force in the blow. Harry hadn’t bitten through his carotid artery, because then the jet of blood would have hit the roof, but he was blocking his airway, and Smith could already feel the pressure in his head building. But he still didn’t want to let go of the revolver. He had always been like that, the boy who never let go. The monkey. The monkey. But he had to get some air, otherwise his head was going to burst.

Hallstein Smith let go of the revolver, he could grab it again later. He raised his right hand and hit Harry on the side of his head. Then with his left hand, across Harry’s ear. Then again with his right, Harry’s eye, and he felt his wedding ring tear the policeman’s eyebrow. He felt his rage rise at the sight of the other man’s blood, it was like petrol on a fire, felt himself gain new strength, and let loose. Fight. Keep fighting.

‘So what do I do?’ Mikael Bellman said as he stared out across the fjord.

‘To begin with, I can’t actually believe you’ve done what you have,’ Isabelle Skøyen said, walking up and down behind him.

‘It happened so fast,’ Mikael said, focusing on his own reflection. ‘I didn’t have time to think.’

‘Oh, you had time to think,’ Isabelle said. ‘You just didn’t have time to think long enough. You had time to think that he’d shoot you if you tried to intervene, but not that the entire media would shoot you if you didn’t intervene.’

‘I was unarmed, he had a revolver, and it wouldn’t even have occurred to anyone that intervention was an option if Truls Berntsen, the idiot, hadn’t got it into his head that this was a good time to play the hero.’ Bellman shook his head. ‘But then the poor bastard has always been head over heels in love with Ulla.’

Isabelle groaned. ‘Truls couldn’t have done any more damage to your career if he’d tried. The first thing people are going to think, whether or not it’s fair, is cowardice.’

‘Hold it there!’ Mikael snapped. ‘I wasn’t the only one who didn’t intervene, there were police officers there who—’

‘She’s your wife, Mikael. You were sitting next to her in the front row, and even if you’re at the end of your tenure, you are still Chief of Police. You’re supposed to be their leader. And now you’re supposed to become Minister of Justice—’

‘So you think I should have got myself shot? Because Smith did actually shoot. And Truls didn’t rescue Ulla! Doesn’t that prove that I, as Police Chief, made the correct judgement while Constable Berntsen, acting on his own initiative, got it badly wrong? In fact he actually put Ulla’s life in danger.’

‘Obviously that’s how we’re going to have to try to present this, but all I can say is that it’s going to be difficult.’

‘And what’s so damn difficult about it?’

‘Harry Hole. That he volunteered himself as hostage and you didn’t.’

Mikael threw his arms out. ‘Isabelle, it was Harry Hole who provoked the whole situation. By unmasking Smith as the puppet master he practically forced Smith to grab that revolver, which was just sitting there in front of him. By offering himself as a hostage, Harry Hole was merely taking responsibility for something that was his fault anyway.’

‘Yes, but we feel first and reason afterwards. We see a man who doesn’t intervene to rescue his wife, and we feel contempt. Then along comes what we think is cold, objective reflection, but is actually us trying to find new information to justify what we felt initially. It may be the contempt of stupid, unreflective people, Mikael, but I’m pretty sure that’s what people are going to feel.’

‘Why?’

She didn’t answer.

He looked her in the eye.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Because you’re feeling that contempt now?’

Mikael Bellman saw Isabelle Skøyen’s impressive nostrils flare as she took a deep breath. ‘You are so many things,’ she said. ‘You have so many qualities that have brought you to where you are.’

‘And?’

‘And one of them is your ability to know when to take cover and let others take the blow, when cowardice will pay off. It’s just that this time you forgot that you had an audience – and not just the usual audience, but the worst possible audience.’

Mikael Bellman nodded. Journalists from both home and abroad. He and Isabelle had a lot of work ahead of them. He picked up a pair of East German binoculars from her windowsill, presumably a gift from a male admirer. Pointed them at the fjord. He had seen something out there.

‘What do you think would be the best outcome for us?’ he asked.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Isabelle said. In spite of the fact that she had grown up in the country, or perhaps precisely because of that, she still spoke like the upper classes of western Oslo used to, without it sounding odd. Mikael had tried, and it hadn’t worked. Growing up in the east of the city had caused irreparable damage.

‘For Truls to die, or for him to survive?’ He adjusted the focus on the binoculars. It took him a moment to hear her laughter.

‘And that’s another of those qualities,’ she said. ‘You can switch off all emotion when the situation demands it. This is going to damage you, but you’ll survive.’

‘Dead would be best, wouldn’t it? Then it would be beyond question that he took the wrong decision, and that I was right. And then he won’t be able to give any interviews, and the whole thing will have a limited shelf life.’

He felt her hand on his belt buckle as her voice whispered right next to his ear: ‘So you’d like the next text to your phone to tell you that your best friend is dead?’

It was a dog. Far out on the fjord. Where on earth was it going?

The next thought came automatically.

And it was a new thought. A thought that had basically never before occurred to Police Chief and soon-to-be Justice Minister Mikael Bellman at any point in his forty-year life.

Where on earth are we going?

Harry had a high-pitched buzzing in his ear, and his own blood on one eye. And the blows were still coming. He no longer felt any pain, only that the car was getting colder and the darkness deeper.

But he wasn’t letting go. He had let go so many times before. Had given in to pain, fear, a death wish. But he had also given in to a primitive, egocentric survival instinct that had shouted down any longing for a painless nothingness, sleep, darkness. And that was why he was here. Still here. And this time he wasn’t letting go.

His jaw muscles ached so badly that his whole body was shaking. And the blows were still coming. But he didn’t let go. Seventy kilos of pressure. If he had managed to get a firmer grip of the neck, he could have stemmed the flow of blood to the brain, and Smith would have lost consciousness fairly quickly. By only stopping the supply of air that could take several minutes. Another blow to his temple. Harry felt his own consciousness waver. No! He jerked in the seat. Clenched his teeth tighter. Stick it out, stick it out. Lion. Water buffalo. Harry counted as he breathed through his nose. One hundred. The blows kept coming, but weren’t the gaps between them longer, weren’t they a bit less forceful? Smith’s fingers closed over his face and tried to push Harry away. Then gave up. Let go of him. Was Smith’s brain finally so starved of oxygen that he had stopped functioning? Harry felt relief, swallowed some more of Smith’s blood, and at that moment the thought struck him. Valentin’s prediction. You’ve been waiting for your turn to be a vampire. And one day you too will drink . Perhaps it was that thought, a gap in his concentration, but at that instant Harry felt the revolver move under the sole of his shoe, and realised that he had eased the pressure without noticing. That Smith had stopped punching him in order to reach for the gun. And that he had succeeded.