Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘Cleanliness?’

‘He moved his last victim from the place where he killed her to the bed. Serial killers usually do things in roughly the same way, so why did he leave this woman in the living room? The only difference between this bedroom and Elise Hermansen’s is that here the bedclothes are dirty. I inspected Hermansen’s flat yesterday when Forensics picked up the sheets. It smelt of lavender.’

‘So he committed necrophilia with this woman in the living room because he can’t deal with dirty sheets?’

‘We’re coming to that,’ Harry said. ‘Have you seen the blender in the kitchen? OK, so you saw that he put it in the sink after he used it?’

‘What?’

‘The sink,’ Katrine said. ‘Youngsters don’t know about washing up by hand, Harry.’

‘The sink,’ Harry said. ‘He didn’t have to put it there, he wasn’t going to do any washing-up. So maybe it was a compulsive act, maybe he has an obsession with cleanliness? A phobia of bacteria? People who commit serial killings often suffer from a whole host of phobias. But he didn’t finish the job, he didn’t do the washing-up, he didn’t even run the tap and fill the jug with water so that the remnants of his blood-and-lemon smoothie would be easier to wash off later. Why not?’

Anders Wyller shook his head.

‘OK, we’ll come back to that, too,’ Harry said, then nodded towards the body. ‘As you can see, this woman—’

‘A neighbour has identified her as Ewa Dolmen,’ Katrine said. ‘Ewa with a “w”.’

‘Thanks. Ewa is, as you can see, still wearing her knickers, unlike Elise, whom he undressed. There are empty tampon wrappers at the top of the bin in the bathroom, so I assume that Ewa was on her period. Katrine, can you take a look?’

‘The forensics officer is on her way.’

‘Just to see if I’m right, and the tampon is still there.’

Katrine frowned. Then did as Harry asked while the three men looked away.

‘Yes, I can see the string from a tampon.’

Harry pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket. ‘Which means that the murderer – assuming he didn’t insert the tampon himself – didn’t rape her vaginally. Because he’s …’ Harry pointed at Anders Wyller with a cigarette.

‘Obsessed with cleanliness,’ Wyller said.

‘That’s one possibility, anyway,’ Harry went on. ‘The other is that he doesn’t like blood.’

‘Doesn’t like blood?’ Katrine said. ‘He drinks it, for God’s sake.’

‘With lemon,’ Harry said, putting the unlit cigarette to his lips.

‘What?’

‘I’m asking myself the same question,’ Harry said. ‘What? What does that mean? That the blood was too sweet?’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’ Katrine asked.

‘No, I just think it’s odd that a man we think seeks sexual gratification by drinking blood doesn’t take his favourite drink neat. People add lemon to gin, and to fish, because they claim it makes the taste more pronounced. But that’s wrong, lemon paralyses the taste buds and drowns everything else. We add lemon to hide the taste of something we don’t actually like. Cod liver oil started to sell much better when they began to add lemon. So maybe our vampirist doesn’t like the taste of blood, maybe his consumption of blood is also a compulsion.’

‘Maybe he’s superstitious and drinks to absorb his victims’ strength,’ Wyller said.

‘He certainly seems to be driven by sexual depravity, yet appears able to refrain from touching this woman’s genitals. And that could be because she’s bleeding.’

‘A vampirist who can’t bear menstrual blood,’ Katrine said. ‘The tangled pathways of the human mind …’

‘Which brings us back to the glass jug,’ Harry said. ‘Have we got any other physical evidence left by the perpetrator, apart from that?’

‘The front door,’ Bjørn said.

‘The door?’ Harry said. ‘I took a look at the lock when I arrived, and it looked untouched.’

‘Not a break-in. You haven’t seen the outside of it.’

The other three were standing out in the stairwell, looking on as Bjørn untied the rope that had been holding the door open, back against the wall. It swung slowly shut, revealing its front.

Harry looked. Felt his heart beating hard in his chest as his mouth went dry.

‘I tied the door back so that none of you touched it when you arrived,’ Bjørn said.

On the door the letter ‘v’ was written in blood, about a metre high. It was uneven at the bottom where the blood had run.

The four of them stared at the door.

Bjørn was the first to break the silence. ‘V for victory?’

‘V for vampirist,’ Katrine said.

‘Unless he was just ticking off another victim,’ Wyller suggested.

They looked at Harry.

‘Well?’ Katrine said impatiently.

‘I don’t know,’ Harry said.

The sharp look returned to her eyes. ‘Come on, I can see that you’re thinking something.’

‘Mm. V for vampirist might not be a bad suggestion. It could fit with the fact that he’s putting a lot of effort into telling us precisely this.’

‘Precisely what?’

‘That he’s something special. The iron teeth, the blender, this letter. He regards himself as unique, and is giving us the pieces of the puzzle so that we too will appreciate that. He wants us to get closer.’

Katrine nodded.

Wyller hesitated, as if he realised that his time to speak had passed, but still ventured: ‘You mean that deep down the murderer wants to reveal who he is?’

Harry didn’t answer.

‘Not who he is, but what,’ Katrine said. ‘He’s raising a flag.’

‘Can I ask what that means?’

‘Of course,’ Katrine said. ‘Ask our expert on serial killers.’

Harry was looking at the letter. It was no longer an echo of a scream, it was the scream itself. The scream of a demon.

‘It means …’ Harry flicked his lighter and held it to his cigarette, then inhaled deeply. He let the smoke out again. ‘He wants to play.’

‘You think the V stands for something else,’ Katrine said when she and Harry left the flat an hour later.

‘Do I?’ Harry said, looking along the street. Tøyen. The immigrant district. Narrow streets, Pakistani carpet shops, cobblestones, Norwegian-language teachers on bikes, Turkish cafes, swaying mothers in hijabs, youngsters getting by on student loans, a tiny record shop pushing vinyl and hard rock. Harry loved Tøyen. So much so that he couldn’t help wondering what he was doing up in the hills with the bourgeoisie.

‘You just didn’t want to say it out loud,’ Katrine said.

‘Do you know what my grandfather used to say when he caught me swearing? “If you call for the devil, he’ll come.” So …’

‘So, what?’

‘Do you want the devil to come?’

‘We’ve got a double murder, Harry, maybe a serial killer. Can it really get any worse?’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘It can.’

SATURDAY EVENING

‘WE’RE ASSUMING THAT we’re dealing with a serial killer,’ Detective Inspector Katrine Bratt said, and looked out at the conference room and her entire investigative team. Plus Harry. They had agreed that he would participate in meetings until he’d set up his own group.

There was a different, more focused atmosphere than during their previous meetings. This was obviously to do with the development of the case, but Katrine was pretty sure that Harry’s presence also made a difference. He may well have been Crime Squad’s drunk, arrogant enfant terrible , someone who had directly or indirectly caused the deaths of other officers, and whose working methods were highly questionable. But he still made them sit up and pay attention. Because he still had the same dour, almost frightening charisma, and his achievements were beyond question. Off the top of her head, she could only think of one person he had failed to catch. Maybe Harry was right when he said that longevity bestowed respect, even upon a whorehouse madam if she kept going for long enough.