Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘Where have you been?’

‘At a bar.’

The unfamiliar rhythm of his steps. ‘Have you been drinking?’

He slid into bed beside her. ‘Yes, I’ve been drinking. And you’ve gone to bed early.’

She held her breath. ‘What have you been drinking, Harry? And how much?’

‘Turkish coffee. Two cups.’

‘Harry!’ She hit him with the pillow.

‘Sorry,’ he laughed. ‘Did you know that Turkish coffee isn’t supposed to boil? And that Istanbul has three big football clubs that have hated each other like the plague for a hundred years but everyone’s forgotten why? Apart from the fact that it’s probably very human to hate someone because they hate you.’

She curled up next to him and put her arm round his chest. ‘All this is news to me, Harry.’

‘I know you like getting regular updates about how the world actually works.’

‘I don’t know how I’d survive without.’

‘You didn’t say why you’ve gone to bed so early?’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘I’m asking now.’

‘I was so tired. And I’ve got an early appointment at Ullevål before work tomorrow.’

‘You haven’t mentioned that.’

‘No, I only heard today. Dr Steffens called in person.’

‘Sure it’s an appointment and not just an excuse?’

Rakel laughed quietly, turned away from him and pushed back into his embrace. ‘Sure you’re not just pretending to be jealous to make me happy?’

He bit her gently on the back of her neck. Rakel closed her eyes and hoped that her headache would soon be drowned out by lust, wonderful, pain-relieving lust. But it didn’t come. And perhaps Harry could feel it, because he lay there quietly, just holding her. His breathing was deep and even, but she knew he wasn’t asleep. He was somewhere else. With his other love.

Mona Daa was running on the treadmill. Because of her damaged hip, her running style looked like a crab’s, so she never used the treadmill until she was completely sure she was alone. But she liked jogging a few kilometres after a hard session in the gym, feeling the lactic acid drain from her muscles while she looked out across the darkness of Frognerparken. The Rubinoos, a power-pop group from the seventies who had written a song for one of her favourite films, The Revenge of the Nerds , were singing bitter-sweet pop songs through the earphones that were connected to her phone. Until they were interrupted by a call.

She realised that she had been half expecting it.

It wasn’t that she wanted him to strike again. She didn’t want anything. She merely reported what happened. That was what she told herself, anyway.

The screen said ‘Unknown number’. So it wasn’t the newsroom. She hesitated. A lot of weird types popped up during big murder cases like this one, but curiosity got the better of her and she clicked ‘answer’.

‘Good evening, Mona.’ A man’s voice. ‘I think we’re alone now.’

Mona looked round instinctively. The girl on reception was immersed in her own phone. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve got the whole of the gym to yourself, I’ve got the whole of Frognerparken. Actually, it feels like we’ve got the whole of Oslo to ourselves, Mona. You with your unusually well-informed articles, me as the main character in those articles.’

Mona looked at the pulse monitor on her wrist. Her pulse rate had gone up, but not by much. All her friends knew she spent her evenings at the gym, and that she had a view of the park. This wasn’t the first time someone had tried to fool her, and it probably wasn’t the last either.

‘I don’t know who you are or what you want. You’ve got ten seconds to convince me not to hang up.’

‘I’m not entirely happy with the coverage, a lot of the detail of my work seems to be passing you by completely. I’m offering you a meeting where I shall tell you what I’m trying to show you. And what’s going to happen in the near future.’

Her pulse rate rose a bit further.

‘Tempting, I must say. Apart from the fact that you probably don’t want to be arrested, and I don’t want to be bitten.’

‘There’s an old abandoned cage from the zoo at Kristiansand down at the container port at Ormøya. There’s no lock on it, so take a padlock with you, lock yourself in, and I’ll come and talk to you from outside. That means I’ve got control of you at the same time as you’re safe. You can take a weapon to defend yourself with if you like.’

‘Like a harpoon, you mean?’

‘A harpoon?’

‘Yes, seeing as we’re going to be playing great-white-shark-and-diver-in-a-cage.’

‘You’re not taking me seriously.’

‘Would you take you seriously if you were me?’

‘If I were you, I would – before I made up my mind – ask for information about the killings that only the person who committed them could know.’

‘Go ahead, then.’

‘I used Ewa Dolmen’s blender to mix myself a cocktail, a Bloody Ewa, if you will. You can check that with your police source, because I didn’t wash up after me.’

Mona was thinking hard. This was mad. And it could be the scoop of the century, the story that would define her journalistic career for all time.

‘OK, I’m going to contact my source now, can I call you back in five minutes?’

Low laughter. ‘You don’t build trust by trying cheap tricks like that, Mona. I’ll call you back in five minutes.’

‘Fine.’

It took a while for Truls Berntsen to answer. He sounded sleepy.

‘I thought you were all working?’ Mona said.

‘Someone has to have some time off.’

‘I’ve just got one question.’

‘There’s a discount for bulk if you’ve got more.’

When Mona hung up she knew she’d struck gold. Or, to be more accurate, that gold had struck her.

When the unknown number called again, she had two questions. Where, and when.

‘Havnegate 3. Tomorrow evening, eight o’clock. And, Mona?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t tell a soul until it’s over.’

‘Any reason why we can’t just do this over the phone?’

‘Because I want to see you the whole time. And you want to see me. Sleep well. If you’re done on that treadmill.’

Harry lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Obviously he could blame those two cups of Mehmet’s bitumen-strength coffee, but knew that wasn’t the cause. He knew he was there again, unable to switch his brain off until it was over. It just went on working and working until the perpetrator was caught, and sometimes far beyond that. Four years. Four years without so much as a sign of life. Or a sign of death. But now Valentin Gjertsen had shown himself. And not just a glimpse of his devil’s tail – he had voluntarily stepped out into the spotlight, like a self-obsessed actor, scriptwriter and director rolled into one. Because this was being directed, it wasn’t simply the actions of a raving psychotic. This wasn’t someone they were going to catch by chance. They just had to wait until he made his next move, and pray to God that he made a mistake. In the meantime, they had to keep looking in the hope of unearthing the tiny mistakes he had already made. Because everyone makes mistakes. Almost everyone.

Harry listened to Rakel’s regular breathing, then slipped out from under the covers, crept to the door and downstairs to the living room.

His call was answered on the second ring.

‘I thought you’d be asleep,’ Harry said.

‘And you still called?’ Ståle Aune said in a sleepy voice.

‘You have to help me find Valentin Gjertsen.’

‘Help me ? Or help us ?’

‘Me. Us. The city. Humanity, for fuck’s sake. He has to be stopped.’