Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘I’ve never had anything against thieves with acceptable motives.’

‘Hah!’ Ståle exclaimed. ‘You like him even more now. Because you understand the idea of the monkey trap: you can never give up either, Harry. You’re losing the bigger prize because you can’t let go of the smaller one. You’re determined to catch Valentin Gjertsen, even though you’re actually aware that it might well cost you everything you hold dear, yourself and those around you – you simply can’t let go.’

‘A neat parallel, but you’re wrong.’

‘Am I?’

‘Yes.’

‘If that’s the case, then I’m pleased. Now I ought to go and see how my womenfolk are getting on.’

‘If Smith does join us, could you give him a brief introduction into what’s expected of him as a psychologist?’

‘Of course, it’s the least I can do.’

‘For Crime Squad? Or because you’re why he got nicknamed “the Monkey”?’

‘Goodnight, Harry.’

Harry went back upstairs and lay down in bed. Without actually touching Rakel, he lay close enough to feel the heat radiating from her sleeping body. He closed his eyes.

And after a while he glided away. Out of bed, out through the window, through the night, down towards the glittering city where the lights never went out, down onto the streets, into the alleys, over the rubbish bins, where the light of the city never reached. And there, there he was. His shirt was open and from his bare chest a face screamed at him as it tried to rip the skin apart and get out.

It was a face he knew.

Hunter and hunted, scared and hungry, hated and full of hate.

Harry quickly opened his eyes.

He had seen his own face.

MONDAY MORNING

KATRINE LOOKED OUT at the investigative team’s collection of pale faces. Some of them had worked through the night, and those who hadn’t probably hadn’t got much sleep either. They had already been through the list of Valentin Gjertsen’s known contacts, most of them criminal, some of them in prison, some of them dead, it turned out. Then Tord Gren had briefed them about the call lists provided by Telenor, which showed the names of everyone the three victims had been in contact with by phone in the hours and days before they were attacked. So far there hadn’t been anything to link them in the numbers, or any suspicious-looking calls or texts. In fact the only thing that was suspicious at all was an unanswered call from an unregistered number, made to Ewa Dolmen’s phone two days before her murder. It had come from a pay-as-you-go mobile which couldn’t be traced, which could mean that it was switched off, had been destroyed, had had its SIM card removed, or that the balance on the card had simply run out.

Anders Wyller had presented the current state of the investigation into the sale of 3D printers, saying that there were just too many of them, and the percentage that weren’t registered to names and addresses in the stores that sold them was too great for there to be any point carrying on with that line of inquiry.

Katrine had looked at Harry, who had shaken his head at the result, before nodding to her that he agreed with the conclusion.

Bjørn Holm had explained that now that the forensic evidence from the last crime scene pointed towards a suspect, Krimteknisk would concentrate on securing further evidence that could tie Valentin Gjertsen to the three crime scenes and victims.

Katrine was ready to allocate the day’s work when Magnus Skarre stuck his hand up and said, before she had given him permission to speak: ‘Why did you decide to go public with the news that Valentin Gjertsen is the suspect?’

‘Why? To get tip-offs about where he might be, of course.’

‘And now we’re going to get hundreds, thousands of them, based on a pencil sketch of a face that could easily have belonged to two of my uncles. And we’ll have to check every single one of them, because imagine if it later emerged that the police had received a tip-off about Gjertsen’s new identity and where he was living before he bit and killed victims number four and five.’ Skarre looked round as if to gather support. Or, Katrine realised, because he was already speaking on behalf of several of them.

‘That’s always the dilemma, Skarre, but that’s what we decided.’

Skarre nodded towards one of the female analysts, who picked up the baton and ran with it. ‘Skarre’s right, Katrine. What we could really do with right now is some time to get on with our work in peace. We’ve asked the public for information about Valentin Gjertsen before and it didn’t get us anywhere, it just took the focus away from things which might have been able to get us somewhere.’

‘And now he knows that we know, we may have frightened him off. He’s got a hideaway where he’s managed to stay out of sight for three years, and now we risk him sneaking back into his hole. Just saying.’ Skarre folded his arms with a triumphant look on his face.

‘ Risk ?’ The voice came from the back of the room, followed by a snort of laughter. ‘Surely the ones at risk are the women you want to use as bait while we keep quiet about the fact that we know who it is, Skarre. And if we don’t catch the bastard, we might as well chase him back to his hole, in my opinion.’

Skarre shook his head with a smile. ‘You’ll learn, Berntsen, when you’ve been in the unit for a bit longer, that men like Valentin Gjertsen don’t stop. He’ll just do what he’s doing somewhere else. You heard what our boss –’ he pronounced our boss with exaggerated slowness – ‘said on television last night. That Valentin might have already left the country. But if you’re hoping that he’s sitting at home with his popcorn and knitting, a little more experience will make you realise you’re wrong.’

Truls Berntsen looked down at his palms and muttered something Katrine couldn’t hear.

‘We can’t hear you, Berntsen,’ Skarre called, without turning to look at him.

‘I said that those pictures that were shown the other day, of the Jacobsen woman under that pile of surfboards, didn’t reveal everything,’ Truls Berntsen responded in a loud, clear voice. ‘When I got there she was still breathing. But she couldn’t talk because he’d used pliers to rip her tongue out of her mouth and stuff it you know where. Do you know how much more comes out if you rip someone’s tongue out instead of cutting it off, Skarre? Either way, it sounded like she was begging me to shoot her. And if I’d had a pistol, I’m pretty fucking sure I’d have considered it. But she died soon after that, so that was OK. Just thought I’d mention it while we’re talking about experience.’

In the silence that followed, as Truls took a deep breath, Katrine found herself thinking that one day she might end up liking Constable Berntsen. That thought was immediately punctured by Truls Berntsen’s concluding remarks.

‘And as far as I know, our responsibility is Norway, Skarre. If Valentin fucks wogs and coons in other countries, they can deal with it. Better that than him helping himself to our girls.’

‘And that’s where we stop,’ Katrine said firmly. The looks of surprise revealed that they were at least awake again now. ‘We’ll gather for the afternoon meeting at 1600 hours, then there’s a press conference at 1800 hours. I want people to be able to reach me over the phone, so keep your reports as short and concise as possible. And, just so we’re all still aware, everything is urgent. The fact that he didn’t strike again yesterday doesn’t mean that he won’t today. After all, even God took a breather on Sunday.’

The conference room emptied quickly. Katrine gathered her papers, shut her laptop and got ready to leave.