Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘Obviously I want to help you and Bellman.’

‘You do? That’s great!’

‘The best way I can. Which is by catching Valentin Gjertsen. Something I’m pretty busy with right now, so if you’ll excuse me, Skøyen.’

‘I know you’re all working hard, Harry, but that could take time.’

‘And why is it so urgent to polish Bellman’s reputation right now? Let me save us both some time. I will never stand in front of a microphone and say anything dictated by a PR agent. If we hang up now we can say that we had a civilised conversation which didn’t end with me being forced to tell you to go to hell.’

Isabelle Skøyen laughed loudly. ‘You haven’t changed, Harry. Still engaged to that sweet lawyer with the black hair?’

‘No.’

‘No? Maybe we should have a drink one evening?’

‘Rakel and I are no longer engaged because we’re married.’

‘Ah. Well, I never. But is that necessarily a problem?’

‘It is for me. For you it’s probably more of a challenge.’

‘Married men are best, they never give you any trouble.’

‘Like Bellman?’

‘Mikael’s lovely, and he’s got the most kissable lips in the city Well, this conversation’s getting boring now, Harry, so I’m hanging up. You’ve got my number.’

‘No, I haven’t. Bye.’

Rakel. He’d forgotten that she’d called. He brought up her number as he checked his reaction, just for the hell of it. Had Isabelle Skøyen’s invitation had any effect on him, had it managed to turn him on at all? No. Well. A bit. Did that mean anything? No. It meant so little that he couldn’t be bothered to work out what sort of bastard he was. Not that it meant that he wasn’t a bastard, but that tiny little tingle, that involuntary, half-dreamt fragment of a scene – with her long legs and broad hips – which was there one moment, then gone, wasn’t enough for a guilty verdict. Bloody hell. He’d rejected her. Even though he knew that rejection made Isabelle Skøyen more likely to call him again.

‘Rakel Fauke’s phone, you’re talking to Dr Steffens.’

Harry felt the back of his neck begin to prickle. ‘This is Harry Hole, is Rakel there?’

‘No, Hole, she isn’t.’

Harry felt his throat tighten. Panic was creeping up on him. The ice was creaking. He concentrated on breathing. ‘Where is she?’

In the long pause that followed, which he suspected was there for a reason, Harry had time to think a lot of things. And of all the conclusions his brain automatically came to, there was one he knew he would remember. That it ended here, that he would no longer be able to have the one thing he wanted: for today and tomorrow to be a copy of the day he had yesterday.

‘She’s in a coma.’

In confusion, or in sheer, utter desperation, his brain tried to tell him that a coma was a city or a country.

‘But she tried to call me. Less than an hour ago.’

‘Yes,’ Steffens said. ‘And you didn’t answer.’

MONDAY AFTERNOON

SENSELESS. HARRY WAS sitting in a hard chair and trying to concentrate on what the man on the other side of the desk was saying. But the words made as much sense as the birdsong outside the open window behind the man in glasses and a white coat. As senseless as the blue sky and the fact that the sun had decided to shine brighter today than it had done for weeks. As senseless as the posters on the walls depicting people with grey organs and bright red blood vessels on show, or, beside them, a cross with a bleeding Christ on it.

Rakel.

The only thing in his life that made any sense.

Not science, not religion, not justice, not a better world, not pleasure, not intoxication, not the absence of pain, not even happiness. Only those five letters. R-a-k-e-l. It wasn’t the case that if it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been no one.

And having no one would have been better than this.

They can’t take no one away from you.

So in the end Harry cut through the torrent of words.

‘What does it mean?’

‘It means,’ Senior Consultant John D. Steffens said, ‘that we don’t know. We know that her kidneys aren’t working the way they should. And that could be caused by a number of things, but, like I said, we’ve ruled out the most obvious.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘A syndrome,’ Steffens said. ‘The problem is that there are thousands, each one rarer and more obscure than the last.’

‘Which means?’

‘That we need to keep looking. For the time being we’ve put her in a coma, because she was starting to have difficulty breathing.’

‘How long …?’

‘For the time being. We don’t just need to find out what’s wrong with your wife, we need to be able to treat it as well. Only when we’re sure she’ll be able to breathe independently will we bring her out of the coma.’

‘Could she … could she …’

‘Yes?’

‘Could she die while she’s in the coma?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Yes, you do.’

Steffens put his fingertips together. Waited, as if to force the conversation into a lower gear.

‘She could die,’ he said eventually. ‘We could all die. The heart can stop at any moment, but obviously it’s a question of probability.’

Harry knew that the rage he felt bubbling up wasn’t really anything to do with the doctor and the platitudes he was coming out with. He had spoken to enough next of kin in murder cases to know that frustration sought a target, and the fact that it couldn’t find one only made him more furious. He took a deep breath. ‘And what sort of probability are we talking about here?’

Steffens threw his hands out. ‘Like I said, we don’t know the cause of her kidney failure.’

‘You don’t know, and that’s why it’s called probability,’ Harry said. Stopped. Swallowed. Lowered his voice. ‘So just tell me what you think the probability is, based on the little you do know.’

‘Kidney failure isn’t the fault, in and of itself, it’s a symptom. It could be a blood disease, or poisoning. It’s the season for mushroom poisoning, but your wife said you haven’t eaten any recently. And you’ve eaten the same things. Are you feeling unwell, Hole?’

‘Yes.’

‘You … Okay, I understand. What we’re left with, some sort of syndrome, is invariably a serious problem.’

‘Over or under fifty per cent, Steffens?’

‘I can’t—’

‘Steffens, I know we’re in no man’s land here, but I’m begging you. Please.’

The doctor stared at Harry for a long time before seeming to make a decision.

‘As things stand, based on her test results, I think the risk of losing her is a little over fifty per cent. Not much more than fifty, but slightly more. The reason I don’t like telling relatives these percentages is that they usually read too much into them. If a patient dies during an operation where we estimated the risk of death at twenty-five per cent, they often accuse us of having misled them.’

‘Forty-five per cent? A forty-five per cent chance of her surviving?’

‘At the moment. Her condition is deteriorating, so a bit lower if we can’t identify the cause within a day or two.’

‘Thanks.’ Harry stood up. Dizzy. And the thought came automatically: a hope that everything would go completely dark. A fast and pain-free exit, stupid and banal, yet no less senseless than everything else.

‘It would be useful to know how to get hold of you if …’

‘I’ll make sure you can reach me at any time,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll go back to her now, if there isn’t anything else I should know.’

‘Let me come with you, Harry.’