Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

They headed back to room 301. The corridor stretched away and vanished into shimmering light. Presumably a window, with the low autumn sun shining directly through it. They passed nurses in ghostly white, and patients in dressing gowns, slowly moving towards the light with their living-dead shuffle. Yesterday he and Rakel had been embracing in the big bed with its slightly too soft mattress, and now she was here, in the land of coma, among ghosts and spirits. He needed to call Oleg. He needed to work out how to tell him. He needed a drink. Harry didn’t know where the thought came from, but there it was, as if someone had shouted it, spelling it out, straight into his ear. The thought needed to be drowned out, quickly.

‘Why were you Penelope Rasch’s doctor?’ he said in a loud voice. ‘She wasn’t a patient here.’

‘Because she needed a blood transfusion,’ Steffens said. ‘And I’m a haematologist and bank manager. But I also do shifts in A&E.’

‘Bank manager?’

Steffens looked at Harry. And perhaps he realised that Harry’s mind needed distracting, a brief pause from everything he found himself in the middle of.

‘The local branch of the blood bank. I should probably be called bath manager, because we took over the old rheumatic baths that used to be in the basement beneath this building. We call it the bloodbath. Don’t try to tell me that haematologists haven’t got a sense of humour.’

‘Hm. So that’s what you meant about buying and selling blood.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You said that was why you were able to use pictures from the crime scene in Penelope Rasch’s stairwell to calculate how much blood she’d lost. By eye.’

‘You’ve got a good memory.’

‘How is she doing?’

‘Oh, Penelope Rasch is recovering physically. But she’s going to need psychological help. Coming face-to-face with a vampire—’

‘Vampirist.’

‘—it’s an omen, you know.’

‘An omen?’

‘Oh yes. He was predicted and described in the Old Testament.’

‘The vampirist?’

Steffens smiled thinly. ‘Proverbs 30:14. “ A sort whose teeth are swords, and whose jaws are set with knives, who devour the poor from the earth and the needy out of house and home .” Here we are.’

Steffens held the door open and Harry walked in. Into the night. On the other side of the closed curtain the sun was shining, but in here the only light was a shimmering green line jumping across a black screen, over and over again. Harry gazed down at her face. She looked so peaceful. And so far away, floating in a dark space where he couldn’t reach her. He sat down on the chair beside the bed, waited until he heard the door close behind him. Then he took hold of her hand and pressed his face to the covers.

‘No further away now, darling,’ he whispered. ‘No further.’

Truls Berntsen had moved the screens in the open-plan office so that the corner he shared with Anders Wyller was completely hidden from view. Which is why he was annoyed that the only person who could see him, Wyller, was so damn curious about everything, and especially who he was talking to on the phone. But right now the snooper was out at some tattoo and piercing parlour, because they’d had a tip-off saying they were importing vampire accessories, among them denture-like metal objects with pointed canine teeth, and Truls was planning to make the most of the break. He’d downloaded the final episode of the second season of The Shield , and had turned the volume so low that only he could hear it. For that reason he definitely wasn’t at all pleased when his phone started to flash and buzz like a vibrator on the desk in front of him as it played the start of Britney Spears’s ‘I’m Not a Girl’, which Truls, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear, was very fond of. The words, about her not being a woman yet, prompted vague thoughts of a girl who was under the age of consent, and Truls hoped that wasn’t why he had it as his ringtone. Or was it? Britney Spears in that school uniform, was it perverse to wank off to that? OK, in that case he was a perv. But what worried Truls more was that the number on the screen was vaguely familiar. The City Treasurer’s department? Internal Investigations? Some questionable old contact he’d done a burner job for? Someone he owed money or a favour? It wasn’t Mona Daa’s number anyway. Most likely it was a work call, and probably one that meant he was going to have to do something. Either way, he concluded that this was unlikely to be a call he had anything to win by answering. He put the phone in a drawer and concentrated on Vic Mackey and his colleagues on the STRIKE team. He loved Vic, The Shield really was the only cop series that showed how people in the force actually thought. Then all of a sudden he realised why the number had seemed familiar. He yanked the drawer open and grabbed the phone. ‘Detective Constable Berntsen.’

Two seconds passed before he heard anything at the other end, and he thought she had hung up. But then the voice was there, right by his ear, soft and tantalising.

‘Hello, Truls, this is Ulla.’

‘Ulla …?’

‘Ulla Bellman.’

‘Oh, hi, Ulla, is that you?’ Truls hoped he sounded convincing. ‘How can I help you?’

She let out a little laugh. ‘I don’t know about “help”. I saw you in the atrium of Police HQ the other day, and realised how long it had been since we last had a proper chat. You know, like we used to.’

We never had a proper chat, Truls thought.

‘Could we meet up sometime?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Truls tried to stifle his grunting laughter.

‘Great. How about tomorrow? Mum’s got the kids then. We could go for a drink or a bite to eat?’

Truls could hardly believe his ears. Ulla wanted to meet him. To interrogate him about Mikael again? No, she must know they didn’t see much of each other these days. Besides: a drink or a bite to eat? ‘That would be great. Is there something on your mind?’

‘I just thought it would be nice to meet up, I don’t really have much contact with too many people from the old days.’

‘No, of course,’ Truls said. ‘So, where?’

Ulla laughed. ‘I haven’t been out for years. I don’t know what there is in Manglerud these days. You do still live there, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Er … Olsen’s is still there, down in Bryn.’

‘Is it? Right, then. Let’s say there. Eight o’clock?’

Truls nodded dumbly, then remembered to say ‘Yes’.

‘And, Truls?’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t mention it to Mikael, please.’

Truls coughed. ‘No?’

‘No. See you tomorrow at eight o’clock, then.’

He stared at the phone after she’d hung up. Had that really happened or was it just an echo of the daydreams he had cooked up when he was sixteen, seventeen? Truls felt a happiness so intense that his chest felt like it was going to burst. And then panic hit. It was going to be a disaster. One way or another, it was obviously going to be a disaster.

It was all a disaster.

Obviously, it couldn’t have lasted, it was only a matter of time before he was chucked out of paradise.

‘Beer,’ he said, looking up at the young freckled girl who was standing at his table.

She wasn’t wearing any make-up, her hair was pulled up in a simple ponytail, and she’d rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse like she was ready for a fight. She wrote on her pad, as if she were expecting a longer order, which made Harry think she was new, seeing as they were at Schrøder’s, where nine out of ten orders stopped there. She’d hate the job for the first few weeks. The coarse jokes from the male customers, the ill-concealed jealousy from the most alcoholic of the women. Poor tips, no music to sway her hips to as she moved round the bar, no nice guys to be seen by, just argumentative old drunks to chuck out at closing time. She’d wonder if it was worth the boost it gave her student loan, which meant she could afford to live in a shared student house in such a relatively central location. But Harry knew that if she got through the first month without giving up and handing in her notice, things would gradually change. She’d start to laugh at the senseless humour in the comments, learn to give as good as she got in the same tacky way. When the women realised she wasn’t threatening their territory they’d start to confide in her. And she’d get tips. Not much, but they’d be genuine tips, as well as gentle encouragement and the occasional declaration of love. And they’d give her a name. Something that might be uncomfortably close to the bone, but it would still be meant affectionately, something that ennobled you among this ignoble company. Short-Kari, Lenin, Backscreen, She-Bear. In her case it would probably be something to do with her freckles and red hair. And as people moved in and out of the collective, and presumptive boyfriends came and went, little by little it would become her family. A kind, generous, irritating, lost family.