Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Mehmet shrugged. ‘I feel I ought to help. After all, this was where Elise was before she got murdered.’

‘Hm.’ Harry looked down into his cup. ‘Anders?’

‘Yes?’ Anders Wyller seemed pleased, possibly because this was the first time he’d heard Harry use his first name.

‘Can you go and get the car, and drive up to the door?’

‘Yes, but it’s only—’

‘And I’ll meet you outside.’

Once Wyller had left Harry took a sip of coffee. ‘This is none of my business, but are you in trouble, Mehmet?’

‘Trouble?’

‘You have no criminal record, I checked. But the guy who was here and then vanished the moment he saw us arrive does. And even if he didn’t stop to say hello, Danial Banks and I are old acquaintances. Has he got his claws into you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that you’ve just opened a bar, and your tax history shows that you aren’t sitting on a fortune. And Banks specialises in lending money to people like you.’

‘People like me?’

‘People the banks won’t touch. What he does is illegal, you know that? Usury, paragraph 295 of the Penal Code. You could report it, then you’d be free of him. Let me help you.’

Mehmet looked at the blue-eyed policeman. Then he nodded. ‘You’re right, Harry …’

‘Good.’

‘… it’s none of your business. Sounds like your colleague’s waiting for you.’

He shut the door of the hospital room behind him. The blinds were down, letting only a little light filter into the room. He put the bouquet of flowers on the nightstand at the top end of the bed. He looked down at the sleeping woman. She seemed so alone, lying there like that. He closed the curtains. Sat down on the chair beside the bed, took a syringe from his jacket pocket and pulled the cap off the needle. Took hold of her arm. Gazed at the skin. Real skin. He loved real skin. He felt like kissing it, but knew he had to restrain himself. The plan. Stick to the plan. Then he stuck the point of the needle into the woman’s arm. Felt it slip through the skin without any resistance.

‘There, now,’ he whispered. ‘Now I’m going to take you from him. You’re mine now. All mine.’

He pushed the plunger and watched as the dark contents were forced out, injected into the woman. Filling her with blackness. And sleep.

‘Police HQ?’ Wyller said.

Harry looked at his watch. Two o’clock. He had arranged to meet Oleg at the hospital in an hour.

‘Ullevål Hospital,’ he said.

‘Are you unwell?’

‘No.’

Wyller waited, then when nothing more was forthcoming, he put the car into first gear and pulled away.

Harry looked out through the window while he wondered why he hadn’t told anyone. He’d have to tell Katrine, for practical reasons. Anyone apart from her? No. Why should he?

‘I downloaded Father John Misty yesterday,’ Wyller said.

‘What for?’

‘Because you recommended it.’

‘Did I? Must be good, then.’

Nothing more was said until they were stuck in traffic, slowly creeping up Ullevålsveien past Sankt Olav Cathedral and Nordal Bruns gate.

‘Stop at that bus stop,’ Harry said. ‘I can see someone I know.’

Wyller braked and pulled in to the right, next to a shelter where some teenagers were waiting to catch the bus after school. Oslo Cathedral School, yes, that was the one she went to. She was standing slightly apart from the noisy crowd, with her hair hanging in front of her face. Without having any real idea what he was going to say, Harry lowered the window.

‘Aurora!’

A twitch ran through the girl’s long-legged frame, and she took off like a nervous antelope.

‘Do you always have that effect on young girls?’ Wyller asked, as Harry told him to drive on.

She’s running in the opposite direction to the car, Harry thought, watching her in the wing mirror. She didn’t even have to think. Because she’d thought this through in advance: that if you want to run from someone in a car, you run away from the direction the car is facing. But what that meant, he didn’t know. Some sort of teenage angst, perhaps. Or a phase, as Ståle had called it.

The traffic grew lighter further along Ullevålsveien.

‘I’ll wait in the car,’ Anders said, after he pulled up in front of the entrance to Block 3 of the hospital.

‘It might take a while,’ Harry said. ‘You wouldn’t rather sit in the waiting room?’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘Bad memories of hospitals.’

‘Mm. Your mother?’

‘How did you know that?’

Harry shrugged. ‘Had to be someone you were very close to. I lost my own mother in a hospital when I was a boy.’

‘Was that the doctors’ fault as well?’

‘No, she couldn’t be saved. So I shouldered the guilt myself.’

Wyller nodded wryly. ‘With my mother it was a self-appointed god in a white coat. That’s why I won’t set foot in there.’

On his way in Harry noticed a man leaving, holding a bunch of flowers in front of his face, noticed because you expect to see people with flowers going into a hospital, not coming out. Oleg was sitting in the waiting area. They embraced as patients and visitors around them continued their subdued conversations and disengaged browsing through old magazines. Oleg was only a centimetre or so shorter than Harry. And Harry occasionally forgot that the lad had finally stopped growing now, and that he could have actually cashed in on their bet.

‘Have they said anything else?’ Oleg said. ‘About what it is, and whether it’s dangerous?’

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘But like I said, you shouldn’t worry too much, they know what they’re doing. She’s been put in an induced coma, in a controlled way. OK?’

Oleg opened his mouth. Closed it again and nodded. And Harry saw it. That Oleg realised Harry was protecting him from the truth. And that he let him do it.

A nurse came over and told them they could go in and see her.

Harry went in first.

The blinds were down.

He went over to the bed. Looked down at the pale face. She looked like she was far away.

Far too far away.

‘Is … is she breathing?’

Oleg. He was standing right behind Harry, the way he used to when he was little and they had to walk past one of Holmenkollen’s many large dogs.

‘Yes,’ Harry said, nodding towards the flashing machines.

They sat down on either side of the bed. And glanced at the twitching green line on the screen when they didn’t think the other would notice.

Katrine looked out across the forest of hands.

The press conference had lasted barely fifteen minutes, and the impatience in the Parole Hall was already tangible. She wondered what had got them most worked up. The fact that there was nothing new on the police hunt for Valentin Gjertsen. Or that there was nothing new on Valentin Gjertsen’s hunt for fresh victims. It had been forty-six hours since the last attack.

‘I’m afraid it’s going to be the same answers to the same questions,’ she said. ‘So if there aren’t any new—’

‘What’s your reaction to the fact that you’re now working on three murders rather than two?’

The question had been called out by a journalist at the back of the room.

Katrine saw unease spread through the room like ripples on water. She glanced at Bjørn Holm who was sitting in the front row, but he just shrugged in response. She leaned into the microphones.

‘It’s possible that there is information that hasn’t reached me yet, so I’ll have to get back to you about that.’

Another voice: ‘The hospital has just released a statement. Penelope Rasch is dead.’

Katrine hoped her face didn’t betray the confusion she felt. Penelope Rasch’s survival hadn’t been in any doubt.