Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘I’ve been thinking of doing that. Call if you need anything, anything at all.’

‘Yep.’

They ended the call and Harry stood up. Went over to the coffee machine, heard his own feet drag on the floor. He never used to drag his feet, never. He stood with the jug in his hand and looked around the empty kitchen. He’d forgotten where he’d left his mug. He put the jug down again, sat at the kitchen table and rang Mikael Bellman’s number. He reached his voicemail. Which was just as well, he didn’t have much to say.

‘This is Hole. My wife’s ill, so I’m leaving. This decision is final.’

He remained seated and looked out through the window at the lights of the city.

Thought about that one-ton water buffalo standing there with a solitary lion hanging from its throat. The water buffalo was bleeding from its wounds, but it had a lot of blood, and if it could just shake the lion off, it could easily trample it underfoot or spear it on its horns. But time was running out, its windpipe was being squeezed and it needed air. And there were more lions on the way, the pride had caught the scent of blood.

Harry saw the lights, but thought they had never seemed so far away.

The engagement ring. Valentin had given her a ring, and had come back. Just like the Fiancé. Damn. He pushed it away. Time to switch his head off now. Turn the lights off, lock up and go home.

It was 20.14 when Mona heard a noise. It came from the darkness, which had grown more dense while she had been sitting inside the cage. She saw a movement. Something was approaching. She had been through the questions she had prepared and wondered what she was most frightened of: him coming, or not coming. But she was no longer in any doubt. She felt her pulse throbbing in her neck and clutched the pistol in her jacket pocket. She had practised firing it in her parents’ basement, and from a distance of six metres she had hit what she’d been aiming at, a half-rotten raincoat hanging from a hook on the brick wall.

It came out of the darkness and into the light from a freight ship that was moored by the cement silos a few hundred metres away.

It was a dog.

It padded over to the cage and stared at her.

It looked like a stray. It didn’t have a collar, anyway, and was so skinny and scabby that it was hard to imagine it belonging anywhere but here. It was the sort of dog little Mona with her cat allergy had always hoped would follow her home one day, and never leave her.

Mona met the dog’s short-sighted stare, and imagined that she could see what it was thinking. A human being in a cage . And heard it laugh inside.

After looking at her for a while, the dog positioned itself parallel to the cage, lifted one back leg, and a stream of liquid hit the bars and floor inside.

Then it padded away and disappeared back into the darkness.

Without pricking its ears or sniffing the air.

And Mona realised.

There was no one coming.

She looked at the pulse meter. 119. And falling.

He wasn’t here. So where was he?

Harry could see something in the darkness.

In the middle of the drive, beyond the light from the windows and by the steps, he could make out the shape of someone standing with their arms by their sides, motionless, as they stared at the kitchen window and Harry.

Harry lowered his head and looked down at his mug of coffee as if he hadn’t seen the figure outside. His pistol was upstairs.

Should he run and get it?

On the other hand, if it really was the hunted man who was approaching the hunter, he didn’t want to frighten him off.

Harry stood up, stretched, aware that he was easily visible in the well-lit kitchen. He went into the living room, which also had windows facing the driveway, picked up a book, before taking two rapid strides towards the front door, grabbing the garden shears Rakel had left next to her boots, yanking the door open and running down the steps.

The figure still didn’t move.

Harry stopped.

Peered.

‘Aurora?’

Harry rummaged through the kitchen cupboard. ‘Cardamom, cinnamon, camomile. Rakel has a lot of teas starting with “c”, but seeing as I’m a coffee drinker I don’t really know what to recommend.’

‘Cinnamon would be fine,’ Aurora said.

‘Here,’ Harry said, handing her a box.

She took out a tea bag and Harry watched her as she dunked it in the mug of steaming water.

‘You ran off from Police HQ the other day,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said simply, pressing the tea bag with a teaspoon.

‘And from the bus stop earlier today.’

She didn’t answer, her hair had fallen in front of her face.

He sat down, took a sip of coffee. Gave her the time she needed, didn’t fill the silence with words that demanded answers.

‘I didn’t see it was you,’ she said eventually. ‘Well, I did see, but by then I was already scared, and it often takes a bit of time for your brain to tell your body that everything’s fine. And in the meantime my body had already managed to run away.’

‘Mm. Is there someone you’re afraid of?’

She nodded. ‘It’s Dad.’

Harry steeled himself, he didn’t want to go on, didn’t want to go there. But he had to.

‘What’s your dad done?’

Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘He raped me and said I must never tell anyone. Because then he would die …’

The nausea came so suddenly that Harry lost his breath for a moment, and bile burned in his throat when he swallowed. ‘Your dad said he would die?’

‘No!’ Her sudden, angry exclamation threw a short, hard echo off the walls of the kitchen.

‘The man who raped me said he’d kill Dad if I ever told a soul. He said he’d nearly killed Dad once before, and that nothing would stop him next time.’

Harry blinked. Tried to absorb the grim mixture of relief and shock. ‘You were raped?’ he said, with feigned calmness.

She nodded, sniffed and wiped her eyes. ‘In the girls’ toilet when we were playing in a handball tournament. It was the day you and Rakel got married. He did it, and then he left.’

Harry felt like he was falling.

‘Have you got somewhere I could get rid of this?’ She raised a dripping, dangling tea bag above the cup.

Harry just held his hand out.

Aurora looked at him uncertainly before letting go of the tea bag. Harry clenched his fist, felt the water burn his skin and run out between his fingers. ‘Did he hurt you, besides …?’

She shook her head. ‘He held me so tight that I got bruises. I told Mum they were from the match.’

‘You mean you’ve kept this to yourself right up to now? For three years?’

She nodded.

Harry felt that he was on the verge of getting up, going round the table and wrapping his arms round her. But a second thought had time to kick in, picking up on what Smith had said about closeness and intimacy.

‘So why have you come to tell me about it now?’

‘Because he’s killing other people. I saw the drawing in the paper. It’s him, it’s the man with the funny eyes. You’ve got to help me, Uncle Harry. You’ve got to help me protect Dad.’

He nodded, breathing with his mouth open.

Aurora tilted her head with a worried look on her face. ‘Uncle Harry?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you crying?’

Harry could taste the salt of the first tear at the corner of his mouth. Damn.

‘Sorry,’ he said in a thick voice. ‘How’s the tea?’

Then Harry looked up and met her gaze. It had changed completely. As if something had opened it up. As if for the first time in a very long while she was looking out through those beautiful eyes of hers, not in, as she had done the last few times they had met.

Aurora stood up, pushed the mug away, and walked round the table. Leaned over Harry and wrapped her arms around him. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be OK.’