Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Bjørn Holm vanished through the door out into the culvert.

‘It looks like this kidnapping could be about me,’ Harry said. ‘That’s my restaurant, my usual table.’

‘That’s not good,’ Smith said, shaking his head. ‘He’s lost his grip.’

‘Isn’t it good that he’s lost his grip?’ Wyller asked. ‘Doesn’t that mean he’s going to be less careful?’

‘That part might be good news,’ Smith said. ‘But now that he’s experienced how it feels to have power and control, no one’s going to be allowed to take that away from him. You’re right, he’s after you, Harry. And do you know why?’

‘That article in VG ,’ Wyller said.

‘You called him a wretched pervert, who … what was it?’

‘You were looking forward to slapping a pair of handcuffs on him,’ Wyller said.

‘So you describe him as wretched and threaten to take his power and control away.’

‘Isabelle Skøyen called him that, not me, but it doesn’t really matter now,’ Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Do you think he’s going to use the girl to get hold of me, Smith?’

Smith shook his head. ‘She’s dead.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘He doesn’t want confrontation, he just wants to show you and everyone else that he’s in control. That he can go to your place and take one of yours.’

Harry stopped rubbing his neck. ‘One of mine ?’

Smith didn’t answer.

Bjørn Holm returned. ‘That was Ullevål. Just before Penelope Rasch died, a man came to reception and identified himself as someone she’d listed as a friend, a Roar Wiik, her former fiancé.’

‘The guy who gave her the engagement ring Valentin stole from her flat,’ Harry said.

‘They contacted him to see if he’d noticed anything about her condition,’ Bjørn Holm said. ‘But Roar Wiik says he hasn’t been to the hospital.’

Silence spread round the boiler room.

‘Not the fiancé …’ Smith said. ‘So …’

The wheels of Harry’s chair shrieked, but it was already empty and heading at speed towards the wall.

Harry himself was already at the door. ‘Wyller, with me!’

Harry ran.

The hospital corridor stretched out and seemed to grow, growing faster than he could run, like an expanding universe which light and even thought couldn’t get through.

He only just managed to avoid running into a man who came out of a doorway clutching a drip stand with his hand.

One of yours.

Valentin had taken Aurora because she was Ståle Aune’s daughter.

Marte Ruud because she worked at Harry’s regular bar.

Penelope Rasch to show them that he could.

One of yours.

301.

Harry grabbed the pistol from his jacket pocket. A Glock 17 which had spent almost a year and a half lying untouched and locked away in a second-floor drawer. This morning he had taken it with him. Not because he imagined he would be using it, but because for the first time in four years he wasn’t entirely sure that he wouldn’t be using it.

He pushed the door open with his left hand as he pointed the pistol in front of him.

The room was empty. Had been emptied.

Rakel was gone. The bed was gone.

Harry gasped for air.

Went over to where the bed had been.

‘Sorry, she’s gone,’ a voice behind him said.

Harry spun round. Dr Steffens was standing in the doorway with his hands in the pockets of his white coat. He raised an eyebrow when he caught sight of the pistol.

‘Where is she?’ Harry panted.

‘I’ll tell you if you put that away.’

Harry lowered the pistol.

‘Tests,’ Steffens said.

‘Is she … is she OK?’

‘Her condition is the same as before, stable but unstable. But she’s going to survive the day, if that’s what you’re worrying about. Why the drama?’

‘She needs to be watched.’

‘Right now she’s being watched by five members of hospital staff.’

‘We’ll be placing an armed police guard outside her door. Any objections?’

‘No, but that isn’t up to me. Are you worried the murderer will come here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because she’s the wife of the man hunting him? We don’t give out room numbers to anyone who isn’t a relative.’

‘That didn’t stop someone pretending to be Penelope Rasch’s fiancé from getting hold of her room number.’

‘No?’

‘I’ll wait here until the officer is in place.’

‘In that case, maybe you’d like a cup of coffee.’

‘You don’t have to—’

‘No, but you need it. Just a moment, we’ve got some intriguingly bad coffee in the staffroom.’

Steffens left the room and Harry looked around. The chairs he and Oleg had sat in were still where they had left them the day before, on either side of the bed that was no longer there. Harry sat down on one of them and stared at the grey floor. Felt his pulse slow. Even so, he still felt there wasn’t enough air in the room. A strip of sunlight was falling through a gap in the curtains, reaching across the floor between the chairs, and he noticed a strand of fair hair curled on the floor. He picked it up. Could Valentin have been here looking for her, but got here too late? Harry swallowed. There was no reason to think about that now, she was safe.

Steffens came in and handed Harry a paper cup, took a sip of his own coffee and sat down on the other chair. The two men sat there opposite each other with a metre of empty space between them.

‘Your boy was here,’ Steffens said.

‘Oleg? He wasn’t going to come until after college.’

‘He asked after you. He seemed upset that you’d left his mother on her own.’

Harry nodded and drank some coffee.

‘They often get angry and full of moral indignation at that age,’ Steffens said. ‘They shift the blame for anything that goes wrong onto their father, and the man they once wanted to become suddenly represents everything they don’t want to become.’

‘Are you speaking from experience?’

‘Of course, we do that all the time.’ Steffens’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

‘Hm. Can I ask a personal question, Steffens?’

‘By all means.’

‘Does it end up positive?’

‘Sorry?’

‘The joy of saving lives minus the despair at losing people you could have saved.’

Steffens looked Harry in the eye. Perhaps it was the situation, two men sitting opposite each other in a largely darkened room, that made it a natural question. Ships passing in the night. Steffens took his glasses off and ran his hands over his face as if to wipe the tiredness away. He shook his head. ‘No.’

‘But you still do it.’

‘It’s a calling.’

‘Yes, I saw the crucifix in your office. You believe in callings.’

‘I think you do too, Hole. I’ve seen you. Maybe not a calling from God, but you still feel it all the same.’

Harry looked down at his cup. Steffens was right about the coffee being intriguingly bad. ‘Does that mean you don’t like your job?’

‘I hate my job,’ the senior consultant smiled. ‘If it had been up to me, I’d have chosen to be a concert pianist.’

‘You’re a good pianist?’

‘That’s the curse, isn’t it? When you’re not good at what you love, and good at something you hate.’

Harry nodded. ‘That’s the curse. We do jobs where we can be useful.’

‘And the lie is that there’s a reward for someone who follows a calling.’

‘Perhaps sometimes the work in itself is reward enough.’

‘Only for the concert pianist who loves music, or the executioner who loves blood.’ Steffens pointed to the name badge on his white coat. ‘I was born and raised a Mormon in Salt Lake City, and I’m named after John Doyle Lee, a God-fearing, peace-loving man who in 1857 was ordered by the elders of his parish to massacre a group of ungodly immigrants who had strayed into their territory. He wrote about his torments in his diary, about the terrible calling that fate had dealt him, but that he simply had to accept it.’