Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘Mm.’

‘Mm,’ she mimicked.

‘Do you feel like elaborating?’

‘I’d like to fire Truls Berntsen.’

‘That goes without saying.’

‘Yes, but not for being useless and lazy. He’s the one who’s been leaking to VG .’

‘And how did you find that out?’

‘Anders Wyller set a trap. He went a bit too far – I think perhaps there was a degree of payback as far as Mona Daa was concerned. Either way, we won’t have any trouble from her if she’s been paying a public official for information, seeing as she should have known that could lead to charges for corruption.’

‘So why haven’t you fired Berntsen?’

‘Guess,’ she said, going back to her desk.

‘Mikael Bellman?’

Katrine threw a pencil, not at Harry but the closed door. ‘Bellman came in here, sat where you’re sitting now, and said that Berntsen had convinced him of his innocence. And then he implied that it could have been Wyller himself who had been talking to VG and then tried to pin the blame on Berntsen. But that we couldn’t prove anything yet, so it would be best to let it go and concentrate on catching Valentin, that was the only thing that mattered. What do you make of that?’

‘Well, maybe Bellman’s right, maybe it’s best to delay washing our own dirty laundry until we’ve stopped wrestling in the gutter.’

Katrine pulled a face. ‘Did you think of that one all by yourself?’

Harry extracted his packet of cigarettes. ‘Speaking of leaks. The papers are saying I was at the bathhouse, and that’s OK, I got recognised. But no one apart from the boiler room and you know about Mehmet’s role in this. And I’d rather keep it that way, just to be on the safe side.’

Katrine nodded. ‘I actually raised that with Bellman and he agreed. He says we’ve got a lot to lose if it gets out that we’re using civilians to do our work for us, that it makes us look desperate. He said that Mehmet and his role in this shouldn’t be mentioned to anyone, including the investigative team. I think that makes sense, even if Truls is no longer allowed to take part in meetings.’

‘Really?’

Katrine raised one corner of her mouth. ‘He’s been given his own office where he can file away reports about cases that are nothing to do with the vampirist murders.’

‘So you have fired him after all,’ Harry said, sticking a cigarette between his lips. His phone vibrated against his thigh. He pulled it out. A text from Dr Steffens.

Tests finished. Rakel’s back in 301.

‘I need to go.’

‘Are you still with us, Harry?’

‘I need to think about that.’

Outside Police HQ Harry found his lighter in a hole in the lining of his jacket, and lit the cigarette. He looked at the people walking past him on the path. They seemed so calm, so untroubled. There was something very disconcerting about that. Where was he? Where the hell was Valentin?

‘Hi,’ Harry said as he walked into room 301.

Oleg was sitting next to Rakel’s bed, which was back in place. He looked up from the book he was reading but didn’t respond.

Harry sat down on the other side of the bed. ‘Any news?’

Oleg leafed through the book.

‘OK, listen,’ Harry said, taking his jacket off and hanging it on the back of his chair. ‘I know you think that when I’m not sitting here it means I care more about work than I do about her. That there are others who could solve the murders, but that she only has you and me.’

‘Isn’t that true, then?’ Oleg said, without looking up from the book.

‘I’m of no use to her right now, Oleg. I can’t save anyone in here, but out there I can make a difference. I can save lives.’

Oleg closed his book and looked at Harry. ‘Good to hear that you’re driven by philanthropy. Otherwise one might think it was something else.’

‘Something else?’

Oleg dropped the book in his bag. ‘A desire for glory. You know, all that Harry-Hole-is-back-to-save-the-day stuff.’

‘Do you think that’s what it’s about?’

Oleg shrugged. ‘The important thing is what you think. That you can convince yourself with that bullshit.’

‘Is that how you see me? A bullshitter?’

Oleg stood up. ‘Do you know why I always wanted to be like you? It wasn’t because you were all that great. It was because I didn’t have anyone else. You were the only man in the house. But now I can see you more clearly, I need to do all I can not to end up like you. Deprogramming initiated, Harry.’

‘Oleg …’

But he had already left the room.

Damn, damn.

Harry felt his phone buzz in his pocket and switched it off without looking at it. Listened to the machine. Someone had increased the volume so that it made a slightly delayed bleeping sound every time the green line jumped.

Like a clock counting down.

Counting down for her.

Counting down for someone out there.

What if Valentin was sitting looking at a clock right now, as he waited for the next one?

Harry started to pull out his phone. Then let go of it again.

The low, slanting light meant that when he put his broad hand on top of Rakel’s thin one, blue veins cast shadows across the back of his hand. He tried not to count the bleeps.

By 806 he couldn’t sit still any longer, and stood up and walked round the room. He went out, found a doctor who didn’t want to go into any details but said that Rakel’s condition was stable, and that they had discussed bringing her out of the coma.

‘Sounds like good news,’ Harry said.

The doctor hesitated before replying. ‘We’re only discussing it,’ he said. ‘There are arguments against it as well. Steffens is on duty tonight, you can talk to him when he gets here.’

Harry found the cafeteria, got something to eat and went back to room 301. The police officer outside the door nodded.

It had got dark in the room and Harry lit the lamp on the table next to the bed. He tapped a cigarette out of the packet as he studied Rakel’s eyelids. Her lips, which had become so dry. He tried to reconstruct the first time they met. He had been standing on the drive in front of her house, and she’d walked towards him, like a ballerina. After so many years, was he remembering it right? That first look. The first words. The first kiss. Maybe it was inevitable that you revised your memories, little by little, so that they eventually became a story, with the logic of a story, with weight and meaning. A story that said they had been on their way towards this all along, one that they repeated to each other, like a ritual, until they believed it. So when she disappeared, when the story of Rakel and Harry disappeared, what would he believe in then?

He lit the cigarette.

Inhaled, exhaled, saw the smoke swirl up towards the smoke alarm, dissipate.

Disappear. Alarm, he thought.

His hand slid into his pocket and grasped the cold, dormant phone.

Damn, damn.

A calling, as Steffens had put it: what did that mean? When you take a job you hate because you know you’re the best at it? Somewhere you can be useful . Like a self-effacing herd animal. Or was it like Oleg said, personal glory? Was he longing to be out there, shining, while she lay in here wasting away? OK, he’d never noticed any great sense of responsibility to society, and the recognition of colleagues or the public had never meant much. So what did that leave?

That left Valentin. That left the hunt.

There was a double knock, and the door slid open quietly. Bjørn Holm snuck in and sat down on the other chair.

‘Smoking inside a hospital,’ he said. ‘A six-year sentence, I reckon.’

‘Two years,’ Harry said, passing the cigarette to Bjørn. ‘Do me a favour and be my accomplice?’