Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘What?’

‘Are they ill?’

Truls saw Ulla’s brief confusion before she grabbed the lifebelt he was offering her. Offering them both.

‘The little one’s a bit poorly.’ She shivered under her thick sweater, and looked as if she was trying to curl up inside as she looked around. Only three of the other tables were occupied, and Truls assumed she didn’t know any of the other customers. She certainly looked a bit more relaxed after her scan. ‘Truls?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I ask you an odd question?’

‘Of course.’

‘What is it you want?’

‘Want?’ He took another sip to gain himself a timeout. ‘Now, you mean?’

‘I mean, what do you want for yourself? What does everyone want?’

I want to take off your clothes, fuck you and hear you scream for more, Truls thought. And after that, I want you to go to the fridge, get me a cold beer, then lie in my arms and say that you’re giving it all up for me. The kids, Mikael, that fuck-off great house where I built the veranda, everything. All because I want to be with you, Truls Berntsen, because now, after this, it’s impossible for me to go back to anyone but you, you, you. And then I want us to fuck some more.

‘It’s being liked, isn’t it?’

Truls gulped. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Being liked by the people we like. Other people aren’t as important, are they?’

Truls felt his face make an expression, but didn’t know what it was supposed to mean.

Ulla leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘And from time to time, when we think we aren’t liked, when we get trampled on, we feel like trampling on them in return, don’t we?’

‘Yes,’ Truls said, nodding. ‘We feel like trampling on them in return.’

‘But that urge disappears as soon as we realise that we’re liked after all. And you know what? This evening Mikael said he likes me. In passing, and not directly, but …’ She bit her lower lip. That wonderful, blood-filled lower lip that Truls had been staring at since they were sixteen years old. ‘That’s all it takes, Truls. Isn’t that strange?’

‘Very strange,’ Truls said, looking down into his empty glass. And wondering how to formulate what he was thinking. That sometimes someone saying they like you doesn’t mean a damn thing. Especially when it’s Mikael fucking Bellman saying it.

‘I don’t think I ought to make the little one wait any longer.’

Truls looked up and saw Ulla peering at her watch with an expression of deep concern. ‘Of course not,’ he said.

‘I hope we get longer next time.’

Truls managed not to ask when that was going to be. He merely stood up, tried not to hug her longer than she hugged him. And sat down heavily on his chair when the door closed behind her. Felt rage building. Heavy, slow, painful, wonderful rage.

‘Another beer?’ Olsen had silently appeared again.

‘Yes. Actually, no. I need to make a call. Does that still work?’ He gestured towards the booth with the glass door where Mikael claimed to have fucked Stine Michaelsen during a student party when the place was so packed that no one could see what was going on below chest height. Least of all Ulla, who was standing in the queue at the bar to buy beer for them.

‘Sure.’

Truls went inside and looked up the number on his own mobile phone.

Tapped the payphone’s shiny square buttons.

Waited. He had decided to wear a tight shirt to show off the fact that he had bigger pecs, bigger biceps and a narrower waist than Ulla probably remembered. But she had hardly looked at him. Truls puffed himself up and felt his shoulders touch both sides of the booth. It was even smaller than that fucking office they’d stuffed him in today.

Bellman. Bratt. Wyller. Hole. They could all burn in hell.

‘Mona Daa.’

‘Berntsen. What will you pay to find out what really happened at the bathhouse today?’

‘Have you got a teaser?’

‘Yep. Oslo Police risk life of innocent bartender to catch Valentin .’

‘We can probably come to an arrangement.’

He wiped the condensation from the bathroom mirror and looked at himself.

‘Who are you?’ he whispered. ‘Who are you?’

He closed his eyes. Opened them again.

‘I’m Alexander Dreyer. But call me Alex.’

From the living room behind him he heard insane laughter. Something that sounded like a machine or a helicopter, and then the terrified screams that marked the transition between ‘Speak to Me’ and ‘Breathe’. It was those screams he had tried to conjure up, but none of them had wanted to scream like that.

The condensation was almost gone from the mirror. He was finally clean now. And he could see the tattoo. A lot of people, mostly women, had asked why he had chosen to have a demon engraved into the skin of his chest. As if he had chosen it. They knew nothing. Nothing about him.

‘Who are you, Alex? I’m a claims manager at Storebrand. No, I don’t want to talk about insurance, let’s talk about you instead. What do you do, Tone? Would you like to scream for me while I slice your nipples off and eat them?’

He walked from the bathroom to the living room, and looked down at the picture lying on the desk, beside the white key. Tone. She had been on Tinder for two years, and lived on Professor Dahls gate. She worked in a horticultural nursery and wasn’t all that attractive. And she was a bit plump. He would have preferred her to be thinner. Marte was thin. He liked Marte. Her freckles suited her. But Tone. He ran his hand across the red hilt of the revolver.

The plan hadn’t changed, even though it had come close to falling apart today. He didn’t recognise the guy who had come into the hararet , but it was obvious that the guy recognised him. His pupils had dilated, you could see his pulse rate rise, and he had stood paralysed in the thinner mist near the door before hurrying out. But not before the air was thick with the smell of his fear.

As usual, the car had been parked by the pavement less than a hundred metres from the back door that opened onto a little-used street. Obviously he had never been a regular at any bathhouse that didn’t have an escape route of that sort. Or a bathhouse that wasn’t clean. And he never went into a bathhouse without having his keys in the pocket of his bathrobe.

He wondered if he should shoot Tone after biting her. Just to create a bit of confusion. See what sort of headlines that led to. But that would be breaking the rules. And the other was already angry at him for breaking them with the waitress.

He pressed the revolver against his stomach to feel the shock of cold steel before putting it down. How close were the police? VG had said that the police were hoping that some sort of legal process would force Facebook to surrender addresses. But he didn’t understand things like that, and wasn’t bothered by them. It didn’t trouble Alexander Dreyer or Valentin Gjertsen. His mother said she named him after Valentino, the first and greatest romantic lead in cinema history. So she only had herself to blame for giving him a name to live up to. At first it had been relatively risk-free. Because when you rape a girl before you’re sixteen, and the lucky girl is past the age of consent, she’s old enough to know that if the court concludes that it was consensual sex rather than rape, then she risks punishment for having sex with a minor. After you turn sixteen the risk of being reported is greater. Unless you rape the woman who named you Valentino. Mind you, was that really rape? When she’d started locking herself in her room, and he told her it was her or the girls in the neighbourhood, teachers, female relatives, or just random victims picked off the streets, and then she unlocked the door? The psychologists he had told that to hadn’t believed him. Well, after a while they had believed him. All of them.