Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Bellman looked for Katrine Bratt, aware that the pair of them together would make a good subject for the photographers. But she was already gone.

‘Gunnar!’ he called, loudly enough for a couple of photographers to turn round. The head of Crime Squad stopped in the doorway and came over to him.

‘Look serious,’ Bellman whispered, and held out his hand. ‘Congratulations,’ he said loudly.

Harry was standing beneath one of the street lamps on Borggata, trying to light a cigarette in Emilia’s dying gasps. He was freezing, his teeth were chattering, and he could feel the cigarette bobbing up and down between his lips.

He glanced up at the entrance of Police HQ, where the reporters and journalists were still coming out. Perhaps they were just as tired as him and for that reason weren’t talking noisily among themselves the way they usually did, but were heading down the road towards Grønlandsleiret as a silent, sluggish mass. Or perhaps they could feel it too. The emptiness. The emptiness that comes when a case is solved, when you reach the end of the road and realise that there’s no road left. No more field to plough. But your wife is still in the house, with the doctor and midwife, and there’s still nothing you can do. Nowhere you can be useful.

‘What are you waiting for?’

Harry turned. It was Bjørn.

‘Katrine,’ Harry said. ‘She said she’d drive me home. She’s getting the car from the garage, so if you need a lift as well …’

Bjørn shook his head. ‘Have you spoken to Katrine about what we talked about?’

Harry nodded and made a fresh attempt to light his cigarette.

‘Is that a “Yes”?’ Bjørn wondered.

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘I haven’t asked her where you stand.’

‘You haven’t?’

Harry closed his eyes for a moment. Perhaps he had. Either way, he couldn’t remember the answer.

‘I’m just asking because I was thinking that if the two of you were together around midnight, somewhere that wasn’t Police HQ, then maybe you weren’t just talking about work.’

Harry cupped his hand round the cigarette and lighter as he looked at Bjørn. His childlike, pale blue eyes were bulging out more than usual.

‘I can’t remember anything but work stuff, Bjørn.’

Bjørn Holm looked at the ground and stamped his feet. As if to get his circulation going. As if he couldn’t move from the spot.

‘I’ll let you know, Bjørn.’

Bjørn Holm nodded without looking up, then turned and walked off.

Harry watched him go. With a feeling that Bjørn had seen something, something he himself hadn’t spotted. There! Lit, at last!

A car pulled up beside him.

Harry sighed, tossed the cigarette on the ground, opened the door and got in.

‘What were you two talking about?’ Katrine asked, looking at Bjørn as she drove towards the nocturnal calm of Grønlandsleiret.

‘Did we have sex?’ Harry asked.

‘What?’

‘I don’t remember a thing from earlier this evening. We didn’t fuck?’

Katrine didn’t answer, apparently concentrating on stopping exactly on the white line in front of a red traffic light. Harry waited.

The light turned green.

‘No,’ Katrine said, putting her foot down and easing off the clutch. ‘We didn’t have sex.’

‘Good,’ Harry said, and let out a low whistle.

‘You were too drunk.’

‘What?’

‘You were too drunk. You fell asleep.’

Harry closed his eyes. ‘Shit.’

‘Yes, that’s what I thought.’

‘Not like that. Rakel’s in a coma. While I—’

‘While you’re doing your best to join her there. Forget it, Harry, worse things have happened.’

On the radio a dry voice announced that Valentin Gjertsen, the so-called vampirist, had been shot and killed at midnight. And that Oslo had experienced and survived its first tropical storm. Katrine and Harry drove in silence through Majorstua and Vinderen, towards Holmenkollen.

‘What are your thoughts about Bjørn these days?’ Harry asked. ‘Any possibility of you giving him another chance?’

‘Did he tell you to ask?’

Harry didn’t answer.

‘I thought he had something going on with what’s-her-name Lien.’

‘I don’t know anything about that. OK, fine. You can let me out here.’

‘Don’t you want me to drive you all the way to the house?’

‘You’d only wake Oleg. This is great. Thanks.’ Harry opened the door, but didn’t move.

‘Yes?’

‘Mm. Nothing.’ He got out.

Harry watched the rear lights of the car vanish, then walked up the drive towards the house.

It sat there, looming even darker than the darkness. No lights. No breathing.

He unlocked and opened the door.

Saw Oleg’s shoes but couldn’t hear anything.

He took his clothes off in the laundry room, put them in the basket. Went up to the bedroom, got out some clean clothes. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, so he went down to the kitchen. Put some coffee on and looked out of the window.

Thinking. Then he pushed his thoughts aside and poured the coffee, knowing he wasn’t going to drink it. He could go off to the Jealousy Bar, but he didn’t feel like drinking alcohol either. But he would do. Later.

His thoughts returned.

There were only two of them.

And they were the simplest and the loudest.

One said that if Rakel didn’t survive, he would follow her, walk the same path.

The other was that if she did survive, he would leave her. Because she deserved better and because she shouldn’t have to be the one to leave.

A third thought appeared.

Harry rested his head in his hands.

The thought of whether he wanted her to survive or not.

Damn, damn.

And then a fourth thought.

What Valentin had said out in the forest.

We all get fooled in the end, Harry.

He must have meant that it was Harry who had fooled him. Or did he mean other people? That someone else had fooled Valentin?

That’s why you’re also being fooled.

He had said that just before he fooled Harry into thinking he was pointing a gun at him, but perhaps that wasn’t what he meant. Perhaps it was about more than that.

He started when he felt a hand on the back of his neck.

Turned and looked up.

Oleg was standing behind his chair.

‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ Harry tried to say, but his voice couldn’t seem to settle.

‘You were asleep.’

‘Asleep?’ Harry pushed himself up from the table. ‘No, I was just sitting and—’

‘You were asleep, Dad,’ Oleg interrupted with a little smile.

Harry blinked away the fog. Looked around. Put his hand out and felt the coffee cup. It was cold. ‘Bloody hell.’

‘I’ve been doing some thinking,’ Oleg said, pulling out the chair next to Harry and sitting down.

Harry smacked his lips, loosened the saliva in his mouth.

‘And you’re right.’

‘Am I?’ Harry took a sip of the cold coffee to take away the taste of stale bile.

‘Yes. You have a responsibility that stretches beyond those closest to you. You have to be there for people who aren’t so close. And I have no right to demand that you let them all down. The fact that murder cases are like a drug to you doesn’t change that.’

‘Hm. And you came to this conclusion all on your own?’

‘Yes. With a bit of help from Helga.’ Oleg looked down at his hands. ‘She’s better than me at seeing things from other angles. And I didn’t mean what I said, about not wanting to be like you.’

Harry put his hand on Oleg’s shoulder. Saw that he was wearing Harry’s old Elvis Costello T-shirt to sleep in. ‘My boy?’

‘Yes?’

‘Promise me that you won’t be like me. That’s all I ask of you.’