Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Svein Finne turned and began to walk. His steps were longer, faster, more sure.

There was so much to do.

Truls Berntsen was sitting on the sixth floor, watching the red glow of the sun try to force its way over Ekebergsåsen. In December Katrine Bratt had moved him from the doghouse to an office with a window. Which was nice. But he was still archiving reports and incoming material about closed or cold cases. So the reason why he got there so early had to be that at minus twelve degrees, it was warmer in the office than in his flat. Or that he was having trouble sleeping these days.

In recent weeks most of the material that needed archiving had naturally enough been late tip-offs and unnecessary witness statements relating to the vampirist murders. Someone claiming to have seen Valentin Gjertsen, probably someone who also thought Elvis was still alive. It didn’t matter that the DNA test of the corpse had provided incontrovertible evidence that it really had been Valentin Gjertsen that Harry Hole had killed, because for some people facts were just minor irritants that got in the way of their obsessions.

Got in the way of their obsessions . Truls Berntsen didn’t know why the sentence stuck, it was just something he had thought rather than said out loud.

He picked up the next envelope from the pile. Like the others, it had been opened and its contents listed by another officer. This one featured the Facebook logo, a stamp that showed it had been sent by special delivery, and an archiving order attached with a paper clip, on which it said ‘Vampirist Case’ beside the case number, and Magnus Skarre’s name and signature next to the word case manager .

Truls Berntsen took out the contents. On top was a letter in English. Truls didn’t understand all of it, but enough to recognise that it referred to a court disclosure order, and that the enclosed material was printouts of the Facebook accounts of all the murder victims in the vampirist case, plus the still missing Marte Ruud. He leafed through the pages and noticed that some of them were stuck together, so he guessed that Skarre hadn’t looked through everything. Fine, the case had been solved and the perpetrator would never find himself in the dock. But obviously Truls would dearly love to catch that bastard Skarre with his trousers down. He checked the names of the people the victims had been in contact with. Looked rather optimistically for Facebook messages to or from Valentin Gjertsen or Alexander Dreyer which he could accuse Skarre of having missed. He scanned page after page, only stopping to check senders and recipients. He sighed when he got to the end. No mistakes there. The only names he had recognised apart from the victims had been a couple that he and Wyller had dismissed because they had been in touch with the victims by phone. And it was surely only natural that some of the same people who had been in touch by phone, such as Ewa Dolmen and that Lenny Hell, had also been in contact on Facebook.

Truls put the documents back in the envelope, stood up and went over to the filing cabinet. He pulled out the top drawer. Let go of it. He liked the way it glided out, with a sigh, like a goods train. Until he stopped the drawer with one hand.

Looked at the envelope.

Dolmen, not Hermansen.

He hunted through the drawer until he found the file containing the interviews from the phone list, then took it and the envelope back to the desk. He leafed through the printouts until he found the name again. Lenny Hell. Truls remembered the name because it had made him think of Lemmy, even if the guy he had spoken to over the phone had sounded more like a terrified bastard with that tremble in his voice that so many people – regardless of how innocent they were – got when they found out it was the police calling them. So, Lenny Hell had been in touch with Ewa Dolmen on Facebook. Victim number two.

Truls opened the file of interviews. Found the report of his own brief conversation with Lenny Hell. And his conversation with the owner of Åneby Pizza & Grill. And a note he didn’t understand, in which Wyller reported that Nittedal Police Station had vouched for both Lenny and the owner of the pizzeria, confirming that Lenny had been in the restaurant at the time of Elise Hermansen’s murder.

Elise Hermansen. Victim number one.

They had questioned Lenny because he had called Elise Hermansen several times. And he had been in touch with Ewa Dolmen on Facebook. There was the mistake. Magnus Skarre’s mistake. And, possibly, Lenny Hell’s mistake. Unless it was just a coincidence. Single men and women of a similar age seeking each other within the same geographic area of what was after all a fairly sparsely populated country. There were more improbable coincidences. And the case was closed, there was nothing to consider. Not really . But on the other hand … The papers were still writing about the vampirist. In the USA, Valentin Gjertsen had acquired an obscure little fan club, and someone had bought the book and film rights to his life story from his estate. It may not have been on the front pages any more, but it could be again. Truls Berntsen got his phone out. Found Mona Daa’s number. Looked at it. Then he stood up, grabbed his coat and walked towards the lift.

Mona Daa screwed up her eyes and pushed with her arms as she curled the dumbbells up towards her chest. She imagined she was unfurling her wings and flying away from here with her arms outstretched. Across Frognerparken, across Oslo. That she could see everything. Absolutely everything.

And she was showing them.

She had seen a documentary about her favourite photographer, Don McCullin, who became known as a humanitarian war reporter because he showed the worst aspects of humanity in order to encourage reflection and soul-searching, not for cheap thrills. She couldn’t say the same of herself. And it had struck her that there was one word that hadn’t been mentioned in the one-sided hagiography of the documentary. Ambition. McCullin became the best, and he must have met thousands of admirers in between his battles, quite literally. Young colleagues who wanted to be like him, who had heard the myth about the photographer who stayed with the soldiers in Hue during the Tet Offensive, and the anecdotes from Beirut, Biafra, Congo, Cyprus. Here was a photographer who achieved what human beings thirsted for most, recognition and acclaim, yet not a word about how it could make a man put himself through the very worst trials, take risks he would otherwise never have dreamt of. And – potentially – commit similar offences to the ones he was documenting, all to take the perfect picture, get the groundbreaking story.

Mona had agreed to sit in a cage and wait for the vampirist. Without telling the police and potentially saving people’s lives. It would have been easy to sound the alarm, even if she did think she was being watched. A note slipped discreetly across the table to Nora. But she had – like Nora’s sexual fantasy of allowing herself to be raped by Harry Hole – made it feel like she was obliged to go through with it. Of course she had wanted it. The recognition, the acclaim, seeing the admiration in younger colleagues’ eyes when she was giving her acceptance speech for the Journalism Award, humbly saying that she was just a lucky, hard-working girl from a small town in the north. Before going on, slightly less humbly, to talk about her childhood, the bullying, and revenge and ambition. Yes, she would talk out loud about ambition, she wouldn’t be afraid to tell it how it was. And she wanted to fly. Fly.

‘You need a bit more resistance.’

It had got harder to lift the weights. She opened her eyes and saw two hands pushing down gently on the weights. The person was standing immediately behind her, so that in the big mirror in front of her she looked like some sort of four-armed Ganesh.