Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

Harry shook his hand. ‘Thanks for taking the time to talk to us on a Saturday, Jimmy. This is Oleg, he’s a student at Police College.’

‘Looks like a future sheriff,’ Jimmy said, looking the tall young man up and down. ‘I consider it an honour that Harry Hole himself would want to visit us. So I’m afraid you’re the ones wasting your time here, not me.’

‘Oh?’

‘You said on the phone that you couldn’t get any answer from Lenny Hell, so I did a quick check while you were on your way. Turns out he went off to Thailand just after that interview with you.’

‘Turns out?’

‘Yes, before he left he told his neighbours and regular clients that he might be gone a while. So presumably he’s got a Thai number now, even if none of the people I spoke to know what it is. They don’t know where he’s staying out there either.’

‘A loner, maybe?’

‘You can safely say that.’

‘Family?’

‘Single. Only child. He never left home, and since his parents died he’s lived up in the Pig House on his own.’

‘Pig House?’

‘That’s just what we call it here in town. The Hell family worked with pigs for generations, did quite well out of it, and a hundred years ago they built a rather striking three-storey house up there. The Pig House.’ The sheriff chuckled. ‘Doesn’t do to get ideas above your station, eh?’

‘Hm. So what do you think Lenny Hell is doing in Thailand for so long?’

‘Well, what do people like Lenny do in Thailand?’

‘I don’t know Lenny,’ Harry said.

‘Nice guy,’ the sheriff said. ‘Smart too, an IT engineer. Works from home, freelance, we sometimes call him in when we get computer trouble. No drugs, nothing stupid. No money problems either, as far as I know. But he’s never quite got to grips with the whole women thing.’

‘What does that mean?’

Jimmy looked at the smoke from their breath as it hung in the air. ‘Bit cold out here, guys. Shall we go inside and get some coffee?’

‘I reckon Lenny’s on the lookout for a Thai bride,’ Jimmy said as he poured filter coffee into two white social services mugs and his own Lillestrøm Sportsklubb mug. ‘He couldn’t cope with the competition here at home.’

‘No?’

‘No. Like I said, Lenny’s something of a lone wolf, he keeps to himself and doesn’t say much, and he’s not much of a babe magnet to start with. And he has trouble controlling his jealousy. As far as I know, he’s never hurt a fly – or a woman – but there was one incident when a woman called us, saying that Lenny had become a bit intense after their first date.’

‘Stalking?’

‘That’s what it’s called these days, yes. Lenny had evidently sent her a load of text messages and flowers, even though she’d said she wasn’t interested in taking it any further. He’d be standing there waiting when she finished work. She made it very clear that she never wanted to see him again, and so she didn’t. But instead she told us she started to feel that things in her flat had been moved while she was at work. So she called us.’

‘She thought he’d been in her flat?’

‘I talked to Lenny, but he denied it. And we never heard any more about it after that.’

‘Does Lenny Hell have a 3D printer?’

‘A what?’

‘A machine that can be used to copy keys.’

‘No idea, but like I said, he’s an IT engineer.’

‘How jealous is he?’ Oleg asked, and the other two turned towards him.

‘On a scale of one to ten?’ Jimmy asked. Harry couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.

‘I’m just wondering if it could be morbid jealousy?’ Oleg asked, glancing uncertainly at Harry.

‘What’s the lad talking about, Hole?’ Jimmy took an audible slurp from his canary-yellow mug. ‘Is he asking if Lenny’s killed anyone?’

‘OK. Like I said on the phone, we’re just tidying up a few loose ends from the vampirist case, and Lenny did talk to two of the victims.’

‘And this Valentin guy killed them,’ Jimmy said. ‘Or is there some doubt about that now?’

‘No doubt,’ Harry said. ‘As I said, I just wanted to talk to Lenny Hell about those conversations. See if I could find out anything we didn’t already know. I saw on the map that his address is only a few kilometres from here, so I was thinking we could head up there and knock on the door. Get it out of the way.’

The sheriff stroked the emblem on his mug with a large hand. ‘It said in the paper that you’re a lecturer these days, not a detective.’

‘I suppose I’m like Lenny, a freelancer.’

Jimmy folded his arms, and his left sleeve slid up to reveal a faded tattoo of a naked woman. ‘OK, Hole. As you’ll appreciate, not much happens in Nittedal sheriff’s district, and thank God for that. So when you called, I didn’t just make a few phone calls, I also took a drive up to Lenny’s house. Or rather, I drove as far as I could. The Pig House is at the end of a forest road, and once you’ve passed the last neighbour there’s still a kilometre and a half to go. And the snow is half a metre deep, just as high as it is at the side of the road, with no sign of tracks made by either wheels or shoes. Only elk and foxes. And maybe the odd wolf. You get my meaning? There hasn’t been anyone there for weeks, Hole. If you want to get hold of Lenny, you’ll have to buy a plane ticket to Thailand. Pattaya’s popular with men who are after Thai ladies, or so I’ve heard.’

‘Snowmobile,’ Harry said.

‘What?’

‘If I come back tomorrow with a warrant, can you organise a snowmobile?’

Harry realised that the sheriff’s good humour had run out. Presumably he had imagined sharing a nice cup of coffee while he proved to the cops from the big city that they knew what effective police work was out in the countryside too. Instead they were making fun of his judgements and asking him to put a vehicle at their disposal, like he was some sort of supplies manager.

‘You don’t need a snowmobile for a kilometre and a half,’ Jimmy said, rubbing the tip of his suntanned nose, which had begun to peel. ‘Use skis, Hole.’

‘I haven’t got any skis. A snowmobile, and someone to drive it.’

The silence that followed seemed to last an eternity.

‘I saw that the youngster was driving.’ Jimmy tilted his head. ‘No driving licence, Hole?’

‘Yes, but I killed a police officer once when I was driving.’ Harry picked up his mug and emptied it. ‘I’d prefer to avoid that happening again. Thanks for the coffee, and see you tomorrow.’

‘So what was that?’ Oleg said as they were waiting at the junction indicating to pull out onto the main road. ‘A local sheriff volunteers to help on a Saturday, and you start giving him the runaround?’

‘Did I do that?’

‘Yes!’

‘Mm. Indicate left instead.’

‘Oslo’s right.’

‘According to the satnav, Åneby Pizza & Grill is two minutes away if we turn left.’

The owner of Åneby Pizza & Grill, who had introduced himself as Tommy, wiped his fingers on his apron as he looked carefully at the picture Harry was holding in front of him.

‘Maybe, but I don’t remember what Lenny’s friend looked like, I just remember that he was here, and that he had company on the night that woman got killed in Oslo. Lenny’s a lone wolf, always on his own, doesn’t come here much. That’s why I remembered that evening when you called back in the autumn.’

‘The man in the picture’s name is Alexander, or Valentin. Did you hear Lenny call him either of those names when they were talking?’

‘I don’t remember hearing them talk at all. And I was out front alone that night, my wife was in the kitchen.’

‘When did they leave?’