Jo Nesbo - The Thirst

‘Couldn’t say. They shared a Knut Special XXL with pepperoni and ham.’

‘You remember that?’

Tommy grinned and tapped a finger to his temple. ‘Order a pizza and come back in three months’ time and ask me what it was. I’ll give you the same discount that the police station gets. All the pizza bases are low-carb, with nuts.’

‘Tempting, but I’ve got my boy waiting in the car. Thanks for your help.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

Oleg set off into the early dusk.

They were both silent, immersed in their own thoughts.

Harry was doing calculations. Valentin could easily have eaten a pizza with Lenny and then got back to Oslo in time to kill Elise Hermansen.

A lorry passed them going so fast that the car shook.

Oleg cleared his throat. ‘How are you going to get hold of a warrant?’

‘Mm?’

‘To start with, you don’t work at Crime Squad. And you don’t have any legal basis for the warrant.’

‘No?’

‘Not if I’ve understood the course correctly.’

‘Let’s hear it,’ Harry smiled.

Oleg slowed down slightly. ‘There’s incontrovertible proof that Valentin killed a number of women. Lenny Hell met these women by coincidence. That on its own isn’t enough to give the police the right to break into Lenny Hell’s house while he’s on holiday in Thailand.’

‘Agreed, it would be difficult to get a search warrant on those grounds. So let’s drive to Grini.’

‘Grini?’

‘I was thinking of having a chat with Hallstein Smith.’

‘Helga and I are making dinner together tonight.’

‘To be more precise, a chat about morbid jealousy. Dinner, you say? I understand, I’ll find my own way out to Grini.’

‘Grini’s almost on the way, so OK.’

‘Go and make dinner, it might take a while with Smith.’

‘Too late, you’ve already said I can come along.’ Oleg sped up, pulled out and overtook a tractor, and put the lights on full beam.

They drove for a while in silence.

‘Sixty,’ Harry said, typing on his phone.

‘And icy,’ Oleg said, easing off the accelerator slightly.

‘Wyller?’ Harry said. ‘Harry Hole. I hope you’re sitting at home and feeling bored on a Saturday afternoon. Oh? Then you’ll have to explain to the lovely lady, whoever she is, that you need to help a washed-up but legendary detective check a few things.’

‘Morbid jealousy,’ Hallstein Smith said, looking keenly at the guests who had just arrived. ‘It’s an interesting subject. But have you really come all this way to talk about that? Isn’t this more Ståle Aune’s specialty?’

Oleg nodded and looked like he agreed.

‘I wanted to talk to you, seeing as you’ve got doubts,’ Harry said.

‘Doubts?’

‘You said something that night Valentin was here. You said he knew.’

‘Knew what?’

‘You didn’t say.’

‘I was in shock, I probably said all sorts of things.’

‘No, for once you said relatively little, Smith.’

‘Did you hear that, May?’ Hallstein Smith laughed at the slight figure who was pouring tea for them.

She smiled and nodded, then went off into the living room with the teapot and one cup.

‘I said “he knew”, and you interpreted that to mean I doubted something?’ Smith asked.

‘It sounded like something inexplicable,’ Harry said. ‘Something you couldn’t quite understand how Valentin could know. Am I wrong?’

‘I don’t know, Harry. When it comes to my own subconscious, you can probably answer as well as me, maybe better. Why do you ask?’

‘Because a man has popped up. Well, he’s actually gone off to Thailand in something of a hurry. But I asked Wyller to check. And the person in question isn’t on any passenger lists during the period when he’s supposed to have gone. And during the past three months there hasn’t been any activity on this individual’s bank or credit cards, either in Thailand or anywhere else. And, almost as interestingly, Wyller found his name on our list of people who have bought 3D printers in the past year.’

Smith looked at Harry. Then he turned and looked out through the kitchen window. The snow lay like a soft, sparkling blanket over the field in the darkness outside. ‘Valentin knew where my office was. That’s what I meant by “he knew ”.’

‘Your address, you mean?’

‘No, I mean the fact that he walked straight from the gate to the barn. He didn’t just know that my office was there, he also knew that I was usually there in the middle of the night.’

‘Maybe he saw light from the window?’

‘You can’t see any light in that window from the gate. Come with me, I want to show you something.’

They headed down to the barn, unlocked the door and went into the office, where Smith turned on his computer.

‘I’ve got all the security footage here, I just need to find it,’ Smith said, and started tapping.

‘Cool drawing,’ Oleg said, nodding at the bat-man on the wall. ‘Grim.’

‘Alfred Kubin,’ Smith said. ‘ Der Vampyr . My father had a book of Kubin’s drawings. I used to sit at home and look at it while other kids went to the cinema to watch bad horror films. But sadly May won’t let me have any of Kubin’s pictures in the house, she says they give her nightmares. And speaking of nightmares, here’s the footage of Valentin.’

Smith pointed and Harry and Oleg leaned over his shoulders.

‘Here he is coming into the barn. You see, he’s not hesitating, he knows exactly where he’s going. How? The therapy sessions I had with Valentin weren’t here, but in a rented office in the city centre.’

‘You’re saying someone must have given him instructions in advance?’

‘I’m saying someone could have given Valentin Gjertsen instructions. That’s been the problem with this case right from the start. Vampirists don’t have the capacity for planning that these murders demonstrate.’

‘Hm. We didn’t find a 3D printer in Valentin’s flat. Someone else could have made the copies of the keys for him. Someone who had previously made copies of keys for himself, to let himself into the homes of women who had dumped him. Who had rejected him. Who had gone on to meet other men.’

‘Bigger men,’ Smith said.

‘Jealousy,’ Harry said. ‘Morbid jealousy. But in a man who’s never hurt a fly.’

‘And when a man isn’t capable of hurting anyone, he needs someone to act for him. Someone who can do the things he can’t.’

‘A murderer,’ Smith said, nodding slowly.

‘Someone who’s prepared to kill for the sake of killing. Valentin Gjertsen. So we have one man who plans, and another who acts. The agent and the artist.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Smith said, rubbing his cheeks with his hands. ‘Now my dissertation is actually starting to make sense.’

‘In what way?’

‘I was in Lyon recently, giving a lecture about the vampirist murders, and even if my colleagues have been enthusiastic as far as my pioneering work goes, I keep having to point out that there’s something missing that stops it from qualifying as truly groundbreaking, and that is that these murders don’t fit the general profile of a vampirist that I’ve come up with.’

‘Which is?’

‘An individual with schizophrenia and aspects of paranoia who, as a result of their overwhelming thirst for blood, kills whoever happens to be closest to them, an individual who can’t commit murders that require a lot of planning and patience. But this vampirist’s murders point more towards an engineering personality.’

‘A brain,’ Harry said. ‘Who approaches Valentin, who has had to put a stop to his activities because he can’t move freely without being caught by the police. The brain offers Valentin the keys to the flats of single women. Pictures, information about their routines, when they come and go, everything Valentin needs to get them without having to expose himself. How could he turn down an offer like that?’